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HS Chapter 24:
🕑 Added 2024-10-07 17:43:25 +0000 UTCChapter 24:
In a blind panic, Alice fired a mana bolt directly at the creature's beak. The shimmering haze of magic glanced off its black carapace mouth. Though it didn't break the shell as she had hoped, it wasn't entirely ineffective. The bolt continued forward, striking the main body of the baby Kraken and sizzling its rubbery flesh.
Titus put aside his ax and stabbed with his new enchanted pilum. He had rushed up to the monster and stabbed at the webbing between its long, tentacled legs, trying to pry it away from the vessel. The spear sank in, but it was just a small needle compared to the large creature.
Alice found she had recovered maybe four Mana Bolts worth of her mana when she'd been meditating. But she'd already fired off two, and it hadn't done much. This wasn't going to work. The boat was already slowing as the kraken's body jammed the propeller.
We should have looked for some more mundane weaponry, especially at our level. Even a nice rifle would have probably had more impact than I would after running out of mana with only two more shots.
Alice held off, instead repositioning herself to get a better glimpse from the side of the ship. She leaned over and saw the baby Kraken was at least as long as the ship. Each tentacle was maybe forty feet long, and the bulbous, octopus-like head was another twenty feet. There weren't just eight tentacles, though. There were several more.
The half-torn one had already rotated back into the water, and countless others grasped at the boat, not doing much damage to its structure. The weird beak mouth thing was chattering at Titus as he somehow managed to dodge between tentacles flying at him, and he stabbed it repeatedly. He managed to hit the same spot several times, carving off a chunk of rubbery flesh. The purplish-black blood that spilled out slowed almost as soon as the injury was created.
"What do we do?" Alice yelled.
"I'm open to ideas," Titus responded between spear thrusts.
We need to get it off and do a lot of damage. It will have to be from Titus because I just don't have the skills for it. If I had a class, maybe one of my new skills would give me the option to actually fight it. [Mana Bolts] are useful against things my level or for supporting Titus as he fights. I can only think of a few things in his kit that would help.
"Have you tried [Primal Marksmanship] yet?" she yelled.
"When would I have had the time?" Titus responded.
"Well, I guess now! Combine it with [Critical Strike]!" she called. It was more of a question than anything, but Titus nodded.
"You're going to have to keep it off me. This might take a moment to figure out."
Alice nodded, and as Titus ran away to get some distance so he could use his skills, she moved in front of him. Her hands rose, ready to cast the two remaining mana bolts to knock aside any tentacles that came for him. The beast didn't take advantage of the opening to attack but climbed further up the ship. Its head was now mostly out of the water and starting to appear on the deck. Its weight bore the ship down, sending the deck tilting at a dangerous ten, almost fifteen degrees. Alice was grateful for the extremely rough decking that her shoes could grip into; otherwise, she'd be sliding down into its face.
She let it come, and one of the massive eyes, nearly as tall as she was, looked at them with a strange amount of intelligence. Then, a tentacle swung for both of them at the side.
Instinctively, she flung her hand to the side and nailed it with a mana bolt, severing the last ten feet in the air instead of smashing them off the deck. She caught the nearly 200-pound piece of rubber flying at her incredible speed. Her new stats were enough that she managed to catch it and halt its momentum, but not before she was sent tumbling. Though she managed to protect Titus.
He was frowning in concentration, but the second she was blasted aside, he acted. Taking a crow hop like she imagined an outfielder would when preparing to throw the ball home, he twisted in a practiced, effortless motion, and the pilum he bought flew from his hand, shimmering and duplicating itself dozens of times. A veritable volley of projectiles flung the nearly twenty-foot gap between him and the head of the baby Kraken.
She wasn't sure how [Critical Strike] worked, but it looked like nearly a third of them landed in the thing's eye. Viscous black pus exploded everywhere as the eye was punctured a half dozen times, and black blood oozed from the creature's head as it became a pincushion. Titus held his hand off to the side, focusing, and a single one of the spears in its eye disappeared, the blood increasing as it reappeared in Titus's hand. Alice saw that Titus's veritable sun of endless mana was actually dimmed. With mana sight, she could see the pathways of mana within him; that had taken a lot out of him. He could maybe do it one more time.
"Again!" she called. This was their only hope unless they could rig up something with random supplies, but they just didn't have time. If the thing managed to get all the way onto the boat, it very well could sink from its weight alone, and they would have nowhere to hide from the writhing tentacles. At least the tentacles weren't seeking them out anymore, instead just flailing randomly in pain. As long as she ducked low beneath the railing, she was relatively safe.
Still, she kept careful watch. The tentacles sometimes got close to Titus. She had one more shot, one more chance to knock aside a tentacle seeking to hit him and prevent the damage he could do. Luckily, she didn't need to.
He lunged forward, throwing the pilum with even more momentum as if it was a long-forgotten skill that he was even better at than she could have hoped, as if he had done it countless times before. The pilum flew true, and with even more force, all of its illusory copies buried themselves deep into the creature. After he launched the second volley, the first volley that still impaled the creature disappeared, and the deep puncture wounds started to bleed even more profusely. Its eye was completely shredded, and the second wave followed through the eye's path and dug deep. Hopefully it had hit the thing's brain, assuming it had one and wasn't like an octopus with some sort of distributed network amongst its tentacles.
The thing screeched, a wave of physical sound slamming Alice back to the deck. She struggled to her feet, but in the process, she missed the tentacle that had grasped Titus's leg. Even as he attempted to recover, clearly still dizzy from the massive expenditure of mana, it yanked him off his feet and pulled him towards the sickening black maw.
"No!" Alice yelled and fired her last mana bolt at the tentacle holding Titus's leg. It hit, but it hit too far up the base and too thick of a spot, causing the tentacle to tear but not fully sever. It convulsed, whipping Titus around, but a second tentacle found his leg and pulled him towards the maw of the thrashing creature.
Alice ran forward. As Titus was yanked towards its maw, its beak opened wide. She shouted forward, drawing her knife in one motion and hacking at the tentacle, cutting it. But Titus was too close, and the thing sunk its beak into his foot. Titus yelled in surprise and pain as he thrashed, ripping his foot free of the kraken, and leaving his boot behind. A jagged cut along his foot bled red against the purple and black backdrop of the kraken's own blood.
Alice stabbed into the other tentacle wrapped around Titus's leg repeatedly, damaging it and eventually severing it. She grabbed his arm and pulled him with her now surprising strength, enough to move him easily up the deck and away from the monster as it thrashed.
Slowly, its grip started to ease up on the ship as the amount of damage Titus had done was adding up. Either it was dying, or it decided that they were too much of a hassle to deal with.
Alice pushed Titus down next to the steering wheel. They huddled behind the captain's chair as the thing slowly eased its way off the back of the ship. Then it stopped moving, and Alice groaned. A notification flashed in her head, telling her that they had defeated a level 38 baby Kraken. Normally, this would be a cause for joy, but the thing was still attached to the ship.
