Meanwhile, at the same time.
"Hmm, I know it sounds impossible, but... could that be?"
"Even if I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and say no, his track record is just too flashy. He keeps a lot of things to himself, too."
"Hahaha, thought so."
After the duel with Arghana, Finn and Tione were also witnessing the string of emergencies firsthand from the deck out at sea.
A gigantic monster suddenly rising from beneath the ocean.
Along with it, the shoreline rapidly being contaminated by grotesque chunks of flesh.
And then, following that, yet another giant appearing.
"I was already thinking this during the War Game."
"He really does whatever he wants when the situation gets bad. If the Guild finds out, there's going to be another uproar for sure."
"Definitely."
At a time like this, it wasn't all that important which side the magus was the culprit for.
No, perhaps both sides were part of his plan.
Or maybe this was a disaster caused by an accident, followed by the cleanup.
Either way.
"For now, let's deal with that giant monster first. We can think about the rest after everything right in front of us has been handled."
"Fair enough. Then...?"
"First, abandon this ship and regroup with the other teams on land. For most enemies, this could be a decent foothold for sea combat, but at the rate the surrounding waters are being contaminated, we'd only end up trapped in a narrow space. That said, if the thing is that big, it might actually be better to climb directly onto its body and fight there."
"Understood, Captain. Hey! You heard him, right? If you don't want to end your life as that filthy monster's meal, then move your asses and run! Got it!?"
"Ah, um, that is..."
"I said, do you understand!?"
Bang!
"Hii, hiiik! Y-Yes, ma'am!"
"R-Right, run already!"
"You idiots! Take Arghana with you too, that damned woman!"
At Tione's shout, the Amazoness from Kali Familia on the ship all turned pale and, in a panic, quickly jumped overboard.
Even making sure to take their former enemy Arghana along with them was, honestly, either incredibly considerate or incredibly soft-hearted.
"Still."
Lately, far too many things had been happening that defied common sense.
The new monsters, and that fallen spirit from the deep levels, too.
The remnants of the Evils alongside them.
And now, an abnormal phenomenon on the surface that he had never seen even once until now.
It felt like some wheel of fate had started turning, changing the ordinary flow of daily life.
"I guess I should be grateful that my thumb hurts less than it did back then."
Finn licked the thumb that had started throbbing little by little since the giant monster appeared.
He wondered if all of this might somehow be woven together into one huge thread, connected by some conspiracy behind the scenes.
"Captain! Those idiots all got off!"
"Good. Then now we can get out of here...!"
That was when it happened.
Boom!
"Huh?!"
"So it's begun."
A large, heavy roar echoed from far away.
A battle at sea unfolding beneath the bright light of the full moon.
Boom! Boom!
"A fight between a giant and a giant monster, huh."
The sheer force of it was nothing short of a scene from mythology.
Of course, setting that aside.
"Well, it's definitely fun to watch."
Finn felt his heart pounding strangely, almost like a novice adventurer's.
*
"Hahahahaha! Now that's some satisfying impact, buddy!"
Let me briefly explain the current situation.
Champion Gareth has gone completely wild.
Boom! Boom!
-"Kyaooooooo!"
"Hey now, where do you think you're going! Hraaaah!"
Crash!
The armored giant's steel fist smashes into the grotesque tentacled monster's face.
The enraged beast tries to wrap its tentacle bundles around him like ropes and stop the giant's movements, but it's useless.
Creak, sizzle!
Riiip!
The tentacle bundles are torn apart in an instant.
Which was only natural, since the power of [Bankai] is basically something that lets the user's strength and durability, and the power derived from those stats, multiply several times over.
And Gareth is, by common consensus, a first-class adventurer with top-class strength stats recognized all over the world.
Just how much could some creature hope to endure against strength and brute force on the level of several times that man's own?
At the very least, not some rotten heap of corpse-like trash like that.
"Hahaha! Too soft, too soft!"
"He's having way too much fun."
And that was the result.
Gareth was happily pounding the monster into the ground, while the thing itself was being battered almost completely defenseless by the attacks of the armored giant mimicking his movements.
The battle was proceeding smoothly enough.
"Still, ugh~! Having to keep drinking like crazy while fighting. I don't hate it, but this is pretty damn inconvenient."
"Can't be helped. You're not some once-in-a-century archmage like that elf princess. No matter how much of a tank-specialist warrior you are, your mana is way too low. Just the mana support from the cockpit—well, the makeshift ritual chamber—is nowhere near enough. So all you can do is keep replenishing the missing energy by chugging down alcohol, which at least counts as a relatively high-calorie food. Unless you've got some legendary bread or beans that fill you up for ten days from a single bite, that is."
"Is that so? Then it can't be helped. Yep, can't be helped at all. Gwahahaha, gulp! Khh~!"
Look at him, look at him.
He keeps saying it can't be helped, but he's still grinning and drinking away.
Maybe that old man was genuinely enjoying this situation.
Well, dwarves and alcohol went together naturally, so I guess that made sense.
And for me, too, that was a relief.
Because that alone wasn't enough to replenish all the missing energy.
I'd even left out not just the weapon, but some of the armor parts as well, just to reduce the burden a little more.
In other words, all that excessive drinking did was keep [Bankai] moving and slightly reduce the risk afterward.
So where did the remaining calories come from?
Obviously, they had to be paid from Gareth's own body.
By the time this battle was over, his weight might have dropped by at least a quarter.
For a top-tier first-class tank, that would be a pretty painful loss, but given the current situation, there was nothing for it.
I'd already asked the man himself to bear with it, so we'd think about the rest later.
Or maybe he'd use it as an excuse to spend some time in alcohol-soaked recuperation?
Still, he was a first-class adventurer. He'd know how to handle himself.
As for whether it made Riveria or Finn's stomach twist, that wasn't my problem.
"Even so."
Bang! Bang!
-"Kuoooooooo!"
While I kept letting the huge impacts ringing out in front of me go in one ear and out the other, I did a rough calculation in my head.
Let's see.
If I compare the remaining amount of alcohol, Gareth's mana reserves, and the mana consumption of the [Bankai] I made, then, hmm.
"At this rate, we've only got two minutes left at best."
Which was because, although I hadn't told Gareth this, this [Bankai] was basically a failure, too.
Altogether, the large-scale romance works I'd made so far numbered three.
Golden Sosaijou, Keter Malchut, and this current Black Sealed Heavenly Dog King.
Of those, the first one I made, Keter Malchut, had failed despite me throwing money at it like there was no tomorrow.
Using that failure as experience, I made this one, Black Sealed Heavenly Dog King, in a cheaper way.
And the method of making it was surprisingly simple.
Since I'd already failed by wasting money in the material world, this time I'd try going crazy in the immaterial world.
From that perspective, I traveled all over the world to graveyards, ancient battlefields steeped in history, and even battlefields of the present age, installing ritual chambers there.
I indiscriminately gathered and condensed thought-ether.
Someone might mistake or misunderstand that as some evil necromancer collecting souls, but that's a little different.
To explain it more simply:
What is usually called the soul's self and core memory is referred to as [Soul], while the medium connecting it to the present world, or the movement memory... no, the biologically instinctive part, is called [Po].
In other words, a normal undead is a corpse left with only the [Po] remaining.
And an apostle, a vampire, has both [Soul] and [Po] remaining, but its very nature has been heavily twisted away from that of a human.
The thought-ether I gathered among those was precisely the [Po].
As for the other [Soul], it had long since gone up to the heavenly realm where the gods reside, so even if I wanted to recover it, I couldn't.
In any case.
By gathering those [Po], compressing them into clumps of ether, shaping them, carving them, and assembling them into the current [Bankai] form, I created this Black Sealed Heavenly Dog King.
Of course, that absurd physical power had nothing to do with the Third Magic.
That was just a lump of energy forcibly gathered and compressed, producing that much physical force.
In other words, its essence was a kind of divine possession... an energy shield armor... or, to put it more simply, something like the "Over Soul" concept from some shamanism manga?
No, maybe more like a mutated, upgraded version of shadow magecraft?
Anyway, let's just go with something like that.
Even I start to feel like this gets difficult when I try to explain it endlessly without technical terms.
Let's just say that's roughly how it works.
In the end, I went to all that trouble to cut costs and make it, but while it didn't produce the performance or output I'd expected, the inefficient imbalance between the mana and stamina required for activation, maintenance, and use was such a major problem that I classified it as a failure.
In short, that thing had terrible fuel efficiency.
Honestly, if it weren't for the mana shortage, a warrior who wasn't on Gareth's level would have had all their life force drained the moment [Bankai] activated and turned into a mummy in no time.
Ah, and this part is absolutely hush-hush, okay?
Anyway, because it's not something meant to be used for very long.
The operational limit was already right around the corner.
"This is too slow."
"Hraaaah!"
Crash!
Maybe he hadn't heard my worried mutterings over the noise.
Or maybe he was simply drunk on the massive amount of alcohol he'd consumed.
Either way, Gareth just kept moving the armored giant and happily pounding the tentacled monster.
But watching from right beside him made it clear.
Even the invincible tank Gareth had reached his limit.
Any more than this would be too dangerous, even for him.
So.
"Yeah, yeah. In the end, I'm the one who has to run one more time."
Let's get moving from this side now.
And later, I'll demand extra hazard pay from the Guild, inflated nicely.
Ah, honestly.
I'm just too diligent and kind for my own good. (Heh?)
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