The wind stirred up by the hundred-meter-tall monster still swept across the beach with inertial force.
Amid her flying strands of hair, Lola stared blankly up at the silhouette in front of her. Several seconds passed before her heart, which had been seized in that brush with death, began to beat again… and then it pounded faster and faster, until the blood roared in her ears like thunderous war drums!
An unprecedented sense of hope and power radiated from the backlit figure ahead, surging over her so fiercely that amid the exhaustion of that emotional rollercoaster, a spellbound admiration welled up within her:
How she longed to grab a weapon and charge into battle alongside the person in front of her… Even death would then be fervent and uproarious!
“Gurgle…”
The stationary colossal entity suddenly swiveled its eyeball. The crystalline lens, encased in mucus, produced a thick, viscous sound.
“…” Ode’s pupils contracted slightly. In the instant he made out the shriveled figure lunging at him from behind, reflected in the Black Mud Monster’s eye, he realized he had made a grave mistake.
The Infant Corpse switching its target from Lola to him in its desperate bid to escape meant that, in its eyes, he was just as easy a mark as she was.
And the Black Mud Monster, in the midst of the hunt, shifting its gaze to him indicated that his Time Alchemy Array posed a greater threat than the tasty prey it had already snared.
By this logic, their strengths ranked as follows: the Black Mud Monster stronger than the Infant Corpse, which was stronger than him.
He should have first cooperated with the Black Mud Monster to deal with the Infant Corpse, then turned on it… But in the heat of the moment, he had made the worst possible choice, drawing the attention of both the Black Mud Monster and the Infant Corpse onto himself!
Worse still, the cost of the Time Alchemy Array far exceeded his expectations. In the blink of an eye—not even enough time for the Infant Corpse behind him to lay a hand on him—he already felt his strength and body heat being siphoned away like a rainbow vortex, his legs going soft beneath him.
“Hiss… whoosh!” Dust laden with the breath of death shot toward him like poison-tipped arrows.
Ode bit down hard on the tip of his tongue. With decisive resolve, he severed the Alchemy Array, blocked the incoming assault with his rifle, and was hurled backward by the force propelling the Infant Corpse through the dust. He barely managed to support himself with his arms and legs before tumbling several times and finally skidding to a halt beside Cavendish.
“I told you that you couldn’t beat them. Need a hand?” Cavendish’s light, airy voice drifted down from above as a hand—seemingly as steady as bedrock no matter the circumstances—rested on Ode’s shoulder in a gesture of feigned concern.
But Ode’s mind was filled with that single glance when he had locked eyes with the Infant Corpse moments ago—
The enemy had been frantic, on the brink of desperation. That raw, survival-driven despair had brushed across his face alongside the grit. And if Ode’s guess about this Infant Corpse’s true identity was correct, the fact that the dust hadn’t reduced him to a pile of ash even after grazing his skin proved beyond doubt that this “deity”—most likely Quachil Uttaus, lurking amid the dust motes—was in a severely weakened state.
Think about it! Think of the Children of the Dust, inexplicably summoned to Dreamcatcher Town by Quachil Uttaus. Think of what they had been doing day after day, braving danger at the edge of the dense forest?
Were they trying to rescue their god and break it free from Dreamcatcher Town? Why was Quachil Uttaus so weakened? Who had erected that barrier encircling the town’s outskirts, and to what end?
Could all this be connected to… Yog-Sothoth? To Cavendish?
In that moment of realization, the hand on his shoulder suddenly felt like a venomous serpent hissing at him. Ode broke out in cold sweat but kept his expression neutral as he brushed Cavendish’s hand away and pushed himself up using his knee. “Who needs help? Stay here and watch closely.”
Cavendish replied, “I can’t see.”
Ode deftly spun the silver-plated handgun in his hand and smirked. “Doesn’t that let you see even clearer?”
The next instant, the black mud mountain came crashing down.
Ode unceremoniously kicked the still-rooted Cavendish aside and fired backhanded, fully securing the Black Mud Monster’s aggro. He then bolted toward the open sea, pursued by the pair of grim reapers large and small.
“Quick! Get moving while you can! Head inland!” The sheriff scrambled up the muddy beach, churned treacherous by the waves, hauling an elderly fish-drier to her feet with all his might. His other arm helped up the town clerk, knocked flat by the surf. “To the farmlands! Not the church!! Hurry!!”
Several young deputies who had come with him rushed forward to take the people off his hands. The sheriff then turned to urge the stunned onlookers around him to flee. “Don’t just stand there gawking… Move! You wanna die?! Lola, Lo—”
He had figured Lola’s family would be the hardest to budge—those three simpletons might well stand their ground until the fight was over. But before he could stumble his way over to her, the little girl had already whipped around without a backward glance and dashed in the opposite direction across the beach. “Uh, hey! Where are you going? Your parents aren’t caught up yet!!”
“She’s gone to fetch Dr. Reid,” Lola’s mother said, yanking the sheriff free from a sand pit where his left foot was mired. “How many spare guns are left at the station?”
“What?” The sheriff couldn’t keep up with this family’s leaping logic. “What do you plan to do? Guns are strictly controlled items at the station—there are no spares! And you think department-issued pistols can take down these monsters any better than your family’s hunting rifles?!”
Gripping the sheriff tightly, Lola’s mother spoke calmly and swiftly. “Before he went to save Lola, Mr. Ode asked to borrow a gun. He needed it as a weapon. See the gun he’s using now? It’s not ours—which means—”
“He has his own gun?” The sheriff was still anxiously eyeing the crowds laboriously retreating across the beach.
Lola’s mother continued, “—No. If he had his own, why borrow one from us? That means guns are consumables for him! We can’t fight shoulder-to-shoulder with him, but at least we can make sure he has enough weapons to keep using.”
The sheriff caught on with a delay. Glancing back, he saw Lola’s father already slogging unevenly toward the residential area—off to borrow better civilian firearms from the townsfolk, no doubt.
Meanwhile, in the shallows.
Ode slipped from an unexpected tremor on the beach, his body pitching forward.
He reacted swiftly, twisting his waist mid-fall. One hand braced the ground before his body fully flipped; the other snapped up the gun and blind-fired overhead. “Bang! Bang-bang-bang-bang!”
Unsure if bullets could harm the mountain-like Black Mud Monster, Ode gritted his teeth and held the trigger down, unleashing a hail of rounds.
A vertical shaft tore straight upward through the center of the descending black mountain. Though it didn’t pierce the monster clean through, it bought Ode just enough space to avoid being squashed flat.
The monster bellowed in pain.
Ode wriggled free from its recoiling bulk and flung his arm downward to shake off the writhing gray sludge clogging the barrel. Suddenly, bubbles erupted from the damp, muddy sand pit beneath his feet.
A jet of parched dust speared up from the submerged pit like a spike, instantly punching through the handgun from muzzle to butt!
“!?” Ode released his grip and dodged sideways just before the dust could shred the pistol—and his hand—into scrap. As he pondered the worsening situation, a shout rang out from the distant beach: “Sir—”
Ode’s brow furrowed in irritation. Who the hell wasn’t evacuating? He glanced over to see three young patrolmen, sleeves rolled up, grunting and heaving a bulky beast of a weapon onto the sand—a heavy, elongated contraption with six barrels clustered at the front.
“…” Ode’s eyes nearly bugged out. Had he not just vented most of his frustration cheating death, he might have muttered a curse at the 1888-model Gatling gun.
But his two pursuing reapers were closing in relentlessly—and more importantly: “What makes you think I can even lift that thing?!”
That second of shock cost him; he barely dodged the mud mountain behind him.
Even as he cowered miserably, arms over his head, his longing for the Gatling drew his gaze three times during the skirmish.
On the fourth glance.
Ode: “…Screw it!”
Craving that heavy firepower overrode all reason. He scrambled to the rear of the massive gun, muttering self-deprecatingly under his breath—”Greedy bastard, you; dying here would be a joke”—and cranked the side handle with all his might:
“Thoom-thoom-thoom-thoom…”
The cannon erupted in a symphony of raw, brutal violence.
Quachil Uttaus, struck head-on, was halted for precious seconds. Ode seized the moment, bit his finger bloody, and breathed a Time Alchemy Array onto the hefty barrel: “This isn’t your fight—get lost!”
The young men stood firm behind him without a trace of fear; two even drew their service pistols, glaring ferociously at the sea. “No! We’re with you! That suit hasn’t left either!”
“…” Ode choked back a deep breath, too pressed to turn and kick them off one by one. He wrenched the crank hard instead, roaring over the gunfire, “That’s my pet snake!! Its lifespan might outlast those two sea freaks combined—why compare yourselves to it?!”
He held back the rest—You’re not human either??—mainly because he had no time.
But Cavendish, standing on the shore, must have heard what he said aloud. Surprise flickered across his face; he savored it for a few seconds, then raised his hand toward Ode like a customer summoning a waiter.
Ode spotted it but shot back a single “Scram.”
Cavendish protested the unfairness: “You’ve called me with pebbles, whistles, and banging on boat hulls plenty of times. I thought my way was polite.”
Ode’s response was a heavier “Scram.”
Cavendish: “I can lighten the Gatling for you.”
Three seconds later, Ode slid smoothly to Cavendish’s side like an attentive server: “At your service, sir.—But make it quick.”
Cavendish arched a brow slightly, his hands never pausing: “Sounds like the kind of service you don’t want rushed.”
“As if you could even enjoy it,” Ode retorted. With the Gatling’s weight reduced from cement sack to standard rifle heft, he shouldered the mount and took a step toward the battlefield.
—If Cavendish could have seen Ode, he would have realized how far from “in control” Ode truly appeared.
His face had drained completely white, as if all color had been sucked away. Cold sweat slicked his brow, matting his hair.
The side effects of the Alchemy Array—unapparent until now—finally revealed themselves in full.
The prior Time Alchemy Array had already drained most of Ode’s vitality, and the Gatling’s barrage only compounded the strain.
“…I can hear your breathing trembling.” Cavendish suddenly turned his face slightly. “Your footsteps are hesitating. Are you afraid?”
“I’m thinking,” Ode said.
Cold sweat beaded increasingly on his forehead, but he kept suppressing the monster’s attacks with relentless fire, showing no sign of breathlessness. At the same time, he focused all his energy on devising the next tactic:
With his life force depleted to this extent, even if he was utterly unwilling to swallow a single bite of monster flesh, he had no choice but to do it.
But he couldn’t eat it in front of those onlookers still watching from afar. He had to lure the monsters into the ocean depths to avoid sparking unnecessary panic.
He needed to take them down one by one, starting with the easiest target…
He had to find a way to keep Black Mountain from interfering on the battlefield for now.
The final plan gradually took shape. Ode slowly exhaled.
In that single breath—which lasted less than half a second—he suppressed all the fear he shouldn’t have felt, or rather, the fear that he should have felt but that served no purpose. His dragging, hesitant steps became agile and sure once more. He suddenly charged toward the deep-water zone, kicking up the mud and sand beneath his feet.
In that instant, his shoulder brushed Cavendish’s. The gust of wind it created drew Cavendish’s gaze. Strangely, amid the empty expanse of his vision, an illusion gripped him: it was as if a pilot were watching the Little Prince hurl himself headlong into death’s embrace without a backward glance, abandoning him to wander Earth alone as a solitary soul in eternal vigil.
Cavendish’s hand, hanging at his side, clenched slightly. His foot stepped forward at once.
But before he could intervene, a burst of bullets erupted like cannon fire right at his toes—a silent yet thunderous warning.
‘Don’t come any closer,’ the gunfire seemed to declare.
‘Watch me,’ the Ode from his memories seemed to say.
“Splash—”
Ode plunged in first, Quachil Uttaus and Black Mountain hot on his heels. They smashed towering waves across the sea’s surface.
The waves were poised to crash over Cavendish, but an invisible force halted them. It was like an unseen wall of air cleaving the hundreds-of-meters-high surge apart, then shoving it aside with irresistible power. The tsunami-roiling sea went utterly still in an instant, without so much as a ripple.
Cavendish stood motionless on the shoreline, watching. He tracked Quachil Uttaus and that shoddy knockoff as far as his eyes could follow. Using the hurricane’s passage—the residual waves it whipped up—he tried to glimpse the storm itself, to envision the shape of that magnificent, feral beast amid the gale…
Just like that night, when he had sat in his room leafing through dry, tedious books, only to witness—by chance—a duel of death brimming with exquisite paradoxes. He couldn’t behold the storm proper, merely chase after the Deep Ones it rent asunder.
The arid text beneath his fingertips had suddenly warmed, pulsing like a heartbeat against his skin:
“‘This is the impact of force. A primitive vitality, a basic power, the capacity that moves in these things and makes them surge like giant waves, strike like storms, erupt like volcanoes.’
‘This force contained therein impacts my consciousness like a living storm; it infuses it, fills it with life, and expands it in the flood of power.’”
Cavendish still believed The Sea-Wolf was the book that fit Ode best, just as it described:
“‘He himself was a storm, the core and essence of the raging tempest that swept in.’”
In the deep-water zone, Ode abruptly halted his evasive drifting. The Gatling gun’s red-hot barrel cooled from glowing crimson to dull in the seawater.
He sighed faintly with relief at the sudden end to the life-drain, but before he could fully relax, a searing pain—as anticipated—stabbed upward from his tailbone, detonating along his spine.
Amid the swift onslaught of weakness, he tremblingly raised his left hand to inspect it. Every inch of his skin was shriveling and contracting at a ferocious rate, just like the Children of the Dust back at the Deep One Outpost—those possessed by Quachil Uttaus and withered into mummies. Amid agony that blackened his vision, he flashed a grin of near-delirious triumph. He resisted Quachil Uttaus’s bid to seize control of his body and leveled the Gatling gun ahead.
“Boom.”
The barrage exploded in the water, shoving Ode backward toward the Black Mud Monster looming upon him like an abyss.
‘?!’ Quachil Uttaus’s horror stabbed straight into Ode’s soul. Yet already they tumbled into the Black Mud Monster’s vast, yawning maw.
In a split second, Quachil Uttaus tore desperately from the flesh of Ode’s back. But the next instant, Ode’s hand clamped vise-like onto Its withered, skeletal forelimb.
Ode tilted his head back slightly toward It and grinned—a smile like that of a radiant demon: ‘Come to hell with me.’
“Whirr…”
The Black Mud Monster inhaled like a whale, dragging Ode and Quachil Uttaus wholly into the pitch-black abyss.
The furious vortex battered them against the walls of its esophagus until they plummeted into the thick, spongy sac of its stomach.
All around stretched silent darkness. But in the next moment, golden runes flared to life once more along the Gatling gun’s barrel.
Ode’s face was ravaged to an aged husk by the possession, his red hair drained of all hue. Yet his eyes gleamed undimmed, as if liquid gold swirled in emerald depths—radiating feverish heat even in the gloom.
He seemed indifferent to his own decrepitude, his pain, his impending doom. He smiled gently at Quachil Uttaus and shaped the words with his lips:
‘Good night. Never meet again.’
