Chapter 138: The Kraken’s Retreat
The gate raid had failed.
Walfred’s expression hardened in an instant.
Meanwhile, Jonah relayed the full story he had heard from his acquaintance.
[Ace]: I was shocked too.
[Ace]: From what I heard, the hunters mobilized for the raid included one A-rank and eight B-ranks, plus dozens more hunters on top of that.
[Ace]: So naturally I assumed they’d clear it, but apparently the number of monsters was far beyond anything they expected.
And the result?
The raid had ultimately failed, and the gate had broken open.
[Me]: What’s the situation on the ground?
What mattered now wasn’t grilling anyone over the spilled milk. It was mopping it up.
Maybe Jonah sensed this too, because his reply came right away.
[Ace]: They’ve set up a defensive line right in front of the opened gate and are holding it.
[Ace]: But like I said, there are so many monsters that they may have to consider retreating at this rate.
Not exactly a great situation.
Walfred asked again.
[Me]: What time did the gate break open?
[Ace]: Uh, let’s see...
[Ace]: 3:30 PM, I was told.
The current time was 4:40 PM.
Roughly an hour had passed, so it hadn’t been that long. And with a defensive line in place, it wouldn’t collapse anytime soon either.
Once he had a grasp of the situation, Walfred immediately spread out a map. He was calculating the distance between his current location and Smathers Beach, where the gate had opened, when...
[Ace]: ...I’m sorry.
[Ace]: I promised I’d bring you news of your niece, and now this has happened.
[Ace]: I’m truly ashamed.
A message of apology arrived.
An apology for failing to deliver news of Walfred’s niece, Jenna. Walfred, however, typed his reply as if it didn’t bother him at all.
[Me]: Don’t worry about it.
[Me]: You’ve done everything you could, Chief.
He meant it.
Just by telling him where the survivors of Brooklyn Girls’ Academy had been staying, Jonah had already done his part and then some.
Above all, the gate breaking open wasn’t Jonah’s fault. He was merely a messenger passing along information from the middle.
[Me]: So from here on out,
[Me]: I’ll go check for myself.
Smathers Beach was just over six miles away.
If he sprinted at top speed along the coastal road, it probably wouldn’t even take him an hour.
That was when Jonah voiced his confusion.
[Ace]: ...?
[Ace]: Go check for yourself? Hunter Walfred, aren’t you in Savannah right now?
[Me]: No, I’m in Key West.
[Ace]: ...What?
[Ace]: Wait, how are you already...
The startled Jonah kept typing something, but Walfred never saw the rest of it. The moment he finished saying what he had to say, he logged out of the community.
"Whew."
After a short exhale, he cradled the sleeping Elsa in his arms and strapped her in tight with a belt so there was no chance of her falling. Then he cinched his cold-weather gear shut against the wind.
With all his preparations complete, Walfred kicked off the ground.
---
Smathers Beach.
Once one of the most beautiful beaches in Key West, this place had turned into a horrific battlefield.
A red vortex churned in the air.
From beyond the opened gate, monsters of every shape and size poured out like a flood.
Skreek! Kreek!
Hissssss!
Giant crabs as big as semi trucks.
Fish that walked on two legs, and even a monster covered head to toe in spines, drifting through the air.
Facing down hundreds of monsters, the hunters grimaced almost in unison.
"...They really are endless."
The administrator of Coral Cave Shelter, Gordon, an A-rank hunter of the lightning attribute, muttered with a furrowed brow. The hunters beside him chimed in, each looking sick of it all.
"Isn’t this a system error at this point?"
"Ugh, seriously."
"How is that thing a B-rank gate..."
Their voices were worn thin with exhaustion.
And then...
"They’re moving!"
At someone’s shout, every hunter’s eyes turned sharp.
"All units, prepare for combat!"
"If we get pushed back any further, the shelter is in danger."
"We hold this line no matter what!"
The next moment, hundreds of monsters charged.
Rumble! Boom!
Starting with Gordon’s [Call Lightning], explosions rang out from every direction. The hunters fought back against the monsters with desperate, all-out effort.
And that included Aria, a B-rank hunter of the wind attribute.
"Wind Walker! Tempest Aura!"
She chained together skills that lightened her body and drastically boosted action speed, supporting her allies in the fight.
All the while, she stared with a heavy heart at the red vortex in the distance.
’How did it come to this?’
The B-rank gate, the Coral Tomb.
The monsters found inside the gate were marine monsters, giant crabs among them. Most of them held the water and frost attributes.
Meanwhile, Coral Cave Shelter’s main forces were lightning and fire. In terms of elemental matchups, they had every advantage.
’So I thought we’d clear it easily...’
But the moment they entered the gate, the raid party realized something.
Something was very wrong.
’There were just too many monsters.’
At least five times more than expected.
And that wasn’t the only problem.
The mutant variant that spawned at a rate of about one per hundred giant crabs, the siege crab, existed in far greater numbers than anticipated. That was another wild card.
’Even at a glance, there were dozens of them.’
Siege crabs were tricky monsters that fired chunks of coral from cannon-like tubes on their backs, raining down bombardment from extreme range.
The raid party, never imagining there would be that many siege crabs, walked straight into concentrated fire the moment they entered the gate and took heavy losses because of it.
Even so, the hunters didn’t give up.
And after much struggle, they succeeded in locating the gate boss.
[B-rank Elite, Kraken]
A monster shaped like a colossal octopus.
Its raw combat power was on the low end compared to other elite monsters of its rank, but it possessed an ability that more than made up for what it lacked.
As long as the Kraken remained on the battlefield, the physical abilities of every marine monster present were boosted by up to three times.
So the moment the hunters learned the gate boss was the Kraken, they threw everything they had at it.
’But...’
The hunters’ all-out assault ended in failure.
Realizing it had become the target, the Kraken refused to take the bait and used its swift mobility to slip away to the rear in an instant.
Meanwhile, the giant crabs and siege crabs cut off every route of pursuit, and in the end, they failed to slay the boss within the time limit. The gate broke open.
’Still, it’s not over yet.’
Even now, if they could just take out the Kraken, they had a real shot. If the buff granted by its mere presence disappeared, the fight would become far easier.
The problem was that the Kraken refused to budge from right in front of the opened gate. On top of that, the siege crabs had dug in around it and were pouring out bombardment.
Getting anywhere near it was next to impossible.
’If I’d known things would turn out like this, I would’ve finished the chief’s favor first...’
Not long ago, she had received a request from a benefactor she once owed a great deal.
The favor: to look for the niece of an acquaintance, somewhere in Key West. Since it came from her benefactor, Aria had gladly accepted.
Following the trail had brought her all the way to Coral Cave Shelter, but then a gate had appeared out of nowhere and thrown everything into chaos.
’...God, I’m pathetic.’
She had failed the favor her benefactor asked of her, and the gate raid had failed too. Stuck accomplishing nothing on either front, Aria let out a deep sigh.
Just then.
Twitch!
Far in the distance, the Kraken sitting in front of the opened gate suddenly shuddered. Then, without warning, it hurled itself into the gate.
Bizarre behavior, out of nowhere.