Chapter 260 – Conquer the Greed
The Rank 3 dungeon『Isckia Hills』was a dungeon located between Spada and Fauren.
In the first place a natural region shouldn’t be called a dungeon, but to adventurers, any place where they could fight monsters was a dungeon, hence the main reason was amplified and is being called as that.
Anyhow, the Isckia Hills were covered with abundant nature, but as it was called a dungeon, there were a great variety of monsters living there.
Even this swamp area called『Thunder Cloud Swamp』, located in the interior of the dense forest was included in the range of Isckia Hills.
If an adventurer stood and looked over this swamp, they most likely wouldn’t realise that this was the ‘Thunder Cloud’
That was because this place only had one small filthy muddy swamp, there was nothing special in particular.
It was a completely ordinary swamp located in any forest. Even the scene of monsters going near swamps for water was quite common in this world.
However the monster currently here was quite a rare one.
SFX: GoooGGGyyyayaaaaaaaa!!
A earth-splitting loud howl reverberated.
In an instant, ten-odd metres of ground protruded and a great tree standing there was blown away. A monster literally split the earth and appeared.
The earth and sand grandiosely blew up and rained down on the surroundings. It truly was a downpour of earth and sand.
The monster that appeared by creating a rain of mud was the rumoured rank 5 monster, Greed Gore.
It looked like a dinosaur, no, in this world it had the form of a typical land dragon, i.e. he had a form with head and tail in a horizontal line and walked on two legs, similar to a Dagger Raptor.
However, this Greed Gore had a big body incomparable to a 2 metres long Rank 1 monster. Greed Gore’s body was so big that even if the Rank number was to be doubled it would still not reach there.
He was 30 metres from the tip of the nose to the end of the tail, its overall height easily crossed over 10 metres. Among the numerous monsters, he would enter in the large-monster category.
From the looks of its oblong angular face and carapace that was the same colour and shape of a brick, it truly looked like a dinosaur-shaped Golem.
This golem had high affinity with the Earth attribute, just from the fact that it could move underground with its big body shows the fact that he had a powerful Extra Magic that could manipulate the earth.
If there were other monsters in the vicinity, they might’ve been killed by this Extra Magic.
But then, most of the monsters were of about the size that would conventionally fit into Greed Gore’s mouth, moreover, thinking on the Rank of this dungeon, there would no monster powerful enough to make it use its Extra Magic.
As though trying to prove that, the moment Greed Gore appeared from under the ground, the monsters hiding in the vicinity attempted to escape at full speed.
Fortunately the thirst surpa.s.sed the hunger for the current Greed Gore. It stepped forward towards the swamp in front of it without showing any interest in the presence of other monsters quite far from it.
Although after sating its thirst, it would eat all the fish, insects and monsters living in the swamp and sate its greedy stomach.
After all Greed Gore had come here while greedily devouring everything in front of it.
Every time it would step forward with a thud, the swamp would have ripples spread over the surface.
There was no existence that could stop those heavy steps, and as if it knew this, Greed Gore didn’t pay attention to the surroundings and neared the tip of his nose to the muddy water surface.
It opened its fiendish mouth which bared fangs like knife, no, they were already bigger than swords, and started slurping the water of the swamp with such great force as though he wanted to drink all the water there.
However at this time, to stop the water level of swamp from decreasing,the sound of thunder burst out on the tip of Greed Gore’s nose.
Greed Gore raised his head up whilst making a short shout——no, a menacing sound.
Shrill sounds of blitz flashing reverberated in the surroundings, only noticing now, the swamp was enshrouded by a black fog.
No, this black mist had purple lightning flashing inside it, in that case, this place truly was worthy of being called Thunder Cloud.
In the blink of an eye, the dark clouds surging with electricity covered the swamp and Greed Gore.
The occurrence of this phenomenon, as if thunder clouds were thrown onto the ground, was the main reason for this place to be called as『Thunder Cloud Swamp』.
The monster responsible for causing this phenomenon appeared in front of Greed Gore.
The monster which surfaced by bulging up the water surface was an eerie violet big fish with slippery skin.
If one word was there for that figure it could only be『catfish』. It had a flat head, big mouth, long moustache (ET: ?), a body surface without scales and covered in mucus, and every other trait a catfish could have.
Its length was definitely larger than 10 metres. It was hard to think that fishes of this size were present in several tens and hundreds within this small swamp. Most probably, this one was the owner of the swamp.
However the biggest reason that this catfish was called as monster wasn’t because of its body size but because it had a powerful Extra Magic that could manipulate lightning.
This was a Rank 3 electric catfish monster called as『Mazuna Cruz』. [1]
SFX: Goooaaaaaa!!
One long straight purple-tinted lightning bolt surged towards Greed Gore, who was roaring out a menacing yell.
The lightning attack of Mazuna Cruz wasn’t fired from the mouth and hence wasn’t a Breath Type attack, but rather it was fired from its whole body so it was a Blast Type attack.
The electric attack fire from the back of its body moved forward while creating a purple trajectory.
Moreover it wasn’t any normal lightning, but the amount of electricity in it kept on increasing, and it increased in size and thickness as it neared.
These thunder clouds covering the swamp were one of the abilities of the Mazuna Cruz, in other words it was a thunder-attribute strengthened barrier.
However this wasn’t activated by it alone, but through the help of few other Mazuna Cruzes living in the swamp.
Mazuna Cruz didn’t have the nature to work in crowds, but when they felt danger for their habitat because of a foreign enemy, they all join and work together to fight against the common enemy.
They obey their wild instincts that sometimes show rationality surpa.s.sing that of humans, hence the Mazuna Cruz obeyed the instinct and challenged the Greed Gore that had been said to have enough power to destroy the world.
The lightning attack fired with the wager of Mazuna Cruzes’ existence became as thick as a big serpent by the time it reached Greed Gore. It burned everything that touched it and attacked like a big rocky mountain.
Greed Gore didn’t move at all, maybe because it wasn’t quick-witted and agile enough to evade that lightning attack, and so the attack landed.
The purple lightning burst open as though a Flash for blinding someone was activated. Like that the dazzling light sparked consecutively.
That was not just for show, in truth that attack could defeat most of the monsters, even those monsters that are stronger than the top Ranks humans have set for their convenience.
The lightning attack was fired by the owner of swamp, other individuals Boosted it, the attack was just like a coordinated attack done by any Adventurer Party, but
SFX: Goooggyyyyyyaaaa!!
It wasn’t able to defeat Greed Gore.
The brick-like carapace, after getting hit by lightning, truly became grilled brick-like.
However just that much, the lightning attack didn’t reach down the thick and hard carapace.
The Earth-Attribute was far surpa.s.sing other attributes in defence, one reason for that was because the earth itself was quite a hard substance.
Especially it was the best defence for blocking against lightning, the difficulty to pa.s.s electricity through rock was a given, but even most of the electric heat was cut off.
For the Mazuna Cruz, an Earth-Attribute specialized monster like Greed Gore was the worst enemy.
Greed Gore calmly started walking towards the swamp as though it had already known about the superiority of its body.
It moved in straight line aiming for the Mazuna Cruz floating in the centre of swamp, whilst the water surface would ripple every time it took a step.
Having its own territory breached, the Mazuna Cruz was completely enraged, and fired off lightning from its body with full power, while it also started swimming as though it were sliding on the water surface.
One side was Greed Gore with its big mouth opened for eating the big catfish, the other side was Mazuna Cruz trying to defeat the foreign enemy to save its whole territory.
Both parties collided against each other in a straight line within the swamp.
The battle was decided in just one attack.
The Mazuna Cruz that attacked with its strongest and biggest lightning attack had its stomach ripped apart by Greed Gore, who didn’t even bat an eye to the lightning strike.
The dark red liquid started spreading across the muddy water.
The Mazuna Cruz now with a chewed stomach was already dead, but it’s tail and fins were still active above the water’s surface purely due to reflexes.
Greed Gore raised a voice of happiness after capturing a big prey and opened its mouth to devour the swamp’s master greedily. It was that time it opened its mouth.
A single lightning attack leaped out from the bitten off stomach.
No, looking closely it wasn’t lightning. Although that thing was clad in purple lightning it was something completely different.
A lower body of a snake, upper body of a human, it looked just like the Lamia race, but——
SFX: Goaaaaa!!?
Before it even recognized what the mysterious lightning was, it entered the open mouth of Greed Gore.
It reflexively tried to chew down that eerie thing in its mouth, but all that happened was its fangs united making a *clang* sound.
There was no magic that could do something about the thing that had vanished in its mouth. Hence, Greed Gore restarted eating the food as though it had forgotten the existence of that lightning.
The change occurred after it had eaten the whole corpse of Mazuna Cruz.
A reaction as though the meat it ate was poison, in other words, Greed Gore started writhing in agony.
The 30 metres big body was rampaging in the swamp, large columns of water rose up as though a Mage Squad had simultaneously attacked.
However that also stopped in a few moments, and after it lost all it’s strength, Greed Gore silently sank down to the bottom of swamp.
It died, a person watching from side would only see it like that, but the next moment, it again surfaced.
Like that this time, it returned back to the ground in an extremely lazy manner.
Before Greed Gore knew it, the Thunder Cloud barrier had already vanished and the scene had returned to its original state.
However, for some reason even now the sound of lightning bursts reverberated.
The source of those sounds was Greed Gore, but it had Extra Magic of Earth-Attribute, it could never create electricity like a firefly, no matter how.
However the current Greed Gore was clad in the eerie purple lightning just like a Mazuna Cruz.
—
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
Oh! Greed Gore looks different……
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE:
1. Mazuna is a pun on the way catfish is called in j.a.panese. Catfish = Namazu. Pfft, so bad naming sense!