Translated by: SaltyTank
Edited by: crimsonwolf8439
Sorry for the late chapter, but here it is. Enjoy!
Chapter 52
A gigantic fishman head emerged from the sea, with a large fin extending all the way down from the middle of the skull. Five protruding eyes lined up in a row on the ugly face, and below the jaw filled with nasty teeth were octopus tentacles — a lot of tentacles. It looked like an obese, mega-sized fishman from the speeding ship, but different from other fishmen, this ma.s.sive monster had octopus-like skin instead of fish scales.
"This…… this monster is over twenty metres tall?!" The adventurers were so shocked that they could not take their eyes off the emerging monster. Seemingly poking through the clouds, some adventurers even thought that it was one of the legendary t.i.tans.
The monster was unmistakably staring at the sailing ship. It rapidly approached the fleeing ship, and the adventurers could only try and outrun the pursuer like there was no tomorrow. They headed towards the sh.o.r.e at full speed, ignoring the fact that they would get stranded afterwards — being stranded was better than getting killed after all. Getting attacked by the monster in sea was no different from certain death, thus they all did not care too much about the return trip, only hoping to survive the ordeal.
Perhaps being favoured by their G.o.ds, the ship crashed onto the sh.o.r.e right before they got in range of the tentacles. The paladins and priests leapt off the deck all at once and began their battle by using the wrecked ship as cover. The priests started chanting together, equipping the paladins with a full set of "armour" — a myriad of divine buffs was applied on the paladins while they released their divine aura to increase attack power and defence. Under the blessings of multiple G.o.ds, the paladins were turned into mobile fortresses one after another.
Yet the problem of size difference still remained. As the sea monster approached the shallow waters, the paladins realized that they underestimated the monster"s size. The walking octopus should be well above thirty metres tall, and its grotesque shape made it even more fearsome. Apart from the four limbs, there were also a ton of tentacles swinging around, making it look like a slimy and slippery goo in the shape of a monster. The paladins were holding meteor hammers and two-handed swords, but the weapons were no more than tiny toothpicks to the gigantic monster. Even the two-handed sword with a blade of 1.3 metres long failed to make a deep cut — it most likely only managed to cut through part of the fat under its skin……
While the warriors of justice were having a desperate fight, the Malar believers who were heading from a different direction encountered another one of the four monsters living inside the island. It was a 20-metre-long fishman, with a fish tail replacing its legs. The upper body was similar to the octopus sea monster, but this one had a trident in its hands. It was also a very dangerous and troublesome monster to fight against, at least on sea. To the believers of Malar, this was one of the toughest enemies they had fought against.
Claudius was still oblivious to the two battles nearby as he had just been awoken by a thunderous roar from the sea. The roar even managed to cause ma.s.sive waves to ripple through the seas.
"The heck?" Claudius who was still hazy from his sleep stretched his arms and stood up while yawning. He exercised his wings for a bit while releasing his dragon aura at full throttle. Reaching over 20 metres tall after standing up, Claudius crossed the magma moat with ease, shattering the cooled lava on the ground while doing so. A giant crimson shadow rose from the volcanic crater as he took off with a leap, flapping the reddish-black wings to support his weight. After five years" time, the Crimson Dragon had once again returned to inspect his territory.
The sea monster in the north-east mountain was responsible for waking Claudius from his nice sleep. It looked like a cane toad, having rough skin which looked like shattered bones. The body of the monster was ten metres long and it had hind legs of equivalent length, not to mention the large mouth with occupied half its body size, making it look extremely weird. It was busy eating the drowning adventurers as it had just crushed one of their ships with a sonic wave. Claudius headed straight towards the source of the annoying sound which woke him from his sleep, only to find a giant toad screeching with all its might while looking at him. The toad could not even escape as it was suppressed by Claudius" ravaging dragon aura and could only try to shock the dragon by screaming in order to earn a little bit of time for escaping.
"This thing is a living stun grenade…… The screams are at least 150 decibels! It"s almost as loud as a volcanic eruption, much louder than those little cannons on the ships. Oh, I feel a bit sorry for those adventurers, really. To have their ear drums shattered before getting eaten is surely gruesome."
Claudius was experiencing a slight headache as well due to the noise. His sense of hearing was much stronger than humans, thus he was also affected by the loud screams of the toad. Thankfully, Claudius was well known for his strong physique and being a dragon also mitigated a bit of the damage. The noise was making him annoyed and slightly painful in the head, but it was not enough to stop him from diving down from the sky towards the d.a.m.n toad.
In fact, the giant toad was not inferior to Bronze Dragons in terms of Strength and Const.i.tution, and it even had decent spell-like abilities at its disposal. Claudius did not know much about the toad, but he felt that the toad could not stand up against his dragon flames. The toad immediately spit all the "food" he ate just now in reflex as a last resort to distract its predator after noticing the rapidly approaching dragon. Pieces of meat and bones, along with pungent and slimy digestive juices, covered the sea.
"What the f**k! This is way too disgusting!"
Nonetheless, the gross attack managed to serve its purpose as Claudius could not endure the intense smell. He roasted the entire region with his flames in order to get rid of the vomit.
Sensing the opportunity to escape, the giant toad dove straight back into the sea while Claudius was holding his breath due to the smell. It was so afraid that it continued to dive all the way down even though it was already beyond the reach of the Crimson Dragon. The flames burned on the sea surface, boiling the disgusting mixture along with seawater. Noticing his failure, Claudius immediately flew away from the area — it got even worse. The smell of boiling digestive fluids and seawater was absolutely disgusting, and he would rather burn in h.e.l.l rather than poisoning himself with such smell.
Continuing his inspection, Claudius" eyes sparkled like a child receiving a new toy when he found out that a few ma.s.sive sea monsters were living in the four surrounding mountains. The obese octopus and the trident-wielding fishman immediately escaped from their respective battles, while a gigantic Alaskan king crab was running towards the sea while spewing bubbles everywhere.
"The sh.e.l.l of this oversized crab is well over 20 metres! d.a.m.n, stop running away so quickly! I wanna taste the gorgeous brown crab meat!" Claudius swore while pounding his chest for the mistake he made, "If only I went here instead…… That d.a.m.n toad was f**king disgusting!"
Although Claudius" actions saved the humans in a sense, he did not even give a single d.a.m.n about the tiny figures running around down below. He was busy a.s.sessing the fleeing sea monsters — whether they would taste good or not, whether it would be fun to battle them…… After thinking about such nonsense for a while, Claudius was. .h.i.t by a wave of fatigue.
"Eh, I guess it"s about time to head back and sleep in the warm lava. It"s still my hibernation period after all." Claudius muttered as he sluggishly flew back to his lair.