Chapter 8: Slaying the Kraken
Chapter 8: Slaying the Kraken
ON maps of the area, the coast of Wallum formed a gentle curve. Berths were maintained in the bays dotted along the coast for docking ships, and there were port offices located on each stretch of shoreline to handle a wide range of logistical procedures, including customs procedures for merchant ships coming from other kingdoms and for facilitating the buying and selling of fish caught in the Sea of Wallum.
The port offices at the bay nearest to the margrave’s estate also acted as the town’s central business hub. The sturdy, stone office building faced a public square lined with street stalls and food carts and was filled with people, offering a scenic representation of the bustling port town.
The day before, the port offices had received word that a kraken had made its way into the bay from the open ocean. They were fortunate there had so far only been eyewitness reports and no material damage yet, but they still had to act—krakens had a habit of attacking ships.
So they quickly prepared a boat that acted both as an observation vessel and as a hunting ship, and the student hunters who had just arrived were sent along with the members of the Hunting Unit.
“I wonder if Harold and the others are okay…,” Amy fretted.
“Your grandfather went, too, so Harold will be just fine. Besides, even if fighting in the ocean has its challenges, the magical beasts in dungeons are much harder to beat.”
“But Hal fights best in the air, doesn’t he? Won’t he be at a disadvantage in the water?”
“If he can’t manage to beat a monster like that, he’ll have to retire as a hunter in shame! Hal’s just got to show us what he’s made of.”
There had been no aquatic beast sightings when Amy visited last year, so she was a ball of worry. Isabelle, by contrast, was born and raised in Wallum and had seen aquatic beasts so often she had just accepted them as a part of everyday life. She didn’t seem concerned at all.
Beside the port office was a restaurant with an open-air terrace facing the bay, a section of which was currently being used by the Hunting Unit as a temporary base of operations. Commanding officers from the Wallum army, personnel from the port office, and some of the professors from the school were all huddled together, looking very busy as they communicated with the ship via magical tools.
Amy, Isabelle, and Tigger were sitting at the terrace, too, albeit slightly at a distance. Underneath a large umbrella, they watched as the ship Harold had boarded headed farther out to sea.
Amy felt a little self-conscious, as she was sure they just looked like a family taking a cat to a resort and having a little tea party, but no matter how worried she was, they would only have gotten in the way if they hovered around the others.
“Besides, the kraken might not even come out today,” her mother continued. “They just sent out the boats to show they’re ready and watching. There’s really nothing to worry about.”
Ever since they had received eyewitness reports of the kraken, the port authorities had instructed merchant vessels to avoid the area and use the docks some distance away. Because of that, there were no large ships out today, although there was a smattering of small fishing boats out at sea. Sea monster or not, the citizens of Wallum wouldn’t change their daily routines.
“And anyway, don’t you think the kraken would be a little cautious, having been seen? You’d think it’d be smarter than to jump out at the first opportunity—”
Just as Isabelle lifted her glass of cold fruit water, the magical communicators blared out a piercing emergency signal.
“THE KRAKEN HAS APPEARED!”
The headquarters immediately flew into a flurry of activity.
Amy quickly turned her gaze to the ocean and saw her brother’s boat—which had become quite small in the distance—and something large wriggling beside it.
She couldn’t make out the chaotic voices coming from the magical device, but she could tell even from land that the crewmates on the boat, which was now forcefully shaking left and right, were clamoring in an uproar.
Startled by the sudden chaos, Tigger glued himself to Amy’s feet under the table.
“Mom…! You said it wouldn’t come out today!”
“Well, now that I think about it…Hal always did have good luck!”
Amy nearly fell over in her seat in exasperation as her mother waved her hand and yelled, “Give it all you got, Harold!”
But, Amy remembered, I suppose it’s true that I haven’t actually seen a kraken in real life…and Grandpa has slain them many times before…
It was just another job for the members of the Hunting Unit, and they had surely faced dangers like this on a daily basis… Maybe it was just a part of everyday life…
With a click, Isabelle opened her handbag and handed Amy a pair of small opera glasses.
“Here, Amy. You’ll be able to see everything with these!”
“…Whoa!”
She stopped petting Tigger for a moment so she could bring the opera glasses to her face. She really could see everything, down to the look on her brother’s face, which had only been a dot in the distance with her own two eyes. Amy was pleasantly surprised that the glasses focused on their own when she looked through them, without her having to adjust anything.
“Mother, these opera glasses are amazing! Man… Harold is bouncing all over the place.”
“About what I’d expect from Hal. Your father made those glasses, you know.”
“What? Really?”
“Yes. But that’s the only one—he doesn’t have enough materials to make another, and it’s quite difficult to make, in any case. So be very careful with them, okay? By the way, what do you think the lenses are made of?” Isabelle asked.
Amy tilted her head to the side. No matter how hard she stared at them, the lenses looked just like regular ones from their previous lives.
“Glass?”
Although glass existed in this world, no one had yet perfected shaping it into thin plates. Preserving the glass’s transparency and maintaining a uniform thickness was manual, not magical, work, so it was quite difficult.
But the lenses in the opera glasses looked like flawless glass lenses.
Smiling, Isabelle made a circle with her index finger and her thumb and put it up to her eye, which twinkled impishly through it.
“It’s sea serpent eyes!” giggled Isabelle.
“What?!”
Sea serpents were aquatic monsters that looked like dragons. Not only were they incredibly rare to run into, but they were also incredibly hard to kill. They were so rare, in fact, that her grandfather Rudolf had only encountered a few of them, and he had been out to sea countless times over many, many years.
“Your father says they’re the easiest material to process into lenses, but they’re a challenge to get a hold of.”
“I would think it’s impossible!”
Sea serpent eyes were one of the materials you could only get through hunting monsters, and even among those, it was one of the rarest of the rare materials. In fact, it was taking her father so long to make a camera because he couldn’t find a suitable alternative for the camera lens.
“Even though they’re both aquatic monsters, they’re actually quite different. Look—you see how a kraken looks like a massive squid? The cartilage is rather valuable, but its eyes are too soft—it wouldn’t work for lenses.”
“I-I see…”
“That’s why, as a mother, I would have been much happier if a sea serpent had appeared instead of a kraken… At least then the camera wouldn’t have been too far off!” Isabelle said, laughing in her carefree way. Amy, still worried for Harold’s safety, smiled awkwardly back.
🐾🐱🐾
THINGS were noisy aboard the hunting ship but not chaotic.
All the members of the army’s hunting party were skilled, of course, but the greatest factor was that the feudal lord Rudolf was also aboard today.
Though he was the margrave of the city, Rudolf took a very hands-on approach to his rule and spent more time at sea than he did on land. He single-handedly drove out sea monsters and pirates alike, and everyone in the town respected him the more for it.
Meanwhile, the three hunter students were eagerly awaiting their turn.
“Come on! Let me at ’em!!!”
“Hold your horses, Harold.”
“Don’t scold him for rushing forward and do the same thing yourself, Gil,” said Nick reasonably. “We are just students who came here to study, after all. We should just wait for instructions and do what they say.”
Harold didn’t seem to hear him. With swords in both hands and a foot on the side of the boat, he looked like he would jump in at any second.
Just below them, the top of the kraken’s head and its long tentacles were slithering in and out between the waves.
“It’ll be fine! All right, I guess I’ll go fir— HWAH?”
“Wait, you!”
Just as Harold had decided to dive into the ocean, someone had grabbed the scruff of his neck and yanked him back. Harold fell flat on his butt and started coughing. His grandfather Rudolf and another tall figure silently looked down at him.
“Hot-tempered. He’s a lot like you, Rudolf.”
“My! I’m not sure if he deserves such a high compliment,” Rudolf replied with a smirk.
The tall man wore a robe down to his ankles and had long black hair with a solitary streak of white. His sharp eyes and foreboding appearance may very well have been more frightening than the kraken winding beneath them.
“S-Sir Dion?!” Harold shouted. “Wha— What are you doing here…?!”
The terrifying man was Sir Dion—the ruthless professor of magic who had been noticeably absent from the reception on the front lawn. The three students wore similar looks of shock—they had no idea he was on their ship.
Time didn’t freeze around them—the kraken continued to undulate around the ship, and the crewmates continued to prepare for battle—but the air in this corner of the ship felt tense for an entirely different reason.
Sir Dion glared at the novices with blue eyes like ice.
“I boarded first,” he said sharply. “Is there a problem?”
“No, sir!” the three students said, jumping to attention.
Sir Dion gave them a quick once-over, nodded, and then pointed the short staff he held at Harold. Without a word from the magician, platinum-colored particles shot out from the tip of his staff, enveloped Harold’s body, and then disappeared.
“You have fifteen minutes before that underwater breathing spell wears off. Surely you can finish off the kraken in that time, can’t you?”
“Th-Thank you!”
Wasting no time, Harold leaped into the water. He joined forces with several members of the Hunting Unit that had already submerged and started slashing at the beast.
Gilbert and Nicholas readied their spear and crossbow, respectively, rushed over to their assigned stations, and provided backup from onboard the ship.
“You’ve gone soft on me, Dion.”
“Look who’s talking, old man. Will you be joining him, then?”
“Hm… I wonder…” Rudolf looked over the edge.
A loud wailing was coming from the sea. The cornered kraken was thrashing, whipping up even more waves around them. The seas became so rough that even experienced sailors nearly toppled over, but the margrave and the professor stood completely unbothered, without even holding on to anything for support.
There was a wet, sticky sound as one of the kraken’s tentacles wrapped around the side of the boat just in front of them. An arrow soared from a crossbow and pierced a sucker.
Looking in the direction from which it came, they saw Nicholas, who nodded at them before returning his gaze back to the ocean.
Rudolf grinned, drew a sword from his belt, and cut the tentacle clear off.
“It doesn’t look like they need me,” he said before suddenly shouting, “Hey! Hey! Get those people off that fishing boat!”
In the end, they slayed the kraken with three minutes left to spare on Sir Dion’s breathing spell.
🐾🐱🐾
WHEN the kraken had surfaced beside the hunting boat, many of the small fishing boats out at sea had quickly evacuated to shore. But one ship, appearing to have some mechanical trouble, had been unable to move at all.
Krakens generally tended to attack larger ships. Because its attention had been drawn to the hunting ship, it looked like the smaller fishing boat had escaped its notice as a target for most of the battle. But the smaller boat, which had almost capsized several times from being jostled by the rough waves, had finally gotten stuck at a severe tilt and started filling with seawater.
The two people on board were desperately clinging to the side of the ship to avoid being thrown overboard—neither of them could steer the vessel.
“M-Mom! That ship’s in trouble!” Amy cried.
“They’ll be all right; they sent out people to help them,” Isabelle said calmly, looking through the opera glasses.
Amy could only see over Tigger’s head as she hugged him in her lap.
A small boat had been dropped down from the hunting ship and was skillfully navigating the rough waves as it made its way toward the small fishing boat. One person leaped over to the sinking boat with some rope, and after securing it, the rescue boat started pulling them to shore.
“Oh, thank goodness…!”
“Your grandfather’s troops are outstanding, so you really don’t have to worry so much. Look—see for yourself.”
Isabelle handed Amy back the opera glasses with a smile. Blinking back tears, Amy looked through them and saw the two ships were giving a wide berth to the battle currently raging in the water and were steadily making their way to land.
The two people on the fishing boat—an old man and smaller person, perhaps his grandson—looked relieved, and Amy let out a deep breath.
When the two boats arrived at shore, the boat dispatched from the Hunting Unit turned around and headed back into the fray. One member from the force disembarked with the two from the fishing boat, and they headed to the terrace—the base of operations—to give a status report.
“Well, Amy—let’s go.”
Prompted by Isabelle, they rose from their seats. One of the duties of the feudal lord’s family was to sit with the townsfolk who had suffered misfortunes and to personally thank the troops and staff after a mission had finished.
Hm? What…?
She saw the grandfather and grandson from the small fishing boat.
The older man—likely the owner of the boat—explained that the rudder had suddenly malfunctioned, so they hadn’t been able to escape in time. Standing beside him was a boy around Amy’s age…or so she had thought. As she drew nearer, she realized she had been wrong—he was a she.
She wore worn-out boys’ clothes and her hair had been crammed into a wide-brimmed hat, so Amy’s assumption hadn’t totally been baseless, but she was a girl, nevertheless.
Moreover, she had an incredibly lovely face. She was sunburned, but she had great big green eyes, long eyelashes, and cute, pouty lips. Her features were distinct, but they were very easy to look at. There was a certain friendliness to them that drew you in and made you almost instinctively want to protect her.
Skirts weren’t suited for fishing, so many of the girls in town would wear boys’ clothes out on the water, so nothing about this girl was particularly strange.
But…for some reason, Amy felt uneasy.
“I can’t imagine what you two have been through,” offered Isabelle kindly. “I’m very glad you returned safely.”
“M-Miss!” stammered the old man.
Although Isabelle was married and the mother of two, she was still called “Miss” in her hometown. It wasn’t technically incorrect—she was still the daughter of the margrave—but she never went out of her way to correct them. “Madam” always reminded the townsfolk of her dearly deceased mother, Isabelle explained to Amy.
When Amy was very little, she would accidentally reply when someone called out “Miss” to her mother, but she’d just gotten used to it in recent years.
“Were you frightened?” Isabelle asked the girl.
“U-Uh, yes!”
Surprised by suddenly being addressed, the girl turned bright red and quickly removed her wide-brimmed hat.
Beautiful pink blonde hair spilled down her back.
Amy’s mouth fell open.
“Was it your first time seeing a kraken?”
“Y-Yes. Um…we were really surprised, and then the rotating blades jammed and the rudder stopped working.”
“That must have been very startling.”
While they were having this casual conversation, the battle between the hunting ship and the kraken raged on. Amy was worried about how it was going, but her eyes were glued to the girl in front of her who was still blushing and talking to Isabelle.
That pink-blonde-haired girl…
Was she the one watching me yesterday?
The hair length was about the same, and she was certainly cute enough to be the heroine of a story… It was a little unusual that she was on a fishing boat wearing boys’ clothes, but there were loads of different scenarios where heroines grew up economically disadvantaged, only to later become the adopted child of an aristocrat…
The hypothetical heroine in front of her only had eyes for Isabelle—she didn’t meet Amy’s gaze at all, as Amy stood a little farther behind her mother.
Amy had just come to the conclusion that villainesses, heroines, and otome games didn’t matter anymore, but that didn’t mean she wanted to run into any more potential characters!
Wh-What should I do…?!
Amy desperately hoped the girl wouldn’t notice her, whether her suspicions about her being the heroine were right or not.
“Hey, mister! Get a load of this!”
One of the port office’s staff members had been investigating the old man’s fishing boat. He had picked up a translucent mass with his stick and threw it on the beach, where it landed with a splash. It was as large as a house fan, with a dome-shaped cap and many long legs.
“That’s unusual… A deep-sea jellyfish?” the old man asked.
“It probably held on to the kraken and got dragged up to the surface. This was the reason your boat stopped working.”
Deep-sea jellyfish looked soft, but they were very stretchy and slimy, and unlike the jellyfish usually found in the area, you couldn’t cut them very easily. It looked as though the unlucky creature had gotten twisted around the propeller of the fishing boat.
Poor maintenance wasn’t at fault, and no one had gotten injured, either. The grandfather and granddaughter were visibly relieved to hear that they wouldn’t have to go through any annoying formalities with the port office and that it hadn’t been their responsibility.
“The most important thing is that no one got hurt,” said Isabelle. “You all have done so wonderfully. It shouldn’t be too much longer now!”
The port office workers beamed at Isabelle’s radiant smile.
“Thank you very much, miss!” the worker said. “Oh—Miss Amy! The jellyfish can’t move on land, but it has stingers, so he probably shouldn’t touch it.”
“Huh? Wha—? Stop, Tigger! Stay over here, okay?”
Amy quickly scooped up Tigger, who had clearly been about to start walking up to the jellyfish. Ever since the cat had seen the sea anemones and starfish in the tide pools, he had grown curious—not frightened—of marine life. He had certainly been eyeing the deep-sea jellyfish with great interest.
But it was more like she lifted him up instead of picked him up—Tigger’s body was so large that his hind legs still reached the ground. But luckily, being held by Amy was enough to make him temporarily forget about the jellyfish. His long, bushy tail wrapped around Amy’s leg and he purred contentedly.
She could tell from the cat’s sweet purr alone, even without seeing his face, what he was feeling.
I love you, too, Tigger!
Just as Tigger forgot about the jellyfish, Amy’s feelings of uneasiness about the hypothetical heroine faded and seemed very far away.
That was when the wind shifted, and they heard great cries of triumph from across the ocean.
🐾🐱🐾
AFTER successfully bringing down the kraken, the hunting ship was welcomed back to port with cheers of joy.
As the members of the Hunting Unit filed off the boat, Amy couldn’t see a single injured person. One of the staff members from the port office had told her that she should head over there because there might be injuries, but it seemed Amy was not needed after all.
“Oh, Amy! We’re over here!”
“Harold!”
Amy sighed in relief when she heard his familiar voice. Although she was confident in her healing magic, she didn’t like seeing people in pain.
She jogged over to Harold and his friends, who were beckoning her over with smiles brimming with accomplishment.
Harold, who had participated in the battle underwater, was soaking wet, but after quickly glancing over the three of them, Amy didn’t see any serious injuries. In fact, they looked like they had just come back from a rather wild amusement park ride rather than a battle.
“Did you guys get hurt?” she asked Harold.
“Just a little. Not anything that needs healing magic, so no worries. Oh! That’s strange… Tigger’s not with you?”
“No. It would be a little too dangerous with all the commotion over here, so I left him with Mom.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t seem to like places with a lot of people, does he?” asked Gil.
“It took him quite a while before he let us pet him, too,” said Nick.
The three boys turned their sights to Tigger, who was hanging out by the port office. The cat was right by Isabelle’s side, slightly hunched over on himself with his tail between his legs.
I just want to run over there and go pet him!
“Wait—” Harold said suddenly. “You guys have pet Tigger?!”
“He finally let us around the third time we came over,” Nick said. “He’s super fluffy and soft, isn’t he, Gil?”
“He is! His neck is super fuzzy, softer than any stuffed animal ever created! And his meow is so adorable and sweet.”
Harold looked at the two of them indignantly. He was Amy’s brother and Tigger hadn’t even allowed him to pet him! Harold had sometimes, however, been quick enough to reach out and touch him before he swerved away.
“I…I don’t know what to say…,” whined Harold, shoulders slumped.
Amy had been wondering how to get out of that sticky conversation, with no ideas of her own, but just at that moment, the defeated kraken was unloaded onto the beach. Taking advantage of this opportunity, she pulled at Harold’s arm and redirected his attention.
“H-Harold! It’s the kraken! Whoa, it’s so big…”
She had seen its size through the opera glasses, but it felt totally different when it was partially submerged in the ocean from when its entire body was washed up on land.
Amy gazed with wide eyes. A winch was making creaking sounds as it pulled out the huge creature dripping with seawater.
It was slowly being lifted and placed on a prepared load-carrying wagon to transport it to a nearby slaughterhouse. Naturally, the creature did not survive the battle. Its tentacles were sticking out of the wagon in places.
“It’s probably too big to fry up with some sauce, huh…,” Amy muttered to herself.
“You—You can’t eat it because it’s poisonous!”
“Really?”
Harold muttered very quietly to her, “It’s not a squid!”
I really can’t eat it? What a shame…
“You won’t die, but you’ll go totally numb!” Nick asserted.
“No way, it’ll mess up your insides!” said Gil.
The twins looked amused at the strange, naive reactions from a girl who spent most of her time inland and was too young to learn about the world at school. Nicholas tried explaining how the kraken was poisonous, it tasted terribly bitter, and applying heat to its body would harden it like rubber. There was no way it could be cooked as food.
“But its cartilage is very strong and flexible, so it’s mostly useful as a material for defensive armor,” he concluded.
“Oh, I see!”
“Hahaha! Did it look like food to you, Amy?”
“Grandpa?! I didn’t really mean it— Oh, Professor!”
Her grandfather and Sir Dion had appeared as she had been listening to the boys talk.
“Professor…!” cried the three boys in a panic.
The boys froze at attention once again at the appearance of Rudolf and Sir Dion. With a sidelong glance at the boys, Amy walked up to the older men with a smile and gave a pretty curtsy.
“Welcome back, Grandpa. I’m so glad you’re finally here, Professor. I was surprised when I saw you on the ship.”
“Oh, you saw?”
In the boys’ eyes, the satisfied hand placed atop Amy’s head and the smile that crept onto Sir Dion’s face were as rare as ancient relics buried in permafrost.
“Have you been practicing your magic?”
“Yes! I’m really excited for you to teach me a lot of new stuff!”
“Good. And starting tomorrow, we’ll have three more students joining us.”
With their hunt ending on the first day, the three boys thought they would have at least a day off until their next departure, and they panicked at the sudden extracurricular lesson.
“N-No, sir! Please don’t—”
“…Oh?” asked Sir Dion dangerously.
“We’d love to!!” all three said at once.
The group headed home for the day with one among their number vaguely remembering an old izakaya drinking establishment they used to go to with overly enthusiastic waiters…