Victoria’s hair turned purple, and not only the wounds on her body but also the scales and gills all disappeared.
However, the problem is that water is flowing in.
The water is mixed with shattered stone fragments.
Even if you could breathe underwater, it’s impossible to survive in there.
The debris of the building just destroyed by the mechanical device and the accessories swept along with it will grind up anything that enters the water like a blender.
Even if the tsunami is only 1m high, it’s like a coastal city being torn apart.
Water is dangerous.
That’s why the Great Kraken had such a device made.
There was a reason for the architectural style resembling bumpy coral. It wasn’t simply to capture the feeling of the sea. When flooded, it’s to form whirlpools in the water to kill any creatures sucked in along with the debris.
Since it’s meant to kill traitors rather than enemies, it was done even more meticulously.
Of course, when distributing it, they say it’s a device to trap enemies and self-destruct in case of emergency.
In short.
It’s hard to survive just by being able to breathe in water.
“The scales are gone…”
Victoria half-undresses and repeatedly touches the area near her ribs, spreading her fingers to check carefully.
The water has reached knee level. The water pouring in from the inside swirls in one direction. Because of this, a huge whirlpool has formed inside the dome. It means the blender has been turned on.
It’s getting dangerous. If we’re swept away by the current and fall to the floor like this, we’ll come out dead.
While thinking that and watching quietly, Victoria checked her arms and legs several times, then stretched her arm forward with a puzzled expression.
And the water in front of her changed to become jelly-like. No, not just the water in front, but all the water around us became jelly-like.
Water keeps flowing in from outside the dome where we are, but it all changes into jelly and piles up outside.
Come to think of it, there wasn’t a single person with superpowers in the second world.
No, there were too few people made into harvesters from the beginning.
It’s not something that can be increased recklessly, but here I’m thinking of increasing it a bit more actively.
Meanwhile, water flowed down over my body too.
I thought it would be sticky, but surprisingly, the inside feels just like water. It’s smooth, but when you try to move, there’s strong resistance like water sprinkled with starch powder.
Rumble
The device that carefully demolished the surroundings from the outside has now moved to the final stage.
It’s destroying this place where all the water gathers.
Stones fall from the ceiling, and the pillars around start to completely collapse. But Victoria was stronger.
No debris could penetrate the water barrier Victoria created.
After time passed until all the surrounding buildings collapsed.
“Huff, huff, huff.”
Victoria survived.
But she’s breathing roughly, as if she just sprinted across a playground at full speed. She bent over, and eventually sat down on the muddy ground for a long while.
She seems extremely tired.
Well, even among the superhumans that came out in the first world, many struggled after using their powers.
That superpower is their own strength. It’s not used by drawing from me like the Heavenly Demon Divine Technique. So it’s natural in a way that they get tired.
Rather, it’s strange that she’s only this tired after using power that humans shouldn’t be able to exert.
“You…”
Having recovered some stamina, Victoria gets up and looks at me.
“Survival. Congratulations.”
“Kyaaaah!”
Victoria screams in shock.
It’s understandable.
From Victoria’s perspective, more than half of my body looks like minced meat. The only part unharmed is a portion of the upper body that was inside the barrier. Except for that, not even fish bones remain.
“Are you, alive?”
“It’s fine even if it hurts since it’s someone else’s body anyway.”
There is pain, but the cold is more terrible than suffering from mere nerve signals like this.
“Earlier, you said that body wasn’t originally yours.”
“Yes. That’s right. By the way, I’m not the one who was supposed to descend into this body either.”
Victoria looks at me with a puzzled and sympathetic face. Of course. From her perspective, I’m dying right now.
“Aren’t you their master? I heard them calling you the Great Kraken.”
“No. I’m not the Great Kraken.”
The Great Kraken, Dagon, Supreme Leader Togcheon. There are several names, but they all refer to one being.
She looked herself over several times, then nodded.
“Right. If it had been him, I would have completely turned into a Sahaggin. Yeah. But are you okay? There’s a lot of blood-like stuff flowing out.”
My lower body is completely ground up, and there’s a wide cross-section from the back to the front part where the ribs are. But this body is sturdy.
The loss of blood and bodily fluids has already stopped, and the internal system has entered emergency regeneration mode to maintain life.
If I just eat well from now on, it should regenerate.
“Yes. This body won’t die from something like this.”
Victoria listened to my words and nodded, then suddenly stopped. She stood still for quite a long time, then let out a long sigh.
“I. I made a contract with you earlier, right? Then, what’s going to happen from now on? If you’re some kind of god too, you must have something you want from me.”
Aha.
It seems she now has the leisure to think about the contract?
But there’s no need to worry about that.
“I’m not a god. And people should live freely. I just need to take the warmth when your end comes.”
And in the meantime, I’ll take the warmth of all living beings this person kills. But I don’t say this. What if I say that other people’s warmth comes in if they die, and then they don’t kill anyone?
“Freedom?”
She looks at me with an expression that says I’m telling an absurd lie. But I nodded my big fish-like head.
It feels strangely odd without eyeballs, but it’s fine since there’s no immediate problem.
“Yes.”
I have no intention of forcing anyone. In the first place, if I leave them alone, they’ll send warmth to me on their own, so there’s no reason to force them, right?
Victoria pondered my words. And as if she had reached her own conclusion, she opened her mouth while looking at me.
“What are you going to do from now on?”
She’s asking what I’m going to do in the future.
I check Victoria’s memories in front of me.
There’s a complicated past, but to summarize the important points, it’s this.
Victoria was really a student.
Of course, it’s not a school where royalty and nobles show off their status differences like in the faded man’s memories. Such places do exist in this world, but Victoria doesn’t attend one of those.
She was a student studying to become a modernized alchemist by this world’s standards, a profession called a clockwork knight.
This world is at the forefront of a civilization where brass clockworks and magical devices are intertwined. It’s easy to understand if you think of it as a civilization with a steampunk appearance powered by magic.
So that’s why she was so good at using the iron crowbar.
I can also understand why she used powerful weapons so well.
Anyway.
She was kidnapped at a port where she was staying to catch a ship home while returning home for vacation.
And she woke up in an underground prison deep in the Sahaggin’s den.
Regaining consciousness among people half-transformed into fish-men, she grabbed an iron crowbar that happened to be nearby and killed a Sahaggin trying to inject her with one blow.
After that, while moving around trying to escape from the Sahaggin den, her priorities changed when she caught a high-ranking Sahaggin trying to capture her.
Because that Sahaggin left a dying message that their god was descending. Afterwards, she obtained from him a weapon that could kill any Sahaggin in one hit, and a key that could collapse this place.
And she also learned that she had already been injected.
So she killed all the Sahaggin blocking her way and arrived at the summoning place.
After that, I was summoned, leading to now.
The faded man’s memory sparkles saying it’s like the protagonist of a horror game. I agree with that, and pondered what to do next.
Hiding in the water with this huge body.
This is a bit dangerous. Because various bioweapons made using biotechnology were pushed back and killed by the wild.
Even if I go out with this body, I don’t think it will be of much help. Just. The time to be torn apart might be delayed a little.
Of course, I could turn them into monsters since they attacked me, but I have no intention of taking warmth and making monsters again unless it’s to make tools.
Once is enough for such mockery.
“What should we do?”
“Don’t ask me again.”
Silence fell.
Victoria, who had been standing with her arms crossed in the middle of the ruins, seemed to think of something and asked me a question.
“The magic school kids were walking around with creatures that could transform to look almost human as their familiars, can’t you do that?”
Transform, huh.
I can’t use magic.
Then, if not transformation but mutation, would it be possible? I’m not sure if I can change into a human form, but I have regenerated bodies before.
“I’ll give it a try.”
It’s my first time changing the shape of the vessel. There’s no resistance because it’s not a living creature, but a manufactured life form.
If I forcefully press down on reality, the world changes in the direction I want.
Crack.
A thin crack forms in the world.
“Huh? You were a little girl?”
I became a small girl.
I was at a loss for words.
The appearance of the girl is someone I know. Not exactly the same, but…
A small girl with a still clear face stands in front of Victoria.
I swear, I had no intention of taking on this girl’s appearance.
Purple hair and small hands and feet. A girl similar to how she looked when I last saw her.
Soo-oh.
In a corner of my memory, a skill that I had no idea how to use suddenly sparkled.
Soo-oh Heart Technique Choseol.
Yes.
That memory faintly sparkles.
It sparkled like when Soo-oh succeeded in playing a prank on me and laughed.