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“Mmmh!”
“Huh?”
As Caim and his lovers rested on the beach after playing in the sea, a little girl emerged from the water. Her wet green hair, which looked like seaweed, clung to her petite body, and despite being expressionless, her eyes were full of life. She was the last of the group’s companions—Lykos, the wolf girl.
“Where have you been until now?” Caim asked. He hadn’t seen her for a while, and she usually just did her own thing, so he had supposed she must have been playing somewhere.
“Mmmmh!” Lykos pulled something out of the water, as though answering Caim’s question.
“Is that a crab?” The red creature in Lykos’s hands was indeed a crab. It was bigger than Lykos’s head, and it was struggling, waving its pincers as it tried to flee from the girl’s grasp. “It’s pretty big, so it should make a great meal. Did you catch it for us?”
Lykos nodded. She cared more about food than romance and was more interested in seafood than having fun in the water like Caim and the rest.
“Hmm? Isn’t that an emperor crab?” Lenka, who had recovered after her rest, approached Lykos and took a closer look at the crab. She was now wearing a shirt instead of the bikini top she had lost.
“Are those rare?” Caim asked.
“Yeah, it’s not something you can find in the shallows. It’s a kind of monster that lives in the depths of the sea.”
“Wait, what? You mean it’s a monster?” Caim examined the creature. True, it was bigger than normal crabs, being larger than a human head, but Caim still found it too small to be a monster.
“That one’s just a baby. Adult emperor crabs can be as big as wyverns,” Lenka explained.
“Seriously?” Caim reflexively stared at the crab in Lykos’s hands. He had thought it was rather large, but apparently it was only the child of much bigger crabs. But what had a creature that should live in the depths of the ocean been doing in the shallows?
Don’t tell me Lykos dove all the way down into the deep sea...? Nah, no way.
While it was true that Lykos wasn’t a normal girl, having been raised by the Lycaon King, and that Caim had seen her take on the appearance of an adult during their battle against the assassins on Mount Garank, he didn’t think she was able to dive so deep.
“Well, whatever its size, a crab is a crab. Let’s boil it for dinner,” Caim said.
“No, we should let it go. I don’t know why it was in the shallows, but if its parents find out that it was caught, they might come for revenge,” Lenka warned him.
“They care about their kin? What a pain.” Caim turned toward Lykos. “Sorry, but you’ll have to let it go,” he told her calmly.
Lykos whined.
“Hey, don’t look so sullen. Even without it, we should have quite the feast tonight... I think.” They would sleep at an inn Lance had prepared for them. The imperial prince had made the reservation, so the inn likely would prepare quite a sumptuous dinner for them.
Caim managed to convince Lykos, and while reluctant, she gave him the baby emperor crab.
“Thanks. Now, I just need to throw it into the sea—”
Just then, a great pillar of water erupted from the ocean.
“...Well, I guess we’re too late.”
A giant crab over twenty meters long had emerged from the water. Lenka had said they could be as big as wyverns, but this particular crab was even larger. The creature stared at Caim and the girls as it began to swim their way.
“It’s so big... To think that there are monsters that big living in the sea!” Caim exclaimed. This was the largest monster he had ever seen. He had heard about whales, fish, and squids in the ocean that measured dozens of meters, but actually seeing one stunned him. “The sea truly is an unknown world. Fascinating!”
“Sir Caim, now isn’t the time!” Lenka pulled his arm. “If it reaches land, who knows what kind of damage it will do!”
“Yeah, you’re right. Guess I need to defeat it, then.” There was no guarantee that the crab would leave once it had retrieved its offspring, and if it got too close and began to attack ships, that would be a problem. “First, let’s see how it deals with this.”
As the roaring giant crab neared them, Caim stood in the shallows and manipulated his mana, pointing his index finger at the monster.
“Poison Shot.” A blob of purple liquid shot from his fingertip and struck the emperor crab that was still tens of meters away. However, the projectile was easily repelled by the creature’s hard shell. “Seems like it has a solid defense.”
He’d used a strong acidic poison, but it hadn’t damaged the emperor crab’s shell at all. While Caim’s toxins might still have worked if he could pour them directly into the monster’s body, it seemed that there was no point in continuing to shoot poison at it.
“Welp, guess that means I need to fight at close range—not that I mind.”
The emperor crab was now a little more than ten meters away. Caim leaped and ran along the surface of the water toward the monster—he wasn’t running on the water, though, but creating mana footholds above it.
“KSSSSSHHHHHH!” the emperor crab hissed, swinging its pincers at Caim.
“Shut it! You’re noisy!” Caim dodged and jumped onto the monster’s hard-shelled back. “Ouryuu!” He then released a shock wave of compressed mana inside the creature’s body using one of the basic techniques of the Toukishin Style.