Following the battle against New Yamato, Shu changed Baldr from a robot back into a battleship.
But there were now three people inside the bridge: Shu, Riella, and...
“Unacceptable! I will not stand by this result!”
...a man in a completely drenched navy uniform—Satomi Yamamoto.
“Well, you sure are beary tough.” Shu was confident he’d given Satomi the death penalty when he’d split the ship through the bridge, but once the smoke had cleared, he’d seen Satomi floating in the water, just like Riella.
“Hmph! Don’t underestimate New Yamato! It obviously has evacuation equipment!”
Wouldn’t ya rather go down with your ship like a real captain, ya military nerd? Shu thought, but refrained from saying it out of respect to Riella, whose father had done just that.
And if he’d actually said it, Baldr would probably say something like, “You leave me behind and blow me up all the time, don’t you?” Shu was a man who did whatever he could to win, and Baldr was the most common victim of his gambits.
“Never mind that! We were having an artillery battle! Who let you transform and kick open my damn bridge?!”
“There’s not a trace of that self-important tone you had be-fur.” Shu began to wonder if all of that was just RP.
“I don’t wanna hear that from you! Are you a bear or a scumbag, huh?”
“Not sure about bear, but I’m pawsitively not a scumbag.”
“Oh, you are! And if not that, then you’re a heretic! We have different tech here, but we still make stuff that’s fit for its purpose! Your shitty battleship’s shitty hovering makes no sense, you goddamn hairball!”
“Have you seen the boat you made?! Someone who makes something that absurd has no right to growl about my Baldr!”
“Those broadside cannons are nonsense too! Look how much water’s entering the guns! Should I give you a lesson in the importance of maintenance?!”
“Don’t let that ruffle your fur! Baldr can handle this! He’s nothing like your copy-pasted hunk of scrap!”
“...These conditions are rather suboptimal, though.”
“Baldr?!” His own Embryo was stabbing him in the back now.
“Copy-pasted hunk of scrap? YOU’RE DEAD!” Satomi, meanwhile, had been enraged by Shu’s words, and he grabbed the bear by the chest.
Meanwhile, wrapped in a warm blanket, Riella watched these two idiots interact.
Are they doin’ a bit or somethin’? she thought, for that was exactly what it looked like.
Regardless, she didn’t want to just let this continue.
“Yamamoto,” she said. “You’re threatenin’ him now, but... Ya remember our agreement, right?”
“...Of course.” Satomi nodded with a bitter expression. “Yes! I’ll back away this time! But one day, I’ll sink your pseudo-battleship with my reborn New Yamato!”
“But it sank to the beary bottom of the ocean. Are you gonna make it again?” Its bridge was broken, and it was now lying on the seafloor.
Since it was so absurdly large, Satomi couldn’t put it in any Inventory and thus hadn’t retrieved it.
“I recorded where it sank! And thankfully, the sea here isn’t very deep! My Mu can salvage it! Be prepared for when I fix it!”
Satomi spoke with strong words as he pointed a finger toward Shu.
But a few moments later, he added something else.
“I’m not satisfied with how the fight went or its outcome, but I’ll assist you now. That’s part of the agreement too.”
He followed these words with a resigned sigh.
“Assist us? But your New Yamato has sunk.”
“You’re the one who sank it! And... Heh. I have plenty of firepower even without New Yamato. How long do you think I’ve been in Granvaloa?”
Satomi wasn’t the leader of Granvaloa’s largest clan for nothing. New Yamato was far from the only ship his passion had driven him to make.
He’d been active for only about four years in Dendro time, so his shipbuilding rate was actually kind of ridiculous.
“Anyway, I don’t want to be in this pseudo-battleship longer than I have to,” he said. “I’ll get a new one from Mu.” Satomi then put his hand on his temple and started calling to his Embryo.
Shu was pretty sure that such poses weren’t necessary for Master-Embryo communication, but he figured that Satomi was the type to put form before function, so he refrained from pointing that out.
However...
“Hm...? Mu? What’s wrong?”
Something wasn’t right.
“What’s up?” Shu asked.
“I can’t communicate with Mu. Did we go that far away?”
“No... It should be just on the fur-izon.”
Baldr was on the way to Mu—or more specifically, the Adventure II. This made it unlikely that there was too much distance between them.
“Hey. I can see...it?”
Riella had the best eyes among the three, and whatever she saw filled her voice with confusion.
Mu was right beyond the horizon. It was a massive mega-float—she couldn’t mistake it for anything else.
However, its color had changed.
About half of it was now milky-white and pearlescent.
“Wh-What...?” Satomi was Mu’s Master, but it seemed not even he recognized this phenomenon. He was at a loss for words.
Shu, however, was familiar with the color—this “pearlification” effect.
“Hey, military nerd. You said you got other ships, right? Take out as many of them as you can. Before it’s too late.”
“...No good! I can remotely control the ships, but Mu isn’t responding at all! I can’t open the bulkheads!”
“I’ll do it, then. Baldr!”
By Shu’s order, Baldr’s main gun activated, fixed its sights on the bulkheads it could see—those labeled “7” to “12”—and fired.
They didn’t break in one hit, but careful follow-up shots by Baldr shattered them and opened up a path for the ships inside.
The one to leave first was the one in dock 12—Adventure II.
“Old-timer! And my crew!” The fact that her fleet was okay despite the bizarre situation filled Riella with relief.
Satomi used his remote controls to bring the ships in the other five docks closer to Baldr.
“So what’s happening here?” he asked. “What do you know about this, you stupid bear?”
“That question tells me that you haven’t met any Mocks that use pearlification.”
“Pearlification?” Satomi tilted his head in confusion, but no one could blame him for that. He’d fought and defeated a number of Mocks while here in the South Sea, but not a single one of them used any skill that could be described as “pearlification.” Were they simply unable to use it? Or had he defeated them before they could? “I’m not sure what you mean, but ‘Mocks’ tells me that it’s about those chimeras.”
“Yeah. They eat monster bodies without making them disappear.”
“Huh? Wait, but then... Why my Mu...?”
“Reporting.” Satomi’s question was cut short by Baldr.
“There is an attempt to communicate with the stored boat. Establish connection?”
“It’s from Adventure II! Connect us,” said Riella. Shu added a nod, and Baldr did as told.
“Commander! Are you all right?!” called Asam from the other end.
“I am! What’s goin’ on there, anyway?!”
“I-It’s here...!” Asam spoke and emphasized his words with a voice full of desperation.
And then, he said the most important words of all.
“Abyss Shellder is here!”
Right after that, there was a change in the pearlified Mu.
A massive leg showed itself from the side opposite the one with bulkheads opened by Baldr.
Multiple legs of enormous size pierced into Mu’s deck before pulling up the body attached to them.
Showered in daylight, at first it looked like a gargantuan mountain of silver, but closer examination revealed that it was a shell.
Something clad in a gigantic shell was climbing up on Mu.
“What is that?” Shu hadn’t noticed this massive entity at all. Its size was comparable to Mu’s, yet he hadn’t realized it was there until he saw its legs.
It wasn’t even showing on Baldr’s radar—an abnormality even greater than its size.
“So...that’s...” Shu said.
Soon enough, the massive, shell-clad entity had dragged its entire body atop Mu. It was hard to make sense of what it was, for all that could be seen was the gigantic shell and the legs extending from it.
Its full body was now visible, yet its true form remained difficult to discern.
But above it, like any monster in this realm, was emblazoned its name...
“Khe...khakhakha.”
...and it was “Corpse Stronghold, Abyss Shellder.”
This gargantuan monstrosity was the Irregularity causing chaos in the South Sea, and the creature that had killed Riella’s father.
“How?!” Satomi was at a loss for words.
The scene before him was beyond anything he could ever imagine.
What shocked him wasn’t the fact that Mu had been incapacitated, but that Mu hadn’t noticed its approach before it could happen.
“Mu’s sonar and monster radar were still on. If something like that was closing in, it should’ve caught it...!”
The sonar that let him listen to the Adventure II’s battles from beyond the horizon and the monster radar that could even measure Whalunder’s power as a UBM were completely ineffective against this gargantuan, shelled monstrosity.
“Does it have full stealth against multiple types of detection? Am I supposed to believe this mere wild beast is...!” But even as Satomi was overcome with confusion, Abyss Shellder continued to act.
It stabbed its legs into the pearlified Mu, tore off a piece...
...and tried to bring it to its mouth.
“No!”
An act of instinct. Something inside Satomi was telling him that he simply couldn’t allow that.
Mu was within his sight and wasn’t holding any living creatures inside. This allowed him to summon it back.
The Embryo’s massive form became motes of light that were absorbed by the crest on Satomi’s left hand.
With its footing and meal lost, Abyss Shellder fell into the water below, generating an enormous crash and equally enormous wave.
However, it surfaced just a moment later...
“KHEEAAAAA!”