Chapter 505 – #107_Fish Tank (5)
#505
1.
I had a vague sense of it.
Siwoo’s fate was tumultuous itself.
He was the type to get caught up in trouble just by breathing.
From the moment he got caught up in a suspicious incident out of nowhere, I knew it wouldn’t be a cozy package trip with my mother-in-law.
The expected developments would be the appearance of a homunculus with suspicious abilities, or the emergence of an enemy targeting Siwoo, who is a male witch.
And as expected, signs of turmoil are visible in the distance.
Shadows that darken the already dark night sky even further.
Looking closely, each one is a large fish.
They spread their wings, formed by long pectoral and pelvic fins, like gliders, sometimes flapping them as they flew at a furious speed—a school of flying fish.
Seeing the fish-shaped monsters, a scene naturally came to mind.
A bizarre swarm of piranhas that were neither homunculi nor anything else.
The mass slaughter that the cowardly witch had carried out at COEX when Siwoo was in the mortal realm.
The memory of that nightmare made my expression harden naturally.
“What’s going on?”
Deneb also quickly climbed onto the roof and saw the same scene.
The sight of tens of thousands of flying fish flapping their wings in unison was spectacular, if anything.
“Count, what should we do? It seems like they’re targeting us.”
It was a pity that I hadn’t brought the red branch, which I usually kept in the research lab at the Gemini mansion.
If I had known this would happen, I would have kept it closer.
Siwoo created a long spear out of shadows and asked.
“Well, I’d try to shake them off and run while assessing the situation.”
Even though I thought it was a crisis, my heart was surprisingly calm.
That’s because I had fought for my life in all sorts of crazy situations more than five times before I became a witch.
Twice, my heart had stopped, and I had almost crossed the river Styx.
And those life-or-death battles had given Siwoo great power.
Now, I could beat the giant dog-shaped homunculus that Sharon and I had barely managed to catch like it was nothing.
Even if there were many of them, I felt like I could handle that many small fry.
Besides, Deneb, who could use magic at the 20th level alone, was right next to me.
“Count?”
But Deneb didn’t answer, staring at the sky with her mouth half-open.
Was she nervous?
I had heard that both Deneb and Albireo were witches with combat experience.
But the swarm of flying fish, like the Chinese army, was enough to make anyone shrink back for a moment.
The situation was too urgent to wait leisurely for my unexpectedly cute mother-in-law to come to her senses.
“I’ll take the front. Let’s head towards the church and fight with our backs against the wall. Count Deneb, you can support…”
“…No!”
Suddenly, Deneb yelled, cutting off Siwoo’s words.
Siwoo, startled, turned around.
Deneb was messing up her hair and touching her forehead, expressing her confusion.
“If my guess is right… the real danger isn’t that.”
“Those flying fish?”
“They’re not flying fish! Those are also monsters created by the Deep Sea Witch!”
Deneb bit her lip and thumped her chest as if frustrated.
“The Deep Sea Witch…”
At the ominous tone, Siwoo frowned involuntarily.
It seemed that the déjà vu he had felt when he saw the flying fish was correct.
“The Deep Sea Witch is dead. But her legacy still remains, and some witches are abusing it. You know that too.”
“I know that much. Like Paola Sochitl?”
“Yes. The Deep Sea Witch created her familiars by weaving together legends and myths passed down through folklore.”
Before science had developed, the sea, which swallowed ships with its fickle waves and storms, was an unknown place to sailors.
The deep sea, where the sun never reached, was even more so.
Humans fear the unknown, so the unknown means fear.
The human imagination, inflated by fear, created countless imaginary sea monsters, and the Deep Sea Witch materialized the myths of five monsters and used them as familiars.
Each one was powerful and infamous.
But unlike homunculi, the Deep Sea Witch’s monsters had no ability to hide their bodies by creating pocket dimensions, nor did they have the ability to cross dimensions.
The monsters, which grew larger and more threatening day by day, caused unprecedented disasters just by being released for a short time.
The five ‘fish tanks’ were created to isolate the monsters and take them out whenever needed.
“This is her fish tank. This city itself is a tank and hunting ground for the monsters.”
A closed-loop world created in a day and collapsing again in a day.
To fill the endless void that has no bottom.
Also, false bait scattered haphazardly to keep the sense of hunting alive.
In a world where everything is false, two ‘real’ foods exuding a delicious scent of magic.
The predator, lying in the abyss, noticed their presence.
“We’ve become prey.”
-Kugugugu!!
A huge roar erupted.
At the same time as Deneb finished speaking, the sea in the distance split open.
No.
Something had just shot up, cutting through the black surface of the water.
However, its size was so enormous and overwhelming that it caused a disaster comparable to a tidal wave with just a small movement.
It was as if another island had risen in the middle of the sea.
It was the first time I had seen the monster, but for some reason, I immediately knew its name because of its unique appearance.
A cephalopod sea monster resembling an octopus, the Kraken.
The tentacles that stretched out with a thunderous force grabbed a sailing ship flying into the sky.
The mast of the majestic sailing ship broke like a reed, and the hull folded like paper.
The flying fish that had not yet escaped far were no exception.
The tentacles, whose suckers alone were over 5 meters in diameter, snatched the flying fish with incredible speed.
The monster shoved the crushed flying fish and the wreckage of the ship into its mouth, which was lined with tens of thousands of sharp teeth, and roared.
Kuooh———!!!
The low-frequency sound, which had already transcended the realm of sound and turned into a shockwave, shook my chest.
At that moment, Siwoo felt goosebumps all over his body.
The cry sounded like the terrible screams of a group of the dead who had sunk into the abyss, coming from thousands of mouths.
“Looks like we’re the main dish.”
Siwoo tried to shake off his chilling fear with a joke and gripped his spear tightly.
“Let’s run and see what happens.”
“That would be best.”
Avoiding the school of flying fish that had already reached a close distance, Deneb and Siwoo kicked off the roof and ran.
2.
The large school of flying fish, fleeing in a panic from the Kraken, devoured everything in sight.
With their mouths wide open, they bit at everything they saw like hungry locusts.
When their flight swept through the city, all that remained were the ruins of buildings, as if they had been carpet-bombed.
A school of omnivorous flying fish the size of an adult male attacking a medieval port city.
It was a scene that reeked of a B-grade cosmic horror.
Behind them, like an orca slowly tracking a school of sardines, the Kraken steadily closed the distance, stepping on the broken debris.
As big as it was, its speed was definitely slow.
If Siwoo and Deneb decided to shake it off, they were agile enough to escape.
However, they were trapped together in a net where all sorts of chaos were taking place.
Before discussing countermeasures against the Kraken, Siwoo and Deneb had no choice but to shake off the giant swarm of flying fish.
-Chwarururuk!
Siwoo’s spear, spinning in an instant, tore apart the flying fish that rushed in without hesitation.
The flying fish, neatly cut in half with a fishy smell stinging the tip of my nose, crashed onto the roof.
-Crunch, crunch, crunch
Siwoo cast a disgusted gaze at the head of the flying fish, which was still pecking at the roof with its mouth, even though only half of its body remained.
“They’re really disgusting.”
One of Siwoo’s predictions was correct, but one was wrong.
First, the correct one.
As expected, this school of flying fish posed no real threat to Siwoo and Deneb.
They were easier to subdue than the black dogs that the mother dog had produced.
Siwoo’s feet, which were moving without a moment’s rest, were soon unable to find a place to step due to the fragmented bodies of the flying fish, and in Deneb’s case, every time a purple reflection flashed, a hole was punched through the dense swarm.
In the first place, these things were just biting at whatever they saw while running away, and they weren’t specifically targeting Siwoo and Deneb.
However, one of the things that went wrong was that the school of flying fish was very annoying.
It was a hasty judgment to think that there were only tens of thousands of them.
Even at this moment, the number of flying fish constantly gushing out of the sea was well over six figures at a glance.
The flying fish, which flew in from all directions endlessly, even when killed, were clearly showing the horror of a quantity offensive.
Not only was the range of movement extremely limited, but the consumption was gradually accumulating like getting wet in a drizzle.
The Kraken, which was slowly advancing while turning the ruins of the city into powder, was also a problem for which there was no immediate solution.
“Count! How strong is that octopus!”
I moved a little closer to Count Deneb and shouted as if yelling.
Otherwise, my voice would be buried in all the roaring and flapping sounds.
Deneb, noticing this, waved her hand, and a line appeared to connect the two of them.
Then, Deneb’s soft voice could be heard without being drowned out by the surrounding noise.
“I’ll attack first. We can’t just keep running away like this anyway.”
“Are you sure?”
“If my sister isn’t here, there will be problems in many ways… but it’ll be okay. The Deep Sea Witch was definitely a powerful witch, but she died 300 years ago at the hands of Duke Keter. I heard she was at the 21st level at the time, so I can handle one familiar on my own.”
The strength of a familiar is generally proportional to the strength of the witch.
Although the Deep Sea Witch in the past was strong enough to sink a country alone despite the resistance of many witches, at this point, she was just one of the moderately strong witches.
After saying something reliable, Deneb asked me.
“Buy me one minute.”
“Understood.”
I didn’t have the red branch.
But if I used the ribbons, which had increased dramatically in number since I defeated Bianca, one minute wouldn’t be difficult.
I’ve been through all sorts of hardships so far.
No one would complain if I got a free ride on my mother-in-law’s carry once in a while.
“Bloom.”
Ribbons bloomed from behind Siwoo’s back and began to defend against the flying fish.
