## Chapter 323 – The Monarch of Monsters (25)
The knightly order was engaged in a fierce battle in the lower district that Vivian was looking down upon.
They were desperately fending off the enemy, cutting down countless monsters and whipping their weary arms to kill even one more.
However, with the appearance of higher-tier monsters, the number of casualties began to rise tragically.
Meanwhile, the students, who had been reorganizing their ranks behind the knights as if they were the last bastion, were now staring at the monsters that had trampled over the knights and were approaching them. They were steeling their resolve in various ways.
“We have to do this!!
Let’s stay focused until the end!!
They’re coming!! Prepare for impact!!”
“Hieeek…!! Th-they’re coming…!!”
Finally, after breaking through the last of the knights, the monsters were rushing towards them. At that very moment, various emotions were swirling among the students.
With a huge sound as if the ground in front of them had exploded, a giant, earthworm-like form shot up, kicking up thick dust. All the students involuntarily craned their necks to look up.
“What… is that…?”
“A… Sandworm…?
Anyway, it looks similar…
To that…”
The sheer size of it, reminiscent of a small villa or apartment building, effectively caused the students to lose their will to fight.
Amid the sounds of swords dropping and people collapsing to the ground, the creature slowly bent its back and let out a monstrous roar.
– Kyuiiiiiiiiiing!!
“Well… I was happy to be your friend.”
“The bastard’s posing like it’s the end…
Sigh… Damn… I love you, crazy bastards.
If there’s a next life, anyway, let’s meet again…”
Just as the students, with almost tearful expressions, were trying to accept their deaths,
– Ku-gwa-gwagwagwagwagwang
The monster suddenly swung its bent back in the opposite direction, flinging itself out of the hole.
“Uh… uh…?”
“Why is it doing that…? Is it team-killing…?”
“Suddenly throwing itself…? Is it a troll…?”
With that massive body rolling around outside, there was no way the city, which had been swarming with monsters, could remain intact.
As a result, the surrounding buildings began to collapse.
The students watched in stunned silence as the monsters densely packed around it were crushed under its body and the debris of the buildings.
“Hey… I was happy to be with you, but…
Let’s not meet again…!! Woohoo!!”
“I’ll never step on an earthworm again!!
This is awesome!! Huwaaaaaaat!!”
Meanwhile, some of the students, watching the catastrophe, cheered and immediately picked up their dropped swords.
The students, who were regaining their morale, began to burn with renewed fighting spirit at the appearance of the unexpected ally.
It had only come out and thrashed around a few times, but most of the countless monsters were already crushed to death.
“Take your positions!! The battle starts again when that thing regains its senses!!”
“Bring on whoever you want!!”
Sure enough, the ‘Giant Kernel Worm’ writhed and slowly began to burrow into the ground.
Still, the monsters that had been wiped out were quickly replenished from the gate and began to swarm again.
Compared to the monsters that had been as numerous as a lake until just now, the ones coming now were just a manageable stream.
Just as the students, burning with fighting spirit, were about to greet the monsters with shouts,
“Waaaaa!! Kill them all…!! La…?
Why is that one lying down and sleeping…?
It’s asleep, right…?”
“Look at that one…!! It’s biting its own comrade…?”
The monsters suddenly began to exhibit strange behaviors.
The students, now somewhat frightened by the continuous strange occurrences, trembled as they stared at each other with blank expressions.
After all, these were creatures that had been rushing to kill them.
But now, 20% of them were suddenly lying down and sleeping.
Another 40% were excitedly changing direction and biting or attacking their friends.
About 20% of them were simply collapsing and dying on the spot.
The remaining 20% of the monsters that were still rushing towards them were quickly killed by the students’ swords.
“Why… why are they doing that…? Why…?”
“Ah…!! Isn’t the Magic Corps supporting us…?”
“Ma… Magic Corps…? Is that so…!?
Magic Corps…!! Go… Go!!”
“Waaaa…!! Magic Corps!! I love you…!!”
The students, barely lifting a finger and just holding their swords, were watching the higher-tier monsters rampaging and attacking each other.
They were sending endless praise and affection to the Magic Corps, who must be casting magic somewhere.
Amid the corpses of the monsters fighting or collapsed in the distance, countless small creatures were retrieving the saliva that had spurted from their round snouts and scurrying away somewhere.
No one at this distance could see the teeming mass of creatures, reminiscent of a swarm of cockroaches in a decades-old garbage dump.
.
.
.
‘If I do something like this…
I might get caught…’
In fact, even if humans died, it wouldn’t harm him in any way.
What was there to fear for Enic, even if he was among the monsters?
Even if there was a food chain among monsters, they generally prioritized attacking humans, so there was little chance that Enic, a sufficiently strong being, would be in danger.
‘Why… even though you’re not human…
Why are you fighting for humans…’
Seeing him helping them even while exposing himself, Vivian bit her lip with a surge of emotion.
The only reason she could guess was that he might see all the people as future food, but more likely, it was a desire to save the beings he cherished.
Himself, Lanière, Aurora, Yui, Eloise, and so on.
He was helping his people, who were fighting their own battles somewhere, even at the risk of his own safety.
“Lanière. Call Aurora.
Call her and come with me.”
“Vivian-nim…!?”
Clutching her surging chest, Vivian sheathed her sword, tapped Lanière’s shoulder, and ran towards the back.
‘Good… If that’s how you’re going to play it…
I won’t just die quietly either…
I decided to give you the world…
So I have to make it happen…!!’
“There…!? Where are you going…?”
“I’m just going to the restroom…!!
I’ll be right back, so don’t worry!!”
.
.
.
.
.
.
“Here, drink this all up…!!”
“Uh…!! You can’t drink anything now…!!
You were coughing up blood…!! You still have internal injuries…!!”
“It’s okay, just drink it…!!
You might not be able to drink it after today, you know?”
The sound of a girl arguing with a medic was heard.
Between the girl trying to hand the wooden canteen she was holding to a mage, and the medic trying to stop her.
The mage, glancing at the canteen in front of him, was struggling to decide between his thirst and the uncertain war situation.
“Keueung… Tsk…!! Gulp… Gulp…”
But the mage, who ended up popping the cork, must have been more desperate for thirst, as he ended up chugging the contents of the wooden canteen.
“Ah… I told you not to…!!
Sp-spit it out!! Spit it out…!!”
By the time the medic knocked away the canteen and grabbed his collar, it was already too late.
When internal injuries due to mana depletion were severe, the digestive organs and intestines were naturally in terrible condition.
Therefore, recklessly consuming something could cause serious aftereffects.
The medic struggled to save him, but it was as if the patient had thrown it all away himself.
“Kya…!! It’s sweet…!!
Is this honey water…?
Where did you get this?
Huh…? My throat… my stomach doesn’t hurt…!?”
“Everyone else, have a drink…!!”
Before the medic could stop the girl, she quickly ran forward and began scattering the canteens she had been holding in her arms.
“Give me one too!! Even a ghost who dies drinking is supposed to look good!!”
“Me too!!”
“Here too!!”
“Uwaaaagh!! Are you all crazy…!!?
Are you all trying to die or what!!”
“Keuheu… This is the life…!! What kind of water is this?
Ah… the pain is disappearing…!?”
Already, several other girls were quickly scattering canteens to the people in other places.
When they tried to find the girls who had given them the canteens later, they had long since disappeared like the wind.
After drinking the sweet water, not knowing who had given it to them, the mages felt the pain disappearing from their bodies and their vitality returning in an odd way.
And more than anything, what was even more incomprehensible was…
“Mana… my mana is returning…!!”
“What nonsense… No…? It’s real…?”
The mana within their bodies that mages could sense.
Unlike before, when it was at rock bottom, the mages felt it recovering in an instant, and they picked up the water bottles that the girls had spilled on the ground earlier and began sharing them.
“Eh…!? It’s sweet…!! It’s delicious…!!”
“Mister…!! Can I have a sip too…?♡”
Seeing the students approaching with curiosity, the mages, who had regained some mana, began handing the canteens to the students, and soon rolled up their sleeves and stood up.
“With this… again…
I can try again…!!”
“This time, we’ll seal the dungeon…!!”
With the Royal Magic Corps and the Magic Academy student soldiers, who had begun to recharge their morale, the three girls mixed among them had playful smiles on their lips.
“It really feels like my mana is recovering.
Could Master have had such an ability…?”
Nutrient solution that greatly promotes metabolism and heals wounds or minor injuries.
It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tasted its sweet flavor for a day or two.
Aurora, sipping the liquid in the canteen, quietly muttered with wide eyes in surprise. Vivian, racking her brains, recited the reasoning she had come up with.
“No… these are nutrient solutions extracted from the tentacles of the Workshop Enic…
There… Eloise… that’s right…
While the tentacles were growing, she was intensively summoning that woman…”
While the Workshop Enic was growing, he had been given Eloise’s body, which possessed abundant mana, to exploit.
Hearing the reasoning that the second Enic of the Workshop had adapted to mana and acquired a constitution related to mana, Aurora nodded slightly as if she understood.
“Experiment… adaptation, you mean…?
An Enic adapted to mana?
This is a dream come true for mages…
Being able to continuously supply mana without expensive potions…
More than that, to come up with this idea…
It’s no different from the situation being reversed thanks to Vivian-nim…”
“We still have a long way to go.”
The truth was this.
Vivian, watching the Giant Kernel Worm shake up the battlefield of the Swordsmanship Department and the Knights, confirmed his clear intention to participate, and then, recalling something good, ran to a place where no one could see and requested support from Enic.
Enic, who received the request, immediately ordered the Henias who were waiting inside to start running the factory.
The contents were simple, crude wooden water bottles made by filling roughly trimmed wood with nutrient solution, packaging them, and making sure they didn’t leak.
The water bottles created in this way were stored one by one in the bellies of the small Kernel Worms, and were being rocket-delivered through the ground in an instant.
The girls, who quickly received the underground delivery, hugged the water bottles and scattered, quickly scattering them to the Magic Corps humans.
‘Really… it’s unbelievable…
Who would have even imagined something like this?’
At first, Vivian had been thinking of first restoring the bodies of the mages, and then finding a way to recover mana in some way.
Like a bull stumbling backward and catching a mouse, the performance of the generous nutrient solution, which not only treated internal injuries but also unexpectedly provided mana recovery as an added bonus, was something that couldn’t avoid rave reviews.
Of course, the quantity was limited, and the amount they could prepare in a short time was not very large, so the mages who were looking for more of this mysterious water were disappointed.
But the fact that they had now recovered enough to fight again was the most important thing for them.
“I got help from him again…
He surprises me like this sometimes…”
“Academy Magic Department!! Gather here!!
We will start the magic circle work again!!
This time, we will go with collaborative work!!”
A loud shout that drowned out Vivian’s muttering as she sat with her legs crossed and chuckled.
Aurora, who stood up at that, stretched and waved to Vivian before running forward with light steps.
“Then I’ll be on my way too.
I think I need to be of some help now.
I hope I can go home today.”
“Yeah… let’s finish this quickly…
I’m starting to get sick of it.”
