Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest Vol. 5

by Ryo Shirakome

  Still, before they could, they were interrupted. By the worst possible enemy, at that.

  “Ah!? Everyone, get out of the way!” He called out a warning with Telepathy.

  A giant translucent tentacle slammed into the submarine, sending it spinning away.

  Hajime turned back to see the enemy they’d failed to defeat earlier, the giant sea angel. It looked like a fairy, but its jelly melted anything it came into contact with and it could regenerate seemingly indefinitely. It seemed utterly unaffected by water resistance, and shot its countless tentacles at the party at unbelievable speed.

  I can’t believe we have to deal with this thing even after beating the labyrinth. Hajime ground his teeth and called out telepathically to Yue.

  “Yue!”

  “Crystal Coffin!” She immediately created a barrier of ice around them, freezing the surrounding water in place.

  The tentacles slammed into the globe of ice protecting Hajime and the others. The impact was so strong that the party was rattled around like dice in a shaker.

  “How are we going to handle this, Master!?” Fortunately, Hajime had a plan.

  “Yue, we’ve gotta make it to the surface. We’ll just be slowly beaten down by it underwater. I’ll buy you the time you need!”

  “Okay.” Hajime used the spirit stone-imbued ring on his finger to remotely control the submarine. The submarine stopped drifting aimlessly and charged headfirst at the sea angel. It did an underwater barrel roll to avoid the sea angel’s tentacle barrage, then launched a salvo of torpedoes at it.

  The single salvo contained twenty torpedoes in it. Honestly, it was almost overkill already.

  However, Hajime wanted to be absolutely certain he’d buy them enough time, so he launched all the remaining salvos in the sub as well. He set the submarine circling the sea angel with the hull pointed toward it, as he did so. The unnatural movements almost making it look like the sub was drifting.

  All in all, he launched a grand total of 48 torpedoes at the monster. They came at it from all directions, and each and every one of them found their mark.

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Explosions blossomed one after another. A massive amount of water around the sea angel was displaced. Jets of water broke the surface of the ocean one after another. That was how powerful each of his torpedoes had been.

  While the sea angel was distracted, Yue manipulated the current to carry them to the surface. No matter how fearsome its powers of regeneration were, Hajime was sure that would keep it out of commission for a few minutes at least.

  Unfortunately, Hajime and the others had underestimated its strength.

  “Yue, above us!”

  “No, I can’t stop in time!”

  Hajime looked up and saw a membrane of jelly covering the area above them. In a matter of seconds, the jelly had reformed, and now the sea angel was above them.

  It opened its mouth wide and swallowed the ice sphere they were riding in whole. They were now inside the sea angel’s stomach.

  “Shit, it regenerates too fast!”

  “This isn’t good, Hajime-san. We’re surrounded in jelly now!”

  It seemed the sea angel had been spreading its jelly ever since it appeared. It had planned for this exact situation.

  “Hajime, my barrier won’t last long! There’s no water inside its stomach, so I can’t freeze more to reinforce it, either!”

  “Tch, everyone, brace for impact!”

  Yue did her best to slow the corrosion of her ice sphere. Hajime helped as well by coating the ice in Diamond Skin. At the same time, he used his Treasure Trove to pull out a large number of torpedoes and explosives. He placed them outside the barrier, but inside the sea angel’s stomach.

  One again, the sea angel’s body was blown to bits, its pieces scattered to the four winds. The barrier was nearly corroded away at this point, and the explosion blew it to pieces. Hajime and the others were sent flying from the shockwave.

  They were once again in the middle of the ocean. Hajime called his submarine back, hoping to at least get Shea and Kaori to the surface. The two of them were even more helpless underwater than the others.

  However, his submarine had been caught. The sea angel had latched some of its jelly onto the bottom of the submarine, and now there was a huge hole in it. After being filled with water his submarine had become too slow to maneuver properly. Crippled as it was, the sea angel had easily been able to surround it with more of its scattered jelly and render it completely immobile.

  Worse, it had realized they were trying to make a break for the surface, so it had created a translucent barrier of jelly directly above them. Considering how quickly it regenerated, Hajime knew it wouldn’t be easy to break through it.

  Hajime inwardly cursed as he watched the sea angel devour his prized submarine.

  “Yue, you’re going to have to use your trump card.”

  “I’ll need forty seconds.”

  “I won’t let it touch you. This is our only way out of the ocean now.”

  “Okay... leave it to me.” Yue closed her eyes and began concentrating. Kaori and Shea supported her, making sure the current didn’t sweep her away.

  Tio barely held back the encroaching tentacles with a rapid barrage of mini breath attacks. However, she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long. Breath attacks consumed a lot of mana, and down here they were hampered by water resistance. Moreover, because they were linear attacks, they pierced through the tentacles instead of destroying them. In a few seconds, Tio would be overrun.

  Hajime quickly pulled massive quantities of ore out of his Treasure Trove and transmuted another globe-shaped barrier around them.

  “Master, I cannot hold them back any longer!”

  “You held out long enough, Tio! Everyone, get inside my barrier!” Hajime made the sphere large enough to fit all five of them. They all scrambled inside, with Tio coming in last. Once they were in, he sealed the entrance. Dark red mana surrounded the metal sphere. Hajime had strengthened it with Diamond Skin. Furthermore, because he’d incorporated weightstone into the barrier’s design, it wouldn’t sink.

  Numerous tentacles slammed against Hajime’s sphere. The mana-corroding jelly ate away at his Diamond Skin spell. Before long, the metal itself was being dissolved by the jelly. Red sparks ran down the sections most worn away by the jelly, and they were filled with new metal.

  By continually transmuting more ore into the barrier, Hajime was able to keep it mostly intact. Thankfully, Hajime had stockpiled so much extra ore that he had mountains of it stored in his Treasure Trove. He continued replenishing the walls of his barrier for the full forty seconds Yue needed to finish her preparations.

  “Cosmic Rift!” Yue finished casting her teleportation spell. An elliptical ring of light appeared next to the party.

  The teleportation spell, Cosmic Rift, was one of the many spatial magic skills they’d learned at the Grand Gruen Volcano. It connected two points in space. In other words, it created a warp gate. As Yue had acquired it only recently, it still took her nearly a minute to cast such a difficult spell.

  “Everyone, get in!” At Hajime’s command, everyone jumped into the warp gate. Hajime went last, transmuting the barrier until everyone was through. The gate vanished after Hajime leaped through it, and seconds later the barrier that had been protecting them was dissolved by the sea angel’s tentacles.

  As they passed through the gate, Hajime and the others were assailed by a sense of weightlessness. That was mostly because Yue had teleported them into the sky. In order to get them as far away from the ocean as possible, Yue had put the exit point of her Cosmic Rift one hundred meters in the air.

  Tio instantly transformed into her dragon form and caught the others on her back. Yue slumped over, and Shea and Kaori hurried to hold her up. Casting that spell had taken all of her mana. She instantly began replenishing her reserves using the magic accessories Hajime had given her.

  “Thanks, Yue. I knew I could count on
you. Though it looks like spatial magic’s pretty difficult.”

  “Haaah... Haaah... Yeah. I did it, but I’m not good enough with it yet that I can use it in combat.”

  Spatial magic was far harder for Yue to use than even gravity magic had been. Like she’d said, under normal circumstances it wouldn’t be usable in combat. She’d been forced to use Image Composition to create an imaginary magic circle instead of simply controlling her mana directly like she did for other spells. On top of that, it had consumed twice as much mana as her highest-rank spells did just to teleport them one hundred meters into the air. Its mana consumption was still highly inefficient.

  Still, it was thanks to the fact that she could use it at all that they’d been able to escape. Yue blushed as everyone, even Kaori, praised her skills. Everyone smiled in relief, but a second later those smiles froze.

  Splaaaaaaaaaaaash! A massive tidal wave bore down on Hajime and the others from behind.

  No, massive didn’t do the word justice. The tidal wave rose up so high that it blotted out the sky. It towered over them, even though they were a good hundred meters above the water. At a guess, Hajime put it at five hundred meters tall and at least a full kilometer wide.

  “Tch, Tio!”

  “Understood!” Tio flapped her wings and shot forward. They couldn’t dodge to the left or the right, and spatial magic wouldn’t make it in time. In that case, the only option was to keep moving forward. Tio flew with a speed rivaling that of her flight from the Grand Gruen Volcano.

  “Divine Shackles! Hallowed Ground!”

  “Hallowed Ground.”

  Kaori cast the spells she’d stocked up while they’d been waiting for Yue. She joined everyone together with her chains while simultaneously casting the same barrier Yue did. Shea closed her eyes and concentrated. A second later, her eyes shot open and she shouted out a warning.

  “Tio-san, watch out! That thing is hiding inside the tsunami! It’s going to send its tentacles at you!” She relayed the things she’d seen with Future Sight. Tio reacted instantly, twisting out of the way. Countless tentacles lashed at the spot she’d been in mere seconds ago.

  They’d evaded the first attack. However. because of that, the distance between them and the tsunami had shrunk. Hajime fended off further attacks with his flamethrower, but Tio wasn’t able to recover enough speed to get away.

  “Shit! Everyone, brace for impact!” Hajime hugged Yue, Shea, and Kaori protectively. A second later, the gargantuan tsunami crashed into them.

  Thanks to Yue and Kaori’s barriers, they were able to withstand the impact. Still, the tsunami tossed them around, and before they knew it they were plummeting back into the ocean.

  Moreover, the force of the tsunami had completely shattered one Hallowed Ground, and the other was filled with cracks. Had Yue and Kaori only deployed one barrier, they would have been sleeping with the fishes.

  Hajime shook his head, clearing the dizziness that had accompanied being tossed around by the tsunami. When he looked up, his expression grew grim.

  “So you’re not gonna let your prey go, huh?” The sea angel had caught up to them. It had gotten bigger, too. Now it was over twenty meters long. Apparently, it didn’t think that was big enough though. It continued gathering translucent jelly from its surroundings, growing even larger.

  “Y-You’ve gotta be kidding me. It doesn’t die, it can melt anything, and it can even control the sea... How are we supposed to beat it?”

  “Hajime-san, can you kiss me? I’m not joking, I want to at least be kissed by you once before I die.”

  “In that case, Master, I too wish for a kiss before death.”

  Kaori was despairing, but Shea and Tio were smiling faintly, a look of resignation on their faces.

  But when they looked up at Hajime, shivers ran down their spine. Even now, his eyes glimmered with determination. Bloodlust so thick it was palpable rolled off him in waves. He glared at the sea angel, completely undaunted.

  He hadn’t given up. The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. All he was thinking about was how to kill the enemy in front of him and make it out alive.

  The sea angel they faced was unbelievably powerful. But if Hajime was the kind of person who gave up because the enemy was too strong, he wouldn’t have made it so far. He would have died in the abyss ages ago.

  Yue had walked through the abyss with him, so she understood. She, too, was only thinking of how to defeat the foe in front of her. Surrender wasn’t part of her vocabulary.

  Kaori, Shea, and Tio’s breath caught in their throat as they watched Hajime. They stayed like that for a while, until the sea angel, which was now thirty meters long, attacked and brought them back to their senses.

  Kaori hurriedly put up another Hallowed Ground. Shea tried to use her Branching Paths ability to find a way out of this mess. Tio fired her breath at the sea angel. If Hajime hadn’t given up, then they wouldn’t either. If they didn’t show their grit here, then they had no right to travel at Hajime’s side.

  Yue hadn’t been able to come up with a solution, so she added her strength to theirs, hoping to at least buy time.

  Hajime stood stock still, thinking furiously. He’d activated Riftwalk to accelerate his thought processes even further. He knew he needed to find a solution soon, or they were all dead. He went over all the information they’d gathered on the enemy so far. Every little thing was examined in detail in case it offered a potential solution. There was one point he came back to. Back when they’d first escaped from the giant sea angel. Why didn’t it chase after us back then? It could have chased us down easily. What was different between then and now? We’re not...

  “We’re not using enough fire.” Last time both Tio and Yue had blasted the sea angel with fire spells. The fire had withered its tentacles, and the burned jelly hadn’t regenerated.

  Finally, he saw a ray of hope. He wasn’t one hundred percent certain his conjecture was correct, but it seemed the sea angel couldn’t regenerate indefinitely. It just had so much jelly that it appeared that way.

  Furthermore, it likely could create more jelly given enough time. It seemed creating more jelly took a lot more time than regenerating what was already there, though. That was why it had taken it so long to recover after they’d burned so much of it last time. They’d been able to escape because it had prioritized replenishing its jelly reserves over chasing them.

  So to defeat it, they simply had to do the same thing as last time. Burn it down faster than it could regenerate and replenish. However, they were surrounded by ocean. Fire magic wouldn’t be very effective with all this water around. Tio’s breath was powerful, but she couldn’t keep it up for long enough to burn away all the jelly. They had no weapons capable of burning it away.

  In that case...

  “I just have to make one.” Hajime pulled out a large amount of ore and torpedoes from his Treasure Trove and started transmuting.

  “Hajime? Did you think of something?”

  “Yeah. This is the only way we’re gonna be able to use fire around water. If this works, we’ll be able to kill it.”

  “Do you really mean it, Hajime-kun!?”

  “I knew I could trust you, Hajime-san! I never doubted you for a second!”

  “Shea, were you not the one asking Master for a kiss before you died just moments ago... At any rate, good job, Master!” Tio joked around with Shea. The two of them had relaxed a little. The man they trusted most in the world had told them they’d make it. There was no reason to worry anymore. All that was left was to live up to the trust he’d shown in them.

  “It’s gonna take some time, though. I’m counting on you guys to hold it off.”

  Hajime smiled fearlessly, and the others smiled back at him. Then, he activated both Riftwalk and Limit Break while he worked. Bolstered by those skills, he transmuted faster than ever.

  He finished one weapon and quickly started on the next. This new weapon of his required an unprecedented amount of precision a
nd skill to craft, so he couldn’t mass-produce them like his bullets. However, he needed a lot or it wouldn’t be enough to burn away all of the sea angel’s jelly. Firing them off one after another would just delay their inevitable demise. Either he got it all at once, or not at all. Limit Break caused dark red mana to swirl about him, and it looked like he was caught in a small crimson tornado.

  Unfortunately, their situation was still looking rather bleak. Overpowered as they were, Yue and the others still couldn’t hold back the sea angel for long. The ocean just gave it too great of an advantage.

  They all tried their best to hold on, but it didn’t look like they would be able to endure long enough for Hajime to finish making his weapons stockpile.

  “Three more minutes, that’s all I need!” Hajime used Telepathy to shout that to the others. The sea angel was almost right on top of them. It opened its mouth wide to swallow the party whole once more.

  Hajime reluctantly decided he’d need to fire off whatever he’d made so far. It wasn’t enough, but there was no point in saving it if they were about to die.

  Just then, though, a grizzled old voice spoke to them via Telepathy.

  “Yo, Young Haj. You seem to be in a spot of trouble. This old man here’ll help you out.”

  “W-Wait, I recognize that voice! Is that you, Fish-san!?”

  “That it is. It’s me, your friend Fish-san.”

  To Hajime’s disbelief, the fishman he had freed back in the aquarium at Fuhren was here. Hajime looked around in surprise, and saw a giant silver silhouette tackle the sea angel. The sea angel was taken completely by surprise, and was sent flying off to the side.

  The familiar fish monster with a human head appeared beside Yue’s barrier. Yue and the others were stunned. Yue, Kaori, and Tio had never even seen the fishman before, so it was natural, but even Shea hadn’t expected to find him here.

  “You’re the guy from back then!” Shea exclaimed, while Kaori shrieked in fear.

  “Have you been well, Shea?”

  “Fweh!? Umm, y-yes! I’m doing fine!”