28. The Great Conflagration
I had acquired a weapon.
The opponent I was about to face was, of course, the Electric Eel of the Sea of Fire.
Now, what had the Electric Eel been doing while I was forging my sword?
At first, I had simply assumed it was adhering to that unspoken agreement: "The magical girl will not be attacked while transforming." However, it was not that simple.
The Electric Eel of the Sea of Fire was simply and utterly indifferent to me.
A perfectly, irritatingly indifferent being.
And in the Sea of Fire, marine life continued to be born one after another.
In this hellishly hot environment, creatures specialized in fire were rapidly emerging.
I felt a slight sense of awe at the tenacity of these niche inhabitants daring to challenge such an extreme market.
For example—Jellyfish.
Their fluffy, frilly parts seemed to become veils of fire, swaying and flickering in the fiery wind, causing curtains of red flame to ripple.
Or Lightning Sharks, whose dorsal fins were pale blue lightning bolts, cutting zigzag paths across the surface of the flame, not water, and leaving thin electric trails in their wake.
Also, Magma Whales that harbored several small volcanoes inside their bodies, slowly cruising the Sea of Fire, occasionally erupting columns of fire and black smoke from the vents on their backs.
Furthermore, Flame Crabs, wearing carapaces made of charred soot and lava instead of shells, scuttled across the red-hot reefs, leaving behind only vitrified, glass-like footprints.
And the Electric Eel of the Sea of Fire itself—
It swam, crackling and spitting sparks like a massive pile of kindling exploding in a huge bonfire.
Fire sparks and electrical sparks.
Crackling fire, crackling electricity.
It was the square of "crackling," burning exponentially.
Why could it burn so much?
—Nourishment.
The Electric Eel, the champion of the fire, had been devouring the countless newly born marine creatures in this Sea of Fire one after another. By continuously absorbing this rich nourishment, it had grown into an electric-fire fused entity.
I lunged into battle.
Fortunately, the Electric Eel seemed to remain completely uninterested in me.
If this continued, perhaps I could deliver a blow to its critical spot by surprise, eliminating it like an assassination without a fight—such an optimistic outlook even emerged.
I closed the distance as quickly as possible.
There was no time.
The reason was simple: it was excruciatingly hot.
If I stayed here, my entire body would be scorched, melted, and gone in less than ten seconds.
I had reduced my tactile system—the pain module—to its absolute minimum.
I had heard that the most intense pain for living organisms is the pain from fire. Even in the various depictions of Hell in literature, the Hell of Fire is said to inflict the ultimate agony. Since the current environment was virtually equivalent, the danger was clear.
I had to quickly kill the Eel and escape this place.
So, what was the fastest way to kill it?
—The critical spot.
Where was the Eel's critical spot?
I tried to search for the information, but data transmission was dysfunctional in the Sea of Fire, forcing me to abandon the search.
In the end, the only weapon I had left was—imagination.
I had been lectured endlessly about the importance of imagination, until my ears were calloused, but now, finally, I decided to use my imagination spontaneously and proactively, not just because someone told me to.
First, I observed.
I spent an impossibly long three seconds on observation. I instantly integrated the meager data I obtained, analyzed it, and deduced a conclusion.
The answer was simple.
—The eye.
Regardless of whether a creature is made of protein, the eye is somehow a fragile, delicate part, vulnerable to attack. Visual sensors are precise, and perhaps cannot be protected by thick armor. As a result, the eye tends to be the Achilles' heel. This is true for humanoids and aberrant creatures alike.
However, the eye.
If I approached the eye head-on, I would obviously be noticed.
The moment I was detected, an attack would become impossible.
Should I search for another weakness?
...It was impossible.
Judging from the limited data I had just collected, no other critical spot existed.
My calculation showed that the entire exoskeleton of the Electric Eel of the Sea of Fire—its whole external shell—was billions of times stronger than super-hard alloy stainless steel.
This meant that if I swung The Wind Chime Blade at it, there was a greater than ninety-nine percent chance that The Wind Chime Blade itself would break.
So, what should I do?
What should I do?
Just by pondering, I had wasted another three seconds.
Four seconds remaining.
The deadline was upon me.
At that moment, I suddenly realized.
I had just tried to search for data. The transmission hadn't been completely cut off, it seemed. A portion, just a tiny fraction, had returned.
It was far, far from the one hundred terabytes of information I had desired—just a few bytes.
Only a few characters in terms of text length.
But that was enough.
In fact, that made it perfect.
The necessary information was contained precisely within those few bytes.
The short sentence corresponding to those few bytes read:
"Electric eels are blind."
Upon reading that, I immediately started swimming.
There was no time left.
With the momentum of going in for the kill, I sliced through the fire-water with all my might and charged forward single-mindedly. Finally, I maneuvered right in front of the Electric Eel of the Sea of Fire.
Despite being this close, the Electric Eel was still immersed in its gluttonous feeding. No, it was more like it was drowning in the sheer pleasure of filling its belly, to the extent that the fear I had felt earlier began to diminish.
It's impossible to feel terror toward something so out of control of its own desires and impulses.
However, I must have gotten too close.
I finally reached the space directly in front of its central eye—the most massive of its three eyes, as huge as a state-of-the-art submarine that could hold a hundred people. In that instant, the Electric Eel's nervous system finally registered my presence.
The fading terror surged back in a torrent.
Thinking it was my turn to become the monster's meal, a sensation of bristling overcame my whole body, even though I didn't have skin to get goosebumps. Though what little I had of "skin" was already burnt and melted, a shiver ran across my entire surface.
The colossal eye radiated overwhelming intimidation.
And for a brief moment.
My eyes met those of the Electric Eel of the Sea of Fire.
What, wasn't the data just saying that electric eels are blind? I almost complained to the earlier data, but there's no way it wouldn't have other sensors to detect enemies besides its eyes.
I noticed that my entire body was crackling with sparks. Fire and electricity mingled, enveloping my body in an indescribably violent double-spark, as if the sparks were squared. I had been detected by that signal.
But whether I was noticed or not was no longer the issue.
I was now directly in front of the critical spot of the Electric Eel of the Sea of Fire—the central eye, the largest and supposedly the most fragile of its three eyes.
There was no more hesitation.
I raised The Wind Chime Blade.
In that instant, the monster realized it was under attack and rapidly swung its massive tail, attempting to sweep me away at incredible speed. But before the blow could connect, I plunged The Wind Chime Blade into the central eye.
A loud, deep, momentous sound, neither thunder nor explosion, but somehow reminiscent of a legendary sword striking rock, reverberated. The Wind Chime Blade sank deep into that gigantic eye—driven in, plunged, and submerged as if sinking into the deep sea.
Then, the world—came to a dead stop.
Not just the Sea of Fire.
The entirety of Venus, no, the universe itself, went completely silent for a moment, as if reverting to the static state just before the Big Bang.
Then the pause ended, and as if the play button had been pressed, time resumed, and I pulled out The Wind Chime Blade.
The color of that murky, rainbow-hued central eye was suddenly sucked away, like a rainbow played in reverse, rapidly converging into a dark spot like a sunspot.
And that spot was compressed into a single point smaller than a quark, let alone an atom—
In the next moment,
Blood erupted from it.
With a bursting sound, the compressed blood exploded outward all at once.
A crimson torrent, with enough hydrostatic pressure to pierce through fire, gushed out.
I was flung backward by the tremendous pressure. I shot through the Sea of Fire instantly and was propelled all the way to the edge of the Venusian atmosphere.
Looking down from the penetrated golden sky, the Sea of Fire had already swallowed not just one village but the surrounding settlements, and was continuing to spread. It was growing to a scale that seemed likely to consume half of Venus.
Could a fire be this immense, this fast—?
This would surely become a great catastrophe eternally etched into the history of Venus.