Want to read ahead? Join my Patreon for only $7 to get early access to upcoming chapters!
> > Patreon.com/NegativeTranslations <<
----------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 37: The Ultimate Summoning Beast
Whish!
The instant Konan landed, a white pillar as thick as an arm shot straight toward her face.
She stepped back half a pace, narrowly dodging the attack.
With a flick of her hand, countless sheets of paper swirled together, forming a giant shuriken the size of a millstone.
With a sharp hum, the shuriken sliced through the air, spinning toward the direction the white pillar had come from.
Shkrrrk! The sound of flesh tearing echoed, followed by a guttural scream of pain.
From behind a small hill twenty meters away, a spray of blood burst into the air.
A massive purple spider toppled forward, its enormous head—large as a truck's cab—slamming against the ground. Blood gushed from the wound, pooling beneath it.
A gaping hole had been carved into its forehead, and its brain, slick and crimson, was exposed to the open air.
Alex floated closer to inspect it, clicking his tongue in mild awe.
That's one giant spider. Back in my old world, this thing would've scared people to death.
They stood on the outer edge of Summoning Island, golden sands stretching behind them, dense jungle looming ahead.
Suddenly, the forest ahead shook violently. Trees swayed, earth trembled—something enormous was coming.
Moments later, an entire herd of gigantic creatures burst through the foliage: a centipede the length of a train car, a gorilla five stories tall, mantises the size of automobiles—every shape imaginable, but all sharing one trait: enormous size.
All of them bolted forward in blind panic, as though fleeing from something unimaginably terrifying behind them.
[Konan, head straight for the center of the island,] Alex instructed, landing lightly on her shoulder.
The island's center was the only place where human structures stood.
Konan nodded and spread her wings, soaring toward the middle.
The heart of the island was barren—no trees, no rocks—just a vast clearing the size of a football field, dotted with various buildings.
From the tallest structure at the center came a deafening roar and the crash of splintering walls. The outer surface was riddled with holes, as if something massive were forcing its way out from within.
Konan descended and landed before a man in a white lab coat who was fleeing the main building.
The researcher's face was pale with terror, tears and snot streaming down as he muttered hysterically, "It's over—it's all over…"
Smack!
A sheet of paper struck his face, jolting him back to awareness.
He blinked, dazed, then instinctively looked back over his shoulder—only for his whole body to shudder violently.
He tried to keep running, to escape this cursed facility, but his limbs suddenly refused to move. Looking down, he saw himself wrapped tightly in layers of white paper, only his head left exposed.
"W–Wait! L–Lady Ninja!" he stammered. "This place is far too dangerous! We must leave now! Whatever you require, I'll do it—just not here! Please, once we're off this island, I'll obey your every command!"
The only thing in his mind was survival—to get as far away from this deathtrap as possible.
Konan's tone was cold. "Tell me what happened. Skip the nonsense, or I'll throw you back inside."
Her icy words drained the blood from his face. He swallowed hard and babbled the truth.
"T–This morning was the scheduled activation of the Ultimate Summoning Beast."
At the mention of its name, his voice trembled uncontrollably.
"It's the product of decades of research—our greatest creation! It combines the powers of countless summoning beasts into one body, making it unimaginably powerful!
"We thought we could control it—to use its strength to make the Land of the Sea powerful again! But the moment it awoke, it went berserk! It attacked everything—everyone—without discrimination! My colleagues were torn apart and eaten in seconds!"
He shook violently, tears spilling again. "I… I was the one nearest the exit. I barely escaped with my life. Please, don't send me back! That monster will kill me!"
"So it's already awakened…" Konan muttered, brows tightening. "Among your team, was there someone named Uzumaki Honoka?"
The man's eyes widened. "Honoka? You know her?"
"Don't waste time. Where is she?"
"Sh–She…" He gulped hard. "She stayed behind—to hold the creature off, so the rest of us could escape. She's in the sublevel—Level Two—the place where the monster was created!"
"Hmph."
Konan's eyes darkened. She wrapped the man completely in paper, mummifying him, and hurled his bound body into a nearby tree.
Stayed behind to hold it off? she thought coldly. More likely abandoned—or betrayed.
In the next instant, her body vanished in a blur, using the Body Flicker Technique to dart into the central facility.
The moment she entered, the stench of blood hit her like a wall.
The hall had become a slaughterhouse. Blood and mangled flesh carpeted the floor, splattered across the western wall in dark streaks.
From gaping cracks in the floor, blood-red tentacles burst upward, punching through the walls before snapping back like whips—dragging along pieces of what they'd snatched.
Some were summoning beasts, others were human.
All were crushed and shredded, their blood pouring down the tentacles in crimson streams.
Konan's expression hardened.
Even that brief glimpse of the tentacles revealed an aura—dense and deadly, unmistakably Kage-level.
If just one tentacle stretched tens of meters long, the size of its full body was almost unimaginable.
Without hesitation, Konan leapt into the gaping hole in the center of the floor, plunging down to the second underground level.
The space below was vast.
There, Uzumaki Honoka knelt weakly, her face deathly pale.
Before her loomed a massive glass chamber, the size of a basketball court, filled with a viscous green fluid.
Suspended within it pulsed an enormous blood-red mass of flesh—heaving slowly, grotesquely.
Golden chains wrapped around it like a web, sealing most of its surface, but the exposed areas writhed violently, sprouting nine enormous tentacles that reached upward through the shattered ceiling, clutching at prey above.
The green liquid had long since turned scarlet, thick with layers of shriveled corpses—both human and beast alike.
All their flesh and chakra were being absorbed, feeding into the writhing mass within.
"What… do I do…" Honoka gasped, her chakra nearly depleted. "I can't hold on…"
The golden chains at her back flickered weakly, on the verge of disappearing.
She stared helplessly at the creature in the chamber, whose size had already grown tenfold since its awakening.
Worse still, the Ultimate Summoning Beast showed no sign of stopping—it continued devouring everything in reach, its power swelling by the second.
Her Adamantine Sealing Chains could no longer restrain it.
"It's over…" Honoka whispered as she collapsed, the golden chains behind her shattering into light.
She had exhausted every drop of chakra—she could no longer hold the monster back.
Now, nothing stood between the beast and the island's destruction.
Half-conscious, her eyes fluttered open one last time.
The colossal tentacles rose again, surging toward her like spears.
She couldn't move. Couldn't resist.
So she simply closed her eyes—and waited for death to come.