Chapter 214: Bring Some Popcorn, Jinseo (4) Fwoosh.
As the Dark Dragon Evelyn exhaled her breath, the soldiers hunched their bodies and shielded the plastic bags holding the fried hardtack.
"Whoa there! Our precious fried hardtack almost got burned up by that breath!"
"Hey now! Isn't that too much, even if we're in the middle of battle? Mr. Jinseo said even dogs don't bother people when they're eating! Fight with some manners, will you!"
"So what if you're a dragon? Huh? Does that make you everything?"
When the soldiers, glaring fiercely, protested while crunching away at their fried hardtack, the Dark Dragon Evelyn flinched and took a step back.
The lowly creatures had charged at her bravely even though she was a dragon, but this was the first time they had ever glared at her with such fury-filled eyes.
"At this rate..."
The Dark Dragon Evelyn shrank back as she looked down at the soldiers of the dragon subjugation force, who did not fear her and instead browbeat her.
Not knowing exactly how Dragon's Blessing worked, she found it baffling that no matter how much she attacked, the dragon subjugation force would not fall and kept throwing themselves at her.
Even so, she had fought with the conviction that these lowly creatures would collapse from exhaustion before a dragon like her ever would.
But as the battle stretched into its third day, even that confidence changed into fear that she might truly lose to those lowly creatures.
"This won't do..."
Feeling the need to disperse the attacks aimed at her, the Dark Dragon Evelyn spread both wings wide and began releasing dark energy.
Not long after, the area was covered in darkness, and the soldiers stopped attacking in momentary confusion.
"Huh? What the heck? It suddenly turned into night?"
"What kind of attack is she trying to use? Not that it matters. We won't die anyway..."
"Let's watch for now. In the meantime, finish filling your stomachs."
They kept chewing away at their fried hardtack and washing it down with milk as they quietly waited to see what would happen.
"My subordinates..."
A vortex began forming in the darkness overhead, and before long, unidentified lifeforms slowly began descending from it.
"That's... m-monsters, isn't it?"
"They just keep pouring out without end!"
"Look over at the coast! Monsters are coming in from the sea too!"
All kinds of monsters, corroded by dark energy, began gathering one after another, and in the blink of an eye they had surrounded the dragon subjugation force.
"There are quite a lot."
Craid nodded as he looked up at the dark vortex still pouring out monsters.
He had already assumed that the Dark Dragon Evelyn might summon subordinates to fight, and naturally he had prepared a countermeasure for it as well, so he was not shaken in the slightest.
"It seems it's time to use that weapon."
He drove his greatsword deep into the ground, then turned around sharply.
"Geshtain! Hand it to me!"
"That? By that, do you mean the thing I finished yesterday?"
"That's right!"
Hearing Craid's shout, Geshtain hurriedly opened a subspace storage and took something out before tossing it over.
"Catch!"
Craid snatched the unidentified weapon with one hand, then roughly tore off the wrapping around it.
Feeling the distinctive texture of adadium glittering under the intense sunlight at his fingertips, Craid closed his eyes and opened them again.
"At last..."
A satisfied smile rose to Craid's lips as he gripped the "new weapon" fitted with a sharp saw chain.
The weapon he had received was a modified chainsaw, originally a logging tool Jinseo had lent them when Dwarf Town was being built. Geshtain had remade it into a new weapon that could be infused with aura, combining dwarven processing techniques with magic.
"So I finally get to try this out."
Craid grabbed the pull cord of the chainsaw and started it.
Vrrrrrr.
The chain fitted with blades spun violently, and its roar vibrated in his ears.
"Haaaat!"
As Craid shouted and infused aura into the chainsaw, particles of light burst from the blades and scattered in every direction.
He swung the chainsaw in a great arc from left to right toward the monsters charging at him, and blood and chunks of flesh from the monsters, severed before they could even scream, flew through the air.
"I've used all sorts of weapons over decades of fighting monsters..."
Craid looked down with an apologetic expression at his greatsword, which was no different from his other half, though for now it remained stuck in the ground.
"But until now, I've never encountered a means of communication with monsters as splendid as this."
There was no need to put strength into stabbing or slashing.
The sight of monsters being torn to pieces just by touching them with the violently spinning blades, roaring deafeningly, satisfied Craid, who had always wanted an even fiercer battle.
Vrrrrrr.
Along with the sound of the spinning blades, the monsters were quite literally butchered.
The encirclement hemming in the dragon subjugation force collapsed in an instant, and the monsters scrambling to flee from him got tangled up with each other and fell, turning the whole place into chaos.
"Wow..."
A gasp slipped out of Hayward, who had been watching Craid's exploits from afar.
Craid stood alone atop a small mountain made of monster corpses, and his whole body was dyed red with blood.
"So this is that thing you were talking about before? You really went and made it? The dwarves truly are unbelievable when it comes to handiwork."
Hayward, who had climbed up after Craid, pointed at the chainsaw dripping blood and asked.
"It's Rip and Tear."
"Rip and Tear? That's the name you gave the chainsaw you're holding? What does it mean?"
"It means exactly what I said. Jinseo named it personally."
Vrrrrrr.
Starting the chainsaw again, Craid leaped high and then jumped straight into the middle of the monster ranks.
He ripped monsters apart, killed them, ripped them apart again, killed them again...
Even while doing that, Craid also devoured all the food inside the backpack he was carrying. Then he flicked the blood off his face with his fingertips and turned around.
Toward the place that would fill the hunger rising in his stomach again—the food truck.
"Hey! Assault captain! Leave the rest to us!"
Boom! Boom!
The dwarves began smashing monsters with hammers as tall as they were, and the soldiers who had only been watching joined in as well.
"Right! This is how they ought to fall! The dragon stayed perfectly fine even after we beat on her for three days and nights, so it got boring, but monsters really are different!"
"Fathers! Another blessing, please! Not yet? Ah, it just came in! Let's go!"
After Craid swept through the battlefield like a storm, what followed was a one-sided massacre by the dragon subjugation force.
The corpses of monsters collapsed as soon as they were summoned from the dark vortex, piling up all over the ground before the soldiers' weapons, and there were those watching that scene from ships near the coast.
"They're fighting fiercely indeed."
"As expected of a battle staking the survival of the world. Just watching it makes my blood boil."
The fishermen from Orte Harbor, who had arrived bringing ships loaded with ingredients, unconsciously clenched both fists tight as they watched the dragon subjugation force's fierce performance.
"Hey! Look over there!"
"No, that's...?"
The moment a gigantic magical beast surfaced and thrust its head above the water—the Black Kraken—the eyes of the fishermen gathered on deck changed at once.
"Look at that! It's an enormous kraken!"
"It looks as though it's been drenched in ink."
"Look at those plump tentacle cuts! It'd be perfect for making fried kraken for the after-party once this battle is over!"
These were men who went out to the sea once a month to catch kraken. The moment they found prey of a new color that they had never seen before, they started licking their lips.
"Now, now, calm down! This isn't something we can decide on our own! First we must ask that person for permission, and only then think about it!"
Splash!
No sooner had the village chief of Orte Harbor finished speaking than he jumped straight into the sea.
Splash! Splash! Splash!
The other fishermen followed him into the water and quickly swam to the shore.
"Lady Charlotte!"
"We're here!"
They rushed in a group toward Charlotte, who was lying on a sunbed, sunbathing.
"Huh? What's this? Why did you lot come all the way here?"
Lifting her sunglasses, she looked over the familiar faces of the fishermen with puzzlement.
"Lady Charlotte! May we join the fight as well?"
"The moment we saw that kraken over there, we got itchy all over and couldn't hold ourselves back!"
"The kraken? Will you be all right? If things go wrong, my niece could kill you... though if all of you receive Dragon's Blessing too, the duration won't really be shortened by much, so I suppose it doesn't matter. Go on, run wild to your hearts' content."
Flaaash.
"Ohhh, this power..."
Crush!
Unable to contain the power overflowing through his entire body, the village chief of Orte Harbor crumpled an empty cola can in his hand.
"You've grown stronger! Everyone, charge at the kraken!"
"Yes! You all heard Lady Charlotte, right? Let's go!"
"And I'm going to sleep. If you make fried Black Kraken, wake me up then. I still haven't tried Black Kraken myself. Thanks to my niece, I'll get to taste a delicacy before I go."
"Understood!"
The fishermen burned with fighting spirit as they rushed toward the Black Kraken, which was attacking the soldiers with its long tentacles.
"Now then, let's go! Ah, right, before that..."
The village chief, who had been about to rush off while leading the fishermen, spotted Jinseo busily cooking and approached the food truck's counter seats.
"Jinseo! Just wait a little! I'll make sure you can prepare tempura with freshly caught kraken!"
"Huh?"
"With that in mind, I'll be borrowing this for a moment!"
"Mm?"
The village chief of Orte Harbor walked over to Craid, who was seated at a table eating, then grabbed the chainsaw with both hands and started running.
Vrrrrrr.
"Now that's a sound!"
Thrilled by the roar of the spinning chainsaw blades, the village chief charged fiercely toward the Black Kraken.
"Tonight's dinner is fried Black Kraken!"
"Yeehaw!"
With the fishermen's shouts, the battle against the Black Kraken began.
They had always been nearly invincible against sea-dwelling monsters, and now that they had also received Dragon's Blessing, the Black Kraken was helplessly battered until it collapsed.
"It's down!"
"Come on, hurry and butcher it! Everyone's waiting!"
Before long, the Black Kraken fell, and under the chainsaw in the village chief's hands it began getting sliced up into bite-sized pieces fit for eating.
"This... wasn't how it was supposed to go..."
The Dark Dragon Evelyn looked down in distress at the sight of the monsters she had summoned being butchered far faster than expected.
"But..."
Since every last member of the dragon subjugation force who had been attacking her was now preoccupied with taking down monsters, Evelyn slowly beat her wings and rose into the sky, aiming for that opening.
Charlotte, the only being who could stop her from escaping, was currently asleep on a folding sunbed with a straw hat over her face.
It was the perfect chance to flee.
The thought that she had to run from lowly creatures wounded her pride, but this was no time to worry about that.
Vowing that she would never forget this humiliation and would definitely repay it later, the Dark Dragon Evelyn flew higher.
"Uh..."
But the Dark Dragon Evelyn could not rise any farther. She stopped in midair and merely kept beating her wings meaninglessly.
An invisible magical barrier was blocking her escape.
"Auntie...?"
The Dark Dragon Evelyn looked down in shock at the only one who could restrain her with magic.
"Just because I'm resting right now doesn't mean I'm leaving you alone until the moment I seal you."
At some point Charlotte had already woken up, and with her eyes half-open, she looked up at her niece floating in the air as she spoke.
"And... your aunt doesn't sleep."
After saying that, Charlotte pulled the straw hat back down over her face.
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