The cold, lonely deep sea, without a single speck of light.
The creatures living here have to choose one of two strategies to survive.
1. Live quietly so as not to be eaten.
2. Become conspicuously strong so as to eat.
'......Anyone can see this one's the latter.'
I thought as I looked at the 'giant crab' before my eyes.
-<Soldier Crant-Zoea>
-Combat Power: 30,219
Even the presence it gave off was different.
Truly a crane among chickens.
It was a powerhouse that could not be compared with any of the other Crants around it.
'......To think the soldier class has been sent out.'
A single bead of cold sweat scattered into the water.
By nature, the soldier is the queen's most trusted servant, the main pillar holding up the nest's security.
Hence, the soldier does not come out of the nest under most circumstances.
Ordinarily it only stays around the queen's burrow, resting or training.
......But when an emergency arises, on rare occasions it does come out of the nest; for example, when a 'great threat' endangers the very survival of the nest.
'So does that mean I'm that 'great threat'?'
It seemed the Crants had defined me as a 'danger.'
A danger big enough to endanger the nest's continued existence, that is.
'Well, true. If a hundred-odd workers disappeared at once, the damage would be big. They might get pushed out by another predator cartel of about the same size, too.'
Whatever the case, I could at least tell that the present situation was serious.
I took a close look at the Soldier Crant before my eyes.
First of all, its appearance itself was roughly similar to a Work-Crant's.
A form whose cephalothorax was covered by a thick crab shell, with a belly shell like a figure-eight joraengi rice cake connected at the back.
But unlike a Work-Crant's, the belly shell at the rear had almost completely degenerated and was folded underneath like a belly plate.
The shell there looked very thick and hard, and on top of that, sharp spines were packed tight on its outer surface, so it did not look easy to break through.
Of its five pairs of legs, the very front pair were especially thick, huge pincers, and the three pairs of legs right behind them were pointed and sharp as spears.
And the last pair of hind legs was bizarrely curved like the great scythe a grim reaper carries; one look told me they were for striking down at an opponent directly or for driving into the ground to brace itself.
'Truly a body optimized for a dogfight on the seabed...... no, a crabfight.'
It was the ultimate body form, evolved to hold the burrow entrance to the death by blocking attacks from the front with its pincers while driving its hind legs into the hard bedrock to brace itself.
I felt I understood why crabs are known as the 'most perfect form of life' in the deep sea.
'At this level, it's hard to call it an inferior species of the crab-monster kind anymore.'
Its Combat Power was a whopping 30,000.
That meant it was stronger than 30 Work-Crants charging at once.
My Combat Power was about 20,000, so fighting it 1-on-1 was a stretch.
'This is bad. The soldier alone has higher Combat Power than me, and on top of that there are a hundred workers.'
The upper hand I had held until a moment ago was snatched away in one stroke.
Originally, I had planned to hunt the hundred Work-Crants step by step with a hit-and-run strategy.
But that was a strategy that only worked when the hundred Work-Crants all had about the same Combat Power, between 900 and 1,000.
If a single overwhelmingly strong soldier was taking charge of the front line in offense and defense, it was a different story.
What's more.
[Kikik!]
The soldier did not seem to have the slightest intention of protecting the workers as it fought.
No, rather, it was treating the workers as expendables.
CLATTER, CLATTER, CLATTER, CLATTER, CLATTER, CLATTER......
To catch me, it changed the formation of its underlings.
The soldier spread its pincers to block my way forward, and the workers, split to the left and right, piled their bodies onto one another to form a scrum.
Like American football linemen the size of houses gathering into a wall of flesh, the Work-Crants fitted the joints of their spiky bodies together and raised a crab-shell barricade.
A wall of crabs in front, a stretch of hard bedrock behind.
With that, my escape route was completely blocked.
But.
'When did I ever say I'd run away?'
I charged straight through at the soldier before my eyes.
[Kik?]
The soldier stopped short for a moment, perhaps surprised by the unexpected move, but.
WHOOOOSH!
Like the seasoned warrior it was, it raised its pincer at once and blocked me.
Countless scars lined the surface of the pincer, showing just how many bloodbaths it had come through.
Avoiding the spine-covered pincer, I stretched one tentacle out to its full length.
BLA-AM!
A sphere of hot water shot out.
BABAM!
The tip of the soldier's pincer, hit by Scalding Blast, turned just slightly reddish.
But.
KA-KA-KA-BOOM!
The pincer smashed through my Scalding Blast and came crashing down.
Then it split the floor where I had been until a moment before into two pieces.
SPLI-IT!
In an instant, a deep cliff formed.
-<Trait: Stratum Severing>
-Unleashes a powerful blow. Its might is enough to sever even the strata beneath the surface of the ground.
I looked at the ground split in half and nodded.
'Ah, I guess I never said I'd run away. Then I'll say it now. I'm running away~'
No good after all.
I had tried to overcome the unfavorable difference in strength by relying on all sorts of special techniques, but what wouldn't work wouldn't work.
There were plenty of ways to beat 30,000 with a Combat Power of 20,000, but none of them could be used at this point.
What's more, even at this very moment, the worker crabs' wall of flesh was tightening around my range of movement by the second.
'Fight fair and square and I lose; fight dirty and I lose even worse.'
I pressed a tentacle to my forehead.
I was going to lose even fighting the soldier 1-on-1, and on top of that I had to fight its hundred-odd underlings too.
'Can't be helped.'
If you're placing a bet, the right thing is to bet even on a game you lose 99% of the time, rather than one you lose 100% of the time.
There has to be at least a 1% chance of living before you can stake the bet that's more precious than your life, no, the life that's more precious than your bet, doesn't there?
I took my eyes off the soldier and looked at the workers' wall of flesh.
......I could see it.
Lower left of the soldier.
Starting from the bottom, the first, second, third, fourth row.
Of those, the worker located eighth from the right.
It had a severe wound on its face.
It was the individual whose armor had been pierced when I first used the 'Hell Bite' skill.
-<Trait: Hell Bite>
-Wraps around the enemy and attacks with the sharp teeth on the suckers. Has a low chance of piercing the enemy's armor.
At the time, it had taken a fatal wound, run through diagonally across its back and face.
That it had joined the scrum with a body that looked as if it might die any moment was probably because it wanted to be of help to its companions.
'But that very thing is going to hold its companions back.'
It was a pity, but it could not be helped if I was going to live.
I swam in a straight line, then changed course partway.
FLA-SH!
The tip of the pincer the soldier swung grazed my earlobe, no, my fin lobe.
'Knock, and it shall be opened.'
I swam straight at the wounded worker.
Then I unleashed Scalding Blast from the tips of a pair of outstretched tentacles.
PO-POW!
By rights, my hot-water bullets did not have enough destructive power to pierce a worker's crab shell.
But its carapace had already been broken by my Hell Bite.
CRACRACK!
The worker that had made up the wall had its belly plate and back plate burst open the instant it was hit by the hot-water gun.
A hole was punched right through the solid wall of flesh.
Stretching my body straight, I passed through the way out inside the worker crab's trunk.
'So long, idiots!'
The very moment I was sneering at them.
KA-BOOM!
Suddenly my vision flipped over.
'Huh!?'
I felt my body spin dozens of times.
...WHACK!
After rolling like a cartwheel, I slammed into a rock.
When I raised my head, enduring the pain, I could see the smashed wall of workers.
What had broken the wall was the soldier's pincer.
'Insane, it even attacked its own underlings?'
The moment I passed through the workers' wall, the soldier had brought its giant pincer down like a sledgehammer and blown away even its underlings.
-<Worker Crant-Nauplius>
-Combat Power: 0
-<Worker Crant-Nauplius>
-Combat Power: 0
-<Worker Crant-Nauplius>
-Combat Power: 0
.
.
.
Countless workers lay sprawled dead.
'Merciless even to its own kin. Well, isn't that about the same for any race?'
It did not seem like something a kraken, which sets brother against brother from the moment it hatches out of the egg, could criticize.
And besides, aren't humans much the same?
Big-corporation owners do not care whether their contract workers die or not, and army generals do not care whether the lowliest privates kill themselves or not.
SWOOSH—
I fled at once.
'If I go deeper into the cave, they won't be able to follow me.'
This cave, where I had lived ever since I broke out of my egg, was enormously wide inside.
In terms of depth, it probably ran open from the upper layer of the deep sea all the way down to the middle layer.
This undersea cave was made up of countless caverns, big and small, with countless passages linking them.
Some caves were so narrow that even my body alone could hardly get in, and some caves were so big and vast it was hard to believe they were inside a burrow.
Among them were places so high that you could not see the ceiling when you raised your head from the floor, and there were also zones where giant seaweeds grew thick and formed a forest.
'Let's see. Where should I go to make those things give up the chase?'
Even as I fled, I racked my brain.
Crants have the trait of chasing an opponent they have once branded an enemy until it dies.
So to shake them off, I had to go into a zone where the surroundings were especially harsh.
'Right. That place should do.'
I recalled a few particular maps the Crants could not enter.
'The Gluttonous Monkfish's Depths, Miss Bobbit's Dining Table, the Fish-Cordyceps Spore Swamp, the Tetanus Coral Pit, the Sea Butterfly Spawning Ground, the Lurker Lizardfish's Burrow, the Unclean Gene Repository, Hell's Gas Stove......'
Of these, there was exactly one place that was close and put no limits on my activity.
'Hell's Gas Stove.'
A cavern where countless mini volcanoes were scattered, filling everything around with hot water.
Back when I played the game, it was also my favorite map.
'As long as you have flame resistance, you can get around it with no trouble.'
Fortunately, the pursuers behind me had no flame resistance.
I glided vertically down the narrow, steep cave wall and fled downward.
***
......Before long, the map changed.
WHOOSH—
The water around me suddenly turned hot, so it was hard to breathe.
BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BUBBLE......
A zone where yellow froth made of sulfur gas came shooting up.
A desert so wide that it was hard to believe it was inside a cave spread out before my eyes.
I could see countless small volcanoes jutting up from the sand piled thick on the floor.
The volcanoes mostly stood quietly without erupting, but a few of them were shaking unsteadily and spouting hot froth.
Sure enough.
'Just as I thought.'
Where I turned my head, I could see the Crants standing there awkwardly, unsure.
From here on, the water temperature rose sharply all at once, so for Crants with no flame resistance it would be an ordeal.
In hot water, the metabolism runs hard, so hunger is felt even more severely too.
On top of that, the water temperature in the zones farther in than this was high enough to cause burns, so the Crants would be hit with a debuff that cut 1 Combat Power per second.
For ants with a Combat Power in the 900 to 1,000 range, there would be nothing for it but to roam around for just 10-odd minutes and then keel over dead one after another.
'So stop following me already. Got it?'
I sneered at the Crants, left like a dog that had chased a chicken up onto the roof.
Just then.
THU-UD!
From deep in the cave came heavy footsteps.
THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD!
It came toward me without the slightest hesitation.
[Kikikikik!]
The soldier.
This huge, relentless pursuer charged to catch me, paying no mind to the water temperature around it.
'Insane!'
I marveled at the soldier's relentlessness.
I turned at once and fled farther in, but the soldier alone kept following me.
That seemed to be because of the traits it had.
-<Trait: Tenacious Life>
-Patiently endures even harsh surroundings. Can halve the damage taken from weather, terrain changes and the like.
-<Trait: Fight to the Finish>
-Movement speed doubles while pursuing an enemy.
-<Trait: Persistent Pursuer>
-The perks gained for killing an enemy that has been pursued for 1 hour or more are doubled.
'......That's an attack pattern the in-game AI never had.'
The tenacity and intelligence of the monsters that had appeared in reality were on a level far beyond my imagination.
TATATATATATATA!
The soldier was scuttling sideways with both pincers spread wide, as if it would never let me get away.
Its speed was faster than I had imagined, so the distance between the two of us only kept shrinking.
In the end, I had to make a decision too.
'There's no shaking it off.'
If I left it alone, this thing would follow me all the way to the bottom of the seabed.
'All right, fine. Let's go at it, then.'
Because of the water temperature, the soldier's underlings could not come in this far.
In that case, I could fight a 1-on-1 battle against the soldier alone.
I stopped fleeing and turned around.
'......I think I'll eat you here and raise my Combat Power a bit.'
It was an impromptu battle, but the plan was already all worked out.
Because this map had once been my favorite hunting ground.