RRRRRRUMBLE......
Hot vibrations rose from under the ground.
'Hell's Gas Stove,' a map in the game <Raising a Hungry Kraken>.
A place where small volcanoes, sprouting thick across the cave floor, endlessly spewed pillars of fire and sulfur gas.
For that reason, the water temperature here was always high.
'......Feels like about 50 degrees, I think.'
Even the hottest tub at a bathhouse barely tops 40 degrees, if that.
Having to soak my body in a place like that and even fight a battle there could not help but be painful.
'At least I have flame resistance, so I can bear it, but that thing is really tough.'
I studied the soldier crab before my eyes.
-<Soldier Crant-Zoea>
-A bizarre creature with the appearance of a crab and the habits of an ant.
A warrior of offense and defense in one, with a hard carapace and sharp pincers; it is said that only a very few individuals that have won the harsh competition for survival on the seabed can reach this form.
-Combat Power: 30,118 [-101]
-Traits: <Nest>, <Servant>, <Burrowing>, <Scissor Cut>, <Pincer Hammer>, <Crab-Foam Bullet>, <Ironclad Skin>, <Impregnable Fortress>, <Tremendous Stamina>, <Tenacious Life>, <Fight to the Finish>, <Persistent Pursuer>, <Night Vision>, <Intermediate Poison Resistance>, <Stratum Severing>
The soldier's Combat Power had already dropped quite a bit.
If it had not been able to halve the environmental damage with its 'Tenacious Life' trait, twice as much would have been shaved off.
'......You mean to kill me even if it means putting up with the debuff from the scalding water? You're brimming with confidence.'
I lured the soldier deep into the sand flats farther in.
SWI-ISH!
I swung my tentacles and sent sand flying.
The sand here had been made from volcanic bombs worn down, so it was gritty and hot.
The soldier faltered, as if it disliked the sand being thrown over its body.
But the geothermal heat the sand held was not enough to get through the soldier's thick carapace and cook the flesh inside.
'Doesn't matter.'
I had not scattered the sand to attack.
SHHHHHHH—
A current that had begun to spin like a whirlwind took up a load of sand.
A curtain of sand began to block the soldier's view.
'That thing has the Night Vision trait, so ink won't work on it.'
The soldier had good night sight, so it could see through my movements fairly accurately even inside ink.
What's more, the froth bubbling up from the ground kept sweeping the ink upward, so in the present situation sand was more useful in many ways.
SWIIIIIISH—
I threw myself into the dizzily whirling sandstorm.
The strategy I chose to catch the soldier was hit-and-run, otherwise known as 'hit and pull back.'
The soldier's Combat Power was in the 30,000s and mine was exactly 20,000, so I could not take it on head-on.
A Combat Power gap of 10,000 is pretty big; in human terms, it is like an elementary schooler fighting an adult, I'd say.
'......But if I make good use of the kraken's characteristics and the advantages of the terrain, there are plenty of ways.'
The kraken is a high-tier fiend by default.
So even in its Infant Form, its base stats are higher than the infants of other fiends.
Of those, the one that was by far the most outstanding was 'speed.'
'Real squid are crazy fast too. I guess that's been reflected?'
In fact, squid are creatures that can swim very fast, and certain species can generate tremendous power, moving dozens of meters per second.
I was making active use of that speed to blanket the area around the soldier's body in a sandstorm.
'I've only been inside narrow burrows all this time, so coming out into a wide cavern like this, I can really feel the high-speed output.'
By nature, a kraken has to cover its weak early survival period with nothing but its quick movement speed.
But the cave where I was born was narrow and complicated, and dark on top of that, so it was not easy to move fast.
To move fast, you need light to brighten your view and no obstacles around you, and the cave was the worst in every way.
'But once I'm out in a wide place like this, there's no chance of getting caught and killed.'
Now I had the means to give off light and had secured space to move fast, too.
The soldier crab was swinging its pincers this way and that to catch me, but its movements were slow, so it was wasted effort.
What's more, every time I moved, the sand on the floor flew up and clouded the water, so the soldier's hit rate could only keep dropping.
'Take this!'
From beyond the wall of swirling muddy water, I fired Scalding Blast.
THWOOM!
A hot-water bullet on par with a handgun.
Hit by it, the soldier rolled its eyeballs in irritation.
It was taking terrain damage, slowly as it was, so if I just kept harassing it with chip shots like this, I could seize the upper hand.
'Time's on my side, buddy.'
I kept firing Scalding Blast at the soldier.
The spot I was relentlessly aiming at was the joint at the end of its right pincer leg.
'Crabs have the trait of dropping a pincer and running away when they're in danger.'
That meant the joint of the pincer came off quite easily.
In fact, if you poke around a mudflat, you can often see crabs missing one pincer.
'And a crab without its pincers is a fool.'
When a crab loses its pincers, it has no means at all to fight an enemy.
It simply becomes a fool.
'They say 'FOOL' stands for 'Finest Of Ocean Loot.' So hurry up and become a fool.'
To tear off the soldier's pincer, I kept aiming at a single spot.
THWOOM! THWOMP! PANG!
The area around the soldier's right pincer wrist began to cook red.
With that pincer, heavy enough as it was, the overload on its wrist would be getting severe.
SHUFF—
At that, the soldier pulled its pincers in against its body and made them into a shield.
-<Trait: Impregnable Fortress>
-Coats every corner of the body with scales as hard as iron armor. Defense rises greatly and movement speed drops greatly.
It was hard to deal meaningful damage even with Scalding Blast to the soldier's body, which had turned into something like a big, round boulder.
'......But if I go in close to cast Hell Bite, I'll get caught right away.'
In close combat, I had no chance of winning at all.
To seize the upper hand, I had to fire Scalding Blast from long range, but if the opponent did nothing but defend like that, I was out of options too.
What's more, ever since it went into its defensive stance, that thing was taking almost no terrain damage either.
Just as the mimic I had hunted before, though a land monster, had been able to hold out a long time underwater.
'Hmm. You want to keep this stalemate going, is that it? I don't mind. I can just run away like this.'
I turned away without regret.
There is no way an idiot who gets greedy to eat an opponent stronger than himself can survive for long.
I boldly gave up hunting the soldier and left the spot.
......No, I tried to leave.
FLA-SH!
That is, until the soldier suddenly raised its last pair of hind legs.
...KA-BOOM!
Astonishingly, the soldier 'flew' up with the power of its hind legs.
'Insane, what? Is it a grasshopper?'
My jaw dropped as I watched the soldier's huge body fly up into the water above.
Its hind legs were especially thick and hideous-looking, so I had only thought they were for driving into the ground to brace itself, but so they could be used like this too.
But as if that were not enough, the soldier began to swim, paddling its hind legs hard.
'......Right. Crabs could swim too.'
Fast, at that.
When I was little, I once saw a blue crab swimming in the sea, and it was exactly like that.
BO-OM! POW!
It spun the spikes jutting from its body like saw blades and turned left and right.
A way of moving that changed direction in midwater by leaving one leg as it was and paddling the other leg hard like an oar.
It could move like that because this place was not just empty air but a space packed full of water.
...KRRRRRRK! KA-KA-BOOM!
The soldier's huge body, flying in spinning like a top, made one small volcano collapse.
PAPOW! BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BUBBLE, BUBBLE—
A hot geyser spouted out of the spot where the mountain had crumbled.
The water temperature around us shot up.
The hot spring water flowing here was probably the main stream of the scalding-water vein that had boiled the Blade Madam and the Ironclad Scale to death up above.
[Kikikikikik!]
The soldier came after me again.
'Right. Overwhelming it completely with speed is going to be hard. Admitted.'
But I had another reason for luring the soldier to this map.
As I said before, the kraken is a very weak character in the early game, so the player's sense of control and understanding of the map are extremely important.
In particular, the survival rate from the Infant Form to the near-adult form changes greatly depending on how you use the terrain and its features.
Once you make it to the near-adult form, you show off the presence of a fearsome predator, but until then, you have to watch the surrounding terrain well and read the room.
'I'm at the Growth Form stage now. If I just combine my traits well and use the terrain and its features well, I can put out consistently high firepower.'
I swam deep into the map.
The soldier came flying toward me at tremendous speed.
Before long.
BO-OM! POW!
I entered a zone where small volcanoes spewed pillars of fire.
The water temperature had shot up and was now close to 60 degrees.
I looked down at the small craters sprouting from the floor.
'Good. A familiar zone.'
A place where volcanoes stuck on like barnacles spewed flames and sulfur froth.
This place, where an especially hot current flowed, was exactly the place I had been looking for.
[Kikikikik!]
The soldier raised its speed even more, as if to settle the matter.
At that point, I bent my swimming direction downward.
My destination was the big volcano I could see before my eyes.
Its crater was blocked by a hard rock, so it looked like an egg set on top of a small mountain made of sand.
I confirmed that the huge rock blocking the volcano's crater was heaving ever so slightly.
From under it, a faint orange glow leaked out along with yellow sulfur froth.
SLAP—
I clung to the rock on top of the volcano.
Then I crawled to the top of the rock.
KRRRRRRK—
The soldier chased right behind me.
It came plunging down at me like a top spinning at high speed, and just before the collision it stretched out its huge pincer and cast a skill.
-<Trait: Stratum Severing>
-Unleashes a powerful blow. Its might is enough to sever even the strata beneath the surface of the ground.
An attack skill that was powerful to begin with had multiplied several times over with gravity and centrifugal force added.
Just before the soldier's pincer touched my body, I kicked off the floor with all my strength.
ZOOOOM!
Then I fired hot water from the tips of my ten tentacles and threw my body to one side.
By a hair's breadth, the soldier's pincer grazed past my body.
...KA-BOOM! SPLIIIIIT!
The pincer chop that severed even strata split the rock blocking the crater into two pieces.
At that very moment.
FLA-SH!
A dazzling orange light blazed up between the two halves of the split rock.
The instant the soldier's pincer split the rock, a shockwave burst out as if exploding and shoved me hard.
'......!'
Even in the midst of it, I saw it clearly.
FLA-SH! KRAKOOOM!
Thunder of fire, shooting out of the volcano's crater beneath the split rock.
A huge pillar made of magma, swallowing the soldier's body and soaring up endlessly.