Tommy, an ordinary boy from the Domain of Carcosa, had spent the happiest few days of his ten-year life lately.
He could eat warm, fluffy, freshly baked bread and soup filled with tender potatoes a full twice a day, and he even got enough to fill his stomach.
On top of that, his father had gotten a job as a guard at the lord’s castle, so his mother and older sister now wore smiles every day.
“What’s happening today?”
Yesterday, everyone had been making a huge fuss about putting something into the river, and when he went out into the village today, everyone was making another fuss and telling people not to go near the riverbank.
Now that he was no longer hungry, Tommy was overflowing with energy and poking his nose into everything when Blacksmith Hans caught him and stopped him.
“They’re opening all the sluice gates on the dam today, so it’s dangerous, Tommy.”
What does that mean? Why is that dangerous?
The brief explanation was not enough for the boy to understand, and when Tommy bombarded him with questions, Hans pushed him toward the village with an annoyed expression.
“You just stay home today and help your mother with her chorus— Gasp, my lord…!”
Hans, who had been pushing Tommy back toward the village, jumped in surprise and bowed deeply.
At the lord’s sudden appearance, Tommy looked around in confusion before belatedly remembering his manners and bowing as well.
Seeing that, Alex asked Tommy, “Are you curious what happens when all the sluice gates are opened?”
The boy, whose body had grown but who still plainly looked like a child, only darted his eyes around as he tried to read the mood.
Hamilton approached and spoke.
“This child is the son of one of the newly hired guards.”
“Oh, really? Then… perfect. Hamilton, take him up with you later and let him watch.”
Alex said it casually before hurrying off again.
Climbing onto the dam above the reservoir, now filled to the brim with water, Alex alternated his gaze between the two sides.
On the opposite side of the dam, shallow water no wider than a small stream trickled along.
[Incursion Risk : Magical Beasts 99%]
[Time Remaining : 00 : 04 : 23]
[The compass is currently pointing northwest.]
The system windows appeared over his field of vision.
Two days.
Somehow, he had finished all the preparations in that short amount of time.
Looking at the Magical Beast risk, which now seemed ready to burst at the slightest touch, Alex slowly drew in a deep breath.
He had barely slept while making the potion, releasing it, and preparing everything.
Now it was time to see the results.
“Dame Elizabeth.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Elizabeth answered Alex’s call politely.
Even she looked tense, as though she were slightly nervous.
“Raise every sluice gate.”
“Yes!”
Elizabeth and several newly hired guards strained as they turned the pulleys.
The moment all the sluice gates rose at once, water poured out of the reservoir, which had been filled to its critical limit.
As though a bomb had exploded, an enormous torrent thundered down at incredible speed.
Stop an overflow of Magical Beasts with an actual flood.
That was the core of Alex’s plan.
[Incursion Risk : Magical Beasts 100%]
[Time Remaining : 00 : 00 : 00]
Right on cue, crimson warning windows appeared before his eyes.
The celestial-sphere compass that had remained fixed toward the northwest began spinning around.
Even though the time it had warned of had arrived, the only thing Alex could hear was the violent roar of water.
No matter how terrifying Magical Beasts and curses were, even they could do little against something resembling a natural disaster.
“Hamilton!”
The water was so loud that they practically had to shout to communicate on top of the dam.
Alex dismissed the system windows cluttering his vision and loudly called Hamilton.
Hamilton nodded as though he already knew what Alex meant before hearing anything else, then withdrew.
Alex had already explained the plan to Elizabeth and Hamilton dozens of times.
Each of them had a separate role.
He had explained it thoroughly enough.
Hamilton would do exactly what had been decided.
“……!”
Elizabeth seemed to be saying something pointless again, but Alex could barely hear her over the deafening water.
He waved his hand to signal that he could not hear and crossed over the dam to the other side.
From this point onward, he was no longer in the safe zone but inside the sealed-off farmland.
[Incursion Risk : Magical Beasts 99%]
At the same time, the Magical Beast risk gradually began to fall.
It seemed the raging current had begun sweeping through the farmland.
[Incursion Risk : Magical Beasts 98%]
[Incursion Risk : Magical Beasts 97%]
The status window continued updating as the number dropped in real time.
Watching it, Alex turned his gaze and briefly looked back at his lord’s castle towering atop a high hill in the distance.
By now, Hamilton would be taking some of the more talkative and well-respected residents up there to watch everything happening below.
His role was extremely straightforward and important.
‘Make sure every resident knows about everything I’m about to do.’
No matter how hard Alex worked alone for their sake, it would not help Loyalty if nobody knew about it.
If he wanted the residents’ goodwill, they had to know what he had done.
“Do you think it worked properly?”
Once they were far enough from the dam, Elizabeth’s excited voice could finally be heard clearly.
The Magical Beast risk was still falling rapidly on the system window.
[Incursion Risk : Magical Beasts 91%]
There were Magical Beasts in five areas in total, and the density shown was the combined figure for all of them.
If the Orcs in the farmland alone had caused the number to drop that much, it was an enormous change.
“Yeah. It definitely worked. Let’s start moving in.”
His worries had been unnecessary. Even the potion appeared to have done its job perfectly.
The potion Alex had made possessed only one effect.
Luring Orcs.
To humans, it was nothing more than poison with a rotten stench, but to Orcs, it was different.
Its scent was so irresistible to them that they would charge toward it even after losing all reason.
“Huh… So it… really did work…?”
Just yesterday, Elizabeth had watched from high atop the lord’s castle as the Orcs gathered along the waterway.
They had charged toward the water like a swarm of ants, even fighting among themselves for a chance to drink the water carrying that intoxicating scent.
And Alex had sent a torrent this violent through the ditch they had packed themselves into….
“SKREEEEE—!”
“GRAAAK!”
Only bizarre screams could be heard beneath the violent roar of the water.
Just then, an Orc appeared, clutching a tree root that had been exposed by the raging current.
The Orc violently dragged one of its own kind down and trampled over it before finally crawling onto dry land.
Alex, who had gradually adjusted to his changed body over the past two days, drew his sword.
He had realized it while fighting Gilbert.
If he wanted to survive in this insane world, using his head alone would not be enough.
“Ah, I could take care of this much myself.”
Despite Elizabeth’s words, Alex used Holy Sword and cut down the crawling Orc in a single strike.
Two more managed to drag themselves up afterward, but Alex’s sword did not let either Magical Beast escape.
They had already been half-exhausted from nearly drowning, so dealing with them was easy.
[Proficiency increased through appropriate use.]
[Holy Sword Lv.3]
Of course, he could have left them to Elizabeth, but Alex also needed to raise his skill levels against easy enemies for the future.
“I told you, didn’t I? You need to conserve your stamina.”
Alex had explained his plan several times already, but Elizabeth looked at him anew.
Even so, she had not expected Alex himself to step forward first when an enemy appeared.
“…You did say that.”
No matter how many times something was explained, seeing it firsthand was ultimately the fastest way to understand.
Alex had created a plan, acted on it himself, and then proven it through results.
The doubt and expectation Elizabeth had felt toward him were gradually taking tangible form as something called hope.
“I thought I’d be satisfied as long as you paid me on time….”
“Come on. Fine. Whatever else happens, I won’t fall behind on your pay.”
Alex answered in disbelief at the muttering of Elizabeth, who really did love money far too much.
Alex’s plan had fallen into place so perfectly that even Elizabeth was impressed.
‘But….’
Alex could not shake an inexplicable sense of unease.
He glanced behind himself for no particular reason, scanned their surroundings, and rubbed the cold sensation at the back of his neck.
“…Maybe it’s because everything’s going too well, but that’s actually making me nervous.”
Elizabeth’s green eyes sparkled almost uncomfortably brightly.
Seeing Alex looking lost in thought, Elizabeth proudly pounded on her armor.
“You really do worry too much. Just leave it to me! So now we just kill the boss Magical Beast in the mill, right? We just go there? Go straight in and fight it? Fight it and win?”
Elizabeth was a native of Carcosa.
She had never left this land in her life.
The previous lord had appointed her as a Knight, but she had never received formal training as one.
Alex furrowed his brow at her suggestion that they simply charge in and beat the boss to death.
Who the hell fights a boss without a strategy?!
“Calm down first. Of course I have a plan.”
A strategy that would allow Alex and Elizabeth to eliminate the boss perfectly with minimal damage.
Alex changed direction toward the mill as he continued speaking.
They had swept away the miscellaneous Magical Beasts, but simply reducing their numbers was not enough to relax yet.
“The broodmother of those Orcs should be inside the mill.”
The queen of the Orcs, possessing hundreds of eyes and hundreds of teeth.
Argos.
Alex went over her characteristics in his mind.
“But even though she has lots of eyes, she isn’t intelligent enough to understand what she’s seeing.”
When all several hundred eyes were open, she could not properly judge the distance to whatever she was looking at.
Even humans had only two eyes, yet did they not close one eye when trying to aim precisely?
For similar reasons, Argos had a habit of opening only the eyes facing in one direction out of the hundreds covering her body.
“So I’ll tell you which direction her eyes are opening in, and you can attack while staying out of her line of sight.”
As long as Elizabeth watched out for the acidic liquid Argos occasionally vomited, it should not be difficult.
Alex made it sound simple, but to Elizabeth, it once again sounded rather absurd.
They had already nearly reached the mill, and Elizabeth grimaced at the stench leaking from it as she grumbled,
“She’s just going to let me dodge like that?”
She’s not an idiot….
Elizabeth had no intention of avoiding a fight, but she still found Alex’s explanation unsatisfying.
Alex, however, really had summarized only the essential points as neatly as possible.
“She is an idiot.”
Literally.
This was a Magical Beast with no intelligence, only instinct.
Alex was nervous, but with everything having gone according to plan so far, he entered the mill carrying a strange sense of exhilaration.
What had once been a vast grain warehouse was now almost entirely filled by one enormous, horrifying creature.
“Argos….”
An opponent he had only ever seen through a monitor now filled his entire field of vision.
Seeing her in person for the first time left Alex feeling somewhat overwhelmed.
Around her lay grotesquely shaped corpses of Magical Beasts, rotting where they had fallen.
She was the easiest mid-boss to defeat if one knew how….
“…I didn’t realize she was… this big.”
Now that he was seeing her for himself, she was even larger than he had expected.
Or had she grown bigger because the difficulty had increased?
Seemingly even less eager after seeing the creature’s overwhelming size and grotesque appearance, Elizabeth muttered unhappily, “She really doesn’t look like something I want to fight….”
As though sensing the presence of the two intruders, Argos began tilting her enormous body toward them.
Hundreds of eyes opened one after another across her body, accompanied by a massive mouth drooling filthy saliva.
Even Alex could not stop himself from grimacing.
“It’s fine. She should still be as stupid as she looks….”
Alex was trying to reassure both Elizabeth and himself when he suddenly froze.
Something was wrong.
None of the eyes were closing.
Instead, more and more of them were opening.
“…Is that thing… looking at us right now?”
Argos was supposed to possess such poor intelligence that she only maintained as much vision as she could comprehend….
Yet with all several hundred eyes across her body wide open, she was staring directly at Alex and Elizabeth.
Alex suddenly felt every hair on his body stand on end.
[Hidden Enemy Appeared!]
[Desire that has lain dormant for many years begins to sprout.]
As the overwhelming pressure of hundreds of eyes staring at him bore down on Alex, a crimson warning window cluttered his vision.
[Apostle of Appetite, ‘Argos’]
A status window Alex had never seen before appeared above Argos.
Something was definitely wrong.