Chapter 15

Chapter 15: Beast Spawn (1)

“Oho… So you know how to use Yul (εὐ)?”

Amid a drizzle of Monster blood.

The Monster Merchant muttered with interest, watching Anagin.

A Monster Serpent, thanks to its habit of swallowing people whole, was harder to cut from the inside than the outside—and yet this one had sliced it apart with such ease….

“That’s not Yul (εὐ).”

Diodia cut in, refuting the Monster Merchant’s claim.

“What did you say?”

“I’m telling you, that bastard can’t use Yul. If he could, he’d have used it when he fought me. And besides, there’s no Gi (Γι) on his weapon either.”

It was hard to believe, but the Monster Merchant couldn’t argue. After all, Diodia was a Giant—and a fairly well-known Ascetic around these parts, at that. If even he said so, then there was a good chance it truly wasn’t.

‘Then how?’

The Monster Merchant was puzzled. If it wasn’t Yul, then it meant he’d used a magic weapon. But Bander’s blade hadn’t been enchanted. So how had he split open the inside of a Monster Serpent’s belly?

Anagin answered the question for him.

“I just cut it up with the sword.”

“……” “……”

“I learned how to use a blade from my Master. The hard way.”

At Anagin’s answer, the Monster Merchant and Diodia were rendered speechless.

Cutting down a Monster with an ordinary weapon was no easy feat. If it were that easy, everyone and their dog would already be doing it.

But Anagin hadn’t learned it easily either, just as he said. He’d learned the blade by being cut by his Master.

‘Technique isn’t taught—it’s stolen. Now, steal it.’

The lunatic had said exactly that before swinging his sword at Anagin out of nowhere. And not just a sword—spear, axe, hammer, mace, sickle, staff, javelin, arrow, sling, iron chain—he’d attacked Anagin with every weapon imaginable.

Each time, Anagin was slashed, stabbed, hacked. Sometimes limbs were severed, leaving him with serious wounds.

So, half willingly and half not, he analyzed, grasped, and stole every technique his Master had.

Truly, it had been a shitty time.

Well, now it was just a memory….

‘No. I’m glorifying it too much. It was nothing but a shitty time.’

Regardless, that was how Anagin learned his teacher’s techniques. The blade was just one of them.

A sharp cry rang out.

Five human-sized snakes lunged at Anagin all at once, baring pointed fangs. They were fast—but Anagin swung his sword faster, lopping off their heads in a single stroke.

The heads dropped cleanly, as if cut rope.

Beyond the severed snakes, Diodia hurled something. A bead-shaped object.

Anagin reflexively covered his eyes as intense heat and impact washed over him. Unlike the earlier thing that emitted light and noise, this one caused a physical explosion.

‘A bomb?’

It seemed to be one of those toys his Master had mentioned.

The blast scorched flesh and rattled bone, sending Anagin flying backward. He rolled across the ground.

The Monster Serpents didn’t miss the opening and charged.

Even in his unstable posture, Anagin used the momentum of his roll to cut down every snake that lunged at him.

Then another bomb flew in and struck him.

Beyond the roar of the explosion, he heard Diodia laughing.

“That wake you up? Huh?!”

“Not sure about me, but I can tell you’re scared shitless of me.”

“Scared?”

“A guy who’d normally charge in and split my head with an axe is poking at me from a distance—so yeah, you’re scared. You were pretty damn terrified after I hit you, weren’t you?”

Diodia, struck exactly where it hurt, only scowled and couldn’t retort. He just stomped in place, fuming.

The Monster Merchant tried to soothe him.

“There’s no need to react to every little thing.”

Anagin cut in.

“Anyone who looks like an ugly bastard should keep their mouth shut.”

“……”

“It’s obvious—you’re still wearing that robe even as the weather warms up. You’re afraid the world will see your ugly face, aren’t you?”

The Monster Merchant silently agreed with Diodia’s earlier remark that Anagin was an incredibly irritating person to deal with. He expressed his displeasure through heavy silence.

But silence wasn’t the only way he expressed it.

Shahahahahat—!

A Monster Serpent as large as the one that had swallowed Anagin whole let out a roar of fury and lunged at him.

It charged with its red maw flung wide, and Anagin spread his legs and lowered his stance—

Shhk—!

He sliced the giant snake’s jaws diagonally.

The severed jaw flew off. The Monster Serpent rolled across the ground, thrashing in agony.

Just as when he’d cut his way out of the snake’s belly, no Gi was imbued in his blade. He had cut down a giant Monster with pure swordsmanship alone.

A skill worthy of being called godlike. However—

Kwaak!

Having godlike skill didn’t mean having no openings.

The moment Anagin cut the Monster Serpent, a tiny snake bit his ankle.

Compared to the Monster Serpent it was utterly small, but the inside of its mouth glowed an ominous purple. The instant Anagin saw it, he staggered.

“A poison snake?”

As Anagin muttered, Diodia burst out laughing and came flying at him.

“Correct!”

Kicking off the ground, Diodia brought his axe down in a great overhead swing. An attack focused on power over precision.

As if to prove it, when Anagin dodged and the axe hit the ground, dirt and dust erupted with a thunderous boom.

“You’ve slowed down!”

Even though his attack had missed, Diodia didn’t get angry—he bellowed triumphantly.

He’d already been bitten by the poison snake of the Monster Merchant, famous for its venom. Anagin was as good as dead.

The poison killed an ordinary person instantly, and even a Giant would die without drinking an antidote. Once afflicted, the body would gradually stiffen until it fell to his axe.

Even if he kept dodging, the poison would eventually spread and kill him.

Knowing this, Diodia deliberately closed in and pressed the attack. To wash away the earlier mockery of being scared, and to personally split open that irritating bastard’s skull.

“What’s wrong?! Fight back!”

Diodia taunted, watching Anagin—so desperate to dodge now, unlike before.

Unlike earlier when he’d dodge and drive in a fist, now he could only barely stagger out of the way.

Fwhoosh!

Midway through narrowly evading Diodia’s onslaught, Anagin’s upper body arched backward and he lurched heavily. His center of gravity had collapsed.

An opening!

Diodia raised his axe high.

And in that very moment, Anagin’s waist—which had been about to fall backward—snapped forward with unbelievable speed, and he swung his sword.

A half-beat-faster attack launched mid-preparation.

Diodia hastily thrust his Gi-imbued axe toward the incoming blade.

‘No problem! It’s just a piece of iron with no Gi imbued!’

No matter how outstanding the swordsmanship, a plain sword was no match for a Gi-imbued weapon. On contact, it would break.

Thinking so, he swung his axe.

But just as the axe and blade were about to meet, the blade vanished like smoke.

Ssk—!

At the same instant, Diodia’s right arm—the one gripping the axe—was severed. Cleanly, utterly cleanly.

Just before the axe and sword would have clashed, Anagin pulled his blade back, then used the centrifugal force to cut Diodia’s arm from below upward.

It was a strike aimed at the vulnerable parts left exposed when Gi was concentrated too heavily in one area.

Yet Diodia could only stare at his severed arm and wonder how. How was this even possible? Why had it come to this? Why hadn’t the poison worked?

Instead of answering those questions, Anagin swung his sword horizontally.

Shahahahat—!

Just before the blade reached Diodia’s neck, a Monster Serpent lunged at Anagin.

Anagin withdrew the blade aimed at Diodia and swung it at the snake.

Diodia hurriedly snatched up his severed arm and fled again. Anagin tried to chase him, but a giant Monster Serpent blocked his path.

The snake, having learned that opening its mouth was dangerous, tried to use its own head as a hammer to crush Anagin.

But it was useless. Anagin lightly dodged the snake’s head and sliced clean through its neck.

A godlike strike that, with extreme focus and the sharpest possible edge, targeted the gaps in the snake’s outer shell.

Then, with one hand, he grabbed the house-sized snake head and hurled it at another Monster Serpent that had been watching from afar, slamming it into the wall.

Kwang!! Kurururung…!

The entire underground shook from the giant snake’s head and Anagin’s power that defied common sense, and the Monster Merchant watched in admiration.

“Oh…!”

Even among Giants renowned for their monstrous strength, he’d rarely seen anyone with that kind of brute force.

In truth, strength varied wildly between individual Giants, and that one was top-tier even among the top-tier. Someone who’d inherited the blood of giants very thickly….

To think that, just as Diodia said things were winding down and he’d been about to pack it in, someone like this had shown up…. What incredible luck!

“W-Why won’t it stick?!”

A voice cutting in reached his ears.

The Monster Merchant turned his head. Diodia was desperately shoving pills down his throat, trying to reattach his severed arm.

“Why won’t it stick?!”

Diodia demanded of the Monster Merchant, clutching his severed arm.

Eating a pill should heal anything, and a body part severed only moments ago was no exception. But now it only stuck briefly before falling off again.

Had he been given defective goods?

The answer was no. It was simply—

“You’ve overused them.”

“Overused?”

Diodia asked back stupidly, bewildered.

“Pills are an excellent medicine, but they’re not omnipotent. Take too many and you build a tolerance, and their potency drops. In severe cases, your natural healing ability declines too. You’ve got both.”

The Monster Merchant explained kindly, but Diodia only blinked like an idiot. Good grief, this wasn’t even the first time he’d heard it.

“S-So what do I do?! My arm!! Give me a solution—gahk!”

As Diodia worked himself into a fit, a poison snake that had crept up to his neck bit him, forcing his mouth shut.

Normally he wouldn’t have been caught so easily, but the relentless fighting and his severed arm had shattered his composure, and he was subdued in an instant.

His face dyed purple, Diodia looked up at the Monster Merchant with an aggrieved expression.

The Monster Merchant merely shrugged beneath his robe.

“You were too loud…. Well, I was planning to clean up anyway, even if not for that.”

“Grrk…!”

Diodia cried out through his poison-stiffened lips and collapsed.

The Monster Merchant extended both arms, covered by his robe, toward the fallen Diodia. From within the robe that covered even his fingertips, over twenty long snakes emerged.

The snakes that came out from the robe coiled around Diodia, lifted him, and carried him toward the head, and just like that, Diodia vanished completely inside the robe.

As if swallowed by a snake.

Once Diodia’s head, then torso, then legs, then feet had all disappeared inside, the Monster Merchant straightened his disheveled robe.

“Thank you for waiting.”

“I was curious.”

Anagin answered, having piled the Monster Serpent corpses into a mountain around him.

Large and mid-sized Monsters alike had their necks cut, or were smashed against the walls and strewn about.

For damage that had occurred in such a short time, it was devastating.

“It seems you’re not surprised.”

“When a shitty bastard joins hands with another shitty bastard, they’re bound to meet a shitty end. Especially when one of them isn’t even human.”

The space beneath the Monster Merchant’s robe squirmed.

Watching him, Anagin asked.

“Ah, is it a secret?”

“…How did you know?”

“What’s so hard about telling a beast from a person? Especially a beast that bites people…. No wonder I felt like crap the moment I entered this village.”

“You should learn to mind your tongue. We could have settled this nicely, but now I don’t feel like it.”

“Ah, forget it. I’ve got zero interest in settling things nicely with a beast spawn. Getting talked about like that would be too embarrassing.”

“Are you acting so arrogant because you think you’ll win?”

The underground beneath the Ruins, a vast cavern.

Eerie sounds echoed from all directions.

Shahaaa—! Sssssss…. Shahh—!

The hiss of snakes, enough to raise goosebumps all over your body the moment you heard it.

Hundreds of such hisses rang out from the floor, walls, and ceiling.

With the sound of snakes echoing from every direction as his backdrop, the Monster Merchant spoke.

“Killing a giant snake was impressive. I understand feeling triumphant. But it’s a problem if that’s all it takes. You see, when it comes to snakes, the small ones are more deadly than the big ones.”

The entire underground, shrouded in darkness, heaved. The snakes clinging to the floor, walls, and ceiling all moved at once, forming a current like a school of fish.

Seeing it, Anagin understood what he meant.

At first glance a giant snake might seem more threatening, but as long as you had the strength, you could beat one down—whereas small snakes were harder to deal with. No matter how strong you were, you couldn’t kill a hundred at once with a single attack. And even if you could, in the meantime the other snakes would just bite you.

Especially if those snakes were poison snakes….

Shahahahat!!

The snakes covering every direction opened their mouths. Like the one that had bitten Anagin, their mouths glowed purple.

“You’re resistant to poison?”

“Thanks to having a shitty Master…. Just thinking about it pisses me off again.”

“There must be a limit, though. One or two bites might be fine—but could you stay unharmed after ten? A hundred?”

“Dunno. Never been bitten that many times.”

“Then let’s find out now.”

“You think you’re clever, don’t you?”

The snakes that had been about to swarm from all sides hesitated at Anagin’s sudden question.

“What?”

“You talk like a person, you scheme like a person. So—do you think you’re clever? Special? But you’re not. Back in my village, there was one of your kind too. A wolf cub that talked like a person and schemed like one, and it devoured not just beasts but even children and adults.”

As Anagin spoke of the past, he untied the subspace bag from his belt. Then he opened its mouth as wide as it would go.

“It pissed me off. So do you know what I did?”

“Set a trap, perhaps?”

“No. I just chased it. Without sleeping or eating, I followed its scent and kept chasing. One day, two days, three days, four—without rest.”

“How crude.”

“Yeah, crude. But it worked. The thing got tired too, and it pulled all sorts of tricks to shake me off. Covering its scent with its underlings, launching ambushes. I didn’t care—I just chased it. Do you know how it ended?”

The Monster Merchant couldn’t answer.

"After about a week, its underlings abandoned it and it collapsed. The whole time I was chasing it, it barely ate or slept. I broke its neck, skinned it, and made its hide into my blanket. It was warm."

"What's your point?"

"The point is, a clever bastard can't beat an ignorant one. The more elaborate the trick, the weaker it is to something simple."

Whoosh— clang!

Anagin swung the bag at his hip. Something flew out, struck the wall, and shattered.

It was an amphora.

An amphora filled with Slippery Oil from the magic shop.

The amphoras flew in every direction and shattered.

Still moving, Anagin pulled out a flint and set the oil alight.

"You'll be no different. You Beast Spawn."