Chapter 39: Ambush: Kraken

“Master!”

It was Sierra.

She had been deliberately lingering not far from Lee Juju, and the moment he drifted off by himself, she immediately approached him. Juju smiled awkwardly, reminded of a loyal pet dog.

“Sierra.”

“What are you doing? Should Sierra help you?”

“No, it’s fine. I was just looking around the lake. I thought maybe I might find some clues.”

“Clues? What kind of clues?”

Sierra asked, her ears practically perking up. She was in an extremely good mood, simply being able to look at such a beautiful lake together with her “master” made her happy.

The idea that they needed to close the Gate barely crossed her mind at all. After all, this was her first mission, and when she used to belong to a villain faction, she had always avoided entering Gates whenever they were discovered.

“No abnormalities.”

After the cross-checking ended, Colonel Shan nodded expressionlessly as he received the report. The moment they entered the Gate, he had already begun measuring its interior with his ability, and the scale was enormous, far too large to believe it was merely a Rare-class Gate.

The turret group said to be in the northeast was so remote that it could barely even be detected.

He couldn’t treat the advance team member, Maximilian, as a disposable piece, but trusting him completely would be foolish as well.

Bringing Lieutenant Frank would have helped, yet Shan had assumed this would be a simple Gate suppression operation and left him behind. Now that decision was turning into a mistake. They were essentially taking a difficult detour instead of an easy road.

Near the lake, Lee Juju was crouched with his head lowered, examining something carefully. Beside him, Sierra trotted after him with quick little steps.

Shan had never liked Sierra, but moments like this made it worse. No, truthfully, even if it had been another esper walking beside Juju, he would have felt the same way.

At that moment, a small pit sound was heard.

In an instant, a long tentacle shot out of the lake toward Juju.

The feeling that one’s vision goes dizzy, that was exactly what this was like. Not only Colonel Shan but every esper around the lakeshore who had been secretly glancing at Juju rushed toward him in that split second.

“That was close.”

Juju rolled smoothly across the ground, dodging the tentacle, then got up while brushing dust off his pant leg.

KRAAAAAA!

“No wonder the lake looked too clear.”

Who would have thought a D-class nymph-type monster, Kraken, was living in it? Juju could have been cautious beforehand if he wanted to, but he wanted to confirm whether the lake mud stuck to the Center espers’ corpses was really from this lake.

And if those bodies had indeed been buried near the lakeshore, he wanted to find traces to make sure of it.

Juju let out a small sigh.

“Juju! Are you okay?”

Sierra, her face pale, hurried in front of him and asked frantically. Behind her, the shadow cast by her body swelled and surged. At the same time, the Kraken that had failed its ambush tore through the lake’s current and revealed its enormous form.

A full battle was about to begin.

“Yeah.”

‘Of course I’m fine.’

As long as he could dodge the first ambush, the rest would be handled by the espers. The real problem began when a guide died helplessly in that initial surprise attack.

As an S-class guide, Juju had undergone countless simulations, dozens, hundreds, training him to respond smoothly to every type of ambush imaginable.

Naturally, his sharp hearing could easily pick up the sound of a Kraken preparing to strike. Not just Krakens, he could avoid even a B-class demonic beast Shadow ambushing him with his eyes closed.

Monster ambushes were surprisingly simple. If you knew the direction and timing, even a seventeen-year-old high schooler could dodge them.

Well… of course, in a serious one-on-one fight he would still lose to an F-class turret.

BOOM!

The Kraken’s roar abruptly cut off.

A gigantic fireball crashed down onto the lakeshore like a disaster. Lieutenant Colonel Miles, blazing with heat, slowly descended from the air and landed in front of Juju.

“Are you alright, Juju?”

His usual smiling face had hardened into a chilling expression. Juju realized that when Miles didn’t smile, he actually looked surprisingly irritable.

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“That was an excellent response.”

While staring directly at Juju, Miles flicked his hand, and the sizzling sound of the Kraken being roasted on the lake’s surface grew louder.

“But next time, it would be better if you didn’t move around on your own. What do you think?”

“…”

“Miss Sierra doesn’t seem particularly useful, you see.”

“…!”

Sierra bit her lip and lowered her head as if in anguish.

Juju felt like he had somehow become a walking accident magnet, but instead of offering excuses, he simply nodded in agreement.

Maximilian stared at the scene as if spellbound.

Two of the military’s most famous officers, Colonel Shan and Lieutenant Colonel Miles, were protecting a single squad member. And that wasn’t all. Every other squad member was also staring at the same man.

Meanwhile, the Kraken was being mercilessly burned to shreds.

Just what kind of soldier was that man?

How important could he be that he didn’t even verbally answer Lieutenant Colonel Miles, only nodding his head instead? It was an unbelievably insolent attitude.

At this point…

Even if he didn’t want to believe it, he had no choice but to.

****

Juju frowned slightly.

“Ow.”

“Ow, my foot. Hold still, you brat.”

Military doctor Michael clicked his tongue while pressing gauze onto the scrape on Juju’s palm.

“If I’d known there was a Kraken, I wouldn’t have gone that close.”

The Kraken had long since burned to ashes on the lake’s surface. After thoroughly overturning nearly the entire lakebed to check whether more dangerous monsters were hiding inside, they concluded that there were none left.

Maximilian had said, looking extremely flustered, that he didn’t know a Kraken lived in the lake. Juju backed him up, explaining that Krakens sometimes buried themselves in lakebed mud and slept for a month at a time.

“Thank you for earlier. I didn’t know Krakens had that kind of habit.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Um, Mac? May I call you Mac too?”

“Of course. Please do.”

Mac replied while scratching his curly brown hair. As a member of the advance team, he had entered the Gate earlier and had already spent a week inside, so his body was covered in various wounds.

Michael decided to treat him as well. Since Juju’s injury was comparatively minor, just a scraped palm from falling, Juju was treated first.

Looking over Maximilian’s body, Michael said,

“You’re in pretty decent shape.”

“Wouldn’t it be strange if I got injured fighting mere turrets?”

Mac smiled with an easygoing expression.

Sleeping for a month? What is it, a dragon? Juju scoffed internally.

Most likely the Kraken was one of the monsters that had appeared when the Gate started shifting again. The turret monsters said to be in the northeast had probably disappeared.

Either way, Krakens and turrets were both pathetic monsters. It was unlikely that anything particularly extraordinary had mutated in a Rare-class Gate like this.

Then why had so many of the advance espers died?

Pretending to watch the treatment, Juju carefully examined Maximilian’s older wounds.

The yellowish discoloration looked like bruising. The scattered scratches looked like he had fallen down repeatedly.

But they were clearly different from Juju’s own scrape.

“That’s an unusual set of injuries. It’s not easy to get wounds like these fighting monsters. It almost looks like you were in hand-to-hand combat. And this one… what is it? A puncture from a tree branch?”

“Haha. Does it?”

Mac let the handsome man examine his hand without stopping him. It was better to stay on friendly terms with him.

Mac smiled politely, then the man suddenly lifted his head and pressed the question sharply.

“Yes. Did something happen? It really looks like you fought someone. Was it a big battle?”

“Not exactly…”

Mac looked at Juju with slight confusion.

Juju’s transparent brown eyes reflected Mac’s face clearly.

****

Juju and Mac quickly became friendly.

More precisely, Juju kept approaching him openly with a bright smile, while Mac, unsure how to refuse him, ended up responding politely, and before long they were chatting naturally.

Even though it was an unspoken rule that people generally listened to the military doctor, ignoring Doctor Lee Juju would cause everyone around to glare as if ready to kill. Because of that, Mac had no choice but to talk with him, it wasn’t that he was particularly kind or friendly.

“So, Mac, what kind of ability do you have?”