The noises on top of me aren't stopping. Rumbling, stomping, metal scraping and being slashed, the boat aggressively moving back and forth.
"Now, where's that crown. I hope you haven't snatched it away," I commented as I sluggishly stood up and left the lifeless Taurus' body lying there.
"I've used so many Body Strengthening techniques... My body feels so heavy."
Every step felt like it was such an arduous task to do. Even the fire breath I used took so much of my energy that my breathing was ragged and paused. I'm thankful that I managed to avoid taking any significant damage throughout all this run, because if I had been hurt in any significant way I probably wouldn't have made it this far.
The robust and big metallic safe the crown was placed in sat in the middle of the storage room. It was bigger than a refrigerator but even heavier and seemingly sturdier due to the many scratches and small indents it had.
It's obvious that the Taurus wanted to force the safe open and take the crown. I don't really understand what the whole point of that would end up being since he'd end up also dying on this ship, since monsters would end up finding him at any point, and the Scylla would've sunk the ship by then.
Did he have a plan to escape the ship by himself, avoid the monsters, and take the crown to the Korailian kingdom? That's the only possible explanation I can think of.
Grabbing the lock of the safe, it seemed to be one that was magically reinforced, making it so that only a mage allowed by the caster could open it with a spell. It's a relatively complicated lock to open if you have magic, but a nigh-on impossible one if you can't use it.
!!!
Something's happening on the upper parts!
"Wha—?"
Suddenly, something came crashing down, breaking the thick and girthy metal ceiling of the storage room and hitting against the safe I wanted to open. I barely had enough time to cover my eyes and shield myself from the dust formed by such a heavy hit against the safe that caused it to be sent flying.
Not long after, following a thunderous roar, a pink-colored beam of energy descended onto where the safe was. But it seems there was something in there that was stopping the beam. Was it the safe itself? No, I don't think a safe would handle that much power. Maybe it was the thing that crashed against the safe.
"Can you stop that!" Trudeia's voice roared angrily from the receiving end of the energy beam. He broke the beam with a swing of his axe.
"Trudeia!" I called out, but was surprised when I saw how beaten up the old horse was.
He had lost his right arm, one of his eyes couldn't even open due to the amount of blood flowing down his face, half his face was burned and his whole body was covered in recent open wounds caused from all the recent fighting against the many monsters. Even his clothes that were meant to last through a tough fight, that even swords and common monsters couldn't cut through, were mostly torn apart.
"Grey! What are yo—fuck! You have the crown with you!?" He asked in a hurried way while looking through the hole the beam left.
"You crashed against the safe. But I can't open it, so we'll have to—"
"This one? Let me open it!" He interrupted me and, with a single swing of his axe, broke the lock of the safe. "The safe could even withstand the beam of that monster? An adequate metal for such an important item," he commented while spitting blood.
With that, the door of the safe opened, revealing a glass box with a soft, expensive-looking red silk that probably was there to protect the crown from sudden movements.
"There it is! Now, scram! Hide anywhere you can and find a way to escape before the Scylla uses the Sailor's Nightmare Stone to create a whirlpool!"
"Roger!" I nodded and picked up the glass, planning to escape as intended.
However...
A second beam of energy pierced through the whole room, this time horizontally, dividing the room in two halves. Trudeia jumped next to me in an attempt to shield me if the beam attacked me.
The beam stopped for a single second, and not letting us a second to catch up with what was happening... another beam, this time from above, melted every single floor of the ship— from the top part of the deck all the way to the storage room we're in—opening up a massive hole that finally let me see the kind of monster attacking us.
A big, serpentine monster with greenish scales all over its body. Bigger than the tallest building, and bigger than this boat. Bigger than everything I had ever seen in my life up until now. Its yellow eyes glowed in the darkness of the storm. From the sides of the hole caused by the beam, many monsters peeked their heads.
"What are you still doing here! Run! Leave this place immediately!" Trudeia yelled at me, snapping me out of my trance of looking at what may very well be what causes our death.
But I couldn't. My whole body paralyzed itself in front of a monster of such proportions. I didn't know if I was even breathing at all when watching that Scylla.
"Grey—fuck!" Trudeia cursed under his breath. Seeing monsters start to drop down from the topmost part to the storage room through the hole the beam created, the old horse gripped his weapon tightly with the only hand he had left.
Trudeia was clearly using several Body Strengthening techniques at the same time, more than I could manage at my current level.
Monsters of all body shapes and sizes dropped like a tsunami to the room we were in, Trudeia immediately attacking the monsters.
"Shit, snap out of it, Grey!" He yelled out as he cleaved through the sea of monsters, some of them the same species that chased me before.
Behind me!
Body Strengthening technique: Sharp Claws.
I turned around and began swinging my arms, attacking the various smaller monsters that either sneaked behind me or got past Trudeia's murderous swings.
"Such a powerful survival instinct you have, don't you!?"
"I'm sorry, Trudeia. I don't kno—"
"Shut it, Grey! Anyone would've acted the same way. At least you still have that crown on your hands even while fighting these many monsters, that's nice. Listen up! I'll protect you and take care of the bigger ones, you focus on not dying."
"I don't know how much I'll be able to hold on!"
"Don't even think about it! Right now, you either fight and survive, or you die! Keep on fighting and survive, Grey!"
That was the last thing I heard coming from Trudeia's mouth. After that, everything happened too quickly. I took his advice to heart and focused only on one thing: survive. At some point, even my own body forgot all about the pain I felt, how tired I was; I just kept on fighting for my life.
It didn't matter how much I got bitten, slashed, hit, smashed, tossed, hurled, pierced. No matter how much blood I lost, I just would not stop fighting. The same—or even worse—happened with Trudeia since he was fighting against stronger monsters and defending me.
Wave after wave of monsters. One after another.
Trudeia is truly a monster in his own right. Despite his various injuries and the overload of work in defending me, he still fought tooth and nail to kill those monsters, handling the ones I could never beat at my current level of strength. He even pulled off movements of the Body Strengthening techniques I've never seen before in my life.
At one point, even Trudeia's axe broke and its handle shattered, leaving the horse-man to use only the sharp edge of his axe directly.
Hours probably passed—I don't know, at some point, time just stopped making sense to me—and the monsters' numbers finally started to go down.
In the end, after most monsters were killed and we were finally left alone, both Trudeia and I ended up lying on the floor of the bloody storage room.
I could feel the cold air rapidly entering and leaving my lungs in short gasps, the putrid smell of the combined corpses and blood of the many monsters slaughtered by us.
"T-Trudeia... are you still..." I did not have the courage to finish my question and have him not answer me back.
"Not for long... All my bones are broken, I lost my right arm and leg. And there are still many monsters left that aren't coming down due to the stench released by the corpse of a monster." The old horse's voice was so soft I had trouble even hearing him.
"Grey... can you move at all?"
"No... I don't think so..."
"Force yourself to stand up and leave this place immediately. You have to live."
"I'll try."
A low, tired chuckle escaped Trudeia's lips. "Hehe... You've always been a fun kid. You never ask questions when told to do something."
"I'd follow orders way less if they were dumb."
"That's nice, always stand your ground."
"Grey... I... I've lived a life full of regrets... That's not a bad thing by itself—a life without regrets is impossible—but that's exactly why I've hated being alive these last few years. But... I think I found comfort in you... you were like a grandson I was actually there to raise."
"Grey... if you make it out alive... please, look for my granddaughter... my daughter and her kid walked away from me because of stupid things I did in my past. I regret being stubborn and not wanting to make things right with them, I regret what caused our separation... Please, Grey, can you find 'em and tell them how much I regret what happened between us?" While I definitely couldn't see his face, the sad tone of his voice and the ragged breathing was all I needed to know how he felt.
"What're their names? Where do they live now? You can't expect me to find them with no clues?"
"Hellen is my daughter... Ghishame my granddaughter. Last I've heard of them they lived on the Southwestern continent, in the kingdom of Rivalidha."
"I'll be sure to look for them." I didn't really have any intention to look for them, not because I'm a jerk, but because we'll probably die here since that Scylla's still there with the ability to sink the entire boat. At this point, I just wanted the old man to pass away with the thought that maybe his dying wish could be completed.
"Grey... I'm close to breathing for the last time. My vision has turned black. Can you tell me how the night sky is right now? If the violent storm and clouds have gone away? Are those stars beautiful?"
Is his body in such a sorry state that he doesn't even feel the drops of water falling onto us? Since we ended up falling thanks to exhaustion under the hole caused by the Scylla, the rain and the sky could be seen and felt.
No... Today's an awful night. The dark clouds, the cold rain, the slight warmth from the monsters' corpses that still had some minutes before going completely cold, the thought that monsters still walked on the top deck and could jump down here at any moment but didn't due to the scent of one of these monsters.
"I'm sure that... above the dark clouds, and whichever sky your granddaughter is under, the stars are beautiful."
...
No response...
"Trudeia?" I asked, worried and preparing for the harsh truth.
If I had enough strength to move only a small part of my body, enough to do the simplest of motions involving the movement of turning around my head. But I had no strength.
I wonder if he heard what I said...