Chapter 176 - Diver VIII

"Uwaaaaaaagh?"

Screams rang through the Operations Control Office.

Seo Gyu accounted for the largest share of them. Unfortunately, still folded at the waist, he was elevating the genre of his life into a pinball game.

Even disregarding that collateral damage, the gravitational acceleration assaulting the ark fleet was terrifying.

"Big brother! The ordinary people can't take it!"

Lee Hayul shouted as though screaming. More precisely, it was the voice of the housekeeper whose lap she was sitting on.

"At this rate, they'll burst! Their whole bodies!"

"Understood!"

I immediately drew up my aura.

It felt as though a reservoir so deep its bottom was invisible had been drained to half its capacity in an instant. Even for a self-proclaimed aura monster like me, it was an enormous expenditure.

'At this rate, I won't have enough ammunition left when it's time to finish Leviathan!'

Ultimately, my aura alone could not shield all the ordinary people. I urgently but delicately distributed the aura the awakened were sending from the twelve arks.

Most of the ordinary people had already passed out from Leviathan's excessively violent movements.

There had been no choice. To lure the Great Monsoon anomaly specifically to Busan, we had needed to pack as many people as possible aboard the arks.

A bastion of humanity more prosperous than any other city in present-day East Asia.

GRRRRRR!

The tyrannical dragon of myth thrashed even more violently, as though pronouncing divine punishment upon such human arrogance.

["Undertaker! The dragon is falling toward the sea again!"]

WHOOOOOOM!

The ark shook wildly.

It was merely falling from above to below.

Yet the excessive height of the drop and its excessive speed were themselves an immense act of violence. The ark trembled like a tiny boat adrift in the Pacific.

Outside the Operations Control Office windows, blue sky and clouds flashed past in the blink of an eye, like a life flashing before one's eyes.

We were plummeting.

From the sky, back into the sea.

"Saintess! Tell me when!"

["Yes!"]

Even the Saintess, who could freely use Time Stop, sounded urgent.

["Three seconds, two seconds, one second—brace yourselves!"]

There was an impact.

Though I had squeezed out my aura to protect the hulls as much as possible just before we struck the surface, I could not cancel out that horrific impact entirely.

"Eek."

"...!"

People passed out one after another even in the Operations Control Office. Sim Aryeon and Noah, whose mastery of aura lagged behind the others', lost consciousness.

The other Isolation Sections hardly bore mentioning. Awakened with poor control of their aura blacked out one after another, foaming at the mouth.

All Leviathan had done was leap high into the air once, like a dolphin, then land back in the sea.

And yet awakened amounting to half the arks' fighting strength had been knocked out of the battle.

'Was the Great Monsoon anomaly this powerful?!'

I clenched my teeth. My heightened senses caught every scream and every scent of blood erupting from the arks.

"Ah—ah—aaah—."

Dang Seorin's song spread.

It was the unplanned fifth melody.

Before beginning the operation, we had agreed she would sing only through the fourth verse. But sensing that our enemy's strength was no ordinary matter, she too had begun pushing herself.

That melody strengthened the arks themselves. The crushing burden my aura had been bearing abruptly eased.

GRRRRR!

But Leviathan's violence did not stem solely from its overwhelmingly enormous bulk.

GURGLE...

Not long after Leviathan dragged us into the sea, water began rising inside the Operations Control Office.

The weapon Leviathan had possessed all along was attacking us once more.

"Urgh. Hayul!"

"Yes!"

Hayul snapped her belt open and picked up a bucket. Then she repeatedly went through the motions of bailing water.

"...! ...!"

Leviathan was not placidly swimming along at thirty knots while she did so.

Even now, thousands upon tens of thousands of puppet strings constricted its body.

As its hide and flesh tore away, it writhed in pain and fury. The waves raised by its struggles easily formed twenty-meter tsunamis that were devastating downtown Busan.

The most intact city in East Asia—where over eighty percent of the housing consisted of shacks—was being given a thorough cleaning.

Lee Hayul lost her footing inside the ark again and again. Sputtering and swallowing water, she desperately swung the bucket.

"Let me help."

Go Yori caught Lee Hayul's hand.

"...!"

"Heave-ho. Heave-ho."

Lee Hayul instinctively tried to pull her hand free, but Go Yori's grip seemed stronger than expected. Unperturbed, Go Yori moved the bucket with her.

Lee Hayul looked back at me.

Her eyes asked, What should I do, big brother?

I nodded. We needed every helping hand we could get—even a cat's, even Go Yori's.

"Saintess! How are the other sections?!"

["They're all right. I'm impersonating the constellations and continually giving them detailed instructions for each movement. Don't worry about the other Isolation Sections right now, Undertaker!"]

That was right.

Conditions almost impossible for humans to endure kept crashing down upon us, but I could not weep or scream here. Hadn't the world been cruel to us from the very beginning?

I was not an omniscient, omnipotent regressor. I was merely a support who had also taken on the work Old Man Scho should originally have handled.

That was why, through countless trials and errors, I had searched for strategies to develop my party members.

In this operation, Typhoon Hunt, there was almost no one who was useless. (I used the word "almost" specifically because of Seo Gyu, who was still floating unconscious on the water.)

["The water levels in all Isolation Sections are stabilizing."]

["No drownings."]

["Some people have suffered existential contamination from the water bugs, but it's all right. The awakened around them are responding."]

["Those who passed out from the collision with the water earlier are also rapidly regaining consciousness... Ah. Undertaker, the dragon is about to rise again!"]

I swore. Was that tyrannical dragon planning to keep bouncing up and down like this?

'I don't think I'll lose even if this turns into a prolonged battle.'

The problem was the damage to our side.

The sixty thousand people aboard the ark fleet possessed a value difficult to measure with the mere number "60,000."

Residents over whom the National Road Management Corps and Three Thousand Worlds held their strongest sway. Warriors who had volunteered to board even the most dangerous ark if it meant saving other regions.

In this apocalyptic age, when every resource had been tainted by void poison, they were the last remaining human resources, the pillars of the future.

Their mental strength. Their vitality. Their resolve.

Was there even one life among them we could afford to waste needlessly?

'Should I sever the strings now and let the other eleven arks escape? No, that would leave too few puppet strings binding Leviathan. Will I have to let it get away after all? Must I aim for next summer, for the next run?'

That was when it happened.

"Haaaaaaaah!"

A battle cry that shook heaven and earth rang into the Operations Control Office from outside the ark.

A roar that literally shook the horizon.

Someone had deliberately gathered aura and unleashed a lion's roar, as though demanding that the despairing awakened hear it loud and clear.

A flash went through my mind. Before the cry had even finished, I already knew whose voice it was.

"Yohwa!"

The Student Council President of Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School. The Korean Peninsula's only necromancer. The shrine maiden who had sealed a God of Alienation in an hourglass.

Cheon Yohwa had arrived.

"Siiiink!"

Just as Leviathan thrust its head out to soar into the lofty sky once more, an orange-haired girl who had once been the basketball team's ace slammed down upon it.

BOOOOOOM!

An enormous tremor struck Leviathan. Having raised its head, it had no choice but to plunge it straight back into the sea.

CRAAAASH!

The waves spreading from its falling head ravaged the beach and swept over even the National Road Management Corps headquarters, the last intact building in downtown Busan.

GROOOOOAR!

"Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School! Jump! Jump down! Don't tremble like cowards! No matter what happens, don't ever let this snake bastard rise!"

It was difficult to grasp the entire situation through the Operations Control Office windows.

The Saintess spoke quickly to me.

["This was my doing."]

"You did this, Saintess...?"

["Yes. After communications went down, I asked Cheon Yohwa to dispatch troops."]

["With both Sim Aryeon and Cheon Yohwa absent, the northern front will inevitably falter. But I judged that now was the time to prioritize defeating the Great Monsoon, even if it meant surrendering Pyongyang."]

["To persuade Cheon Yohwa, I falsely claimed the request came from you. I apologize for acting unilaterally without consulting you."]

"Not at all. You made the right decision!"

["Yes."]

She answered as though she had known I would forgive her. Much of the urgency had left her voice compared to earlier.

"How did Yohwa stop Leviathan just now?"

["Bombing."]

Bombing?

["The Three Thousand Worlds guild members who were originally scouting the Great Monsoon's approach are now carrying Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School guild members on their broomsticks."]

["Once the Three Thousand Worlds members approach the dragon using flight magic, the Hundred Flowers members drop from several thousand meters up and strike it as they fall. They use their own bodies as missiles."]

"...!"

["Cheon Yohwa herself proposed this operation."]

It was a crude but effective method. Leviathan itself was using crude tactics in the first place; we were simply responding in kind.

Yu Jiwon, who still looked the most composed of anyone in the Operations Control Office, also delivered a report.

"Your Excellency. Awakened belonging to Hundred Flowers Girls’ High School are appearing on the Minimap one after another. I suspect some are already adrift at sea."

BOOM! BOOM, BOOOOM...!

Beginning with Cheon Yohwa, dozens, then hundreds of impacts erupted across the battlefield.

Though difficult to observe through the windows, Hundred Flowers guild members were even now carpet-bombing Leviathan with aura wrapped around their entire bodies.

GROOOOOAR!

"Teeeacher!"

Cheon Yohwa's voice reached us. There was something desperate about it.

"We don't have many left! Before then!"

"...!"

I immediately sprang from my seat and threw open the hatch we had prepared for diving.

A gale blew in.

Only then did I see the entire battlefield, rather than a view constricted by a rectangular window.

The first thing I saw was Leviathan's body, so enormous I wondered whether it stretched all the way to the horizon.

"Teacher!"

Then I saw Cheon Yohwa's struggle.

Astonishingly, she was embedded in Leviathan's eye. Even as she flailed her arms and legs, she unleashed vicious aura and tore wildly through the monster's eye.

Only then did I understand how she had brought Leviathan's ascent crashing down.

That mad disciple of mine had leaped from several thousand meters in the air and stabbed straight into Leviathan's eyeball!

"Yohwa!"

"Yes!"

"Well done!"

"Yes! Please save me!"

GROOOOOAR!

Leviathan went berserk at the state of affairs: some little mosquito bastard had gotten into its eyeball and was sucking blood to its heart's content.

Tsunamis battered Busan's beach without pause. Even the National Road Management Corps headquarters was beginning to tilt, apparently in danger now.

Noh Doha would be pleased at the savings on urban redevelopment.