Gugugung. The ground shakes. I stepped back, holding the lantern out in front of me.
The vineyard heaved, and something burst out from within.
It was a large, four-legged monster resembling a turtle.
But it wasn’t a real turtle.
Because what was attached to its back was too foreign to be a turtle.
Eight tentacles moved haphazardly, as if each was a different living creature.
At that horrifying sight, I shouted in a loud voice.
“It’s a grape-crazed turtle tentacle monster!”
The eight tentacles slammed down on the ground.
Immediately after, eight red lines intercepted the tentacles.
Kkieeeeek! The tentacles screamed. I didn’t misspeak. Mouths actually appeared on the tentacles, and screams burst out from them.
The tentacles are the main body, huh.
Inputting the new information, I prepared magic again.
A mouth and teeth formed in the flame within the lantern. It was a considerably sharp and hard flame.
The flame blazed fiercely. As a signal, I swung the lantern wide.
At the same time, the flame that shot out from the lantern grew in size.
The flame, now almost the size of a human head, opened its mouth wide and bit down on a tentacle.
Devouring consumes everything.
The tentacles were no exception.
The monster, having lost one tentacle in an instant, thrashed around wildly, lashing out with its remaining tentacles. I kept my distance and swung the lantern in the same way.
Kwajeek. Again, a tentacle was devoured by the flame and disappeared.
However, instead of going berserk, the monster quietly stared at me, then used its tentacles to pierce a grape vine and pull something out.
The monster, having taken all the unripe grapes, the grapes hidden by the leaves, and the grapes growing in hard-to-reach places, opened the mouths on its tentacles and swallowed everything at once.
Then, the tentacle that had disappeared into the flame twitched and regenerated at super speed.
I narrowed my eyes and looked around.
The vast vineyard came into view.
How many unharvested grapes are left here? It was hard to calculate.
I clicked my tongue softly.
This was a very bad place to fight a monster that heals its wounds by eating grapes.
I came up with a few ways to move it to another location, but none of them were easy. If it knows its own strengths, it won’t follow even if I lure it.
Should I just run away and bring people back?
But if I do that, won’t it be difficult to find if the monster hides underground?
I was lost in thought when suddenly,
“Lady Ruina!”
I heard the voice of a clumsy apprentice paladin from behind.
I moved my lips, preparing magic.
“Just block the tentacles coming at me.”
“Understood.”
Leon drew his sword and stood in front of me.
Perhaps annoyed that the number of enemies had increased, the monster roared and swung its tentacles.
Leon calmly watched the tentacles, then moved his sword.
Swish. A tentacle fell to the ground.
I was inwardly impressed by the swordsmanship that accurately intercepted all eight tentacles at an invisible speed.
Leon had introduced himself as ‘pretty good with a sword,’ but that was a completely wrong description.
How is that just ‘pretty good’?
He’s a sword genius, if anything.
While the monster rummaged through the grape vines, eating grapes to regenerate its eight tentacles, I slowly prepared magic.
‘Never give a mage time and distance.’ That was a golden rule in the mercenary industry.
Additionally, there’s also the saying, ‘Never fight or antagonize a mage, and if you do end up antagonizing one, run away,’ but that’s not important right now, so let’s skip it.
Anyway.
The core of that saying was this.
Time is a resource for mages.
The more a mage concentrates, the more time they spend, the more powerful the magic becomes.
Of course, that wasn’t true for all mages.
There were clear limitations.
A 1st Circle mage can’t use great magic even if they concentrate for their entire life.
However.
I wasn’t included in those general cases.
Uniform mana meticulously builds up the magic. A highly stable and sturdy foundation is established.
The established foundation is filled with repeated rules. ‘Activating magic inside the lantern improves efficiency.’ Stability is strengthened.
And the restriction puts the finishing touch.
‘Always’ activate magic inside the lantern.
That restriction sublimated everything I had built up until now into a single magic.
The condensed flame flickered inside the lantern as if it would burst at any moment.
I gently held the lantern forward and released the flame.
Flash. A streak of red light that started from the lantern brightly illuminated the dark night.
The slightly chilly early autumn air heated up, and I felt the lukewarm breeze on my face as I raised my
I saw the monster, its body half-melted, staggering and propping itself up on the ground.
Leon’s body relaxed slightly at the sight of it looking like it would breathe its last at any moment.
Then, I heard a voice from behind me.
“We did it!”
I clicked my tongue at the thickened voice, probably from eating herbs in the meantime.
That magic shouldn’t be used carelessly, but non-mages don’t know that, do they.
As expected, the staggering monster opened its mouth and raged violently.
Guooooooo!
Then, its melted body writhed and grew.
head.
The monster, having regenerated its body in an instant, pulled out the surrounding grape vines and swallowed them whole.
So it can eat other things besides grapes.
I learned something new.
“Lady Ruina!”
“Run away.”
I couldn’t kill it even though I hit it with my maximum firepower.
That meant there was no answer with just us.
“Understood.”
Leon turned around with his sword drawn. He also said, ‘Sir Chris, you need to escape.’
I glanced at the monster, which was pulling out and swallowing grape vines again, and quickly left the scene.
I don’t know exactly what effect swallowing grapes and grape vines has, but as long as there are grape vines around, killing it is……..
I stopped in my tracks, interrupting my thoughts.
“Lady Ruina?”
Leon’s voice came from afar.
I, the one who said to run away, had stopped. It was a natural reaction.
Instead of answering Leon, I shifted my gaze to the monster.
The monster swallows the grape vines. It eats them as deliciously as if the grape vines were meat.
Writhe. The monster’s body, which was not yet fully restored, was healed by it.
I watched the monster, which seemed to have finished consuming the grape vines and was now picking grapes and putting them in its mouth, and quietly looked down at the lantern.
The flame flickers inside the lantern.
This flame burns everything.
No. It devours.
Whether it’s trees, stones, animals, herbs, people, emotions, memories, it devours everything indiscriminately.
Then, where does everything it eats go?
Does it disappear?
If so, then the characteristic of the flame that I realized would have been ‘annihilation.’
Not ‘devouring.’
What it eats becomes nutrients. It becomes a component of the body. It becomes mine.
Like the monster that heals its body by eating grapes.
That’s what devouring is.
The monster, completely restored, glares at me.
Its tentacles swell.
The tentacles, now almost the thickness of a small tree, come down to crush me.
“Lady Ruina!”
The sword that rushed in urgently cuts the huge tentacle in half.
Thud. The severed tentacle falls to the ground, and several tentacles sprout from the cross-section of the tentacle connected to the body.
Now, 22 tentacles are aiming at me.
In that very dangerous situation, at the moment Leon calls out my name desperately.
I jingled the lantern.
Hwareuk. A mouth and teeth form in the flame. As I shook the lantern, the flame flew towards the monster.
Kwajeek. The flame bites and eats a tentacle.
In the same development as before, the monster nonchalantly regenerated the tentacle and swung it. It was to deal with me and Leon.
In reality, even Leon had a hard time dealing with 22 tentacles, and I had used up all the cards I had.
Therefore, the monster’s choice was valid. The probability of not being able to block that attack was high now.
—That is, if I had really used up all the cards I had.
The flame that bit and swallowed the tentacle doesn’t disappear and grows in size.
The second principle of the devouring flame that I just realized.
‘Digestion,’ which turns what it eats into its own power.
The monster panics at the flame that grows endlessly.
It takes a step back and regenerates its body, but it was just unfortunate.
If you regenerate endlessly, I will burn everything with the flame that endlessly devours and burns.
The flame, which completely covered the monster’s entire body, eventually devoured it whole.
Only the monster’s dying screams leaked out from within the blazing flame.
I put a pipe tobacco in my mouth in front of the monster that was dying.
“Lady Ruina, are you okay!”
“I’ve been thinking about it since a while ago, but Sir Leon’s lines sound like an extra’s compared to his performance. Thank you.”
“What are you even saying?”
“Sis! Are you okay?!”
“Sir Chris. I’m really sorry, but if you want to call me that, please don’t eat the voice-changing herb. Thank you.”
Hoo. I exhaled a long stream of smoke towards the flame.
With this, the extermination of the pest that was stealing the village’s grapes was over, but there was one problem.
I made eye contact with Chris.
Chris tilted his head at my gaze.
“Lady Ruina? What’s wrong?”
“Where did that bizarre semi-formal speech come from? Anyway, Sir Chris.”
“Yeah.”
“In this case, all the wine grapes went into that monster’s stomach, so what are you going to do? Do you have any remaining assets?”
“Ah.”
Chris spat out a short death cry. It was almost the level of the monster’s death cry that disappeared into the flame.
That was enough of an answer.
“What the hell is going on!”
I closed the lantern and turned around at the buzzing sound coming from afar.
Today’s conclusion.
The jeweler, no.
Chris lost 100 gold coins.