Chapter 48

  Looking at the devastation left over after the battle with the hydra, it was hard for Dalex to imagine he and the others had done anything besides make things worse. Yesui, Arnaut, and Seventh stared at the chaos with him. What had once been a relatively peaceful forest with a few hydra-shaped potholes in its depths was now scarred by a purple wasteland of wind-blasted earth with an unnaturally jagged mountain and a soon-to-be-rotting hydra corpse at its center. And then there were the piles of hydra vomit scattered around the area.

  Dalex took solace in the fact that Dugan was safe, and that he was not solely responsible for the damage to the forest. If the hydra had remained stuck in the anomaly, it would have eventually hurt someone. And luckily, Dalex had planned for this sort of aftermath.

  “Would you look at this mess?” Yesui said. Dalex wasn’t sure if she meant the forest or the layer of paint coating her clothes, skin, and hair. She sniffed her sleeve and gagged. “This junk smells worse than dog’s breath. You two did more damage than that stumpy hydra did.”

  “Something had to be done,” Arnaut protested. “It would have destroyed the town if we hadn’t intervened.”

  Yesui gave him a withering look. “It went a whole month without touching the town, only flattening a few crops, then suddenly you two get involved and Dugan is in danger of imminent catastrophe?”

  Dalex cringed inwardly. Maybe saving Dugan wasn’t such a good excuse. But he wasn’t about to admit defeat.

  “She’s right, Arnaut,” he said, adopting a holier-than-thou tone. “You and I bear responsibility for this.”

  The hero looked at him sideways, and Dalex felt the man’s glare despite Arnaut’s opaque helmet. Yesui turned her disapproving gaze on Dalex now. Neither of them believed he was being sincere.

  “Too bad for you, hero of Angars,” Dalex continued, “I can easily clean up my part.”

  He snapped his fingers and cast, “{Painter’s retraction}.”

  The landscape was suddenly washed green by a light from above. The world changed color for a fraction of a second, and then normal sunlight returned. The paint that had coated the terrain began to dissolve. It sizzled off the ground and out of what nearby trees were still standing. It even melted off of the armor and clothes of the three companions, turning to dust that vanished into the wind.

  On such short notice, Seventh hadn’t been able to help him come up with a paint that was completely non-toxic, but they had used a substance that could be harmlessly eliminated from the environment with the right kind of {astral beam}.

  Yesui inspected her clothes and Arnaut looked down at his armor. While neither were clean, both were free from any paint.

  “Yes, yes, very impressive,” Arnaut said. “As usual, your magic is powerful and multi-faceted. Now why don’t you do something about that giant corpse? It won’t be long before it stinks worse than the paint.”

  “I hardly think it’s fair to pin the cleanup for that one all on me,” Dalex said. “We made that corpse together.”

  “I’m sure the townspeople will help us dispose of the carcass,” Yesui said, her face grim. “But it’s going to be long, gruesome work.”

  “Are there any parts worth preserving?” Dalex asked, once again remembering the rotting corpse of the giant chameleon. “Is a hydra corpse valuable?”

  Yesui hummed in thought and said, “Not as much as other monsters. It’s certainly no long-tongued kidnapper.”

  Dalex felt a pit in his stomach. “What’s a long-tongued kidnapper?”

  “Reptilian monster,” Arnaut explained. “They’re about four times smaller than a hydra but don’t need a magic rock to camouflage and blend in with their surroundings. They’re a delicacy on Gaia Beta, so they’re quite the prize.”

  Damnit. Dalex tried to keep his composure. “Would one hold its value if it had been left out to spoil for a week?”

  Arnaut shook his head. “It’d be worthless. Why are you so curious?”

  Double damnit.

  Luckily, Yesui distracted him from his despair. “For a hydra, the claws, eyes, and teeth are worth saving. Everything else is poisonous waste.”

  “Well then,” Dalex said, seeing dollar signs, “if I can keep the good bits, that’s incentive enough for me to handle the cleanup myself. What do you say, Yesui?”

  She shrugged. “If you can take care of it before the townspeople get out here to haggle over who gets what, knock yourself out.”

  Dalex summoned {Finger Eater} and walked toward the corpse. He circled around its base, the others following after him, probably curious to see what he would do next. Seventh walked alongside him.

  Dalex turned to her and asked, “Would you mind collecting Balgoth? I think the show is over.”

  The [android] stayed silent, matching his stride but not acknowledging the request.

  “Is something wrong?” Dalex asked, stopping to give her his full attention. She stopped as well. “You didn’t sustain any damage while you were inside the hydra, did you?”

  “I did not,” Seventh said. “However, the [orbital torch] would certainly have rendered me inoperable.”

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  Dalex gulped. “You heard that?”

  “I did. You nearly activated the weapon.”

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure what to do. The town was in danger, and well—” He shook his head. “I have no excuse. It was a moment of weakness. I should have just dealt with the hydra before you had to get swallowed by it.”

  “No, it was prudent to wait. The [orbital torch] would have destroyed the benefine deposit. It was necessary for me to first be ingested to retrieve it.”

  “In any case, I’m sorry for what I almost did. I guess I should ask, can you die in the human sense?”

  “That is an odd way of phrasing it. No, I cannot die in the human sense, however, had I been struck by the [orbital torch] I would have lost certain core memories and functions only accessible to this body. A clone could be created on the [stealth frigate], but it would be a new variation missing many hours of data.”

  “I see,” Dalex said. “I should have asked that earlier. I’ll try to be more conscious of your safety in the future.”

  She gave him a sideways glance and then said, “I will retrieve the demon.”

  She floated off the ground. Dalex sighed and looked back at the hydra. He had stopped just next to one of its feet. He went to work, using {Finger Eater} to cut the claws off its toes. He never would have thought the name he chose for the sword would be so applicable.

  It was nasty work, but he forced himself to think about the things he could buy after the Lodge paid him his bounty and he sold the important bits of the hydra; real Gaia Etan food, real Gaia Etan clothes, and maybe a publicized weapon or two. Even the best publicized equipment probably wouldn’t be as useful as his own {far realmer magic}, but he was curious to own one, nonetheless.

  As he worked, Yesui and Arnaut kept their distance, holding their noses at the smell of hydra blood and vomit. After Dalex finished with the feet and stacked up the claws out of the way, Arnaut said, still with fingers pinching his nostrils closed, “I was surprised, Dalex. I thought you would have an easier time dispatching this creature. You didn’t speak any of the spells you used against me and Great Lord Castreier.”

  Yesui chuckled. “Perhaps he is simply not as powerful as he wants others to believe.”

  “Maybe, but he is no weakling,” Arnaut said. “Lord Castreier could have single handedly defeated the monster, and Dalex forced him to flee without so much effort as he exerted today.”

  Before he went to work separating the teeth and eyes from the hydra’s severed heads, Dalex activated his armor’s helmet to block some of the stench wafting off the corpse. The helmet was only marginally effective.

  Dalex’s voice was muffled when he explained to the others, “I was holding myself back. I wanted a challenge.”

  “A likely excuse,” Yesui said.

  “No, really,” Dalex said. “I had set myself a special goal. I wanted to slay it with just my axe, but that was probably impossible.”

  “You do not have to lie to us,” Yesui said with a snide bend to her voice. “Your work today was impressive enough.”

  “I apologize, Miss Yesui,” Arnaut said, “but I believe him. I have set similar restrictions on myself in the past. Without a little extra incentive, defeating certain foes can be… unrewarding.”

  Yesui shook her head. “Humans are crazy.”

  While Dalex continued to saw through gums and then optic nerves, Seventh returned with Balgoth. The [android] set the demon’s basket down, but Balgoth did not leave the container. As usual, she was furiously jotting down notes. Dalex wondered if she ever stopped writing and actually sang what was in the notebook.

  Finally, he finished collecting all of the valuable pieces of the hydra and stashed them in an {astral mortar} box. Seventh summoned a {golem} to retrieve the box, and Dalex set to gathering all of the leftover hydra flesh in one place.

  “I don’t see how you intend to dispose of all this,” Yesui said, examining the growing pile of meat. “You’re not going to burn it are you? That wouldn’t be enough, and it wouldn’t stop the decay from spreading.”

  Dalex tossed the last hydra head onto the pile and dusted off his hands. There were other heads elsewhere in the forest, blown away by Yesui’s storm, but Dalex could track them down later. One thing was certain, he wasn’t going to be making a living of cutting up and selling monster materials. It was absolutely vile work.

  “Trust me,” he said, “what I have in mind will be enough. We’re all gonna want to take a step back, though.”

  Dalex led the others a hundred yards away from the pile of hydra meat. Balgoth seemed distracted and didn’t move when he told her to get to safety, so Dalex had to drag her in the basket out of the danger zone.

  When they were all at a safe distance, he summoned his fake grimoire and cast, “{Prismatic purification}.”

  A column of light—ten times thicker than the one that had killed Dalex’s first mutt and the one that had forced Castreier to retreat—shot out of the sky. It came with an explosive crack louder than any thunderclap. In a fraction of a second, the beam completely consumed the remnants of the hydra. It lingered for a few seconds, scorching the bare earth, and then cut off, leaving only a wisp of smoke.

  Nothing remained of the hydra except what was in Dalex’s {astral mortar} box. No skin, flesh, organs, or bones. All that was left was a charred hole in the ground.

  Arnaut whistled.

  “That’s some prime mange right there,” Yesui said. “Why didn’t you just do that from the start?”

  Dalex grinned. “And risk losing so many precious hydra toenails? Perish the thought.” He giggled. “But no, I really was challenging myself.”

  Yesui let out a long sigh. “Fine, I’ll admit it. You’re plenty strong. Probably strong enough to take on a dragon, but only one of the small ones.”

  Arnaut shot her a look. Even with the hero’s face still obscured by his helmet, Dalex saw the threat in that glance. He did not like having his masters threatened and made light of.

  “You’re no slouch yourself, Yesui,” Dalex said, hoping to change the subject. “That was quite the storm.” And, because he couldn’t resist poking fun at Arnaut, he added, “I bet you could give the Hero of Angars a run for his money.”

  Oddly enough, that seemed to calm Arnaut down. “Indeed,” he said, “your lexicon is impressive, Miss Yesui. And I can tell you have vast mana reserves to draw on.”

  “Flattery will get you nothing,” Yesui said, her voice a little chilly. “Neither of you.”

  “But seriously,” Dalex pressed, “you must be stronger than Dava and the rest of his party. Why does the Lodge put you behind the reception desk most of the time? Why did you let a man like Michel smack you like that?”

  Yesui scowled, probably remembering Michel’s last visit to her lodge. “I hunt when I am needed, but Lodge Mother Sarnai likes me close in case the city is attacked. Only she is stronger than I among the Batulan-bar hunters.” She paused, giving Arnaut a wary look. “And while Michel and humans like him are no threat to me in combat, it is better not to risk the ire of those that are.”

  Arnaut nodded in approval, which, considering it was his ire she was risking, bothered Dalex, but not enough for him to discount everything the hero had done that day. He had been right there with Dalex, trying to stop the anomaly and the hydra from destroying Dugan. Arnaut was annoying, but he didn’t seem like a bad guy.

  “You know, Arnaut,” Dalex said, “I might have misjudged you.”

  The hero looked his way and finally took off his helmet. His hair was soaked with sweat, plastered against the side of his face. Some blood and dirt had made its way under his helmet, streaking his delicately handsome features with red and brown.

  “I must admit,” Arnaut said, “I was not sure we could work together. While it seems true you were fighting with one hand behind your back, it took all of us working together to slay the beast.” He approached Dalex and extended a hand. “Perhaps I was wrong about you as well. I do not think I would mind you as an ally on my next monster hunt.”

  Dalex smiled and took the man’s hand. “I look forward to it.”

  “After all,” Arnaut added, dropping his helmet, “my knife slips between dragon scales.”

  Something struck Dalex in the chest. He looked down to see the blade of a knife over his heart.

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