The downed wyvern hadn’t ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) taken major injuries.
It rolled, corrected its posture, and tried to get up, but—
“‘This is a trap-kill!’”
“That means something else.”
The mysterious technique Asahi had been delightedly calling a long-range strike—another foreleg slam—hammered the wyvern back into the ground.
If that foreleg’s raw muscle power was being transmitted directly into the wyvern—
“The wyvern appears to have lost its defensive membrane.”
Pinned to the earth, the wyvern thrashed its neck in visible distress. But with that unknown force and the ground pressing in, there was nowhere to escape.
With a state that looked like it should be accompanied by a CREAK-CREAK sound, the wyvern sank into the soil. The surrounding earth was compressing under a load it couldn’t withstand.
“That long-range strike looks like it can continuously generate sustained load!”
The dent in the ground was roughly the same size as <The Reflector>’s planted foreleg. The wyvern struggled at the center, but with a body structure that seemed optimized for flight—lightweight by design—breaking free looked impossible.
“The wyvern’s overall toughness—its degree of reinforcement—was on par with <Rein Kroin>, but the skin was thin to begin with, there wasn’t much muscle, the bones had lots of hollow space... structurally, it was quite fragile. It likely isn’t very strong against that kind of pressure!”
Even as Asahi explained, the wyvern seemed to be taking damage.
Foam spilled from its mouth, and its resisting motions had turned into spasms without anyone noticing when.
Then the ground caved in with a particularly deep plunge.
And the wyvern went completely still.
“From image analysis, we estimate severe internal damage occurred inside the wyvern. The ribs and spine likely fractured.”
“Ugh.”
“Haaah. Some insane monster just showed up out of nowhere! What do we even do about this?!!”
Meanwhile, the wyvern that had been blown away by the spatial blast was in a tragic state.
Maybe it had taken the full force of the explosion—its neck and wings were bent at impossible angles as it mowed through trees and tumbled across the forest.
“Based on the explosive force calculated from the footage, I do not believe it should be able to penetrate the wyvern’s defensive membrane.”
At <Ringo>’s analysis, Asahi—still on the other end of the line—shook her head with a weary look.
“It’s a magical attack. It wouldn’t be strange at all for it to pierce the defensive membrane with ease! Looks like we really do need to throw magic at magic!”
“Then that long-range strike stomping attack didn’t have magic riding on it?”
“Who knows. We haven’t made any progress analyzing magic at all, so I can’t say—but it might simply be transmitting force. Spatial blast has a property that destroys barriers mixed into it at the same time, but long-range strike might purely transmit force, for example.”
Now that she put it that way, it did fit. With the long-range strike and stomp, the wyvern’s defensive membrane had been working. But with the spatial blast, that light pattern hadn’t been confirmed.
“<The Reflector> has resumed movement.”
Perhaps confirming both hostile wyverns had been finished, <The Reflector> began to move—slowly. It started walking toward the wyvern it had crushed from long range.
It looked extremely slow, but its size was absurd.
With a single step, the body advanced dozens of meters. The current footfalls were leisurely, but turtles as living creatures can be surprisingly fast on their feet. There was more than enough possibility that this <Spirit Turtle> species could move at high speed.
“Checking for signs of life—or feeding! But I don’t think it would bother checking, so it’s probably feeding!”
While Asahi kept up her excited live commentary, <The Reflector> reached the wyvern. It extended that long neck and bit into the wyvern’s corpse.
“It’s just... eating it, normally.”
“Haa. So even at that size, it still needs to feed. We still don’t really understand how it maintains vital functions, but at minimum, it needs some kind of nutrients. I mean, unless it’s creating something from nothing, or controlling nuclear fusion or fission reactions, it can’t build a body without taking in elements from outside.”
Given its body size and movement, the amount of food needed to sustain its life could be estimated to some extent. Considering <The Reflector> had been almost completely inactive for at least decades, the ecology of hunting prey only very rarely and otherwise staying still would make sense from a calorie conservation standpoint.
But could something survive in the comparatively harsh environment of land with only minimal intake?
“Even so, this time it’s two wyverns! Relative to size, wouldn’t that be a plenty large enough meal!?”
“I’d really like it not to start moving around actively after eating a full meal...”
“I don’t know about that! But considering it was moving around energetically right after waking up, it feels like the hunting style is ‘sit and wait’!”
“Based on the surrounding vegetation, it can be inferred it had not moved from that location for at least around forty years. If it moved, it would have knocked down the surrounding trees.”
The area around where <The Reflector> had been sleeping—what Akane had pulled up—showed trees that had grown in properly. If so, then at minimum, enough time had passed for solid trees to grow.
“Big Sis. It’s tearing that wyvern apart as it eats. When we investigated, it was strong enough that we needed a high-convergence laser cutter...”
As Ichigo said, <The Reflector> looked to be ripping off chunks of the wyvern from one end and eating it.
A wyvern’s body—under the influence of that mysterious mineral, provisional designation <Magic Stone>—had high resistance to structural destruction.
If it was chewing through it like that, did it simply have an extraordinarily tough jaw?
“Could be an ability that nullifies the structural reinforcement from <Magic Stone>.”
It was true that once something was separated, it had been observed to slip out from under <Magic Stone>’s influence. If it could nullify that reinforcement through some sort of magic-fantasy mechanism, it could bite clean through with ease.
As they watched, <The Reflector> finished eating one wyvern in its entirety.
Then it started moving again. This time, it lumbered toward the individual it had finished with the spatial blast.
Naturally, the forest was being leveled under that gigantic mass. Along <The Reflector>’s route, every tree was knocked down.
“So it’s going to eat the other one whole, too.”
“It eats a lot!”
The wyvern’s estimated weight was around 2,000 tons. But <The Reflector>’s estimated weight was 470,000 tons, so it could probably put that much into its stomach.
Even assuming 4,000 tons for two, it was less than one percent of body weight. If someone said, “A 180-kilogram tortoise ate 1 kilogram of food,” that would feel about right. If anything, it was on the low side.
Of course, what it was eating was an animal—wyvern. Compared to a herbivorous land tortoise, that was high-calorie.
“I mean... this turtle’s a carnivore?”
◇◇◇◇
The roar <The Reflector> released was observed even in towns and villages more than a hundred kilometers away. That was the level of sound pressure involved.
At the mysterious sound echoing from deep within <Demon Forest>, the residents—and especially the clerics stationed there to govern—were on extremely high alert. Information that the Kingdom of Reidia had been annihilated by monsters had been properly transmitted to the villages and towns around <Demon Forest>.
The cleric-soldiers set strict security posture, and sensing that atmosphere, the residents also tended to shut themselves inside their homes.
And that change wasn’t limited to the clerics and residents.
<The Fenrir> male parent <Froze> and female parent <Yarn>—whose territory centered around the former capital region of the Kingdom of Reidia—had begun moving restlessly as well.
They had sensed the presence of a powerful enemy and heightened their vigilance, most likely.
If <The Reflector> was carnivorous, then carelessly stepping into the detection range of that threat organism could make even this <Fenrir> parent pair into prey.
