Kamiya was spared. Any more pain and the tentacle would have crushed him, it had squeezed him try anyway, the electricity from the previous attack was still left in the tentacle and that flowed to Kamiya's body.
Hitori was leaning on the shore but the katana had sunk into the water and so was the A-Grade monster they had killed.
Kamiya closed his eyes and let his body fall back without caring. He was low on stamina and energy, he had mana, but he could not free himself from the tentacle. He believed Hitori would cut the tentacle and free him.
Suddenly, the tentacle around his abdomen tightened, it squeezed the life out of him. He opened his mouth to scream but no voice came, at least he could not hear his own voice.
An octopus's tentacle moves for an hour after being chopped off, and a Kraken's tentacle has neurons in it that allow the tentacle to move on its own with any signal from Kraken's brain.
The tentacles moved on their own, still trying to kill Kamiya even after it was chopped. Hitori had not realized it. The white dragon behind them paused when he realized they had killed the monster.
If they killed Kraken, they must be someone, it thought, I should hurry.
So it opened its mouth to release the freezing wave, it would freeze Hitori and Kamiya, making things easy for the white dragon to eat them peacefully later, and preserve them for days, too.
Hitori raised his hand over the water. He grunted, "Levitate!" Nothing happened. He could not pull shit out of the river.
Then Hitori brought his hand close to the water, almost touching it, still aware of the living tentacles. He heard a bubble from the water. He opened his eyes and found waves in the water.
He leaned further and dipped his hand in the water. "Levita—" It was not levitating that pulled the katana out of the water, it was the mana connection.
Water splashed and fell on Hitori, it was cold, definitely cold, but not that kind of cold he felt around his neck. Perhaps the tentacle had leaped out of the water but when he felt cold bone around his hand, it knew it was the katana.
As if he had a magnet in his palm, the katana's handle jumped out of the water and stuck to his palm, like Thor's hammer.
The impact was so great it pushed Hitori to his back and away from the river. The water had washed the blood from the blade.
He pushed against the snow and pulled the red blade in the air, it was glowing! He found what was glowing, not the blade, but the ancient red dragon's core.
The katana's tsuba (or guard) was forged from the dragon's core, which means it carried the dragon's mana.
He turned on the ground and did not bother around the snow sticking to his body. He froze. Kamiya was dying, the tentacle was killing him, and he was already unconscious.
Hitori turned the katana upside down and punctured the tentacle with the katana's blade, it fell into two. Hitori cut the tentacle into six to seven parts and he finally freed Kamiya.
Hitori removed his hand from the handle, then he felt a tight string around his wrist. He found the katana's chain had coiled around Hitori's wrist, refusing from letting go.
Hitori drew his wand and leaned over Kamiya. He was breathing, it was low, but he was breathing. "Iyashi!" Hitori cast the healing charm. God's Blessing.
The white half-dragon froze in the middle. He released his breath but did not it could not reach Hitori because it paused midway.
His jaws clamped together, closing its mouth, and it gulped. Its eyes were frozen on only one thing… the red blade on the ground beside Hitori. It was human prey in a few years, its best chance.
It grabbed the tree on the side and crunched it halfway– almost breaking the trunk. It lifted its leg and took a step forward, then it could not bring itself to take another step forward.
The claw on the trunk started trembling. 'No wonder…' it thought in Draconic language, 'they killed Kraken's offspring. Red Dragon… Ancient… its mana…'
Kamiya coughed. Hitori moved his wand and stepped back. "A-Are you okay?" he asked.
Kamiya coughed, grabbed his stomach, and reached his hand for Hitori. He held it and pulled him to his butt.
"Take it easy."
"Yeah…" Kamiya said, "I am good. My abdomen hurts, it will for days probably."
"No, we will take you to the healer lady, she will help you." Hitori got to his feet, still squatting, and grabbed the katana.
The dragon shuddered. It turned on instinct and ran into the forest, crushing the leaves and snow under its feet.
Hitori dropped the katana, grabbed it again, and threw a look behind. He heard the leaves crush, someone was running in the forest. He tried to listen harder, but the sound got weak as time passed, and the person was running away from them.
He sighed and pulled the katana to his chest. 'How do I resize it?'
"What is that…?" Kamiya pointed at the katana and frowned.
Hitori glanced at him and smiled. "My weapon. It has an ancient red dragon's core."
Kamiya was unaware of an ancient dragon's power, especially a red dragon's power. So he could not imagine its power, he could not compare the power of a wyrm dragon to an adult dragon to an ancient dragon.
"The katana that saved us today."
All Kamiya could do was nod. "The octopus monster?" he asked, "where is it?"
"It is dead, do not worry."
"Its tentacles are not…" he grabbed Hitori and stood straight, he had trouble walking, he needed to tighten his abdomen to walk straight, and that hurt.
The half white-dragon grabbed its tail and ran through the forest. It admitted to itself now, "Scared! Scared! Dragon Slayer! The human has a Dragon Slayer!"
Its language sounded like a reptile's hiss. Only the adult and ancient dragons could speak the human language (the language of the region they rule), but the half-dragons and wyrm spoke their language only.
"Papa, gotta report Papa. Got to!" it said to itself.
The air swirled above the dragon. It recognized it when the leaves and snow on the ground lifted off the ground and swirled into a tornado. The dragon stopped and took a step back.
It spread its arms. It moved its finger through the dagger's leather grip on the handle. When the grip was perfect, it drew the dagger.
"Who?" it asked in dragon language: Draconic. No reply.
Then it sniffed a smell. With the smell of a human, it smiled and released its guard. 'I a half-dragon, I am not scared!'
It was like the lion in the herd of ships which had forgotten its identity. It had the humanoid body of its humanoid mother and the skills of its pride dragon father. It had nothing to fear, especially not a human—
It closed its mouth and stepped back when it sensed the human's mana. It was coming from all over, it was feeling the chills down its spine.
The dust in front of it cleared, and the leaves settled along with the snow particles. The dragon was ready for a fight, a human can not scare it.
His white hair was blowing back due to the air. It could not suppress its happiness when he saw the white half-dragon. Such a beautiful color and such a beautiful creature. He smiled, his white teeth glowed in the dark, and its pale grey eyes met with the white dragon's deep white eyes.
Then in its rusty voice, the man said in Draconic, "I like your scales, it will add grace to my room. I will take it from you."
Jiyara could not watch the destruction, he lowered his head and closed his eyes. His junior was looking at the radar. He frowned.
"Sir, you got to take a look at this."
Jiyara sighed and raised his head. "I do not want to see them die… it hurts—" his eyes fell on the radar and tried to pop out, "impossible!" he exclaimed.
The teens were meters away from the partition, they had moved from their spot in the hope of getting out of the forest, they were taking the way back, this time, they were on the way.
Senso would reach the site in a few seconds. He had missed the teens by tens of meters. To his shock, the white dragon had retreated, it was further deep into the forest, the area no one was allowed without a team– the place where the dangerous monsters had built their lairs. A few dragons dwelled in the lairs, too.
"And… am I seeing things or is the white glow fading?"
Jiyara acted on his junior's words, he zoomed into the dot. To his surprise, the white dragon was losing mana indeed. Something was killing it, definitely not a human. Jiyara knew.
"Jiyara, come in…" Senso's voice was calm and suspicious, "come in…"
"Y-yes, I know," Jiyara said, "the teens have left, they are heading back, you may head back, too..."
"Are they safe?"
"They are. And they killed the Kraken."
"And the dragon?"
"It re… retreated. And now it is fighting something… invisible… I do not know, I can see nothing but only the white dot fading."
"Fading? Because the dragon is heading to its lair where your radar can not reach?"
"It is not moving, though… you are right, sir, it might be my radar acting up."
"Atama-sensei?"
"Still there," Jiyara told after checking on Atama's position. "I suggest you come back and check on him on the way."
"Alright. I am on my way back. Over."
At the science academy's back, Onogi and Kuzu had come out from the back door. After walking for a few meters they were now standing in front of the electric fence– the border.
"So…" Onogi said, "what happened to your hitmen?"
Kuzu sighed, he was cutting off the power of the fence with a device somewhat like a wire cutter. "The elder brother turned into a dark wizard out of nowhere and disappeared into thin air. And the younger brother refused, he was scared. He is eighteen, after all, any eighteen-year teen would freak out to find his scientist brother using dark magic, pass through walls, and act psychopathic."
"You said he was already a psychopath."
"No, I mean, yes, but a psychopath at the limit, this version is out of limits."
"What happened actually?" Onogi pulled a cable and threw it over the fence. It caused a short circuit and defused the electricity in the fence.
Then Kuzu leaned forward to cut the wires. "I do not know… it was too sudden and your old friends interrupted again, we could not pass through the door."
Onogi looked at the cloudy sky. It was midday yet it was dark– pleasant darkness, the weather introverts, and heartbroken crave for.
"Then what?" Onogi said. "Was he possed by a dark wizard's ghost?"
"That is the only possible explanation," he looked at Onogi, "even for a scientist like me, I would bet a hundred thousand yen to believe this theory."
Kuzu snapped one metal cable, the other snapped, and a domino caused the cables to snap like a burning piece of paper.
The domino effect stopped at the two pillars at the end, but it created a wide-ass pathway to the Forest of Doom (as the scientists called it), or the Forbidden Forest.
They exchanged glances. "He must be waiting," Kuzu said.
"Where did you say he was meeting us?" Onogi asked.
"Uh… Tengoku said he was already in the prefecture so he would sneak into the forest and meet us near the partition."
They took a step. They walked out of the border. "We are out…"
"We are…" Onogi nodded. "Now…" He fired the boosters in his shoes. "Now, now…"
Kuzu activated the nitro booster at the back of his ankles.
They vanished from the border, leaving the leaves on fire only for the snow and dampness to extinguish it a minute later. They glided through the snow, the partition was only a hundred meters away.
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