Odell Reef

From the very beginning, Ian had not cared in the slightest whether he had been reincarnated or transported through time. Nor had he felt any resistance toward the other world being a fantasy realm with psionic power.

He was an engineer, and also a steadfast materialist. That meant that upon seeing psionic power and magic, he would not think, This isn't scientific! Instead, he would think, What kind of new system would be needed to explain psionic power?

So, when he saw that humans on the Terra Continent possessed natural protective bone plates, saw giant sea serpents dozens of meters long in the ocean, learned that the forests contained giant boars as tall as a person and giant bears two stories high, and saw just now a gigantic marsh Crocodile Dragon nearly twenty meters long and six or seven stories tall—

Ian did not find any of it surprising at all.

—It was another world. Wasn't it perfectly normal for there to be giant beasts?

What existed was reasonable; that was his unshakable conviction. Even if he saw Godzilla building a nest and laying eggs beneath the sea, he would not so much as furrow his brow.

But all that calm, rational composure completely fell apart when Ian saw the full-armed combat power armor worn by Viscount Grant.

"What the hell? They can manufacture power armor, so how could their productive capacity possibly be this low?!"

Though that had been his first reaction, and though the Terra Continent's productive capacity was not actually low, Ian soon thought of no fewer than seven or eight possibilities—for example, perhaps this thing was fundamentally a kind of high-end handcrafted armor, exclusive to nobles, with no large-scale industrial system behind it; perhaps it merely looked like power armor on the surface, while actually being magical psionic equipment; or perhaps it was a relic of the Pre-Epoch Civilization, which modern Terrans could only use and repair, but could not manufacture at all...

"Right, inscriptions?"

They were extremely far apart, with a curtain of water between them. Even though Ian's eyes were far sharper than an ordinary person's due to psionic power, he could not make out the details of the distant battle. He could only hear the roars of the giant beast and thunderous crashes like a surging tide.

A realization dawned on him. "This world also has technological systems like inscriptions and alchemy... A power armor achieved across eras through inscriptions is not impossible to understand."

But now was not the time to dwell on whether a battle between power armor and a giant beast was strange.

Outside the window, the battle between Viscount Grant and the Great Shaman had already reached a white-hot stage.

Both sides' attacks could easily tear apart streets and destroy houses. In just a few seconds, they had blasted the plaza at the city center into fragments. As expected of Sublimators two major ranks above him, an apprentice who had only begun cultivating two months ago, and who had already begun nurturing their souls.

Ian could see that the gigantic Crocodile Dragon had no blind spots. Under the Great Shaman's control, its three pairs of eyes could sweep everything around its body without the slightest gap. Even Viscount Grant, clad in power armor with vastly enhanced mobility, found it difficult to defeat his opponent through high-speed movement.

The Viscount had naturally already noticed the Great Shaman, protected atop the Crocodile Dragon's head amid its crown of spines. But leaving aside whether the Great Shaman's human form was already entirely useless, his consciousness had long since merged into the Crocodile Dragon's brain. Even if that spot truly was a weak point, it would be difficult to strike it accurately.

"You actually managed to return at once. I truly did not expect that you would be so irrational—giving up the chance to wipe out my main force, only to return and reinforce this city of yours that has already been half destroyed."

The decrepit human form chuckled sharply, mocking his enemy's "decisiveness." "Where are your troops? The soldiers you abandoned may well be weeping as my tribe's warriors encircle and annihilate them."

"Have you forgotten Bishop Light's Embrace?"

The Viscount could naturally hear his enemy's taunts, and knew that the other wanted to disrupt his movements with words and create an opening.

But he answered with a cold laugh instead. "You knew the old bishop was softhearted and could not bring himself to strike ordinary people, and that he was held up in other colonies by unrest created by your spies. That was why you dared launch such a brazen surprise attack within the city?"

"But you seem to have forgotten that I am merely a Viscount of the Empire, not a supreme leader like you. Half a month ago, I requested assistance from the capital. They could not reach Harrison Port, but suppressing the colonies in the mountains was effortless."

"Bishop Light's Embrace, having freed himself, arrived just in time. He learned that you had unleashed a massacre against civilians, and for once, he has chosen to act of his own accord. He is commanding the troops in Anmore Town in my stead."

Viscount Grant gloated, "The seven shamans and the strongest chieftains are all there. The ones following you are all newcomers... Those old relics might manage against others, but before His Excellency the Bishop, they have no chance of victory!"

Seeing the Crocodile Dragon hesitate slightly and sensing his opponent's wavering, the Viscount immediately controlled his armor to spray water mist and move into position. He swung his sword, slashing out a water blade toward the Crocodile Dragon's flank—the superheated steam expanded and exploded, like a bomb propelling it from behind. Driven by such force, the razor-sharp liquid blade could easily sever metal pillars more than ten centimeters thick.

But the Great Shaman, having reacted, controlled the Crocodile Dragon to turn its head and meet the water blade with its hardest crown of spines, instantly shattering it.

"Damn it."

The Viscount could not help frowning at the sight.

Back then, the Redwood Natives had four great totem spirits: Mountain Tide, Drumwave, Tide Surge, Tree Sea, and Mist Nest... Of them, the Mountain Tide Spirit was the marsh Crocodile Dragon before him. The Drumwave and Tide Surge Spirits were two abyssal giant eels deep within Odell Reef, regarded as one entity, while the Tree Sea Spirit was the Great Redwood Forest Sea itself.

As for the Mist Nest Spirit, the fifth among the four great totem spirits, it was a giant Rotshadow Spider located deep within the miasma region of the Great Redwood Forest Sea. It was also the only totem spirit slain by his father—old Viscount Grant—when the Empire's pioneering corps built the town.

But old Viscount Grant had fought several totem spirits at once and suffered grievous injuries. More than half of his armor had been damaged, while the matching Sublimation weapon, the Condensed Crystal Sword, had been corroded and broken by the Mist Nest Spirit's poisonous vapor. As a result, the current Viscount lacked a weapon and could not condense his water blades into spirit-matter ice, transforming them into solid ice blades. Their killing power was greatly reduced.

Not to mention that his combat skills truly did not match those of his father, who had fought his way out of the sea of blood at Mistveil Port.

But even so, Viscount Grant remained confident of victory in this battle.

The aether armament Tidebreaker he wore possessed many functions and weapons. One of them was an accelerator that enhanced his killing power—as the Viscount fed in Origin Matter and drove the Aether Furnace Core to accelerate, the water mist surrounding him was absorbed by the armor, then accelerated and ejected from the nozzles in the centers of his palms.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Under the influence of Origin Matter, the hypervelocity water cannons were not vaporized by the intense heat. Instead, they struck the Crocodile Dragon and the streets solidly, blasting away all mud and rock within a radius of seven or eight meters. The tremendous impacts caused the Crocodile Dragon pain as well. Even with the Great Shaman forcibly suppressing it, it still instinctively let out agonized howls.

But water cannons alone could not inflict fatal damage on the Crocodile Dragon—and acceleration mode also consumed the aether armament's reserves. The battle had become a contest of whether the Crocodile Dragon had more stamina, or whether the armor and Viscount Grant had more energy.

The storm continued. The pale-blue aether armament wrestled with the giant beast, and only Sublimators could join a battle amid such severe interference.

"Teacher isn't here. He probably has something more important to deal with."

With his brow tightly furrowed, Ian turned to look at the endlessly churning open sea. The massive pillar of clouds had already begun moving southwest, but there was still a long time before the storm ended.

Though he held a wood-splitting axe capable of easily cutting off an ordinary native's head, it felt utterly useless in his hands at this moment. "Killing a few natives is one thing, but how am I supposed to deal with a monster this huge?"

At this very moment.

In the distant sea south of Harrison Port, near Odell Reef.

Hilliard stood upon the mirrorlike surface of the water. A faint golden radiance of Origin Matter flowed around him, while a layer of translucent crystalline matter covered his body, indestructible and unbreakable.