"AAAAAHHH!!!" A man built like an iron tower, wielding a gigantic ten-meter-long steel spike, leaped high into the air and drove it into the tentacle monster. The moment the spike's tip struck the creature, several boosters sprang out. Under that double force, the tentacle monster's tough hide held for less than a moment before a huge gash was torn open.
As the saying went, one needn't fear godlike opponents—only Pig Teammates... Well, perhaps the teammate had meant well... but weren't there plenty of cases where good intentions led to disaster?
In any case, aside from a few people... no, non-humans would be more accurate. Aside from the few non-humans who knew the truth behind the tentacle monster's swelling, none of the clueless onlookers thought anyone who had voluntarily crawled into the monster's body could still be alive.
Nonsense. It could swallow a person whole without even a bubble rising to the surface. Even if he hadn't died the moment he went in, after this long, he would have long since died thoroughly, wouldn't he?
In short, the steel spike forcefully plunged more than halfway into the tentacle monster's body. Then, the tentacle monster, swollen like a balloon, began to leak air.
"...This must be what the little shopkeeper calls a 'pig-like teammate,' right?" Yakumo Yukari lightly tapped her forehead with her folding fan, speaking with considerable helplessness. Everything had been going perfectly; if she had waited a little longer, she could have confirmed her suspicions. But now... looking at the tentacle monster, which had deflated by at least a tenth of its size, she did not even know how to describe it.
In a sense, the people fighting the tentacle monster below were lucky as well. If it had been the Yakumo Yukari of old, after running into something this