The ground trembled.
The clear, heavy crunch of gravel being crushed drew closer through the forest.
A massive ballista, like a savage beast, crashed into the battlefield.
Three enormous bows—two facing forward and one backward—were mounted on its wooden frame.
The bow at the very front was none other than the Giant Lightning Bow Blair had made from the remaining charred Divine Wood.
Two Giant Arrows had already been loaded side by side into the grooves.
This weapon, a ballista specially built to hunt giant beasts, had lain dormant for more than a decade since its creation. At last, it was about to serve its purpose.
Behind the wooden-wheeled beast,
more than a dozen tall Warriors spread out. Their faces were taut with bulging veins and fury. Once they had put some distance between themselves and the others, they shouted anxiously to draw the Sea Monster's attention.
The tribesmen who had rushed to their aid were Boer and the guards, who had hurried here as soon as they received the news.
However,
once they arrived,
the guards were just as shaken.
The brutal scene and thick stench of blood churned their guts.
The carnage, far beyond anything they could have imagined, shocked everyone.
But as members of the guard,
they clearly regained their composure faster than the ordinary tribesmen.
"Spread out! Use the Acid Arrows! Don't let that Sea Monster get near the ballista!"
Boer roared.
He tried to drive away his trembling and fear with that fierce shout, not wanting the guards to see his body quiver.
The scene brought back the terror of that day, when he had been young and chased across the sea by a Sea Monster.
When faced with this kind of primal struggle for survival,
the young chieftain, who had always followed the god's merciful teachings, fell far short of his father.
But Boer quickly forced himself to calm down.
He was the son of the God-Chosen.
He couldn't bring shame upon his father, much less disappoint the gods.
He and the guards shouted at the top of their lungs, buying time for the panicked tribesmen.
"Slow it down! Buy the ballista some time!"
One strange arrow after another shot through the air.
They were Acid Arrows, specially prepared and filled with the acidic fluid of Yamal Spiders.
However,
these powerful arrows were extremely costly to make.
Yamal Spiders needed a long time to produce their highly corrosive acid.
It could often be harvested only once a year.
Therefore,
only the guards possessed these precious arrows.
"Sizzle!"
When the precious Acid Arrows struck the monster's hard shell,
the people watched in delight as wisps of white smoke rose from its slick, black carapace.
"It's working! The acid is eating through its shell!"
Seeing that the Acid Arrows really worked,
the guards stopped sparing their precious ammunition and hurriedly pulled more arrows from their quivers.
They fired volley after volley of Acid Arrows without a second thought.
But the corrosion still needed time.
The Crab Sea Monster charged through the rain of arrows, barreling into the people in front of it.
With the slightest sweep of its claw, it could send someone tumbling to the ground, vomiting blood.
Humans were as fragile as blades of grass before a monster like this.
Under its savage charge, more and more people fell beneath its claws.
That made it even harder for the ballista to take aim.
With the Sea Monster moving like that,
the cumbersome ballista had no way to adjust its direction precisely, let alone aim and hit its target.
Just as the people were growing frantic,
a tall guard found courage from somewhere.
As the Giant Monster flipped a tribesman into the air, he seized the moment, gripped his stone rope, and charged forward in silence.
Before he died, the bloodied guard wrapped the stone rope around one of the Hermit Crab's giant legs, keeping it from moving.
At last, he gave the ballista a chance to aim.
Several tribesmen, drenched in sweat, worked together to turn the winch. The wooden bows tightened in unison.
A series of sounds like coarse hemp tearing rang out.
The bows had reached their limit.
"Fire!"
A wooden mallet struck the trigger.
A piercing whistle rang out.
It swept across the beach like a fierce gale.
All the people could make out with the naked eye was a dark blur.
After that blur flashed past,
the huge arrow had already sunk into the Sea Monster's shell.
A tremendous crack rang out.
The monster's shell, already weakened by the acid, was finally pierced by the arrow.
As the two huge arrows drove in,
unprecedented arcs of electricity leaped through the Sea Monster's body beneath its shattered armor. The moisture on its shell evaporated at once, and white smoke billowed upward.
"Boom!"
The Sea Monster suddenly collapsed, kicking up sand and gravel as several of its legs convulsed uncontrollably against the ground.
Cracks began spreading across its hard shell, and then whole sections caved in.
An exceptionally foul-smelling, pale yellow liquid began spurting from the shattered shell. It looked like blood.
After the flashing arcs of electricity vanished,
the struggling monster gradually stopped moving.
But the guards didn't dare stop firing their arrows for even a moment.
Only when the shell was almost bristling with arrows did Boer call them off.
"Stop!"
At Boer's command, the guards, their faces slick with cold sweat, finally ceased firing in uncertainty and gasped for breath.
The monster had stopped moving long ago.
An intensely foul-smelling, pale yellow liquid
slowly spread out from beneath its enormous fallen body.
"Did we kill a Sea Monster?!"
The guards stared at what seemed to be a dead Sea Monster. Their faces lit up with joy, but the expression had barely appeared before they reined it in and hurriedly scanned their surroundings.
From the way the boy had blown his whistle earlier, and the repeated, piercing whistle blasts now sounding along the distant shore,
it was obvious that more than one Sea Monster had landed on the island.
The dead monster was only one of them.
The Tribe had not won.
After sending the tribesmen to rescue the wounded,
Boer hurried to the boy who had first witnessed the Sea Monster's invasion. The boy stood there dazed, seemingly scared witless.
"Quick! How many of those Sea Monsters did you see? Where did the others go?"
When he learned how many Sea Monsters there were and which directions they had scattered in,
Boer's heart sank.
He looked up at the other shores, then toward the direction the boy had indicated. Unease stirred within him.
"Brother."
Before you continue