Ch.179Elemental Eradication Operation: Execution Phase

Fighting the corrupted Water Elemental for the fourth time already.

The battle situation at the lakeside was progressing smoothly within the expected parameters.

“Arcane Alter Squads 1 and 2, commence firing!”

‘Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!’

With the Guardian Captain’s command, the Guardian units formed teams of six and attacked the Elemental from both sides.

Normally, they would have refrained from meaningless attacks on the tentacles and concentrated firepower on the slime-shaped mucus rising from the center of the lake—referred to as the “Scout Battery” for convenience in this operation—but…

“Avalest Phantasm!”

The Guardians armed with pistols and rifles were actively firing large arrow-shaped light bullets, repeatedly destroying the tentacles.

Rather than simply shooting at the mucus mass, making it swing its tentacles and then destroying them to force continuous replenishment was the faster way to deplete the Elemental’s magical power accumulated in the lake.

Of course, a smooth battle situation didn’t mean they were pouring one-sided attacks without any damage.

Facing more than 20 combatants, the Water Elemental had increased its tentacles to 10 and the frequency of its mucus attacks was incomparably higher than yesterday’s reconnaissance battle.

It seemed to have vaguely realized that we had come with the intention of finishing it off.

‘Splat’

“Argh!”

“Wounded personnel, move to the rear! Backup squad, prioritize evacuation and treatment of the wounded!”

“Yes, sir!”

When a Guardian collapsed after getting mucus splashed on his face while distracted by the tentacle attacks, four healers waiting in the rear quickly protected him and treated his wounds.

The polluted lake water had a weak acidity, but not enough to melt skin, and the toxic substances dissolved in the water weren’t an immediate threat unless excessively ingested through the mouth or nose.

Washing off the mucus with clean water, cleaning the mouth, and using detoxification magic would leave him with just some peeling on the roof of his mouth.

‘Whoosh!’

“W-Whoa!”

Due to the Scout Battery’s aggressive activity of flinging mucus in all directions, the area around the lake quickly became covered in sticky puddles.

Anyone who slipped on the accumulated mucus or got their feet tangled, stopping their movement, was likely to be caught by rapidly approaching tentacles and dragged into the water, but…

‘Slash!’

“Ugh!? Th-thanks.”

“No problem. Be careful from now on.”

Seti, who could shoot wind blades by swinging his spear, was prioritizing support to free Guardians caught by tentacles, so no one had yet been dragged into the contaminated lake.

“Fireball {Incendiary Grenade}!”

‘BOOM!!’

Phyllis’s well-timed Fireball engulfed four tentacles and the Scout Battery at once, and the completely destroyed Scout Battery began to regenerate.

Right after the Scout Battery regenerates like this, it tends to slacken its offensive as it reassesses its surroundings.

This timing is the perfect opportunity to clean up the remaining tentacles in one go.

“Now! All units, concentrate fire on the tentacles!”

With the Guardian Captain’s vigorous command, magic bullets and attack spells flew in, sweeping away the tentacles writhing on the water’s surface.

The lone Scout Battery fired mucus to keep the Guardians at bay while generating new tentacles, but since the tentacles didn’t all appear simultaneously, they were simply swept away by our party and the Guardian unit’s firepower.

After about five minutes of continuously eliminating the emerging tentacles while occasionally pouring attacks on the Scout Battery…

The Scout Battery, directly hit by Seti’s wind blade and experiencing its second sinking, no longer regenerated, and without any more tentacles extending, the lake’s surface gradually began to calm.

Mina, who had been observing the lake carefully with her goggles raised, finally announced the long-awaited victory.

“The lake’s magical reaction has decreased to natural levels! The Water Elemental is in a suspended state!”

“Guardian unit, begin installing magical devices! We’re proceeding to Phase 2 of the operation!”

Hearing Jessica’s command, the Guardian unit hurriedly gathered at the main camp, then took nets from the Ancestor’s cart and began carrying them toward the lake.

“I just thought of something—if we depleted the Elemental’s magic power through battle, is it in a dying state now?”

“No. What we’ve depleted is only the magic power the Elemental infused into the lake to control the water. It has nothing to do with the magic power of the Elemental’s main body.”

“I guess so… It would be comical if a water spirit died from exhaustion while controlling water.”

While having such conversations, reloading our magic guns, and tidying up the surroundings, the Guardians finished setting up the net and surrounded the lake in a circle.

An impossibly large net covering the 50-meter diameter lake.

When all the magical devices attached to it start operating simultaneously, this area will turn into a hot, humid sauna.

“The Guardian unit is ready! We can start anytime!”

“Then I’ll now deploy protective magic and activate the magical devices! If anyone inhales toxic steam, retreat from the operation area with backup squad members and focus on detoxification treatment!”

After shouting loudly enough for members on the opposite side of the lake to hear, Jessica activated her special protective magic as soon as she confirmed the hand signal from the Guardian Captain.

“Heat and Poison Immunity!”

A blue light mass flew from Jessica’s fingertips toward the lake, and upon reaching the center, it expanded in all directions, forming a dome large enough to cover the entire lake area.

Heat and Poison Immunity—a wide-area protective magic that grants resistance to ‘heat’ and ‘poison’ to everyone within range.

This magic, cobbled together by completely dismantling Clean Up, Dehydration, Antidote, Airy Curtain, Diamond Dust, and even Break Enchant, not only consumes massive magical power but also maintains its effect only while Jessica concentrates.

Jessica herself described this magic as “a terrible hybrid patched together like rags from lower magics due to lack of proper editing equipment,” but without it, the 24 people gathered here would have fainted from toxic steam without even getting a chance to fight the Elemental.

“Good, Pyroxite Resonance Heating Device, activate!”

As Mina remotely activated the magical devices after confirming the deployment of the protective magic, 50 round magical devices hanging at the intersections of the net lowered wires and sank beneath the surface.

The sound of water bubbling and boiling, and the hissing sound of something burning.

In less than a minute, steam began to rise from the entire lake along with intense heat.

“You can literally see the water level decreasing in real time. That’s no joke…”

“The ambient temperature around the magical devices is fixed at 220 degrees. We’re forcing evaporation regardless of the contaminated water’s thermal conductivity, so 10 minutes should be enough to finish.”

As Mina explained, the contaminated water of the 50-meter diameter lake was rapidly decreasing, like bathwater draining away.

Steam rising from the surface spread in all directions, moistening leaves and grass, while toxic substances that hadn’t fully evaporated remained like messy seaweed residue stuck to a soup bowl.

According to the Guardians, the deepest part of this lake was about 6 meters deep, so if things progressed smoothly, the lake would reveal its bottom before Jessica’s magic power ran out.

Of course, the corrupted Water Elemental wouldn’t just sit by and watch this happen.

‘SCREECH!!’

A chilling scream echoed around the lakeside in the forest.

There was no need to ask whose scream it was.

The corrupted Water Elemental seemed to want to throw the water-evaporating magical devices out of the lake, as the water—now reduced by half—began to stir and writhe viscously.

But the 50 magical devices burning pyroxite instantly turned even water controlled by the Water Elemental into steam.

The dirty residue stuck to the surfaces of the magical devices was evidence of how futile the Elemental’s resistance had been.

“It’s too late. If you wanted to spit them out, you should have done it from the start. Well, that’s why we made the net-shaped frame.”

The net spread over the lake surface wasn’t meant to trap or capture the Water Elemental, nor to press down the lake’s mucus to prevent overflow.

It was a guide to simultaneously insert 50 magical devices at regular intervals according to the lake’s shape, and a safety net to prevent the devices from being thrown out of the water before they were sufficiently heated.

Having failed to block this early on, the Water Elemental had no way to stop the 50 fully operational magical devices.

“Miss Minaret, there’s the underground water vein flowing into the lake!”

“Great, Seismic Cracker, release!”

As the lake’s water level dropped below 1/4 and the underground water vein was exposed, Mina threw the Seismic Cracker while shouting the asymmetric mass isolation release keyword.

A large amount of soil poured out from the Seismic Cracker that flew near the water vein, covering the area around it, and was gradually dried by the buried magical device.

This completely blocked any possibility of the Water Elemental escaping through the water vein.

‘SCREECH! SCREEECH!!’

“It’s coming out! Everyone prepare to fire!”

As the water level continued to drop and parts of the lake bottom began to be exposed, the corrupted Water Elemental finally abandoned the persistence of its home ground and began to materialize.

A pile of mucus that had been pooled at the bottom suddenly rose up and took human form—fascinating yet somehow unpleasant.

‘So that’s a Water Elemental.’

The corrupted Water Elemental before us clearly had the form of a naked woman, but it was difficult to perceive it as beautiful or erotic.

A bizarre form with the upper body of a woman without eyes, nose, or mouth, buried in abundant hair.

The ends of the long hair that engulfed its body had transformed into tentacles that writhed like octopus legs.

The entire being was made of murky light-green sticky mucus—truly the embodiment of a twisted slime woman from the underworld.

I don’t know about others, but according to my aesthetic sense, it was ‘impossible.’

“Water Elemental materialization confirmed! All units, commence firing!”

‘Ratatatatata!’

“Wind Slash!”

“Avalest Phantasm!”

“Piercing Incinerator {Armor-Piercing Incineration Bullet}!”

White magic bullets from all directions, attack spells from the Guardians, and Phyllis’s Piercing Incinerator.

Mina and I also contributed to the barrage by continuously firing our pistols.

The corrupted Water Elemental tried to counterattack with tentacles and mucus while enduring the attacks pouring in from all directions, but it was immediately pushed onto the defensive without showing even as much movement as during the preliminary battle.

The Water Elemental, with both physical and elemental resistance, reduces attacks by nearly 90% except for fire attributes, which are opposite to its nature.

This means that attacks other than Phyllis’s Piercing Incinerator are only exerting 1/10 of their power.

But that only matters when comparing single-hit power; in a situation where more than 20 people are pouring in surrounded attacks, such calculations become meaningless.

“Ah… uaaah…”

The water of the lake, its home ground, had already completely evaporated, and its life was being mercilessly chipped away by the relentless magic bullets.

The Elemental, collapsed on the dry lake bottom and reaching out toward somewhere, looked so desperate and pitiful that it made us, who were fighting to protect the sanctuary, feel like the villains.

I sensed that the poor Elemental’s life would end in just a moment.

“Cease fire! Everyone stop!”

An old man’s voice echoing through the operation area made everyone doubt their ears.

It was the voice of Euclid, the Elder of the Nightwood Sanctuary.

“Elder?! Why have you come here! It’s dangerous!”

The Guardian Captain rushed to the Elder who had appeared from behind the Ancestor, urging him to evacuate.

But the Elder calmly shook his head, approached the lakeside, and spoke to the Elemental that was pathetically crawling on the ground.

“I see. You just wanted to go there.”

“Elder…?”

“What do you mean by ‘there’? What’s in that direction?”

I turned my head in the direction the Elemental was reaching toward, but saw nothing special, just dense trees.

However, the elves of the Nightwood Sanctuary seemed to have realized what was there, as they began to murmur among themselves.

“While you were preparing the extermination operation, I thought about it. Why did a corrupted Elemental appear near the Spirit Tree? It wasn’t attacking the elves, nor was there any movement to invade the sanctuary. What was this Elemental trying to do?”

“Did you find the answer? What’s over there that…”

“It’s obvious. The center of the sanctuary, our Spirit Tree.”

Answering Phyllis’s question, Euclid went down to the lake bottom through the net mesh before the Guardian Captain could stop him.

Ignoring the sticky contaminants spread all around, he walked straight toward the corrupted Water Elemental.

Finally reaching the Elemental’s side, Euclid stroked its head with his wrinkled hand and spoke in a kind voice.

In clear and pleasant Arcane Words.

“{So you wanted to be clean. Even though you were blocked by the Spirit Tree’s protection and couldn’t approach any further, you wanted to somehow go there to cleanse your impurity and become a pure water spirit.}”

“Ah… aah…”

“{Of course you can. I have no intention of refusing anyone, regardless of race or purpose, as long as they mean no harm to the sanctuary.}”

“Uu… ah-“

“{In the name of Euclid Edelvainen, Elder of the Nightwood Sanctuary. I recognize you, poor water spirit, as a rightful guest of the Nightwood Sanctuary.}”

As Euclid spoke these words, the Water Elemental’s body was enveloped in light, and the light-green contaminants slowly washed away, transforming it into a transparent and clean form.

The silhouette of a woman with an octopus-like lower body remained the same, but just by not dripping stickily, it looked much more divine.

“…Is it over?”

Despite my unconsciously uttered cliché line, the Water Elemental did not become corrupted again.

Although the ending was a bit different from what we expected, the operation to subdue the corrupted Water Elemental had succeeded.