{Author's Note}
Hey guys! Got my inspiration back, and was finally able to write the encounter with the Kraken! It was fun for me to write, and I'm hoping that I can also write the next chapter fairly quickly.
In other news, while browsing the comments on other people's stories on this site, I encountered a meme that perfectly described how I feel about people telling me that they are dropping this story because of this or that reason. I'll be attaching it to this paragraph so you can see the beauty of this.
Another thing that I've discovered is that, contrary to how I've felt before, I seem to be gaining power from any negative comments or reviews I'm receiving, specifically the ones centered around Chapters 12, 13, and 19. I am becoming stronger, and you assholes are only adding fuel to my rise in strength. Keep them coming, you little comment gremlins.
I DARE you.
Anyway...ON WITH THE STORY!
***
Unsurprisingly, no other monsters halted their descent to the sea floor after Kevin's brutal treatment of both the Jellyfish Girl and Sea Anemone Girl. Apparently, blowing up the former and slicing off a limb of the latter had left an impression on the few monster girls who'd seen fit to spy on the duo as they descended. More specifically, it encouraged them to stay the hell away from the psychopath who did it all without batting an eyelash.
This included an Anglerfish Girl who would've swam toward them if she hadn't sensed the massive magical signature coming from Kevin. She may be blind, but all of her other senses were working perfectly, and she was absolutely certain that whatever this creature was that was swimming along the magical path, it was responsible for the enormous explosion that shook the ocean an hour ago. So, she turned her fish body to the side and swam as fast as she could out of the creature's path.
With no more monster girls foolish enough to slow them down, the duo reached the Southern Sea Temple in record time. The structure was made of stone, marble, and other materials that were all kept in perfect condition, as opposed to the 'sunken ruins' aesthetic Kevin had been expecting. The pillars, statues, and carvings on the walls looked as if they were regularly scrubbed clean, showing no signs of algae, coral, or other sedentary aquatic life that would usually settle on sunken structures.
"it's a lot cleaner than I expected," the still-female Galveon commented as she continued to propel herself through the massive entryway.
Alice raised an eyebrow. "What were you expecting?"
"An ancient-looking structure with crumbling walls, cracked floors, and a multitude of non-monstrous sea creatures making their homes in the wreckage."
"…really?" the Monster Lord questioned. "What kind of Queen, let alone any self-respecting person, would choose to live in conditions like that?"
"The kind you would find in just about any book that includes an underwater temple," Kevin replied, her voice calm and emotionless.
Alice couldn't refute that logic. Her own experience with reading the various novels in her castle's library had colored her expectations of the world a lot when she was younger, but she learned later on that life was often much less romanticized and/or dramatic. She knew for a fact that the Queen of the Southern Sea had a whole team of monsters whose sole purpose was to make sure her temple never reached any level of decay.
"What kind of monster is the Queen?" the metal girl asked.
The lamia raised her hand to her chin in contemplation. "I believe the Queen who rules the Southern Sea is from the Kraken family. I left the governance of this part of the ocean completely up to her."
"She must be quite competent for you to give her so much freedom."
"…" Alice was silent for a moment as she remembered her last meeting with the giant monster girl. "I'll let you see for yourself." She then proceeded to pull a shellfish out of her pocket space and eat it, indicating that she refused to say any more.
They continued to make their way through the temple until they reached a giant hall at the very body of the structure. The pillars and statues decorating it were more detailed and extravagant, but were also widely spaced to either side, leaving a very large path to the end where a massive monster…stood? Floated? Sat? With the way her tentacles held her upright while simultaneously bobbing up and down, it was hard to tell.
The Kraken reminded Kevin a little of the Jellyfish Girl, only on a much larger scale. She seemed to have two types of tentacles: giant blunt-tipped ones that served as the equivalent of her legs, and smaller ones ending in gentle points that came down from her head like hair. Her skin was pale, her expression mostly blank, and she was adorned with golden jewelry befitting a monster of her station.
[Kraken – Queen of the Southern Sea]
[Type: Water]
Confirmation that his current evolution wasn't going to have an advantage in this confrontation was enough to prompt Kevin to revert back to his Eevee form. He was somewhat pleased by the fact that the Galveon form wasn't as personally-traumatizing as his Sylveon evolution had been. The emotionless state he'd been subjected to was actually pleasant when compared to the state of irritation he seemed to maintain the majority of the time nowadays.
Unfortunately, he couldn't reminisce over the bliss of not having to feel anything for long, as there was a still-blank-faced Queen-Class monster in the room waiting for him to say something.
"Let's get this out of the way," he mumbled to himself, before directly addressing her. "So, you're the Queen of the Southern Sea?"
"…Yes, I am," she replied, her smooth voice carrying almost no emotion. "I am entrusted by the Monster Lord to rule over these southern seas. And what might you be? When you entered, you gave off the aura of one of the Four Spirits, and yet now you look and feel like a human male with the ears and tail of a kitsune. It's…confusing."
The Eevee sighed. "As much fun as having THAT conversation right now would be, I'm here for something else. I was sent by –"
The Kraken's eyes instantly narrowed. "Sent? So, you're not here of your own accord? Are you a Hero, sent by the church to steal the orb in this temple?!"
"…what?" It was Kevin's turn to be confused. "No, I'm not a Hero. What herculean leap in logic made you come to that conclusion?"
His reply didn't have the results he was hoping for. "Whether you're a hero or not, it's all the same. You must have come to steal the orb! But I shall never hand it over!"
"What the hell are you talking –"
"Silence! If you want the orb, you will have to defeat me first!" the Kraken declared, taking a fighting stance.
Silence hung in the air as the teenager turned to stare at Alice, not entirely believing what was going on. "Is this really happening? Did you really appoint someone this stupid to rule an entire ocean?"
The Monster Lord was completely unphased. "She is a competent ruler…most of the time. The Kraken family is not exactly known for their situational awareness, but they are powerful enough that no other monster would be willing to contest them."
"You do know that if I have to fight her because of a misunderstanding, I won't stop beating her even if she somehow realizes that she made a mistake…right?"
"I have no problems with you punishing my subordinates for their idiotic actions."
Kevin nodded. "Good to see you're still reasonable." He then turned back to the Kraken. "I will only say this one more time: I am not here for whatever this orb –"
"I will not accept your lies!" The Queen interrupted, refusing to talk any further. She followed up her declaration by launching two of her leg-tentacles at Kevin, trying to quickly restrain him.
Fortunately, he was able to use the Water control he'd regained upon reverting to quickly swim out of her reach. "…you know what? Fine," the Eevee growled, more than a little irked that he was interrupted AGAIN. "Screw the marriage pledge. I'm going to beat you half to death and rip your tentacles off."
The Kraken paused for a second upon hearing him say that. "What did you say? A marriage pledge?"
"Yeah, but it's too late, dumbass!" Kevin quickly navigated through the Settings menu with his mind and turned off the [Seal Enemies] function. "You attacked me without provocation, so you forfeit the right to have ANY functional limbs for the foreseeable future."
With that said, he initiated his second transformation of the day. Any onlooker would've likely expected him to don his Vaporeon evolution, but he wanted to save that for if things really got out of hand. Thus, he had a choice to make between Leafeon and Jolteon. Since neither of the forms that would be super effective against a Water Type opponent were exempted from the Downgrade update, Kevin decided on the one that was less likely to let the Kraken off easy if she were to surrender for some reason.
The light of evolution died down to reveal the teenager in his Jolteon form, which thankfully hadn't been gender swapped by the Downgrade. A hyper-happy smile cemented itself on his face as he practically vibrated in place. "Oooooooh yeah!" he grinned sadistically; his happiness slightly twisted by the anger he'd felt before evolving. "This is going to be so much fun!"
Having sensed the Elemental aura rolling off him when he'd first entered the room, as a girl at the time, the Kraken wasn't put off by the power level of the teenager skyrocketing again. What did catch her attention was that, unlike the Four Spirits level power he was putting out before, at this point in time he was exactly even with her own power level. It was still intimidating, but not as much as if he'd reverted back to the other mechanical form.
By now, having heard him mention the marriage pledge, she understood well that she had jumped the gun. Thinking back, he hadn't said anything about the orb or being a Hero from the Church of Ilias. She'd just assumed that he was here to steal it when he said he was sent there by someone, and reacted as if he was an enemy while ignoring his words.
"Wait!" she said, holding her hands up in a placating gesture. "If this is a misunderstanding and you're here about a marriage pledge, then we don't need to –"
She was cut off when the boy, seemingly ignoring the water that SHOULD have slowed him down, zipped past her, only to stop some distance behind her. Pain erupted from her head as one of her hair-tentacles was severed as he passed by, the stump of it profusely bleeding into the surrounding ocean. Upon looking at him, she saw her missing tentacle held firmly between his razor-sharp sparking teeth.
[Thunder Fang – Electric Type Move]
[Description: The user bites with electrified fangs. This may also make the target flinch or leave it with paralysis.]
The Move didn't cause flinching or paralysis in the Kraken, but it did give her an idea of exactly what kind of enemy she was facing. Him telling her he was going to rip her tentacles off had gone from a boastful threat to a very real possibility if she didn't regain control of the situation. Unfortunately for her, she quickly came to the conclusion that the tables had officially been reversed, with her trying to talk him down from attacking and him ignoring everything she had to say. Unlike before, though, whereas she was more likely to violate him sexually then let him go later, a gut feeling told her that this boy wasn't going to stop until she was, as he had put it earlier, "beaten half to death."
In the time it took for her to come to that conclusion, the Jolteon was already preparing his next move. Launching himself toward her, he readied two Moves. The first, [Electrify], which he'd previously used in his fight against the Harpy Queen, settled around his right fist, which he was leading his charge with. The other, however, enveloped his entire body in lightning that electrified the water around him. Although, the second move had a nasty side effect of causing electrical burns to appear almost all over his body.
[Volt Tackle – Electric Type Move]
[Description: The user electrifies themselves and charges the target. It also damages the user quite a lot. This may leave the target with paralysis.]
It took a split second for his fist to strike her jaw, which didn't hit as hard as it would've if they weren't underwater, but still carried the electrical charge that immediately diffused into her body, causing damage along the way. Instead of letting the momentum dissipate with the impact, he continued forward, allowing his body to collide with her human half and let loose the rest of his accumulated electricity.
While neither attack moved her from where she was resting/floating, on account of how utterly massive she was, the lightning suddenly flowing through every inch of her body did cause her to cry out in pain. Never before had she been subjected to the sheer agony of being electrified, what with her living underwater and any such attacks having an equal chance of harming her opponent, so she was unprepared for the degree of pain she was being subjected to. It took all of her willpower just to wrap one of her leg-tentacles around him and throw him away from her.
Fortunately for the teenager, the electricity coursing through her veins made her grip on him more than slightly stronger, which counted as an attack as far as his powers were concerned. As such, the Electric Element that was suddenly added to it healed up half of his self-inflicted wounds…before he was propelled face-first into one of the stone pillars.
The Kraken took a moment to recover before quickly focusing on the also-recovering teenager who, despite having been smashed THROUGH one of her pillars, hadn't lost the manic grin on his face. If anything, he looked like he was somehow MORE excited about bringing the Queen untold amounts of pain.
Not eager to let him have the next move, she lashed out with four of her leg-tentacles and restrained both his arms and legs, making sure to avoid touching his hands as she didn't want a nasty shock. She brought him back up to eye level, and decided to try talking to him again. "Now that you've had your revenge, are you willing to accept my apology for the misunderstanding?"
Contrary to her expectations, the sheer glee in his eyes brightened even further. "Absolutely not! This doesn't end until all of your tentacles are severed and you're half dead at my feet!"
He wasted no time in following up this statement with yet ANOTHER discharge of electricity which, due to her holding him still, made its way through her four tentacles and to the reset of her body. However, this one didn't cause any pain. Instead, it locked up almost every nerve in her body, setting aside those necessary for keeping her internal organs functional, rendering her completely immobile as she collapsed in a heap on the floor.
[Thunder Wave – Electric Type Move]
[Description: The user launches a weak jolt of electricity that paralyzes the target.]
Having completely incapacitated his opponent, the hyperactive teen gently floated down to the stone floor to stand next to her. "Now that you have no means of fighting back," he began, shifting back to his Eevee form. "I can properly show you the consequences of your stupidity."
Kevin then held his hand up to show his enemy what was going to happen next. From his fingers, five incredibly sharp claws extended, gleaming menacingly in the dull light of the room. The question of how dangerous they actually were was answered shortly when he lashed out with them, completely severing it in one swipe. Blood gushed from the wound, and the Kraken cried out in pain, unable to even try moving her remaining tentacles out of his reach.
[Scratch – Normal Type Move]
[Description: Hard, pointed, and sharp claws rake the foe to inflict damage]
"Two down," Kevin nodded, floating over to another of the motionless appendages. "A bunch more to go."
Seeing no other choice for her own survival, the Queen of the Southern Sea decided that she had no other choice than to activate the most powerful magic spell she knew. Luckily, it didn't require her to be capable of moving. "Aqua Pentagram!" she shouted.
Water swirled around her, with some of the currents glowing to form a pentagram on the ground. From the glowing lines rose a barrier that stopped Kevin in his tracks. He tried striking it with his sharpened claws, but the attack simply bounced off the wall of light.
"This is the Aqua Pentagram," the downed Kraken informed him. "An absolute defense made out of water."
The Eevee stared at the lines on the ground, then moved his unimpressed gaze back over to her. "So, let me see if I have this right: you were smart enough to set up a complex magical formation in preparation for if someone ever attacked this temple, but were somehow too stupid to let me get through a single sentence without jumping to conclusions and attacking me. Is that right?"
If they hadn't been underwater, a river of nervous sweat would've been pouring down the back of the Kraken's neck. "Um…I…uh…"
Growling, Kevin reached behind him and pulled his backpack off his back. "I was planning on just crippling you for your stupidity, as I know for a fact that you monsters have advanced healing magic that would eventually bring you back to full strength. Stupidity should be painful, after all, and you've apparently gone long enough without being taught that lesson. But with the proof that you actually CAN be intelligent, but for some reason chose this interaction to let your inner dumbass run free, I think it's best to just kill you now and remove you completely for the gene pool. Alice can find another monster to be the Queen of the Southern Sea, for all I care."
Dread settled in the pit of the monster girl's stomach, but she kept her strong outer disposition. "How do you expect to get through my Aqua Pentagram? Even the Monster Lord herself would find it near-impossible to destroy this barrier."
The boy slowly unzipped the secondary compartment of the Backpack of Holding. "You know what? I was thinking the same thing for a brief second, before I came to a simple solution," he replied, finishing opening the bag, but still holding it closed. "Would you like to guess what conclusion I came to?"
She didn't dare to answer.
"I decided 'Fuck it. Imma drain the ocean.'"
Upon snapping the flap of the bag as far open as it could go, an immense current appeared in the middle of the room, rapidly drawing the water into the infinite space inside. What was worse, was the fact that it appeared that the longer the back was open, the stronger the whirlpool that was forming seemed to become, drawing in the surrounding liquid faster and faster.
The Kraken's jaw dropped at the sheer insanity of what the boy had decided to do. Considering the fact that he was doing this with a straight face, and the claims he'd already made up to this point, she completely believed he was capable of doing what he said. "Don't you think that's a little too far?! There are millions of creatures that will die!"
"Honestly? It's a small price to pay for removing you from the face of the planet," Kevin shrugged, still not closing the bag. "I figure it's better for them to be dead than to have someone like you as a Queen."
Before the situation could escalate too much further, Alice finally decided it was her time to step in. "Kevin, close the bag."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "Why?"
"As much as I do agree with you that stupidity should be painful, I can't allow you to kill one of my direct subordinates," she informed him.
"And?" he asked, tilting his head to the side.
The unspoken 'what's in it for me?' was easy for the lamia to detect. "If you stop now, I promise to never bring up the topic of you giving me your semen or complain about it ever again."
Kevin took a brief moment to consider the offer. The whole 'why won't you have sex with me already?' thing she had going on, despite knowing that he despised the concept, had been a major annoyance since the first night they'd stayed in the Sutherland Inn. All that she wanted for a permanent reprieve from her griping was for him to spare all the aquatic life in the area, including the moronic Queen?
"Alright then," he nodded, quickly zipping the bag up. Just in time, too, because at that point some deep-sea fish were already being pulled in, the whirlpool having been too strong for them to escape. The ones in the bag were dead now, likely to be eaten by Alice sometime in the future. He then glared at the still-paralyzed Kraken. "You're lucky Alice was here to save you."
"Speaking of which," Alice said, approaching the Aqua Pentagram. "Dispel the barrier so I can remove the paralysis from your body."
Realizing the power level of the lamia before her, the Kraken dropped the barrier without a second thought. It took a brief flash of magic for Alice to remove the aquatic monster's status effect, but she refused to regrow the tentacles the giant woman had lost. Like she'd said before, she did believe that stupidity should be painful, and dealing with the bleeding stumps should teach her a lesson in listening when people speak.
"Thank you," the Kraken said, bowing before the more powerful monster. "I apologize for my actions."
"As long as you learn from them, I don't care," Alice huffed, backing away. "Maybe now we can get back to the reason why we're here."
The Kraken perked up, turning to tentatively look at Kevin. "Ah, yes! You…said something about a marriage pledge?"
In response, the boy unzipped the bag slightly, which scared the hell out of the Kraken for a brief second before he pulled out a sealed envelope. "Yeah, here it is," he grumbled, haphazardly throwing it at her and using his Water control to carry it all the way over.
Holding the envelope in her hand, the large monster nodded. "Now, boy, who is it that you are marrying? Is it the Monster Lord here?"
"Of course not, you idiot," Alice snapped at her subordinate.
Kevin took a deep breath, holding himself back from attacking the woman again. "No. In fact, I see marriage as a useless tradition that will inevitably lead to divorce. I'm delivering this for a fucked up mermaid who stopped her husband's aging before he was even ten years old. "
"Delivering it…for another couple?" the Kraken asked as she opened the envelope. "Why didn't they just come down here themselves? Children these days."
The Eevee huffed. "It could be the fact that any human male making the journey down here would be caught, raped, and maybe even eaten by the plethora of monsters on the way down here, even with a mermaid protecting them. That, or they didn't want to have to deal with your rampant stupidity."
"…I said I was sorry," she mumbled.
"I don't care."
The Kraken sighed. "I guess it doesn't matter. The law doesn't specifically say the people getting married have to bring it, I guess. At any rate, the pledge has been delivered. As Queen of the Southern Seas, I declare Meia and her husband married."
Kevin quirked an eyebrow at that. "Did you even bother to read what his actual name is?"
"Not really," the Kraken shrugged, before pulling out a ring. "Now, take this Pledge Ring. Wearing this ring on your finder, you will always remember the pledge of marriage to your partner. No matter the difficulty, you must always support each other. Now, I shall give you the Queen's blessing."
"I'll just pass along the sentiment," the boy replied, taking the ring and slipping it into this Backpack of Holding.
The Kraken then turned to Alice again. "By the way, are you possibly…?"
"I'm nobody important," the lamia interrupted her. "I'm just a traveling gourmet who passed by on a whim."
"Incredible. Coming to the bottom of the sea in search of food! Unfortunately, there is nothing too amazing to eat down here."
As much as Kevin wanted to say that that was a stupid cover story, the reply the larger monster gave assured him that she was either too stupid to see through the ruse, or smart enough to know not to talk back to the Monster Lord, of all people.
"I'm leaving," he grumbled, swimming toward where the light road led out of the room. "If I stay here any longer, I'll either kill her or myself."
"I can send you to the surface as an apology, if you want," the Kraken offered.
"No. I'd rather go the long way," the boy shot her down, leaving the room as fast as his Water control would allow.
***
Meia stared at the duo, her jaw dropped so far it would've hit the floor if it weren't firmly attached to her skull. They'd just finished explaining how the quest she'd given them to deliver her marriage pledge to the Queen of the Southern Sea went, and from what she heard…she seriously questioned her choice to give them the quest in the first place.
"You…you really tried to torture, and then kill the Queen?" she numbly asked.
Kevin crossed his arms. "She started it. If you're stupid enough to attack without provocation, then you'd better prepare for excessive retaliation."
"I can understand fighting back when she attacked you," the mermaid conceded. "But was escalating it to the point of trying to drain the entire ocean just to kill her necessary!?"
Alice, sitting beside Kevin in her human disguise, smiled smugly at the boy. "I told you we should've left that detail out."
"True, but if I didn't and for whatever reason the Queen decides to come after her for sending us down there in the first place, she'd need all of the context so as not to be caught off guard," he replied, as if his statement wasn't incredibly foreboding. He then put the Pledge Ring in her hand. "Anyway, here's the ring. And the Queen says you have her blessing, and to remember your pledge whenever you look at it or something."
On one hand, Meia was happy that her marriage to her husband was finally acknowledged by the Queen of the Southern Sea, which was signified by the ring. On the other hand, she'd sent an unstoppable juggernaut down to deliver the pledge in the first place, leading to him brutalizing said Queen and almost killing her. She didn't know whether to cry from happiness, or cry from despair.
"Now that that's out of the way, we're gonna go," the Eevee announced, standing up and heading for the door with Alice trailing behind him. "Good luck on your marriage, if it lasts."
With them gone, Meia was left alone with her thoughts, her husband out fishing. The main thought that kept running through her head, though, was the desperate wish that the Kraken wouldn't hold a grudge against her.
***
{Author's Note}
And that's a wrap!
The journey to the undersea temple is completed, the Kraken was defeated, and Kevin is off on his next adventure.
Coming up next will be San Ilia, the city where the King is a high priest of Ilias. How will the interactions between Kevin, Alice, and the residents turn out? Wait and see!
As always, comment on the paragraphs and the chapter itself. Try not to be a dick, memes are appreciated, and correct my grammar so I can fix it for future readers!
See you later!