Chapter 199: Reaching the Heavens Part 5 Part 1

「With this type of bosses, it is not all that uncommon that there are some key items that serve the purpose of revealing its true appearances.」

What we were doing right about now was holding a special emergency meeting. Our Kutanid Extermination Squad was analyzing what we just learned and we were pondering our heads as to how to approach this problem. When Mold said the above words, I nodded my head in agreement.

「Yeah, I have played through a lot of games and in vast majority of them a thing like that was often present. Although it does not necessarily has to be an item. It can be a weapon, or some sort of specific magic, or literally anything.」

「So, does that mean we need to find that item? Roger that! On it!」

「Akitsu Akane, STAY!」

Over time we would surely figure out how to deal with this situation. However, I could very well understand Akitsu Akane’s eagerness to act. Since his base profession was that of a Thief, he could explore the majority of this dungeon with fairly low probability of getting detected. He has the biggest chances of discovering the key item in question.

Therefore, in order to utilize his talents to maximum, we need to send him to the place where it would be the most probable to find the item in question.

「Even though we have no proof to back that up, there is a high chance that we cannot defeat Kutanid as it is now. That is why we are holding this emergency strategy meeting right now. We must review what we know and agree on what to do next.

Let us start with the basic information. What do we know about Unique Monster ‘Kutanid of the Abyss’.

「Well, one thing that we know for sure, without any trick to it…… It’s an octopus. A huge octopus that made its nest here in the underwater city of Lulilas.」

「And most probably…… Its special ability is the power to be able to reverse the nature of seemingly everything around it.」

It even manages to hold the principles of life and death in the palm of its hands…… I mean tentacles. It completely depends on its mood, but it can rebuilt the destroyed city seemingly on a whim, as well as cook all of the living fish around the town into rotten sushi. And that is without mentioning its ability to turn people into fish zombies. Let us not forget about that.

Just like Rei mentioned, its ability is ‘Inversion’. It is a powerful ability that managed to even sink an entire island and city to the very bottom of the ocean.

Since it is a Unique Monster, it would only be natural for it to possess some sort of magical abilities, but at the same time it is quite impossible for its physical abilities to be low. I mean, with body this big, it could easily steamroll us all into pancakes just by walking all over us.

「…… At the very least, with our current information we do not know anything about Kutanid’s possible weaknesses, or any means of inflicting huge damage to it.」

「I would not say that, Rust. We do know SOMETHING. Did you look at its tentacles? Four of them were being chained to the ground. I think that by defeating the bosses of the four towers we managed to at least weaken Kutanid’s battle potential, or maybe even seal away some of its abilities…… Or at least it would be nice if it was something like that.」

Surprisingly enough it was Akitsu Akane who pointed that fact out to Rust, who still seemed to not get it. I mean, it should have been obvious from the start that those bosses would serve that kind of purpose, right?

「It almost feels like Kutanid-san wanted to tie itself down. Like it was waiting for it to happen.」

「Yeah, that’s exactly right.」

Four towers each located at the edge of the underwater city. Four boss monsters waiting inside of the towers. Their powers: magic nullification, physical attacks nullification, long distance attacks nullification, short distance nullification. Each boss monster held a different nasty ability that could severely impair the playstyle of the players. Up until now we had no idea what would happen if we were to defeat them. But now at least that mystery seemed to have been resolved.

Of that I can be sure: I have seen with my own eyes that four out of eight of that creature’s tentacles has been chained down, their powers most probably sealed away. But the question still remained: why? I feel like we’re missing something really important in here.

And that’s right. It can certainly be said that as for right now, all of the underwater city of Lulilas stays under Kutanid’s direct control. Now then, this gives raise to another question: why would the boss monster of this whole place set up a gimmick that would lower its own power and impair its battle potential?

「It seems that normal logic cannot be quite applied to Kutanid. It’s almost as if it was the irrational incarnate.」

「The good news here is that even though our dear Kutanid has a trap set up in place, there should be something in this dungeon that serves as a key to that trap. Talk about a design flaw.」

Or was that supposed to be some sort of pity system? A way for the strong to let the weak at least have a sliver of a chance at fighting back? If that’s the case, we definitely cannot lower our guard around this place. We need to be cautious if we want to emerge victorious from this battle.

It seems that our logic was partially flawed here as well. Apparently destroying the four bosses of the towers around town was not a trigger for being able to fight Kutanid, but rather a gimmick used to weaken it battle potential. Apart from that, everything else seemed to be just like we managed to deduce it.

「It’s both good and bad thing that this game likes to keep things clean and proper. Even in challenging quests like that, we have to figure our ‘why’ and ‘how’ ourselves. No one is going to guide us by the hand.」

For now, we have way too few information about Kutanid, so we need to change our approach quite a bit here.

We also have to consider the fact that was we saw there might not be Kutanid’s real body…… Or maybe that its real body was the underwater city Lulilas itself.

「Underwater city Lulilas can be roughly divided into four sectors: shipwreck graveyard, towers, main city and the castle.」

Lulilas is ‘inverted’ city, which means that there was a time when everything around here was normal. I’d say that both the castle and the town were made before the inversion took place, and the towers and the shipwreck graveyard were added after the inversion took place…… At least that’s what I think.