"It's enormous... It's like Midgard Serpent...!"
Rest's face twisted with a mix of fear and fascination as the image of the great serpent from Norse mythology flashed through his mind.
"GYAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
The air crackled with static.
The roar echoed back, reverberating in multiple layers.
This was clearly different from the enemies he'd faced before... even bigger than the magic beast Sabnock.
"So this is the parent worm? I'd heard they were among the weaker dragons, but is this really weak?"
Worms were originally creatures that flew through the sky, but after losing battles with other dragons, they had burrowed into the earth. Their descendants were said to be what worms were now.
In other words, they were among the weaker dragon species — but in an environment with no natural predators. On top of that, having absorbed the mana of the demon realm, the worm had grown far beyond its original size.
Rest wondered if this was how characters in monster-movie sci-fi films felt, observing the situation as if it were happening to someone else.
"It must have lived for hundreds of years... no, possibly thousands. It must have taken an inconceivable span of time to grow this large...!"
It felt disrespectful to lump the monster before him in with ordinary worms.
If he had to give it a name... he'd call it an "Elder Worm."
"GYAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
"Don't be so loud. It's ringing in my ears."
The Elder Worm lunged at him.
Rest dodged in midair, avoiding a maw so massive it could have swallowed a large truck whole.
"[Star Eater]"
He drove the Dark Star into it, carving away at its body, but... against this colossus, it was like a mantis trying to chop at an axe. The damage dealt was negligible.
"GYAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
"This feels like déjà vu. Something like this happen when I fought Sabnock too?"
How had such a massive monster gone undetected by everyone all this time, lurking hidden away?
Rest pondered the question, but... it was probably the result of coincidence.
It just so happened to have made its home in the wetlands. It just so happened that the magic beast Sabnock was there, keeping people from approaching.
It had never clashed with Sabnock either, because their respective habitats were different enough that they simply coexisted without overlapping.
"[Fire Cannon], [Fire Cannon], [Fire Cannon]"
Rest maintained his distance and attacked with fire magic.
He'd already confirmed during the daytime hunt that fire-attribute magic was effective against worms.
He fired while hoping for at least some decent damage... and the result was exactly as he'd imagined. The flame attacks only lightly scorched the Elder Worm's surface.
"It's big and tough too... Half-hearted attacks aren't going to cut it."
"GYAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
"And its attacks cover a massive area... Coming alone was the right call after all."
He dodged the colossal mouth by a hair's breadth, and Rest let out a bitter laugh.
He'd been riding high from the girls' home cooking, but faced with this situation, his composure inevitably returned.
Part of him regretted coming to a place like this alone, but another part was glad Yuri and the others weren't here.
"If it were just me, I might still manage, but if everyone were here, there was no way they could dodge this... I got lucky. Truly."
Rest manipulated the wind, darting in every direction to evade the Elder Worm.
For all its size, the Elder Worm's movements were not particularly agile.
For someone like Rest who could fly, the evasion wasn't too difficult.
"That said... just running away won't get me anywhere."
He couldn't win by fleeing alone.
He had to land effective magic and whittle down the enemy's life.
Falling back to regroup was an option, but... if the Elder Worm pursued him outside the wetlands, the devastation would be catastrophic.
He couldn't let the same mistake Rodele had once made play out again.
(There's no choice but to defeat it here... but how long would [Star Eater] take? My strongest offensive spell is [Amaterasu], but...)
"...It's nighttime."
That's right — it was nighttime.
[Amaterasu], which gathered sunlight and unleashed it, was unusable.
He could gather moonlight or starlight and fire that way, but... the power would obviously be pathetic.
There was no point even trying. There was no way he could finish off the Elder Worm like that.
"Coming here alone without the others was the right call. But coming in the dead of night was a mistake... Life doesn't always go the way you want, does it?"
If he'd tried to come during the day, Yuri and the others would have insisted on following along. Things just never worked out the way you planned.
"GYAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
"In that case... it's a shot in the dark, but maybe I should try out a new finishing move."
He knew that both [Star Eater] and [Amaterasu] were finicky spells with their own quirks, making them difficult to use.
That was exactly why Rest had been hard at work developing new magic.
He'd never deployed it in actual combat before... but he'd already formed a complete image of it in his mind.
"Honestly, if this fails, I could die too... but might as well give it a try."
Rest let out a wry laugh.
The thrill rising within him despite the life-or-death situation — was that really caused by worm meat?
On his second life, in a danger he'd lost count of how many times he'd faced, Rest murmured.
"I'll use it... [God of Flame Genesis]."
Rest wore a combative grin unlike any he'd shown before as he decided to unleash the new spell he'd been planning for so long.