NOVEL NEXT Chapter 102: Raiju the Kaiju, Say That Five Times Fast
The weeks flew by, and soon it had been almost four months since Mikayla had enrolled at Cloudscraper, and she had settled into the routine. Class continued as per their schedule, and Mikayla learnt and memorised everything she could. They were now learning shelter construction in Survivalism, and Mikayla now knew how to create waterproof tarpaulins from thin air, solidify earth into dry, habitable surfaces, and conjure tripwires that would make loud noises when triggered.
Those Techniques would probably be useful. For something. Eventually.
She'd also reached Level 27, but now that she wasn't fighting for her life on a daily basis her levelling speed had become much slower, more standard.
Today was Friday, which meant they had another chance to put what they were learning into practice.
"Today, you lot will learn what it's like to face a monster stronger than any one person could ever be. The sort of battle that can only be won by pitting a large group against an overwhelming enemy. Your target is this. A Raiju," the Huntsman projected an image of a wolf swathed in stormy clouds, with ears that billowed outwards and looked more like horns and a long tail that seemed to have serrated curves.
Mikayla whistled. "A lightning monster?" She'd done some research on possible targets that satisfied Geng's criteria for her Neidan. Raijus had appeared quite prominently.
"You're familiar, are you?" The Huntsman regarded her inquisitively.
"Oh, uh, not really, I read a bit about them is all. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt,"
"Mm. This is a very dangerous creature, relative to you kids. A Tier 11. Today's exercise is a simulation of what we call a
raid battle
- that is, a fight in which a large group of people all work together to bring down an extremely strong foe," The Huntsman himself was the one who had coined that particular term, and it had rapidly become part of the Goliath Guard's vernacular. No one needed to know that it had its roots in MMO gaming.
"The Raiju is not particularly strong by
my
standards, but it is head and shoulders above anything you all have fought to date," Mikayla and Keldryn traded a knowing look, but didn't interrupt. "This is an experience that will serve you well when you're Level 60 and facing down a Tier 20, or Level 80 and fighting a
Monster King
. I will be on standby to pull any of you out if your Armours collapse, but if that happens, then for the purposes of the exercise you have died and can no longer participate. I suggest you make a plan rather than charge in blindly," He stepped back.
"Um, sir? Where is the Raiju?" Geri raised his hand.
"You'll have to work that out for yourself,"
The twelve students gathered in a circle, exchanging glances.
"Our first order of business is to locate the beast. Lydia, that's your area," Irin asserted.
"Indeed, we'll strategise while you locate it. Once you have, come back here and we'll fill you in on the plan," Nya added, ignoring a glare from Irin in response to being interrupted.
"Kay, back soon," Lydia confirmed as she left.
"Would it get your head on a pike to let someone else talk?" Irin hissed.
"What? Ahem. Our strategy should be clear; Mikayla and Treft are our foremost defenders, so," Nya paused as Mikayla squeezed her hand.
"How about we hear what the rest of the group has to suggest for our strategy? You don't have to take charge," she gently encouraged her roommate.
"Ah. Um. Very well. I'll open the floor," Nya gestured expansively at their classmates.
While Mikayla had meant well, she had failed to consider how the
other
Yevgenia in the class would take this. "Yes, thank you, Aiadon, Han," Sendo looked smug. "Now, it should be immediately apparent how we proceed,"
Nya glared at her rival. Mikayla winced. But a few seconds passed, and Sendo didn't say anything else - in fact, her confidence had abated just as rapidly as it had emerged. Because, even if Mikayla had talked her down, Nya had started outlining the basic and obvious plan of having their tanky defenders occupy the monster's attention while the rest of the group assaulted it. So Sendo couldn't now simply offer the same plan and present it as her own, or she'd have entirely wasted the opportunity to prove her superiority over Nya.
"We, ah, shall . . take advantage of Treft's unusual talent as a high-mobility defensive specialist, and have him act as bait," Sendo ad-libbed.
Treft flipped her off.
". . what does that mean?"
"No starring way," Geri translated for his roommate.
"And why not?"
"Because we're fighting a lightning monster. Any plan that relies on being faster than it requires you to be faster
than lightning,"
Keldryn interjected. He was speaking from experience, Mikayla knew. The Giant Roc had left an impression on both of them.
"No, not necessarily. We can still lure it if we let it see someone from far away and let its own bloodlust lead it into the trap," Nya weighed in. "Of course, for that we'll need our bait to be someone extremely visible,"
All eyes turned to Banki, and the tigerkin flirted her tail with a playful grin. "You know it and you love it,"
"Well, let's lay this out properly," Sendo conjured her weapon and started scratching a plan in the dirt. "Say the Raiju's here and Banki is over here. We'll lure it in, and then . ."
<=====}—o
"Dibs on this thing's corpse, by the way," Mikayla added once they'd made their plan and the group was setting out.
"Eh? Absolutely not. You know the rule, killer gets the corpse," Irin protested.
"Why d'ya want it?" Banki asked.
"I'm trying to gather materials for a lightning-focused Neidan," Mikayla hadn't actually decided whether she was committing to getting herself a Neidan made from the Giant Roc's eyes. But Geng had told her to seek out other lightning-themed Kaijus to add to it and improve her Neidan. She'd put the project on the back burner while throwing herself into school life, but when one just dropped into her lap like this she couldn't ignore it.
"If I get it, you can have it," Lydia offered.
"If I get it, you can
buy
it," Sekki offered a shark-like smile.
"Deal," Mikayla pointed a finger gun at him to acknowledge the offer. After all, she'd barely touched the stipend she was still receiving from the Cosmic Isles thanks to Nya's sponsorship. She could afford to pay market value for a monster corpse. Actually, Nya would probably insist on paying for this too if it did happen.
"We can discuss this later," Sendo interrupted. "Let's go!"
<=====}—o
The Raiju was much more intimidating in person.
It paled in comparison to the flying mountain of hatred that was the Giant Roc, but it came closer than any other Kaiju that Mikayla had seen to date. Each paw was the size of a car, leading up to a body that looked like a whole cumulonimbus cloud had fallen from the sky and grown teeth. It didn't have eyes per se, just empty sockets made of cloudstuff that somehow still brimmed with hatred. She and Treft watched it as it paced through the valley, ribbons of vapour falling from its haunches with every step.
And it looked so
fluffy
. It was a crime that a violent, man-eating monster possessed the softest and most comfortable pelt she'd seen in her life.
"Heh. Raiju the Kaiju. A Kaiju Raiju. Try saying that five times fast," she muttered to herself.
Treft shot her a look.
She flushed. "Oh, right, uh, not you,"
They settled in to watch as the rest of the class took up their positions in the distance, one eye on the Raiju just in case it noticed them and launched an attack.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
It only took a few more minutes before technicolor lights burst from the top of a hill in the distance. Suoyou Deng grew to maximum size amidst a spray of fireworks, the massive, acrobatic Core Armour looking directly at the Raiju from three kilometres away and making a 'come at me' gesture.
They could see the moment the Raiju locked onto Banki; its head twitched and its eyes narrowed. It took off, loping across the plains in a measured, even gait that only a fool would assume was its maximum speed.
It passed the tree on whose balcony Mikayla and Treft were perched, which was their cue. "Now!" Mikayla commanded, summoning the Black Knight.
They jumped, and she was already growing towards size ten. Treft's weird talking Core Controller shouted, "Soundboarder, tune up!" and swelling lines drew a blocky green robot with speakers set into its limbs and a bulbous, astronaut-like head. His signature weapon, the High Keytar, landed in his hands at the same time that Mikayla conjured her Sword and Oaken Protector. They approached from behind, hemming it in.
"Oho! A Raiju! How nostalgic," Nocturnus barked in her ear.
The Raiju hesitated, looking back at the two warriors that had appeared behind it. It growled, slowing and and reversing direction, prioritising the newcomers.
This was a mistake, because it meant that it wasn't looking in the direction where Banki, Geum and Sekki had all set up.
There was a thunderous whinny as Geum's Armour Core, the Great Gilded Joust, swelled to maximum size along with his Warhorse Companion Core. Their hooves left craters in the undergrowth as he lowered an angry red lance towards the Raiju's rear end.
For all that Geum was an insufferable elitist, he knew his way around cavalry charges. Mikayla never would have thought of getting up to speed at normal size and only then growing to Goliath size to close the distance rapidly. (In all honesty, she was impressed that the horse could handle it without tripping over.)
But even then, it was going to take him half a minute to reach their position, and she and Treft had to keep the creature still for thirty seconds.
The Raiju probed her defences with a quick jab from its front-right claws, and Mikayla caught the blow on her shield. The impact of the blow running up her arm only took a tiny sliver from her Health, and she retaliated with a deliberately choreographed strike that was designed more to prevent the wolf from trying to escape to her right than anything. It flinched, and she knew they had it.
In the distance, Sekki's dark-coloured Masquerade Armour Core had joined Suoyou Deng, and in the moments between catching attacks, Mikayla could see flashes of light soaking into Geum's back and creating additional layers over various parts of his body.
Sekki's entire arsenal, as she had discovered, was about enhancement. Creating effects tantamount to buffs - no one used that term in this world because they didn't have video games, but that was how Mikayla thought of them - that could make someone stronger, faster, more resilient both physically and mentally. When fighting alone, he applied all of those effects to himself, trading the flashier powers that the rest of the class boasted to become a generalist martial warrior who excelled at close-quarters combat and pugilism.
But Sekki's real power was that his entire arsenal could be given to someone else.
Which was why Geum took the lead with intricate lattice patterns of enhancement Techniques wrapping around his gold/crimson Armour. Three distinct layers of black Mana encrusted his lance as he drove it forward towards the Raiju.
Of course, the cacophony of the horse's hooves did not go unnoticed. The Raiju, unsurprisingly, tried to get out of Geum's way, strafing to the left - but an arrow struck the ground in front of it and, on instinct, it reared back. Sekki nocked another arrow, pulling his bow's string back as far as it went.
Sekki's Cores, of course, could not be given to Geum like his Techniques could. But he'd learned to compensate in other ways. Namely, by providing long-range support with his bow - which had a special Engraving on it to accelerate the speed of arrows fired from it.
The cloudy wolf decided to try going upwards. Its legs tensed, and it sprung into the air - but the students had thought of that too. At Lydia's direction, Ivory the hawk came flying down from where he'd been circling overhead and used his body weight to force the Raiju back downwards. By the time they landed, Geum was only metres away.
Mikayla and Treft threw themselves to the sides, and Ivory disintegrated into sandy Mana, just in time for Geum's incredibly overloaded thrust to go straight through the Raiju. The lance ripped it to shreds, scattering the creature into a cloud of wispy mist.
The horse skidded to a halt, then disappeared, and Great Gilded Joust hit the ground. "Hah!" Geum rounded on the spot where the Raiju had been, smugness radiating from the helmet that was carved to perfectly mimic his face. "So much for Tier 11. One good blow and it's dead!"
Mikayla whistled, scrutinising the shreds of cloud that the Raiju had been reduced to. "Yeah, was that all? It . ." She paused. "Nocturnus? Whaddya mean, 'nostalgic'?"
"When I was a young man, long before the Kaiju Collapse, I bested one of these as a rite of passage. Keep your guard up, lass. That didn't kill it,"
Mikayla had already come to the same conclusion - but Geum hadn't; the young noble was doing a goofy victory dance. "Hang on! Geum? Did you get a kill message from the System?"
"What? I . . um . ." Geum trailed off, rounding on the clouds that had been left behind.
That was when the wisp of thick fluff that had been the Raiju's tail flicked straight upwards and lightning came down from the sky to strike its tip. Another cloud formed back into the wolf's head, and electricity ran through a complex pattern in the air between the dismembered tail and head before being unleashed in a blindingly bright beam. The burning energy struck Geum in the chest and sent him sprawling to the ground, bouncing and groaning in pain.
The Raiju capitalised as its body fully reformed, lunging at the fallen cavalryman, but Mikayla was ready to catch the strike - or so she thought. She stumbled as the entire weight of the Raiju's body crashed against her shield, and a burst of electrical energy flowed around her and struck Geum again. A chunk of her Health vanished, but she was more worried about how the part of the blow she hadn't blocked knocked Geum right back into the air before he could recover.
No sooner had he come to rest than his Armour Core fizzled out.
Mikayla winced, hoping that hadn't been a fatal blow. Geum was a prick but she didn't want him to die. Either way, he was out of the fight, and she didn't have time to worry about him. She launched a retributive strike at the Raiju, her sword growing and sliding right into its chest, and furiously flailed it, ripping its cloudy body into several pieces.
While it was dealing with that, she spared a glance at Geum, but the Huntsman had already retrieved his fallen form. Unfortunately, she didn't have time to worry about her classmate, as the Raiju was already weaving its body back together, already glaring at her and Treft as its next targets.
"Geum starred it up, time for plan B!" she shouted even as she put her sword in between the Black Knight's chest and the lunging Kaiju. Its sheer weight forced her backwards and almost knocked her off-balance.
Half a dozen pillars of multicoloured light heralded the appearance of Nya, Sendo, Irin, Keldryn, Kaizen and Geri, forming a circle around the Raiju with her and Treft. "Hold its attention, you two!" Nya barked. "We've got this!"