A fleet was assembled in Genoa and set sail immediately.
'If only I could lure the Imperial forces out to sea…'
The Grand Duke stood on the deck, lost in thought, before scoffing at himself for indulging in such idle fantasies.
The Kingdom of Sardinia's army had been defeated time and again on land, but they still reigned supreme at sea. Yet the Empire had no navy to speak of. Even if they wanted to fight at sea, the enemy possessed not a single warship—the very notion was absurd.
The distance from Genoa to La Spezia was negligible. The royal fleet sailed without a care. But midway through, a commotion broke out on a galley that had surged far ahead of the rest. The Grand Duke summoned his adjutant and asked,
"What's happening?"
"A monster attack, Your Grace."
"Hmm. Have all vessels coordinate to repel them."
Attacks by monsters at sea were hardly uncommon. One could call them an everyday occurrence. Each of Sardinia's mainstay five-banked galleys carried over a hundred combat troops. As long as no particularly large monster appeared, there was nothing to worry about.
What he had expected to be quickly suppressed, however, spread from ship to ship. The captain cried out, his face flushed with alarm.
"Your Grace! It's Poseidon's Wrath!"
"What… isn't it still August?!"
Poseidon's Wrath was the Sardinian term for a large-scale maritime assault by monsters. The creatures dwelling in the sea migrated en masse around winter, making sailing at this time of year extremely dangerous. But it was still August. Winter was a long way off.
—Clang, clang, clang, clang.
Bells rang furiously from every direction over the water. They were bells designed to produce a tone that monsters found particularly unpleasant. The sailors rang them desperately, but the monsters refused to retreat. Instead, countless merfolk and lizardkin clambered onto the decks.
"Push them back! Keep them from climbing aboard!"
"Hurry, furl the sails!"
"Damn it all—why now of all times!"
The soldiers hurled curses as they drew their spears. They crowded against the railings, jabbing downward with their spear tips, trying to force the monsters to fall back. In an instant, the entire fleet plunged into chaos.
"They caught us off guard...!"
This massive assault was undoubtedly a scheme orchestrated by the Imperial Army. The timing was far too precise to dismiss as coincidence.
The Grand Duke immediately saw through his opponent's stratagem. Even if he accused them of deploying the Monster army, the Empire wouldn't so much as blink. The Monsters currently attacking the fleet were striking with no equipment whatsoever, bare-bodied — in other words, they were unmistakably wild Monsters.
'The Empire has no connection to these creatures whatsoever, and what the Kingdom's forces encountered is nothing more than a horde of wild Monsters.' That's exactly what the Imperial Army would claim. The Grand Duke let out a groan.
"Laspercia was bait."
"Bait, Your Highness?"
"A lure to draw us out. The Empire deliberately refrained from taking Laspercia and pushed it to the brink instead. Then, anticipating that we would come by sea, they prepared the Monsters in advance..."
In close-quarters naval combat, there was little room for elaborate tactics. If it were warships dueling one another, that would be one thing — but against Monsters swarming across the open ocean, each vessel had no choice but to fight for its own survival.
Up ahead, a galley was struck. Having lost its crew and helmsman, the ship drifted helplessly through the waves before slamming into a friendly vessel sailing alongside it. The other ship didn't run aground, but if fortune was unkind, the oars could be damaged, crippling its maneuverability.
The adjutant spoke in a worried tone.
"Many of the mercenaries aren't accustomed to naval combat... Your Highness. Please authorize the deployment of mages. The losses are mounting."
The Grand Duke shook his head.
"Not yet. If this is an Imperial stratagem, then there is surely still a card left to play..."
"It's a Kraken!"
A scream of terror split the air. An octopus leg bristling with suction cups surged from the ocean surface, churning up massive waves. The difference from an ordinary octopus was that every suction cup bore a row of sharp teeth, and the leg itself was enormous — thick as an ancient tree trunk.
"Retreat! Retreat!"
"Gaaaah!"
The Kraken's legs coiled around a galley and crushed it as casually as snapping a cracker. The quinquereme, utterly powerless to resist, split cleanly in two. Surviving crew members leaped into the sea, but what fate awaited them in an ocean already teeming with Monsters was as plain as day.
"Your Highness the Grand Duke!"
"Now! Mages, pour everything you have into taking down the large-type Monster!"
The twenty mages fired their spells at the Kraken simultaneously. A few went wide, but most struck the creature's legs. Flesh exploded outward, and one of the monster's limbs was severed.
At the sight, the kingdom's forces let out a roar of triumph. The Kraken was a tyrant that haunted every sailor's nightmares, and crushing one so decisively did wonders for morale. But then new limbs erupted from the sea behind the fleet.
It wasn't a single creature. Krakens were appearing from every direction at once, as though trying to encircle them. In the blink of an eye, five galleys sank into the white, churning sea.
"Five—no, six of them!"
"Th-this can't be... six Krakens at the same time..."
"Don't panic! Mages, take them down one at a time, steadily—"
At that moment, a deafening roar drowned out the entire fleet. Grand Duke Fiorentino felt primal, instinctive terror race up his spine and spread through his entire body in an instant. Despite being in the heat of battle, the Grand Duke and every soldier under his command had no choice but to turn their heads toward the source of the sound.
There wasn't much to see. Something covered in bluish scales—a torso like that of an enormous serpent—slipped between the waves and vanished beneath the surface. All that remained where it had been was a warship torn to splinters.
"...Did you see that?"
"O Poseidon..."
A faint sound drifted in from somewhere across the sea. A wailing that resembled the high pitch of a violin echoed eerily in the rowers' ears. The soldiers, even as they fought the monsters before them, found their arms trembling from the chill of fear crawling up their spines.
"God help us. The last confirmed sighting was over half a century ago..."
The waves surged upward once more.
This time the Grand Duke saw it clearly. It was a monster with the body of a serpent. Its jaws bore teeth so massive they made an Ogre look laughable by comparison. The creature grazed a galley almost idly, then plunged back into the sea in an instant.
That was enough. The galley flipped over helplessly. Heavily armored soldiers, unable to even swim properly, were sucked into the whirlpool, while crewmen had their throats seized and torn open by the Monsters that swarmed in. In the blink of an eye, a galley carrying a hundred warriors sank beneath the waves.
"Leviathan!"
"God above—it's a Leviathan!"
The entire fleet was engulfed in shock in an instant. Six Krakens appearing at once had already been staggering enough—creatures so rare that even two or three sightings a year was unusual—but now a monster said to appear only once in a century had shown itself. No, it wasn't even a monster. Leviathan had once been worshipped as a god!
"S-spread out! We have to spread out if we want to live!"
Some of the captains quickly barked orders to their helmsmen. This was their first encounter with a Leviathan, but even they knew that clinging together in a tight formation in a situation like this would only make things worse. Several galleys broke formation and began peeling away. The Grand Duke let out a sharp breath and snapped back to his senses.
"Foolish bastards, do not break formation! If you scatter, you're dead!"
If survival were the goal, fleeing individually would have been the right move. But the kingdom's objective wasn't mere survival. They had to save Laspeccia. The moment even a single ship broke away, the remaining vessels would be consumed by panic and the entire fleet would disintegrate in an instant.
The adjutant grabbed the crystal ball and bellowed into it. Moments later, his face twisted in anguish, he reported to the Grand Duke.
"Some of the captains aren't following orders."
"Damn it… Have the mages split into two squads and respond! One squad intercepts the Krakens; the other holds in reserve and strikes when the Leviathan shows itself! Do not lose your composure! This sea does not belong to monsters — it belongs to us, the Kingdom of Sardinia!"
The Grand Duke of Firenze held the fleet together through sheer force of will. The fact that the monsters had been targeting fleeing ships and sinking them first had also helped. It was a source of absolutely terrifying fear, but at the same time it lent powerful credence to the Grand Duke's warning that scattering meant death.
A desperate battle raged across the open sea.
The mages fought until their mana was completely depleted, and in truth some had so little left that they couldn't even manage a short-range teleport — they sank alongside the ships. Many of the mercenaries had no experience with naval boarding combat, but they fought with everything they had. Even the oarsmen — civilian levies from Genoa — grabbed spears and stood their ground.
Three hours later.
The kingdom's forces had, by a miracle, succeeded in driving the monsters back.
From captains to oarsmen, there was not a soul left standing who hadn't collapsed onto the deck in exhaustion. Of the six Krakens, four were dead. The Leviathan's fate was unconfirmed, but it had clearly sustained grievous injuries.
"We… we won! We won!"
"Long live the Kingdom of Sardinia!"
When they saw the last Kraken retreating, the kingdom's soldiers rallied every last shred of strength and let out a roar of triumph. The fleet that had departed Genoa with majestic grandeur — over a hundred and thirty ships — had been reduced to sixty. More than half had become ghosts of the sea. It could fairly be called a near-total annihilation…
"Haaah…"
The Grand Duke sank to the floor. He was utterly spent. Three hours would drain a person's stamina even on land; having to endure that same stretch of time on the open ocean had left him completely hollowed out. It was a victory, but a victory of nothing but wounds…
"Your Grace, congratulations on your triumph."
In stark contrast to the Grand Duke's glum expression, the adjutant was deeply moved.
"A navy that won a victory against a Leviathan… no, I haven't even heard of a navy that merely survived one. Your Grace, you've accomplished a miracle."
"…Adjutant. Contact Laspeccia. There will be no reinforcements."
The Grand Duke muttered gloomily.
"If such a trap was prepared, then the Empire's failure to conquer Laspeccia until now was nothing more than a ruse. Heading to Laspeccia now would be walking straight into the jaws of death. We're turning back to Genoa..."
"Understood, Your Grace."
The adjutant relayed the orders to each ship. The sailors urged their exhausted bodies to unfurl the sails. During the battle, the majority of the ships had their oars damaged. They had no choice but to rely on the wind for sailing.
"...?"
Just as the ships were bustling about trying to adjust their sails, one sailor squinted toward the far side of the sea. He nudged his companion with his elbow.
"What is it? I'm already exhausted to death, so don't go picking a fight for nothing."
"If you're exhausted to death, then I'm already rotting in a coffin. Hey, see that over there?"
"Huh?"
The companion looked carefully in the direction the sailor was pointing.
"...It doesn't look like a monster."
"Well, there are no white monsters. Isn't that a ship?"
Similar conversations were taking place across multiple ships. Information passed quickly from sailors to commanders, from commanders to captains, and from captains to Grand Duke Firenze. The Grand Duke pulled out a telescope and gazed at the horizon.
"..."
The Grand Duke's body went rigid as stone. The adjutant asked, puzzled.
"Your Grace. What's the matter?"
"...They're flying the kingdom's flag. It's Laspeccia's fleet."
At the unexpected good news, the adjutant's face brightened.
"That's fortunate. Since Laspeccia has no hope left, it seems the navy has fled. If we can get their help, we can make it back to Genoa a bit more easily."
"All hands, prepare for battle."
"What?"
The Grand Duke folded his telescope.
"...The report that Laspeccia's outer citadel had fallen came a considerable time ago. If the outer citadel was breached, it's impossible for the ships docked at the port to be intact. In other words, they have been hiding somewhere until now, or the outer citadel hasn't actually been breached. Either way, they have deceived us."
The Grand Duke's lips trembled.
"Issue the order immediately, Adjutant. From this moment, Laspeccia is our enemy..."