Dread.

The word hung in the salt-thick air like a funeral shroud, heavy and suffocating. It was the only emotion that adequately captured what coursed through their veins as they stood transfixed by the ancient predator emerging from bloodied waters.

This wasn’t the manageable terror of facing a known enemy—this was the primal recognition that they had stumbled into the presence of something that existed beyond their understanding of the natural order.

“A dragon…” The whispered words escaped like a prayer to uncaring gods, carrying with them the weight of legends made manifest.

The creature before them was not merely another monster to be catalogued and conquered. This was a living embodiment of the world’s violent history, a remnant from ages when the very continents were shaped by the clash of titans.

Its scales caught the dying light with an otherworldly luminescence that spoke of magical saturation beyond mortal comprehension.

Training overrode paralysis. Without conscious thought, weathered hands moved to deactivate balance cards and activate agility configurations.

The familiar ritual of equipment transition became a lifeline to sanity as silver armor dissolved into motes of light, replaced by leather garments that hummed with defensive enchantments specifically designed for high-mobility combat scenarios.

Melee fighters found twin swords materializing in their grips—weapons balanced for speed over raw power, their edges singing with barely contained magical energy.

The rear guard’s hands filled with crossbows engineered for precision strikes and staves crackling with prepared spells, each piece of equipment representing months of careful preparation for encounters that pushed the boundaries of survivability.

The transformation from hunting party to military unit occurred in heartbeats, each member settling into formations drilled until they became muscle memory.

Yet beneath the professional competence, excitement flickered like wildfire through their ranks. This was what they had trained for—the opportunity to test themselves against an SS-ranked monster, a creature whose power rivaled that of god-ranked beings.

“Maintain positions! Activate defensive barriers!” Douglas’s voice cut through the tension with military precision, his years of command experience lending authority to words that brooked no argument.

The rear guard began their chant, voices harmonizing in the complex syllables of high-level barrier magic.

Ancient words of power flowed like liquid silver from their lips, each syllable carefully enunciated to avoid the catastrophic failure that could result from improperly cast defensive spells at this level of magical intensity.

Blue light erupted around their formation, creating a translucent dome that shimmered with protective energies.

The barrier wasn’t merely a physical defense—it was a complex weaving of magical forces designed to deflect everything from dragon fire to reality-warping attacks that legendary creatures were known to employ.

“Can I enter the fray?” The question escaped my lips before conscious thought could intervene, carrying with it the accumulated hunger of 347 lifetimes worth of unfinished battles and incomplete victories against trolly.

Looking at the dragon, I felt something I hadn’t experienced in months—genuine excitement rather than the crushing weight of anticipated failure.

The creature radiated power in waves that made my incarnations stir restlessly within their confined existence, each one offering fragments of memory from encounters with similar beings across parallel timelines.

You should let me handle this, Alex’s voice resonated through our shared consciousness, tinged with the battle-hunger of someone who had faced death countless times. I remember at least three different approaches that worked against dragons of this size class.

Caution, Claude, Fred’s more analytical presence interjected, his scholarly instincts cataloguing potential magical interactions. The magical saturation readings I’m detecting suggest this creature has survived far longer than our initial assessments indicated. Age brings wisdom, and wisdom makes even the most powerful opponents unpredictable.

Yet even as my incarnations offered their counsel, rational strategic thinking reasserted itself. We had developed comprehensive plans for dragon subjugation that accounted for terrain advantages, resource allocation, and casualty minimization.

Engaging now, in an uncontrolled encounter driven by emotion rather than tactics, would guarantee the kind of losses I had spent lifetimes learning to avoid.

The cost-benefit analysis was brutally clear.

We knew the dragon’s territorial boundaries now, which meant we could return with proper preparation rather than risking everything on impulse. Sometimes the greatest victory was recognizing when not to fight.

The dragon’s response to their defensive posture was both enlightening and humbling. Those ancient eyes, each one larger than a warrior’s shield, swept across their formation with the casual assessment of an apex predator evaluating potential threats.

What it saw apparently failed to impress.

A sound that might have been laughter or contempt rumbled from the creature’s throat—a vibration so deep it seemed to resonate in their bones.

The dismissal was absolute and devastating to any pretensions they might have harbored about their own capabilities.

With deliberate slowness that somehow made the gesture more insulting than any display of aggression, the dragon began to submerge.

Water closed over scales that had witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations, leaving behind only ripples and the metallic taste of humiliation.

“The dragon has withdrawn,” Douglas announced, his professional composure intact despite the sting of being deemed unworthy of serious attention. “Deactivate agility configurations and return to balanced loadouts for approach to secondary hunting grounds.”

The equipment transition occurred with mechanical efficiency, though the psychological adjustment took considerably longer.

Being dismissed as irrelevant by a creature of legend carried its own peculiar form of trauma—the recognition that despite all their preparation and power, they remained fundamentally insignificant in the broader hierarchy of the world’s most dangerous predators.

Yet pragmatism gradually reasserted itself. They were alive, uninjured, and now possessed intelligence about dragon territorial patterns that could prove invaluable in future operations. Sometimes survival was victory enough.

Moving with increased caution but unbroken determination, the team proceeded toward their alternate hunting grounds.

The dragon’s display of intelligence had been as impressive as its raw power—the creature clearly understood that humans, while individually weak, possessed collective capabilities that made them dangerous adversaries when properly motivated.

The brief surge of Touki and mana that Claude had released during the initial encounter had apparently registered as a warning.

The dragon was old enough to recognize that size didn’t always correlate with threat level, and experienced enough to avoid unnecessary conflicts that might escalate beyond acceptable risk parameters.

From the dragon’s perspective, humans were a peculiar species—individually fragile yet collectively destructive, possessed of an almost supernatural capacity for developing creative solutions to overwhelming problems.

They were the sort of beings who would find ways to kill dragons through persistence, ingenuity, and an alarming willingness to die in the process of achieving their goals.

Better to let them exhaust their violent tendencies on each other, as they had done throughout recorded history.

Patience was a virtue that came naturally to creatures who measured their lifespans in geological epochs.

Then the secondary hunting operation proceeded with the smooth efficiency of a well-rehearsed military campaign.

Away from the dragon’s territorial waters, the Crossbow teams employed their carefully developed tactics for sea serpent subjugation with remarkable success.

Using captured wyverns and ground kings as living bait, they systematically lured individual sea serpents away from their natural habitat and toward prepared containment zones on land.

The process required split-second timing and flawless coordination—one mistake could result in losing both bait and hunters to creatures whose hunting instincts had been honed across millennia.

Each successful capture built momentum for the next, as team members gained practical experience with the serpents’ behavioral patterns and attack strategies.

What had begun as theoretical knowledge gleaned from ancient texts became lived expertise written in adrenaline and near-death experiences.

By the operation’s conclusion, they had secured twenty sea serpents with precisely balanced gender distribution—ten breeding pairs that could potentially form the foundation for a sustainable population under controlled conditions.

The achievement represented months of planning and preparation condensed into a single day of flawlessly executed tactical operations.

Yet success brought its own complications.

“We still need to create an ecosystem capable of supporting these creatures long-term, don’t we?” Claude mused, scratching his chin as the magnitude of their logistical challenge became apparent.

The question hung in the evening air like an accusation.

Capturing legendary beasts was one thing—providing them with living conditions that wouldn’t result in their gradual decline and death was an entirely different category of problem.

“Indeed,” Douglas replied, his expression reflecting the same dawning realization. “Beyond ecosystem management, how do we create safe containment that doesn’t compromise their health and breeding potential? Beast storage bags can preserve them in stasis, but they’re not environments where living creatures can thrive long-term.”

The storage bags were marvels of magical engineering, capable of maintaining captured creatures in perfect temporal suspension.

But they were fundamentally preservation tools rather than habitats—useful for transport but unsuitable for the long-term housing of creatures meant to live, breed, and contribute to ongoing operations.

“They’re simply too large for conventional containment,” Douglas continued, his tactical mind working through the implications. “We can’t just release them back into wild populations without losing all the effort we’ve invested in their capture and initial training.”

The silence that followed carried the weight of a problem that threatened to transform their greatest success into their most expensive failure.

Twenty sea serpents represented an enormous investment of resources, personnel, and political capital. Losing them to poor planning would be both strategically and economically catastrophic.

“How about we establish living space within a labyrinth?” The suggestion came from Douglas, his voice carrying the tentative hope of someone grasping for solutions to an apparently insurmountable problem.

Claude’s interest sharpened immediately. “That’s… actually a promising approach. But has our research into labyrinth mechanics produced actionable results?”

“Current findings remain inconclusive,” Douglas admitted, “though preliminary observations suggest something remarkable. The labyrinth appears to have been deliberately designed with human habitation in mind. The structural architecture, the distribution of resources, even the behavioral patterns of indigenous life forms—everything points toward intentional ecosystem management rather than natural development.”

The implications were staggering. If labyrinths were artificial constructs rather than natural phenomena, it suggested the involvement of intelligences operating on scales that dwarfed contemporary magical theory.

“I’ve read reports about goblin and orc communities establishing permanent settlements within labyrinth systems,” Claude said, his multiple perspectives offering insights from various incarnations who had encountered similar phenomena. “But shouldn’t labyrinth monsters be automatically generated rather than forming sustainable populations? Unlike dungeon creatures, which are bound to specific magical matrices, labyrinth entities seem to possess genuine autonomy.”

“Exactly why it represents the ideal environment for S-class beast management,” Douglas replied, warming to the concept. “Unlimited food sources, self-regulating ecosystem balance, and sufficient space for territorial requirements. The primary challenge becomes establishing human infrastructure within the labyrinth environment.”

The conversation was interrupted by the sudden materialization of Kuro, the needle-inhabiting incarnation appearing with the casual confidence that had made him the elected representative of Claude’s failed attempts.

“It’s remarkably simple!” he announced, his enthusiasm cutting through the careful deliberation like a blade through silk. “We migrate human populations directly into the labyrinth!”

“And how exactly do you propose we accomplish that?” Douglas asked, though his tactical mind was already beginning to work through the logistics.

“Did you forget about human greed already, Claude?” Kuro’s grin carried the manic energy of someone who had died quickly enough to avoid the psychological scarring that plagued longer-lived incarnations.

The words hit like a revelation, fragments of memory and strategic planning suddenly coalescing into a coherent vision.

“I see,” I breathed, as the full scope of the possibility crystallized in my consciousness.

Crossbow had already established significant influence within Rapan’s maze city, their reputation extending throughout the Begaritt continent as premier monster tamers and tactical specialists.

That fame represented political capital that could be converted into practical power with the right application of pressure and incentive.

Our roster included more than thirty King-ranked experts, each one representing enough individual combat capability to intimidate entire city-states.

In regions where a single King-ranked warrior could shift the balance of territorial conflicts, our concentration of elite fighters represented overwhelming force projection capability.

The Cloud Style combat techniques had proven effective against monsters significantly above the practitioners’ nominal power levels.

Demonstrating twenty Saint-ranked fighters capable of battling King-level threats would provide the confidence boost necessary to convince civilian populations that Crossbow could guarantee their safety in what many considered the most dangerous environments on the continent.

The economic incentives were equally compelling.

Labyrinth-dwelling communities would save enormous amounts of time and resources by eliminating travel between hunting grounds and safe zones.

Professional adventurers could optimize their operational efficiency while civilians could establish support industries directly adjacent to resource-rich environments.

“We also have our guardian deity,” Kuro continued, his excitement building as the plan took shape. “The tamed beasts might not be individually capable of defeating Behemoth, but coordinated group tactics would allow them to achieve tactical parity. Against the weaker creatures that inhabit upper labyrinth levels, they would represent such overwhelming force superiority that potential threats would be eliminated before they could pose genuine danger to civilian populations.”

The zealous enthusiasm in Kuro’s voice revealed his true motivation—the desire to create something resembling the adventurer cities he remembered from anime and light novels in his previous existence.

The novelty of establishing a functioning community within a labyrinth environment appealed to the part of him that had always craved adventure and exploration.

As the incarnation who had died quickly enough to avoid the trauma-induced psychological scarring that affected his longer-lived counterparts, Kuro retained an optimism and enthusiasm for dangerous projects that the rest of us had learned to temper with hard-won caution.

His attachment to adventure remained stronger than Claude’s increasingly conservative strategic instincts, unclouded by memories of watching friends die in nightmare dungeons or civilian populations suffer from the consequences of poorly planned operations.

Douglas nodded thoughtfully, his experienced mind already working through the tactical implications and logistical requirements. The concept was ambitious enough to border on insanity, yet practical enough that it might actually succeed with proper execution.

“Very well,” Claude said, clapping his hands together with the decisive authority of someone accustomed to making decisions that affected thousands of lives. “We’ll proceed with preliminary planning for this concept. But I want comprehensive input from all division leaders before we commit to any specific course of action. This isn’t the sort of project where we can afford to overlook critical details.”

The approaching footsteps of the night watch team provided a natural transition point, signaling the end of their tactical discussion and the beginning of routine camp management.

Evening shadows were lengthening into true darkness, and several kilometers of distance from the dragon-patrolled waters provided sufficient safety margin for standard rest procedures.

Guard rotations were a time-honored tradition that ensured constant vigilance without exhausting any individual team member.

The current situation appeared stable enough that Claude could afford to rest, though true sleep remained elusive when his mind was processing the implications of dragon encounters and city-building projects with equal intensity.

As he settled into his bedroll, Claude deliberately pushed aside thoughts of more distant threats—the Human God’s manipulations, the mysterious Troubadour with his otherworldly knowledge, and the countless other dangers that lurked at the edges of their expanding influence.

Some problems were too large to solve through direct confrontation. Better to focus on achievable objectives that would strengthen their position for whatever challenges the future might bring. Building cities, taming monsters, and creating sustainable power structures were concrete goals that could be measured and adjusted based on empirical results.

The labyrinth city project represented the kind of ambitious undertaking that could transform their organization from a powerful mercenary company into something approaching a genuine nation-state. If successful, it would provide the resource base and population center necessary to face whatever cosmic-level threats were gathering in the shadows.

But that was tomorrow’s concern. Tonight, there were only the sounds of the ocean, the whispered conversations of guards on duty, and the dreamless sleep of someone who had learned to rest when the opportunity presented itself.

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