Ocean Song flew quickly across the waters.
As he touched land in Italy, there was no need to track the creature.
He could see the destruction it wrought.
Even the cloven hoofprint, even the demolished tree, every obstacle in its way had been mowed down as if it were a weed. An utter lack of caring in what barred its path; it didn't matter if it was a building or people either, it was all the same.
His knowledge on the Calydonian Boar wasn't much. He knew the vague details; it was a punishment monster sent down because a king failed to honor Artemis.
And the king called to a group of heroes to slay the beast; they all gathered but had a hard time hurting it until they finally managed to put the beast down.
Other than that, there wasn't much other information to go on. Other than the hero Atalanta, he couldn't really recall any of the other names associated with the hunting of the animal.
How strong was it?
It was a monster created by a goddess, so it had to have some amount of strength.
Yet, it was so casually let loose to cause chaos without a single care by its creator either.
Ocean Song found himself frowning at the lack of responsibility taken.
At the very least, shouldn't it be leashed somewhere by the Goddess? It was the Goddess of Hunt's divine punishment, yet…
The 'punishment' was now being given upon many innocent souls who had the bad luck to simply exist within its path.
As Ocean Song flew further, he finally found his target.
It wasn't moving quickly; if anything, it was a lazy pace.
Yet, he could see its hide peeking up over the tree line.
It was truly a monstrous boar.
Ocean Song also didn't hide his presence as he touched onto the ground, nor did he announce himself in a flamboyant way.
Merely, he stood dozens of yards ahead in the boar's path.
Normally, the Calydonian Boar would have ignored such an ant, trampled upon it, and kept going, but its large hooves came to a stop.
Monster looked at monster.
"Fellow Dao—" Ocean Song opened his mouth as he normally would but found the words dying in his throat.
It was strange to him; he usually had words to say.
But now, what do you say to the one responsible for killing your mother?
What do you say when you're not even sure you mourn their death? He had been asking himself, would he even want to truly build a relationship with her after his abandonment?
Perhaps, at the end of the day, he just wanted to know why, to hear it properly and move on with his life and no longer care.
"You killed my mother." Ocean Song finally spoke.
The boar pushed out a burst of warm air from its snout as if to dismiss him.
Ocean Song didn't waste any more words and simply swung his swords.
The air screeched as it was cut in half, and a flash of light flew towards the monster, cutting apart dozens of trees before it collided with the boar.
However, to Ocean Song's confusion, it seemed to simply splash across his body as nothing happened.
The boar responded without giving him a chance to respond and charged.
As soon as the boar took a step forward, Ocean Song felt the shift around it. It was fast, extremely so, but it was more than that.
The boar's razor-sharp tusks were already in front of his face, and he braced himself as the boar began to push him back.
He did his best to dig his feet into the ground, but against logic, it seemed that regardless of how much strength he was putting into it, he couldn't stop the creature's charge.
It wasn't able to trample him, but just as well, Ocean Song grasped the tusks as the boar let out a furious roar and continued charging forward, forcing Ocean Song to be carried along.
He could see the pure desire to kill in the creature's eyes.
That's all it existed to do.
It was created to trample, to destroy, to crush anything in its path.
Ocean Song let out a shout and pushed the tusks away, rolling to the side.
The boar continued its charge for hundreds of more meters, everything within its path utterly decimated and flattened or destroyed.
The Cyclops looked down at the sword in his hand, frowning.
The boar did a large swerve before lowering its tusks and coming at him again.
Ocean Song swung his sword again; many more lights slashed at the boar at lightning speed. And each one of them collided with the creature but left not a single mark upon its body.
In fact, it barely even blinked at the attacks.
It knew they would cause it no harm.
Ocean Song stabbed his sheathed sword into the ground, and his Third Eye opened.
His monstrous, baleful aura erupted around him.
Instead of dodging or attacking with his sword again, he took a stance and held his fist back.
The boar charged, and Ocean Song threw a punch.
The two opposing forces collided, bursting outwards with a cataclysmic booming.
Everything that hadn't already been trampled had been uprooted and blown away by the residual force of the two monsters clashing.
Ocean Song's eyes widened because he knew almost immediately he had lost the clash. All the energy and power he put into that punch had seemingly been repelled, and it sent the Cyclops flying backwards as the Boar let out a triumphant roar.
The hit didn't debilitate him into silence.
Even as he pushed himself up off the ground some dozens of yards away and wiped away the blood at the corner of his mouth, he was uncaring about the damage he suffered.
But slowly, he grinned. "I get it now. Even though my punch was far stronger, I lost because of your 'concept,' is that right?"
The Cyclops let out a breath.
"I seem to recall a bit of the story now. The blows that felled you, they came from the rear." He continued, letting his chaotic aura calm down. "When you 'charge,' you can't be 'stopped'; perhaps some concept of 'unimpedement'? And my first sword strike, you weren't charging, but you are seemingly conceptually immune to attacks from the front."
The Calydonian Boar was a Divine Beast of Punishment; it wasn't a simple monster.
It was designed to trample anything in its path; that meant when it charged, it couldn't be stopped.
And from the stories, he recalled, the first strike to do damage came from striking the boar from the rear.
The boar stomped its front hoof on the ground, blowing out air from its nostrils.
The bloodlust in its eyes intensified, as if telling Ocean Song that he hit the nail on the head in this case.
"I wonder, do you also feel discarded and without purpose? I heard those say that there's a chance at godhood awaiting anyone brave enough to claim Rome. Is that what you want? To evolve beyond what you were created for?"
The boar let out another roar and charged again.
"Sword." He called out, and his sword shot out of the ground from where he left it and flew towards his hand.
The full breath of his Dao hadn't recovered yet, but it was fine.
He simply closed his eyes, and the Tai Chi formation appeared on the ground.
He walked into the boar's charge and casually swung his sword.
The boar was confused because it missed him as Ocean Song took a step to the side, and then its bloodshot eyes noticed that one of its tusks had been cut clean off.
It let out another roar of rage and confusion as it rampaged through another set of trees not far ahead, like it was asking what had just happened.
"Once the trick is identified, it's not very difficult." Ocean Song held his sword parallel to the ground, aiming it at the boar as it did a long turn, not ending its charge. "I simply have to change my attack to come from a different angle, even if I attack from the front."
He grasped the handle with two hands and swung again as he turned his body just enough to avoid the beast's forward-charging body.
The second tusk went flying up into the air.
Its tusks were mighty weapons, stronger and sharper than steel, feared by the heroes of old, but they weren't its main weapon.
Its greatest weapon had always been its large body!
It charged even faster, picking up momentum as it took a long detour before lining up with Ocean Song again and letting out a roar of defiance.
The next thing it saw was a flash of red, and the boar's roars were filled with pain, and it went tumbling onto the ground.
Its left eye had been slashed clean through.
"Ah. You have quite the thick hide, don't you? I intended for that slash to take your ear as well." Ocean Song stood over the downed body of the beast.
For the first time, the Calydonian Boar appeared concerned.
Perhaps even frightened.
It was a strange feeling for the ancient beast, because it hadn't ever felt an inexplicable fear before. It knew to cower before the gods, a logic that any creature below the threshold knew. It had been killed by 'heroes' before, more than once even, but it had never been…systematically disassembled before.
"Get up, try again. Don't worry, I'm patient. We have all day."
Rage overcomes fear.
Rage was a feeling it knew better, and it sunk everything it had into the rage it was created with.
The massive boar stomped its feet, standing back up, and roared defiantly.
Ocean Song noticed that its aura seemed to intensify, as if it was showing off everything it had. The title of Divine Punishment wasn't just for show; it was a powerful monster.
A last stand, a final desperate attempt?
Ocean Song put his sword away.
"Fine! Let's see who gives up first!" He gestured for the beast to come.
The Calydonian Boar charged at him with all the strength it could muster, and Ocean Song merely welcomed it.
He let out his own shout as he grabbed the knobs of its tusks as handles and pushed against the unstoppable force.
Ocean Song dug his heels in, but even so, the boar continued to push him back continuously. Yet, he refused to budge even an inch as well.
The boar charged continuously.
It didn't matter what was in its way as it carried Ocean Song with it.
Trees, rocks, and cliffs.
Ocean Song didn't even know how far it carried him, miles upon miles without slowing down.
In fact, he noticed that the boar was speeding up gradually.
It wasn't until Ocean Song hit the first building that he realized he had been taken far off course and deep into the country from where he was originally.
He used his Divine Sense to push away any people in this path, letting it sweep outwards for thousands of yards far ahead.
But he continued to struggle in this battle.
Every building the Boar destroyed only seemed to encourage it further.
The rage and bloodlust in its eyes didn't dissipate at all, its hooves hitting the ground like thunder with every stomp, and Ocean Song continued without breaking eye contact with the monstrous beast.
Who would give up first?
Would the Boar's power run out first, or would Ocean Song be unable to continue holding on and get trampled underfoot?
The boar was confident in its one strength.
Yet, with every mile it continued onwards, it felt the creeping sensation down its spine. Onwards and onwards it continued its charge, but the smaller monster clutching onto it refused to budge.
This was never something it had experienced before.
Nothing had ever been able to meet it at its strongest, to stop its one purpose, to trample and destroy, but here and now, someone was doing just that.
Onward and onward
With every step, the Boar could feel it, its power, its will, waning just a tiny bit.
A prolonged fight? Someone that refused to give like this? It had never tested itself against this sort of thing before, and it was coming to realize its prided rampage wasn't without limits.
It felt it keenly when ramming through a towering human structure.
The impact should have been debilitating, deadly, even harmful to the one grasping its front, yet his eyes still showed that unwavering cold gleam in them.
All it took was a single thought in the back of its head.
I will lose.
It was enough that its stride began to break.
It kept going, but each step was more haggard than the rest; it breathed out, trying to deny it, but its stride was no longer even.
Its charge was running out, meeting some sort of limitation it never knew it had before.
And it wasn't the only one to realize it.
"You—" Ocean Song opened his mouth to taunt it one final time before fully stomping on its pride and ending the monster, but the words died as he saw something fall from the sky.
Gleaming silver pierced through the back of the boar's head, impaling it firmly into the ground.
The momentum of its charge had completely dispersed, and the massive boar went limp without even time to understand how it died.
Ocean Song, however, went tumbling, disoriented by the sudden turn of events.
"Who!?" Ocean Song shouted, looking up to the sky.
Then he saw it, something that seemed to exist at multiple folded layers, its body twisting in ways that he was fairly sure didn't exist in the human language.
Eyes, Feathers.
'Be not afraid.'
He heard the words as the being snapped together. It wasn't some kind of Mist illusion, but as if the creature was hiding its true self behind a false one.
"Too late, I already peed myself." Ocean Song replied, knowing exactly what he was looking at.
An Angel.
It was strange, the word, the realization.
Even as a monster himself, and even meeting gods, it was strange to acknowledge the angel in front of him.
Its current 'form' was more like what people depicted in artworks, what people thought of when someone mentioned the species.
A beautiful woman in white robes floated down with two pure white wings fluttering in the breeze.
However, there was a very uncanny rejection in Ocean Song's eyes as he tried to think of her as a 'person.'
He could feel that there was something off.
Like he was staring at a machine that was simply mimicking a person.
It showed absolutely no emotions on its face, and he couldn't even see the facsimile of breathing or basic bodily functions.
Even gods breathe when they take human form.
It's redundant and doesn't serve a purpose, but they still do it to appear more human.
This thing in front of him did none of that.
Ocean Song recognized that he may have made a booboo.
Perhaps he was a bit closer to the Vatican than he had anticipated? In his anger, he may have gotten wrapped up in his own mess and forgotten the very explicit warning his father gave him.
However!
Ocean Song was also angry.
Furious even.
Once again, someone stole away his chance at closure!
Granted, this instance was a lot less…grudge-inducing than the boar killing his mother, but the principal still remained.
Ocean Song took out his sword and pointed it at the Angel.
The angel put both hands together, its voice ethereal despite the unnaturalness of it. "Child of the Sea, return—"
"You stole my kill! You stole my righteous vengeance!"
Its eyes opened, looking at Ocean Song.
"I demand to speak to your manager!"
There was a pause.
Ocean Song didn't expect that to do anything; he was mostly panicking and blurting out the first thing that appeared in his head.
However, the clouds above parted, and a light shone down.
The angel looked up as if it were talking to someone else.
Ocean Song gulped.
He realized.
He may have made a small mistake.
[Line Break]
A/N
Ocean Song uses one of his advanced techniques, channeling his inner Karen.
If you want to read 1 chapter ahead or support me, visit my p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m / astoryforone
I also have a boosty if you can't use the above under the same name.