Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never lose a hundred battles.
It was a grand saying, but if you peeled back the meaning, it really just came down to: prepare your information thoroughly.
And speaking from my own experience as someone with a fair amount of adventurer mileage under his belt, it was a pretty reasonable saying. The reason I'd survived so many reckless adventures was partly thanks to my excellent [Falna] and skills, sure, but also because of the knowledge Eina had practically forced into me.
Enemy traits, habits, terrain data. A lot of information looks useless when you examine it one piece at a time, but once you gather it all together, there's a surprising amount that becomes useful.
For example, the Vargh Dragon that appears in the Deep Floors.
If you entered the Deep Floors without knowing about the monster called the Foryu, which fires attacks that ignore the level gap, what would happen?
Well, a skilled adventurer might be able to dodge it. But there's no denying that going in informed and going in blind are two very different things.
If you're caught off guard by a sudden barrage and don't know how to respond, you'll just keep getting pushed back. In that sense, whether you have information or not carries real value even for the strongest adventurers. In fact, it can matter even more in battles between the strong.
No joke, fights between monsters at that level can be decided in an instant. So before a massive battle like the Three Great Quests, gathering information on them was, in a way, the most natural thing in the world.
And after gathering that information, what we found was... despite the Three Great Quests' reputation, there was surprisingly little known about those monsters. Not just in the present, but even counting me, who had come from the future.
What I knew was only that the Poseidon Familia and the scholarly faction had cooperated with the subjugation force. Beyond that, there was nothing left in the Guild's records.
Come to think of it, that made sense. Everyone who had gotten close enough to learn the details would have died, and the only ones who survived to tell the tale would have been those who held their breath far away and waited for the calamity to pass.
In the first place, Leviathan lived in the sea, and the Black Dragon lived in the sky. They weren't the kind of things you could just go and look at because you wanted to.
That was why Behemoth had been the first target of the subjugation efforts. At least Behemoth lived on land, so gathering information on it was easier. Of course, that was only relative to the other two.
And that meant this subjugation would be no easier than Behemoth's—if anything, it might be harder.
Everyone knew sea creatures were strong. Water itself is the enemy's domain, not humanity's. Unless you were one of the few special races or had a special ability, the reality was that you couldn't even move freely there.
Restricted movement, inability to breathe, and the pressure of having monsters closing in from every direction while you had to fight them.
Even battle-hardened adventurers would find that hard to ignore. It was a difficult situation, and...
"We're not fighting on the shore?"
"That's right. This time, the subjugation force will head out by ship and fight at sea."
What kind of reaction would you have if you heard that you'd be going out to fight on a ship instead of on land?
"You rotten old geezer!"
"Hey, tie him up! Throw him overboard!"
"Gaaah! Let go of me, you bastards!"
Yeah, probably something like that.
I let out a sigh as I watched the old man, now bound and forcibly dunked into the winter sea, with faraway eyes.
This was the place that would become the harbor city of Melhen...
I said "would become" because, naturally, it wasn't Melhen yet. There was already a modest harbor here for seafood and sea routes, but it was a place that got wrecked regularly by Leviathan's periodic visits. No one would build a town in a place that dangerous. If anything, it was surprising that anything had been developed here at all.
It was sort of like Rivira on the surface. Very different from the Melhen I knew. Back then, it had felt like a full-on seaside town.
Turning my head and looking around, I could feel a strangely peaceful atmosphere in the air for what was basically a shantytown.
Leviathan moved between the coastline and the deep sea on a fixed cycle. And winter was the season when Leviathan went into the deep sea. In other words, this was still a stable period.
Which meant that unless we went out by ship, hunting Leviathan was impossible, and that we had to fight one of the Three Great Quests' central monsters from the disadvantageous environment of a ship.
"A ship..."
Of course, that was basically suicide, so they must have prepared countermeasures.
And I knew exactly what those countermeasures were.
A flying ship. I'd heard plenty about it, and I'd even ridden one before.
The [Hringhorni], the floating ship commonly called the scholarly faction.
The scholarly faction. It had originally been a battleship built to fight Leviathan, but in my era it had taken on a form closer to a floating city that wandered the world.
I never imagined I'd get to see the original in this form...
"I helped too."
Hiding in a corner, Fels whispered that only I could hear, and I nodded at him.
So Fels had been involved in making this too. As expected of a sage, that was entirely possible. In fact, maybe Fels had even led the project.
So this must have been what he'd said he was making before. Something like this couldn't have been built in just a few months, so there must have been at least several years of preparation behind it.
Compared to the one I knew, it was a little smaller, but its oppressive presence surpassed even the one from my era. That was probably because this was not the scholarly faction that doubled as a city, but a battleship built solely to bring Leviathan down.
"A flying ship, huh... It really is amazing. How does it fly?"
"There's a floating mechanism deep inside the ship. It's lifted by that."
"It eats an absurd amount of magic stones, though. Really absurd. But in a situation like this, there's no point in saving on costs."
Fels added the aside so quietly that only I could hear it. This guy really did have a loose mouth, huh?
"I wanted to improve the efficiency too, but that Zeus bastard suddenly moved up the schedule, so..."
He muttered on and on, sounding deeply resentful. As his grandson, I offered an apology in his place. In my heart, of course.
"Honestly, no matter how you look at it, it's wasteful. Even if you think about costs, it'd be better to fight on the shore. Sure, the city would get wrecked, but just paying compensation would be much cheaper..."
Well, I couldn't say I didn't understand Fels's point. If this were Melhen in the future, maybe it wouldn't work, but thinking, "Well, a barren shantytown like this can get smashed for all I care," wasn't exactly unreasonable.
Not unreasonable, but...
"How do you see our chances?"
"Our chances?"
Since he looked like he'd keep grumbling all day if I let him, I asked another question. What did Fels think of this battle?
"I don't know about that. I'm a researcher, not an adventurer."
"I see..."
Cold, but accurate. Fels was surprisingly weak when it came to tactical mind games.
There are limits to what even a sage can bridge between theory and practice. I'd learned that well enough in the original timeline.
"Still, I think we'll probably win."
"Huh?"
"Do you not think so?"
His empty eye sockets looked at me. He had neither eyeballs nor even skin over them, and yet for some reason there was an unfathomable seriousness in that expression.
"...Of course."
I smiled a little and answered. Maybe he liked my answer, because Fels gave a satisfied reply in return.
"Looks like it's time to depart. I'll be going now."
"Yes. Go win."
"Yes!"
With that answer, I immediately boarded the battleship.
"Ah, wait."
"Eh..."
...Or I tried to, but Fels suddenly stopped me.
No, you've got more to say in this situation? What am I supposed to do about this awkwardness?
Unfortunately, my feelings didn't reach him, and Fels fumbled around, pulled something out, and held it out to me.
It was wrapped in white cloth, but I could still see its shape and the gleam leaking through the gaps. There was no way I could forget what it was.
"A Neo Bow? Why are you bringing this now?"
"Take it with you, just in case."
"No, even if some just-in-case situation comes up, I'm not going to use this th—"
"Take it with you, just in case."
"I'm saying—"
"Take it with you, just in case."
"Uh..."
"Take it with you, just in case."
Fels repeated himself like a broken machine. If that were all, I'd just have found it creepy and left it at that, but his voice was somehow getting wetter and wetter, and I felt a stab of guilt for no reason.
But I couldn't just add more baggage for no reason either. Besides, if I took it and then said I never used it, I could already picture him locking me back in a room again. No, this was the moment to steel myself and refuse—
"You never know! It might be desperately needed! Take it!"
"Y-yes, I understand!"
I couldn't do it.
I accepted it in the end because if I refused, Fels looked like he might actually burst into tears. I slung it onto my back.
...Well, like Fels said, it wouldn't hurt to have it. If necessary, I could always stash it inside the ship.
"Sniff... Then take care of yourself."
"Yes..."
Fels had ended up crying a little, but I decided to pretend not to notice.
It was finally time to depart for real.
"Today, we will bring down the second calamity here."
A heavy voice filled the space.
Standing on the platform, the man's speech continued as he addressed everyone below.
"In this battle, we will carve into the world a second feat that no one has ever achieved."
"A path that not even the heroes of antiquity could complete, and that even the successors of the future will never be able to match."
"Right here, right now! We will make the world remember that a hero called us existed! Is that not what we must do?"
Zzzzt- The air trembled. It wasn't just the force in the man's voice; other powers seemed to resonate with it, vibrating in response.
"Bring me all the hardships and suffering in the world, and we will overcome them all! Even if it is a calamity that has continued since ancient times!"
"We will twist open tomorrow itself, which has been shut away by our own hands!"
"Raise your weapons! The world belongs to humanity! From this moment on, the sea returns once more to mankind's embrace!"
Rumble, rumble, rumble- The ground shook. No, the ship was rising.
Not land, not sea, but a flying ship.
The ship carried the heroes and advanced toward the battlefield. It was like a scene from a story—
"We're setting out!!"
"Waaahhh!!"
With a thunderous roar, the Leviathan subjugation battle began.
Something that had been sleeping deep beneath the sea opened its eyes.
As though welcoming the prey that had entered its jaws.
Rumble-rumble-rumble...
The monster that had swallowed the sea rose up.