Battle With the Grand Death Worm
"Whoa!? Another transport vehicle’s down!"
"Damn it! Are the reinforcements not back yet?"
"It’ll take a while longer! Ugh, we have no choice but to handle this ourselves!"
"How are we supposed to handle it!?"
"We’ll figure something out!"
Amidst the furious shouts of the adventurers left guarding the rear, the Grand Death Worm kept targeting the transport and medical vehicles that were vital to our mobility.
Of course, we weren’t just standing around letting it attack us.
We had spread Talat’s spider silk all over the ground to strengthen our defense, but the creature was so strong that it wasn’t being held back much at all.
Seriously, having to fight something like this is a real disaster!
"Lady Lily, what should we do? At this rate…"
"What can we do? We have no choice but to fight. If we try to run, it’ll chase us. That’s obvious."
Yep, some people had panicked and tried to flee in their vehicles early on.
But they were devoured, vehicle and all, by the Grand Death Worm, and after that, no one else attempted to run.
According to Roland, the Grand Death Worm uses vibrations in the ground, like footsteps, to pinpoint its prey’s location.
So, after the first fleeing vehicle was destroyed, we had Talat spread spider silk all over, and everyone parked their vehicles on top of it.
This way, it couldn’t locate us by the vibrations of our footsteps anymore, but now it seemed to be destroying the web at random, gathering information from that.
It’s likely using the tremors from tearing apart the web to estimate our general location.
What a troublesome opponent.
"Lily, can’t you freeze the Grand Death Worm?"
"Don’t say impossible things, Melanie! If I could, I’d have done it already!"
"But the Grand Death Worm’s weakness is the cold. If we can catch it the moment it surfaces and freeze it, the rest of the body should follow."
"That’s easier said than done…"
"Hmm, so that’s why it stopped momentarily when it touched the web after surfacing."
It was Plum who chimed in on my conversation with Melanie.
And, seriously, that’s the kind of information we could’ve used a lot sooner!
"Sorry, sorry. I was fully focused on protecting you, after all. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it would emerge from the ground, so I had to focus all my senses on that."
"Does that mean we can actually catch the Grand Death Worm?"
"If we use the Lumite Grand Wing as bait, it’s not impossible. If we can figure out where it will surface and strike first… well, we might manage."
"Using the Lumite Grand Wing as bait? How would we do that, Plum?"
"Ah, well, the method is…"
The method Plum explained was rather bold but made sense.
First, Talat would create an ice path, and I would race along it at the Lumite Grand Wing’s top speed.
Of course, since the Lumite Grand Wing would zip through the ice path in an instant, the Grand Death Worm would immediately know our location.
But we’d turn that against it. Talat would scatter ice threads from behind the Lumite Grand Wing as we moved, luring the Grand Death Worm into a trap.
The worm, unable to attack the vehicle directly from below, would get tangled in the ice threads and surface.
Once it was above ground, Plum would grab it with her whip, drag it up, and then Talat would freeze it solid, completing the takedown.
It was certainly a bit dangerous, but if we sat around doing nothing, we’d get attacked sooner or later anyway.
I’ll bet on Plum’s plan.
Talat, I’m counting on you!
What do you think about this chapter?
