The Royal Military Academy's Impostor Owns a Dungeon [BL] novel Chapter 713

Chapter 713: The Melting Shore

When it rains, it pours.

That could be the only explanation Nico could think of, as everything that could go wrong had, in fact, gone wrong.

No wonder the official reports for this anxiety-inducing period were all over the place. No one even knew which enemy they were supposed to be panicking over anymore.

What started as a rising tide that lured out mutated creatures had somehow spiraled into a nightmare involving a giant bloom, parasitic sea anemones, and corrupted beasts from Zone Four.

At first, it was manageable. Horrifying, yes, but manageable.

In fact, he’d like to believe that they were doing pretty well against those little shits. It’s just that, why in hell would they call upon their bigger brothers?! Their entire family?!

Because that’s exactly what it looked like now.

While the parasitic ones they were hunting down earlier seemed to be the younger ones, these creatures that had been hurled at them looked more mature, more menacing, and more—

SWISH!!

The blur passed so fast that the scanners almost failed to track it. For one horrifying second, Captain Nico Kane thought it was another monster—until the flicker of light registered across his screen.

It wasn’t a monster.

It was the Duchess.

Though now that he was watching this, maybe the Duchess was a different kind of monster?

"...Holy hell," someone whispered.

Duchess Amelia Kyros had moved.

The dual-blade-wielding mecha darted across the battlefield with terrifying grace, cutting through corrupted water and sludge as if it were slicing through air. She met the first monster head-on—a massive thing whose spine protruded mid-lunge, a jagged bone bursting outward like a spear.

The sight alone was enough to make most pilots jolt in terror.

But not her.

With a slight tilt of her mecha’s body, she shifted just enough for the bone not to graze even the surface plating. The attack missed her by mere centimeters, close enough that even the mecha’s sensors whined in warning.

And yet, before anyone could even gasp, the Duchess had already closed the distance.

Her movements were a masterclass in precision—no wasted motion, no hesitation. The mecha twisted low, surged forward, and the twin blades cut clean through the monster’s side.

SLASH.

Then again, SLASH.

The creature didn’t even have time to scream before it was torn apart, its disjointed body collapsing into multiple chunks that fell by the shore.

The pilots around her exhaled shakily. Someone muttered, "That was insane..."

Another corrected, "Wow."

Even Nia could only stare, awed and slightly terrified. "That’s... yeah, that’s Duchess Amelia, alright."

The silence that followed lasted barely five seconds.

Because right after the Duchess landed, the supposedly dead creature’s remains began to move.

"Wait. Is it just me, or are those parts... twitching?"

"...No. They’re definitely twitching."

Sure enough, the severed limbs, torsos, and scattered remains that had nothing to do with each other started inching back together.

It wasn’t fast, but it was happening.

Then again, such a thing was fast enough in light of their situation.

While it was great that they could still fight the hurled monsters, the downside was that doing so tended to splash corrupted goo all over the battlefield.

And while the mechas coated with Nanite ore were generally fine, the manual mechas that weren’t were bound to start encountering issues sooner or later.

Duchess Amelia’s voice came through the comms, calm but sharp. "We’re changing tactics. Manual mechas are to go inland to hunt down the closest parasitized and non-parasitized mutated beasts. Soldiers of House Kyros will remain here to deal with the actively corrupted ones."

The Duchess just hoped that’d be enough.

For now.

So imagine their utter surprise when Luca’s connection via D-29 showed them an underwater view that was so clear they couldn’t possibly believe it.

But how could it not be clear when Luca had been cleaning the waters by vacuuming the corruption?

"Hello, Marshal Julian," came a polite, cheerful voice from the comms.

The Marshal nearly choked. Around him, officers and pilots froze in unison.

That voice was far too soft and pleasant for the apocalyptic feed they were looking at.

Marshal Julian cleared his throat, trying to sound composed. "Cadet Kyros... you’re currently on an open channel. Everyone can hear you."

He thought it best to clarify that early—just in case Luca started talking about, say, the shine and consistency of the "corrupted goo."

And to his mild horror, Luca’s bright golden eyes did seem to sparkle as if he was itching to do exactly that. Thankfully, he did no such thing.

Still, the Marshal prayed no one else noticed.

"Cadet Kyros, have you found something underwater?"

"Yes, Marshal," came the reply. "I think we just saw the reason why the aberrant bloom was trying to move inland."

There was a pause.

"Earlier," the Marshal prompted carefully, "you said it was probably because it was too crowded, correct?"

Confused murmurs filled the line.

From what everyone could see on Luca’s live feed, there was nothing around him but open ocean—vast, empty, and eerily still.

Too crowded? Where? With what?

The Marshal saw the same thing, so he had to ask, "Cadet Kyros, was there another development?"

Luca nodded a little too eagerly, and the Marshal was suddenly nervous.

But he was even more nervous when the young cadet said, "Well, it might be better to demonstrate instead."