In front of Nathan: a giant, terrifying worm with an unknown level and apparently no weaknesses. Behind him: his pseudo-daughter flower. Next to said flower: one of his closest friends—a sadist and a high-functioning sociopath.

  What a perfectly lovely position.

  Before Nathan had time to second-guess himself, he went right for the kill.

  “[True Maelstrom].”

  A hurricane formed in front of Nathan, concentrated to the width and length of the yellow hallway.

  With a mental command, he tossed it forward, directly into the creature’s gullet. Its teeth flexed as if it were trying to chew into the swirling orb of watery destruction. Instead, the hurricane cut through its teeth and bent several in unnatural and twisted directions.

  Its mouth constricted further, and it crunched into the hurricane. A sound similar to nails against a chalkboard echoed out until, with one final crunch, the entire thing was swallowed whole.

  Nathan frowned. “Well, that’s not good.”

  That was Nathan’s strongest attack. Not only had he hit the creature head-on, but he’d tried to shred its insides—presumably the place where it would be weakest. And it had literally chewed up his attack, then metaphorically spat it out.

  Is there a big red gleaming gem on its forehead that I’m supposed to hit? Or maybe it’s weak to a certain element? That doesn’t particularly matter. Even if that were true, it’s not like I can do anything else but sling water around. Thanks, Thalassa.

  Yes, of course, this was all Thalassa’s fault. He was pretty sure that everything was her fault somehow.

  Lily’s roots wrapped around the creature and constricted it. With a single flex, it shook off the attack like it was nothing, all of the roots shattering at once.

  Its teeth flexed in something akin to a chewing motion. Nathan took a step back.

  “I guess if one doesn’t work, then what if I hit you with several?” he muttered.

  He summoned one [True Maelstrom]. He took a deep breath, then summoned another.

  His head hammered with the strain of pulling off such a move. He threw both of them forward, and they crashed into the creature’s insides. At the same time, he reared back his fishing rod and slung it forward like a war mace.

  All three attacks hit at the same time, and the creature was actually thrown back. The hook hit deep in the back of the worm and caught on a fleshy bit at the end. Nathan reeled back, and he could feel the flesh giving way to his immense strength. Meanwhile, the micro-sized hurricanes inside the worm’s gullet shredded its teeth and insides. It thrashed around and knocked several bricks from the roof.

  He stiffened.

  Its insides were already healing. The bent, broken teeth were being shed like a snakeskin, then replaced with brand-new ones—even sharper and shinier than before.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Nathan muttered. “It’s like it’s adapting. We constricted, it grows stronger to break the restraints. We start ripping it up, it regenerates.”

  Nathan paled.

  He’d seen enough anime to know where this was going.

  “That’s exactly what the power is,” he said. “Everything that we hit it with, it eventually learns to counter.”

  If Nathan was right, then they were completely and utterly screwed.

  He glared up at the ceiling. This wasn’t the kind of challenge that was supposed to appear as a random encounter. You were supposed to use this as a boss monster!

  The worm’s mouth flexed, and both of the [True Maelstrom]s inside its jaws dissipated. Nathan had just finished reeling in his fishing rod at that same moment.

  He looked at the huge chunk of flesh that was attached to the hook. Even now, the flesh was knitting itself back together in front of him.

  And if Nathan threw even more firepower at it, the regeneration would probably only become stronger. It might even develop something ridiculous like cloning or some other unbalanced bullcrap.

  “This is so unfair. What the hell is this?” he said.

  Was this how B32 felt when he was trying to take down Nathan? Okay, he kind of got where Lily was coming from with that earlier comment.

  What Nathan needed was something new. And something powerful enough to blast the entire worm into nothingness.

  Unfortunately, he had no idea where he would be able to find such a thing.

  His mind ran through his list of abilities over and over again, but nothing was coming up. It truly did seem as if he was completely doomed.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  His eyes stopped on [Astral Fishing].

  He didn’t think he was quite lucky enough to fish and suddenly find exactly what he was looking for in the five or ten seconds that he had.

  But… maybe there was something else he could do.

  He pointed his fishing pole toward the air, and it shimmered like a mirage.

  With a mental command, he tried to expand the size of the hole to cover the length and width of the room. He could sense that the hole he poked in reality was getting bigger and bigger, but it was hard to tell how big.

  Nathan internally crossed his fingers. He really hoped that this would work.

  He took a few steps back. The worm inched forward.

  Then he broke off into a run.

  The worm rushed after him. The ground rumbled, and then—

  It disappeared.

  Nathan’s eyes widened. He stopped in his tracks, then shut the portal with a mental command.

  It was gone.

  Just like that.

  A wide smile stretched across Nathan’s face from ear to ear. He nearly collapsed to his knees before he caught himself.

  “I can’t believe that actually worked,” he said. “That’s so OP. You finally did something right, Thalassa.”

  He walked over to where the worm had been. The path of destruction it had carved just suddenly stopped at a certain point—the point where the portal had been.

  Something wriggled on the ground, and he walked over to it. Lily’s “head” popped up to his side right when he came to a stop.

  “What is that?” Lily asked.

  “I think it’s from the worm. A little segment of it must’ve broken off when it was passing through the portal.”

  The little segment stopped. Small teeth snapped into place, and a mouth formed from nowhere.

  Before Nathan could react, it jumped forward straight for Lily.

  Thunder cracked.

  The worm went tumbling away and hit the ground.

  From behind, Mara shuffled up to Nathan’s side. She had one hand to her head. The other hand was holding a six-shooter—probably the one she’d used to shoot the worm out of the air.

  Nathan slumped over in relief.

  “What happened?” she said. “Last I remember, I was just cleaning out one of my shotguns when all of a sudden, I’m here?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Right now, do you have gasoline? Or at least something like gasoline?”

  “…Yes? Why?”

  “Because I’m going to torch this whole place and make sure that absolutely nothing remains of that thing.”

  For the next hour, Nathan thoroughly doused the entire corridor in flames. He wanted to be sure that there wasn’t even the slightest scrap remaining of the worm that could eventually grow up and become another problem. After he’d burned the entire hallway, he blasted the remains with [True Maelstrom], focusing on trying to evaporate any biological matter into atoms.

  After the fact, he patted Mara on the back. “Thanks for saving Lily earlier. I’m not sure what would happen if her rose head was damaged, but it probably wouldn’t have been anything good.”

  “No problem.” Mara looked at the completely incinerated hallway. “I’m still kind of confused about, uh, what happend. And why did you need us to set this whole area on fire?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  Mara opened her mouth to respond, then her breath hitched. Her eyes brightened, and she clapped her hands together.

  “That means you two owe me a favor, right?” she asked

  Oh boy, this’ll be good.

  Nathan stared at Mara.

  “You know what, sure. What do you want?” he asked.

  She put her hands on her hips, then pointed one finger at Lily. “I want to take her for a girls’ day out!”

  What.

  Lily pointed her rose head toward Mara. “A girls’ day out? What’s that?”

  “We go out and we do girly things! You know, like firearm maintenance and target shooting.” She stroked her chin. “We could even invite Emi. Go and hit the town. It would be a lot of fun!”

  Nathan looked between the two. A creeping grin started to form on his face before he forced it back.

  Really, Lily needed something like this. She needed to make friends outside Nathan.

  Lily shifted around.

  “As a flower, I’m not actually a girl—”

  Mara waved her off. “Don’t overthink it. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

  Lily looked over at him. He gave a subtle nod.

  “All right,” she said. “I guess one day wouldn’t be so bad.”

  Nathan wasn’t allowed to accompany them, of course. He was very conspicuously not girly, which invalidated him from the event.

  Which was honestly for the best. He was trying to get Lily to bond with other people outside himself—it wouldn’t do for him to get in the way.

  They’d ended up going to his soulbound town, where Nathan then found out that there were actually two copies of Lily—one inside the soulbound town, and one in the outside world. Apparently, she was moving her consciousness between the two?

  Nathan didn’t want to think about it for too long. He suspected that his brain would start to implode from how ridiculous the whole situation was.

  My flower daughter has two bodies, one of which is inside my magic alternate-dimension town, the other of which is in the real world.

  It vaguely sounded like an anime.

  So instead, Nathan busied himself with reviewing the status of his town.

  Not much had changed. Most of what Gius had been doing was building upon the foundation that Nathan had laid. What had once started as a ramshackle collection of huts was now a high-functioning, fully self-sufficient network of cities.

  The walls and fences of the main town had been upgraded significantly—barriers going over and below the ground to prevent intrusion. Ballistae that could snipe enemy targets from more than a mile away were mounted along several towers. The special forces units had increased, thanks to training and the military academy.

  Meanwhile, with the humans, most of them had chosen to make the former Harrowed Hand base into their home. From what Nathan understood, reconstruction was more or less finished. They had ended up tearing down the gigantic black city spire in the middle of town—it was a bit of an eyesore. Somebody had proposed turning it into a storage house, but he was voted down by the rest of the ruling council.

  The biggest change had been the creation of a formal 'Adventurers’ Guild'. It was intended to be an organization that allowed for coordination among explorers of the Circles, and those who wanted to assist in the race to the bottom. Equipment and information were lent and traded at this building.

  Nathan found the name a bit too isekai-like for his tastes, but whatever.

  By the time he finished reviewing these changes, he heard a knock on his door.

  “Enter.”

  Anand—Nathan’s spymaster, a former member of the Harrowed Hand—stepped through.

  “Anand, it’s been a while,” Nathan said.

  “Not really. It’s just felt that way.” Anand sat down in a chair opposite Nathan. “I have news.”

  “Go for it.”

  “First of all, the humans have won the first quest of the sixth circle. The majority of the yellow pins were found by us.”

  “Okay. I guess that’s good.”

  Seemingly not caring about Nathan’s indifference, Anand continued on.

  “Oh, and Fenrir has put out a hit for your head.”

  “What?”