The Royal Military Academy's Impostor Owns a Dungeon [BL] - Chapter 710

Chapter 710: Twelve Is the Limit

“Brother! Again! Please try again!”

“Huh? But brother, will it even work? Whoever said the bigger the better was obviously lying!”

“My tentacle just hopelessly flopped after hitting the small one!” cried Ollie, voice dripping with betrayal and emotional damage.

“But okay, I’ll try again!”

“It might be the technique! Try using the side with the bumps!” chirped an overly enthusiastic little chipmunk whose brain had clearly gone where no brain should.

“…”

“…”

Unbeknownst to the bestest of brothers, several very important individuals who most definitely needed spiritual cleansing were questioning what could’ve possibly led them to hear all that.

One husband.

One husband-to-be.

One extremely concerned mother.

And several other witnesses who were trying their hardest to cease to exist.

“Brother, sure enough, the bumps got it to explode!”

“…”

“…”

Somewhere across the comm line, a redhead—as if testing the length of everyone’s life—chimed in. “Wait, does it explode faster like that? Should I just do that instead of hammering like this?”

Lord, have mercy.

Kyle, who was stuck inside the same mecha as one of the worst offenders, had his hand covering his face. He couldn’t tell anymore if he was just extremely pent up or if everyone had collectively lost their ability to choose better words.

And from the sound of it, even the Prince had reached his limit.

Because clearly, no man in his right mind would want others to hear his wife discussing techniques and explosions on the public channel.

“Is there something wrong with the tentacles?” he asked abruptly, cutting through the chaos before the comms could be marked explicit.

“Hmm… Not wrong exactly,” Luca said thoughtfully. “It’s more like… It’s behaving like an unrelated creature.”

“Unrelated?” asked the Prince, who by now was staring at D-29, who was crouched near the shore, peering at a pile of frozen monster parts like an overly curious child.

Before Luca could elaborate, a sharp gasp echoed through the channel.

“Luca?” The Duchess’s voice immediately followed, equal parts alarmed and wary. “Is everything alright, son?”

There was a pause. Then—

“Wow! It’s really always twelve!”

“…”

“…”

Xavier blinked. “What?”

“Husband, you really are the best!” Luca announced proudly, voice so full of joy it made even Xavier freeze in mild panic.

“Brother, what’s happening?” Ollie asked, concerned yet similarly curious.

“See!” Luca said excitedly, holding up what appeared to be a smaller frozen creature by one of its tentacles. “The creatures Xavier brought over all have twelve tentacles!”

He gestured enthusiastically toward the monster behind him. “But that aberrant beast over there has hundreds—maybe even thousands!”

The others went silent.

Luca, oblivious to the sudden tension in their voices, continued happily, “So if this one keeps regenerating to twelve, then it just confirms it! It didn’t recognize the tentacle of the giant bloom because it’s a totally different anemone!”

“…”

He froze, eyes lighting up in realization.

“And it’s even corrupted!” he added in awe—before promptly coughing as if only now realizing what that meant.

The others stared, torn between admiration and horror.

Because, of course, only Luca Kyros could sound genuinely thrilled about discovering a swarm of corrupted organisms.

__

Not that the information didn’t help.

It actually did. Immensely, even.

Though the soldiers’ accounts definitely had tears accompanying this part.

Because the moment Duchess Amelia had everyone gathered and hovering above the shoreline for a quick field briefing, the collective morale of the soldiers officially went from “barely hopeful” to “desperately praying for salvation.”

Sure enough, learning that there was another beast did not help anyone’s blood pressure.

But at least they had a better idea of what they were actually fighting.

The soldiers could practically feel their hearts give up halfway through the Duchess’s calm but terrifying words.

They’d already been through enough. They’d suffered at the claws, fangs, and random slap attacks of the previous beasts. They had dealt with tentacles popping out from unexpected angles and explosions from things that should not have exploded.

And now, apparently, there was a second kind.

“Merciful stars, are we being punished for something?” one soldier whispered.

“Probably,” muttered another, clutching the controls of his mecha like it was a sacred relic. “Maybe it’s because we ate all those good things.”

Well, not exactly.

While several mechas had been paralyzed mid-battle, nearly crushed, or shredded to pieces, they still managed to survive thanks to the presence of Lieutenant Sera, who could traverse nearly undetected on the battlefield.

And for the first time in her career, Sera fully understood what “combat enlightenment” felt like.

Her heart was pounding as she darted across the battlefield, utilizing every function Luca had carefully explained to her during testing.

The distance before she’d be detected.

The movements that would use the least spiritual energy.

And that very helpful trick involving pinching at certain parts to delay venom spread.

Every single thing he’d told her came into play, and now she was more determined than ever to master them.

Especially after learning that these new creatures weren’t like the tentacles earlier—they were contaminated.

“Just when I thought things were getting better,” she muttered under her breath, watching a mass of tentacles writhe beneath the waves.

That was when a soldier raised a question, his voice surprisingly curious. “Your Grace, should we assume there are two cores to target? If these creatures have a symbiotic relationship, then there should be two, right?”

Heads inside cockpits tilted.

It was one of the House Kyros soldiers who asked, his tone, for some reason, sounded strangely stable.

But how could they know what the soldiers of House Kyros were thinking?

For as everyone thought about double the number of ways to die, said soldiers were truly hoping to collect as much for the heir.

But before Duchess Amelia could respond, another voice cut through the comms.

“Uhm, excuse me,” a young cadet piped up nervously. “But actually… I don’t think it’s symbiotic.”

“Huh?”

Noah, the cadet in question, sounded hesitant but firm.

Truth be told, he hadn’t planned to speak up, for one, he didn’t want to accidentally say anything that would doom them all. But after spending most of his time collecting beast cores—just as any member of DG—he had noticed something strange.

The beasts that should’ve had predictable core locations didn’t anymore.

They were empty.

And then, just a short while ago, he’d seen something happen by sheer coincidence.

He had watched a tentacled monster leap—yes, leap—from one beast to another like some horrific sticky parasite. The creature it left behind stood catatonic before falling to the ground by itself.

At first, Noah had thought he was seeing things. But then he saw the little horror attach itself to a new host, bite down with its one mouth, and… grow bigger.

“…”

Sure, it wasn’t to such a big degree, but he could swear on Theo’s glasses that he seriously saw it wiggle and grow.

So he realized something.

“I believe it’s parasitic,” he said finally, voice steadier now. “If you check the tentacled beast, you’ll likely find the missing core of its host.”

“!!!”

A collective gasp spread through the comms.

Sera’s eyes widened. “You’re saying it’s eating the cores?”

“More like stealing them, really,” Noah replied evenly, much to the sudden gasps of a guild leader who just had an epiphany.

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