Eventually, Worthy had no choice but to get up and move away from the wall. The crimson sea foam rose higher than expected, meaning that something massive was lying underneath. That collection of bubbles and foam stirred and split apart as various spikes of bone broke through them. Soon enough, it revealed the behemoth that was resting beneath it.
There hadn't even been time to properly study the appearance of the thing.
As it rose, the wall-mounted artillery unleashed a barrage of projectiles upon the abomination, which blew pieces of it away and sent them scattering into the ocean of blood. The power behind the blasts dwarfed all of the cannonfire Worthy witnessed during the initial hours of the flight.
Each impact against the battered body of the bone monstrosity left a massive explosion and cloud of smoke, and by the time the automated artillery ceased its onslaught, there was nothing left of the creature except for jagged, fragmented pieces of where its lower half once was.
"God… I… Do you think that thing actually stood up? I heard rumors that this thing is as deep as the ocean in our world, isn't it? How massive does something need to be for it to come and meet us at this height…?" The Climber speaking raised a valid question, one Worthy did not have an answer to, and would not try to give since he wasn't being spoken to.
That behemoth was not the only one that'd attacked them. Various other creatures had kept rising up to battle them. Fortunately, none of them had the facilities to reach the top of the wall, save for a few problematic pests that kept stalking them for the miles they traveled.
One such pest was lingering at the very base of the wall, just below where the Accursed Port hovered over the sea.
Tracking it was a rudimentary task for the guide, who used his ability to seek out The Irritating Flesh Blob Firing Bone Spikes. Getting someone to precisely strike it was an issue he couldn't circumvent, but he continued tracking the abomination. The skill it showcased while hunting was bone-chilling.
The tether between the two moved rapidly during battles. Whenever there was a disturbance in the sea of blood, signifying that there were Climbers actively battling against the creatures who were dangerous enough to make it up the wall without being assimilated with it, the huntsman was highly mobile. It never stayed in one location, and instead drifted towards distant blind spots, where people would not expect anything to attack from.
From that distant position, like a trained sharpshooter, the huntsman would fire a bone spike that traveled through its target with unsparing speed. More than a few times, Worthy witnessed some Climbers having precise spikes puncture their heart in that moment of weakness.
'...And that's only one of the persistent problems we're facing.'
There were a few others, including one persistent enemy that refused to die. Actually, that one was impossible to kill.
This mountainous horror was deep in the sea of blood, so far beneath them that any attempts at striking it with artillery was fruitless. Far down in the depths of the crimson ocean, there was a vessel unleashing a plethora of oceanic abominations upon the stronghold. Underneath the surface, just like the flesh mountains, there was one at the bottom of the ocean, lying dormant—or perhaps it'd previously been docile. Now that something was crossing the sea, that was never going to stay the same.
War and the Knight Captain—whose name Worthy learned was Randall—had tried all they could to lure the abomination out. There were even those who had powers involving attracting the attention of others. Though they pulled the ire of countless others carnivorous foes, none of them came close to reaching the depths of what was a bottomless ocean, drowning a lost society.
War and Randall had no choice but to abandon their attempts at fighting the creature. Assaulting it was more trouble than it was worth. Any damage done to the wall could be healed, and the assailants would first need to get around the lethal absorption of the wall. Nothing had managed to get close to doing that so far, except for the behemoth responsible for throwing those massive spears.
That enemy that was once persistently engaging in a battle against Taivat's defensive array had become dormant after a while. War worried the abomination might have moved and gone to attack from a different angle, so he stationed two knights on the east, west, north, and south walls.
Each knight was more than capable of preventing those giant bone projectiles from damaging the wall.
This management proved that all the Climbers needed to fear was the sudden attacks of avian creatures, and a high influx of aquatic monsters.
'Honestly, I wonder if I can even call these things aquatic. They swim and bathe in blood. I'm no nerd, but I don't think fish swim in blood. There's probably like, zero water down there.'
Although his absorption of the divine ichor improved his mental aptitude, it did not make him immediately smarter. He'd learn things easier, but so far he'd learned nothing of the sorts. All he could do was ask questions and hope he was never in a circumstance where his wits would be important to his success.
'The Third Floor is supposedly a trial related to patience and the mind. I wonder if only a genius can make it there… Walkyr will have to forfeit his climb early, in that case.' He had no faith in the gunslinger succeeding in anything that required more than seven seconds of thought. Really, it was six seconds, because the extra moment was for him to realize he'd been wasting his time.
Before the boy could finish his thoughts of scrutinizing Deadman Walkyr's mental capacity, he saw the water break open, and blood pour down off the body of a giant, box-shaped formation of gore being dragged out of the water by a massive, titanic golem which was once covered in stone.
Lady Freya's Stone Titan had returned from battling monsters in the depths of the water, and just as expected, it was even larger than before.