Chapter 764: Can You Eat This Thing?
Tom’s expression was a little hard to read.
The Twelve Trials hadn’t exactly been front and center lately. It wasn’t that Tom didn’t covet the rewards. He just had no way forward.
The task was to kill a divine being. For him, the Quetzalcoatl was the only creature who qualified, but he couldn’t find it.
Then Tom had thought of growing more golden apples and forcing a qualifying monster into existence himself. But golden apples had been in heavy demand early on, so the plan never made it off the drawing board.
And now he’d gone and completed the task entirely by accident? This Leviathan was actually classified as a divine being?
But why hadn’t he sensed any divinity from it?
After some thought, Tom figured the thing was simply too huge. Its magical output was monstrous, and it had probably scrambled his senses. Or maybe the Leviathan’s divinity just wasn’t concentrated. Unlike the Quetzalcoatl, it had no complete divine body and no clear authority. Its divine power seemed to be spread through its flesh, and when it wasn’t flaring up, it was easy to miss.
Whatever the cause, the result was great.
Tom couldn’t stop grinning. The fight had been worth it. Not only had he accidentally cleared the Eleventh Trial, but the Leviathan was a walking treasure chest, from head to tail.
Feed its remains to the golden apple tree and who knew how many harvests he’d get.
Looking at the sea around him, stained red with Leviathan blood, Tom felt a sharp pang.
That was all golden apple fertilizer, going to waste!
He raised his wand again. This time the sky didn’t change. He simply gathered his magic into a laser sword.
With a sweep of his arm, the Leviathan was carved into pieces.
Every time the blade came down, the bloody water on the surface flash-boiled away, and the thick scales split open under the edge to reveal dark red flesh.
The thing was just too big. A pocket world could hold it, but the entrance couldn’t stretch wide enough, so he had to cut it into chunks no larger than twice the size of a dragon.
That’s not exactly small. Even so, once Tom had finished carving it up, hundreds of chunks were still floating on the water.
You could guess how massive the full corpse had been. During the fight he’d never seen the Leviathan’s whole body. Only after it died did the parts hidden underwater finally float up.
Then, out of nowhere, a puzzled voice rang out from the study space. "Tom, a fish is a fish, right? Can you eat this Leviathan? What do you think it tastes like?"
"..."
Everyone stared at Andros like he’d lost his mind. Even Mystryl did.
But Andros was oblivious, wearing a look of pure curiosity.
Back in his day, ancient Greece was practically a land of raw meat and blood. People stuffed whatever they could into their mouths to fill their bellies, edible or not. Even esteemed wizards weren’t picky about their food. Out in the wilds, Andros would taste just about anything that was alive, and the Leviathan was no exception.
Tom was frantically shoving huge slabs of fish into his pocket world. He looked at the giant carcass bobbing on the waves and swallowed.
"Maybe... we should take some back and try it?"
After all, while the Leviathan itself looked rather grotesque, its meat was another matter entirely. Fresh and beautifully marbled, it was a rich, appetizing cherry-red that practically begged to be seasoned and thrown onto a grill.
"Yeah, yeah!" Andros said with a bright grin. "Tom, freeze a few pieces to keep them fresh. If it tastes good, send some to me in Dark City. Oh, Jeanne, want to try some?"
The Maid of Orléans shook her head furiously. "Thank you, Andros, but I don’t really like seafood."
"Oh well." Andros looked genuinely sorry, as if Jeanne were missing out on the meal of a lifetime.
Ravenclaw’s eyelids twitched. She couldn’t wrap her head around it. These two had just watched a legendary beast get slain, and their first thought wasn’t to study its anatomy. It was to figure out how to cook it.
Meanwhile, Tom took Andros’s advice. For the remaining pieces, he flash-froze each one before putting it in the pocket world. To hold all the Leviathan meat, he even prepped another suitcase and opened a new pocket world inside it, using Extension Charm.
It took over an hour before the surface was finally clean. The scattered blood in the water was beyond help, and he left the little scraps of flesh alone too. He figured any fish that ate them would face one of two fates: get blown up by the sheer energy, or survive it and evolve. Before long, this stretch of ocean might be home to a whole new crop of magical creatures.
...
While Tom gathered materials, the Mayflower sat obediently where it was.
The students had their faces pressed to the windows, watching Tom zip back and forth over the water. The monster that had nearly swallowed them whole was now hundreds of floating chunks, and the sight hit almost as hard as the fight itself.
Only when Tom came back aboard and told the professors to continue along the planned route did everyone finally snap out of it. The ship got moving again.
Tom stayed on board until dawn, then headed back to his estate.
Dorset was still overcast when he got in. After several days at sea, the Mayflower was now a few hours off British time.
He wasn’t worried about leaving the ship. If it ran into another terrifying monster, so much the better. The trial task was done, but a creature like that was basically fertilizer to a golden apple tree, and the more the merrier.
After a few hours of sleep, Tom went over to Newt’s place for breakfast and dragged Nicolas along too.
"You’ll never guess what I ran into last night," Tom said over the meal, being mysterious on purpose.
With that many young wizards on board, whatever happened to the Mayflower couldn’t stay secret for long. But it wouldn’t spread this fast either.
"What did you run into? Don’t tell me it was Herpo?" Nicolas Flamel asked.
"Nope." Tom shook his head. "But I think that big guy might be tougher than Herpo."
Tom honestly found it hard to rate the Leviathan’s strength. If a normal wizard had its life essence and magical energy, they’d likely become a Morgan, or even stronger. Herpo, for all his fame, was just a legend with a few more tricks up his sleeve. He was better than Ravenclaw, sure, but still at the same level of wisdom.
The Leviathan, though, was a beast running on instinct. It couldn’t use its own power or advantages at all, a classic case of sitting on a mountain of treasure with no clue how to spend it.
If it came down to those two fighting, Herpo could escape without breaking a sweat. Grindelwald or Andros could slip away just as easily. But actually killing the Leviathan? Tom wasn’t bragging, but of all the wizards he’d met, he was the only one who could do it.
Ordinary spells couldn’t even crack its scales. To kill it, you had to break its defenses first, suppress its regeneration, then grind away at it until every last drop of life force was gone.
Nicolas and Newt grew even more curious, and a little uneasy too.
"What is going on with this world?" Newt sighed. "I used to think Dumbledore and Grindelwald stood at the very peak of magic. Now powerhouses keep popping up everywhere."
"I’ve been wondering that myself," Tom said around a mouthful of hash brown. "That’s why I want your professional opinion in a bit. I need you to tell me what this thing actually is."
"My opinion?" Newt blinked.
Half an hour later, when Newt saw what was laid out in front of him, he sucked in a sharp breath.
.
.
.