"One would think that an unliving healer, though extremely skilled with weapons, would have no way to deal with large beasts that often needed overwhelming firepower to bring down.

The Silver Maiden proved that to be an erroneous conclusion, as she was known to liberally use Dragonfire brew on such beasts, often from *inside* their bellies. Needless to say, her method for handling large beasts was highly effective, but nearly impossible to replicate for most." - Pietro Güldhen, researcher of legends and fables.

Aideen was torn when she looked at the beast in the distance. It had just grown more and more massive in her sights the closer they got to it. Its size was one of the reasons she was so torn about the whole thing.

On one hand, she can't help but feel some trepidation at the whole idea of getting herself eaten and then blowing the damned thing up from the inside with what seemed to be an excessive amount of alchemical explosives.

There were so many ways the plan could go wrong, from if the explosives proved ineffective, to cases where the beast's digestive tract overwhelmed her ability to regenerate her body, amongst others.

Despite the potential of the plan ending out with her lost at sea - which was not that great an issue, as at worst she's just have to walk back towards the land at the bottom - or worse yet, ending up amongst the beast's excretions, Aideen couldn't say she didn't feel some excitement at the prospect of taking down a beast that size by her own hands.

Aideen, along with grandpa Aarin and the goblins had departed on the largest ship in town, which was merely a small sloop. Most of the ships moored on the docks of the town were smaller fishing boats, as it was the townspeople's main source of livelihood.

The locals that manned the sloop had expressions that kept alternating between worry and hope, as they looked at the massive beast in the distance and the Bone Lord who stood near the bow of their ship.

Another four similarly sized sloops followed behind them, with half a cadre of mages - all water affinity - gathered on each of them. The Bone Lord had apparently ordered them to come from the nearby ports posthaste and they had arrived even before he did.

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Further behind them, at a safe distance, was a fleet of practically every available ship and boat in town. Their presence was not to fight the beast, but to drag its carcass back to shore, as the Bone Lord had decreed.

The sea serpent itself had come far closer to the shores than most of its kind ever did. Typically, the waters three to five day's journey from shore were safe from the presence of such oversized monsters. This one however, had swam merely half a day off the shore, around what the townspeople thought it deemed its territory.

As they approached closer, Aideen checked her ring once again. She had transferred the many vials of Dragonfire brew over to her own personal storage ring, which had a storage space formed like a cube roughly four meters to a side.

She had received the ring from grandpa's blacksmith friend, who she had learned was a renowned master craftsman, a couple days after he had helped make her weapon. Much like her weapon, the ring was cast from pure adamant - leftovers from the weapon-making process supposedly - and was in the shape of a simple, undecorated band save for the runic carvings of enchantments on it.

Much like her weapon, it was pretty much indestructible without the intervention of some very powerful mages, which meant it was safe enough for her to bring along. That was a potential issue, since normal storage rings from lesser materials would likely shatter when subjected to an explosion from the improved Dragonfire brew.

Around a couple kilometers away the beast, and apparently just outside its territory, they halted and dropped their anchors, while Aideen climbed into a small lifeboat which was slowly lowered into the waters.

She then unfurled the sail on the boat, as the wind carried her closer to the beast. As she drew closer, she got to appreciate just how large the beast was. Even the part of its body that was outside the water was as tall as a hill, with each scale on its form likely longer than a human was tall, and likely just as wide.

The beast itself had clearly seen the fleet approaching it, since she noticed how its building-sized eyes flickered in their direction a few times, but it seemed to have ignored them in contempt. Perhaps, to it, they were little more than harmless insects, not worth its time or attention.

Most likely, it only thought that way because grandpa Aarin had reigned in his mana, as otherwise the emanations would be noticeable from far away, and even stupid beasts couldn't miss them with their intensity.

Aideen sailed her boat even closer as she took a look at the long dorsal fin that seemed to run the entire length of the massive sea serpent. Its tail had a leaf-shaped fin at its end, which reminded Aideen of some kinds of eels that were often caught by fishermen and prized for their fatty meats.

Once she got close enough, the beast finally took affront at the minnow that dared to trespass into its territory, and she saw its eye lock on to her ship for a moment. The beast's distant head turned her way, and it swam over, much, much faster than something its size had any right to move.

A massive, cavernous maw lined with several rows of sharp teeth as if they were stalagmites and stalactites opened up wide, so large that she thought it would have been able to swallow the sloop whole as well with little difficulty.

Then the maw cast a shadow over her boat, and a moment later, came crashing down, blotting out the sun and casting everything into darkness.