Dragon Raja 5; Chapter 258: For Your Majesty (73)

Dragon Raja 5

Caesar remained silent.

In the odd-numbered torpedo tubes, the Swordfish torpedo is equipped with a conventional warhead and a large charge of 249 kg. It once sank the Argentine Navy’s cruiser “General Bellano” with one shot.

The even-numbered torpedo tubes all contained modified warheads. Not only did the charge increase, but they also contained refined sulfur, which was extremely toxic to dragons.

Caesar ordered the launch of standard-issue Swordfish torpedoes, which were far more lethal to the relatively fragile Hydra. The intense heat from the explosion was enough to fry the young Hydra into a mass of charred protein, but Leviathan had a chance of survival, provided its strong body could withstand the three blasts. Caesar hadn’t used a modified warhead simply to leave Leviathan a chance to survive. Of course, Caesar could have explained his desire to capture Leviathan alive, but that lie wouldn’t work on Mai Jude, so he didn’t bother to engage in any further discussion.

When he ordered the torpedo tubes to be loaded with torpedoes, he was indeed targeting Leviathan, but when Leviathan was in danger, his damn sense of identity kicked in, because in some ways Leviathan was like him.

He could accept a fight to the death between God and the devil, with the winner finally raising the loser’s head and cheering, but he didn’t want to see a despicable and disgusting victory.

But just as Jiude Mai reminded him, the ice sea and the wasteland was not places to enforce justice. This was a dark forest where life and death are the key, and being mean was also one of the skills to survive.

But it doesn’t matter if they are willful this time. Even if Leviathan survives the explosion, there were still more than 30 weapons on board, including Tomahawk cruise missiles. They have nothing to fear.

So, thinking about it, they didn’t spend enough money to slay the dragon in the Arctic Circle with just the Yamal. If they had deployed the Nautilus earlier, they wouldn’t have encountered any of the difficulties and obstacles they faced. Many of the elders despised the Gattuso family for their mere spending, but there aren’t many things in this world that can’t be accomplished even with enough money. Pompeii’s logic was to spend twice as much.

“Sonar detection has been restored and no large moving targets were detected,” said the officer in charge of the sonar.

Caesar looked out through the periscope and saw only the dark sea rising and falling.

When the swordfish torpedo exploded, the sonar system temporarily stopped working, but that was only for a dozen seconds, and the Leviathan’s speed was not enough to swim out of the sonar system’s monitoring range.

Caesar sighed silently. The whale king might have been blown to pieces, or perhaps it had sunk to the depths, its life or death uncertain. But whales always surface to breathe. While sperm whales possess impressive lung capacity, they couldn’t remain submerged for long with such serious injuries. If Leviathan still hadn’t been detected within a few minutes, it was likely dead.

    ***

Half an hour later, the Nautilus broke out of the water near the explosion point. The searchlight cast a bright spot of light on the sea. Caesar, Mai Jude and Finger, accompanied by the first mate, climbed out of the bridge and stood on the flat and wide front deck.

The sonar screen remained empty, and the Leviathan signal never appeared again.

The air was filled with a smell of blood. If it weren’t for the low temperature, the smell would probably be so strong that it would be choking. Fragments of animal flesh were floating everywhere, just like the pools used to clean internal organs in a slaughterhouse.

It may not be the wreckage of Leviathan or Hydra. Both the snake group and the whale group paid a huge price for this ambush. The large-caliber machine gun with automatic search function on the bridge slowly swept across the sea surface to prevent any whales or giant snakes from dying.

“Oh my God!” The first mate suddenly pointed forward.

The entire neck of the Hydra floated there. Despite its sturdy muscles and bones, its slender frame was indeed shattered by the swordfish torpedo. The intense flames and shockwaves stripped away some of its flesh, revealing dark golden bones and giant thorns that looked like they were cast from some metal. When it was wrapped around Leviathan, the Hydra’s enormity was hard to discern. But now, closer inspection revealed that its head, half shattered, was the size of a small house. Unlike the skulls of ordinary creatures, it was covered in vibrant patterns.

Hydra alone was a miracle of genetics and biology. If this skull were dragged back to London, I wonder how many paleontologists would kneel down to worship it, not to mention the remains of Leviathan.

But they simply stood side by side, silently watching the giant head disappear into the water. Let the monsters sink to the bottom of the sea, forever slumbering beyond the human realm. Afterward, erase the sailors’ memories. They might spend the rest of their lives dreaming of these mysterious giant sea creatures, unaware that they ever existed. They might tell their grandchildren stories about them, mystical and absurd, that they would relish.

Caesar turned and walked towards the bridge. At this moment, the iceberg behind him collapsed, revealing a huge white figure like a battleship, staring at the Nautilus.

Everyone on deck froze. For a moment, there was silence, except for the waves crashing against the side of the Nautilus and the huge figure.

Caesar turned very slowly. At the moment the iceberg collapsed, he suddenly heard the heartbeat of a war drum—not just one drum, but a whole army of them. To supply blood to its massive body, Leviathan, like Brachiosaurus, possessed multiple hearts.

It withstood the blast and didn’t immediately flee, perhaps lacking the energy. Instead, it hid beneath the iceberg, waiting for the Nautilus to withdraw. It kept its heart rate extremely low, evading the sonar and the weasels. This wasn’t a difficult feat for sperm whales; they are masters of oxygen conservation, capable of reducing their heart rate to just one beat per minute when hunting in the deep sea. But the iceberg it had struck was already riddled with cracks, and once it collapsed, it couldn’t hide its heartbeat.

It was indeed a huge white sperm whale, but it was only the size of a large whale. It did not have a majestic body of nearly 100 meters as speculated. It might be because it swam at a very high speed that it caused such a strong shock wave in the sea.

It wasn’t as ancient and ferocious as other ancient dragons. Aside from its pearly, reflective white scales, it looked like an ordinary sperm whale. Its massive head and high, bulging forehead held a pair of disproportionately small eyes that blinked slowly, making it a surprisingly cute creature. It was severely wounded, the cracks between its scales stained blood red, and one side of its body was charred black from the explosion. However, the Hydra wrapped around it likely helped it absorb much of the force of the blast.     

“Torpedo tubes No. 2, 4, and 6, prepare to fire.” The first mate spoke to the weapons officer in the command cabin in a very low voice.

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