My name is Max Crawslayer. They call me Max.

These past few days have been hectic.

I was one of the slaves locked in the warehouse. Locked along with other slaves, one of them was Sid.

He was my best friend.

And until a few days ago, we had been locked in the warehouse for about a year.

Then, a Navy Alliance fleet came and attacked the pirates. They would eventually set us free.

After becoming free, me and a few other friends including Sid, saw a meteor landing on the island.

It was a lengthy walk, but we soon got there after a while.

What we saw there, was horrifying.

It was a huge black creature with what seems to be metal tentacles. Mesmerized and horrified by the sight, we stood there and watched it doing some weird activity.

It seemed that it was damaged, and the tentacles were doing something to the said damage.

Was it tending its own wounds? Was it healing itself? 

We didn't know.

But we realized, or maybe, only I realized, that it was patching itself up.

We then got into an argument, but we whispered to each other to not alert it.

After a while, I got bored of them arguing, so I sneaked closer to the creature.

I thought that it was harmless considering that it didn't care about us being near it. 

Plus, I was acting reckless and got excited about touching it.

Then, I quietly ran to it. I didn't know why. 

Maybe it was because of my beastman blood, we beastmen of the cat tribe tend to be too curious and adventurous.

I started touching it, and eventually, I hit on it.

It emitted a clunk noise, so I assumed that it was made out of metal.

Maybe it was one of those famous golems? The ones that were famous for being made out of metal or rock and controlled by a single mage.

I never understood them because they often looked weird. Apparently, they weren't used often because only mages with high amounts of mana could control them.

And if no mage was controlling the golem, they would cease to move.

This "Golem" was different.

 There was no mage that was controlling it. 

Maybe that was the reason why I was too curious, because I instinctively thought that it was a golem who lost its mage.

After hitting it twice and yelling to my friends that it was okay, it started talking in a strange language. It was similar to our own language, but it also didn't make sense.

It's as if it was from another world.

Then, a painful ringing noise came from it.

Because the ringing hurted our ears, we all started running away.

But it caught Sid.

Between choosing to safe Sid or running, I instinctively chose to keep running away.

And that was probably our biggest mistake.

After a day had gone by, Sid didn't come back.

A couple days after, he still was gone.

After a week, we had already given up on waiting for him.

He was our best friend. My best friend.

It was my fault for touching the "Golem" and it killed Sid.

To make matters worse, people started getting sick one by one. I had a hunch that it was because they were celebrating for days.

A lot of the slaves were celebrating their freedom.

Me and my friends didn't join them since we didn't really have the mood to celebrate.

Sid was gone too, so we felt guilty to join their party.

"Sigh, I thought that it was the turning point of our lives. Right, Ryan?"

Ryan was not there anymore. Even without joining the celebration, he had also caught the sickness.

He died. Yesterday.

We had to throw him into the water.

It was horrifying to witness it.

The disease had also spread to the people on the ship without anyone noticing it.

Thankfully, not that many people on the ship caught it.

We isolated the sick ones to where the pirates stored their rum. Ryan was one of them.

And when he died, we volunteered to send him away.

By we, I meant just me and a couple others that had a strong immune system.

And by a couple others, I meant a couple other people who were also like me, a beastman.

I am a beastman of the cat tribe. We beastmen rarely get sick in our lives, so I wasn't really afraid of the disease.

The two other beastmen that volunteered were part of the dog tribe.

In actuality, our tribes don't really get along. Both of our tribes are rivals that hate each other. But weirdly enough, there were no such vibes coming from either side of us.

Moreover, a majority of the people on this ship is actually beastmen, most being from either the cat or the dog tribe. So not having any rivalry between our tribes was weird.

Maybe we had no more energy to deal with rivalry. Maybe it was the fact that we were fellow slaves. I don't really know myself.

"H-hey what is that!!??!"

'Huh?'

I came out to the deck. Someone was yelling about something.

"Wha-what the heck???!!"

"Monsteeeer!!!"

"Uwaaaaaah!!!"

"What is that??!"

"I don't want to die!!! Mommmyyyyyy!!!"

"Go inside kids!!!"

People were screaming left and right.

The younger kids were screaming and crying for their parents.

The older kids who were around 15 to 19 were telling the younger ones to hide inside the ship.

And the women were protecting kids too.

Although we weren't family, we still had each other's backs.

"It's coming closer!!!"

I yelled at the other guys. 

We we armed ourselves with rusty pirate weapons we found in the storage room.

A couple of us who knew magic were preparing spells, that were, let's just say, inadequate.

They were inexperienced and because of that, they kept messing up their incantations.

Nonetheless, we felt that we would fight to the death.

The monster that was coming closer to the ship was eerily similar to the one that killed Sid, that "Golem".

This time, it was a lot bigger and was flying towards the ship. It had no wings, which was strange, since monsters that could fly had wings.

Maybe it was using magic to levitate itself?

Upon looking closer, it had this strange blue flame coming out of four sides of its body.

They were smooth-looking and seemingly stable for flames.

Then, without us even noticing, it had suddenly stopped, or rather, slowed down, not far away from us.

We were very wary and decided to attack it since we could somehow maybe damage it before it attacks us.

I had a club on my hand, so I couldn't do anything to attack from far away.

The ones who attacked, were the ones who held long ranged weapons, and also the two people who knew magic.

Bows and crossbows were fired. But most of them missed.

And the few that made it, were too weak to even scratch it.

We thought that it was because of the winds, so we tried again and again.

Two spells were fired from the "mages". But they didn't even burn anything.

The monster was getting closer and closer.

So we tried and tried again.

"Attack it with full force!!!!"

"Orrraaaaaahh!!!!"

"Hey you! Yes you! Can you light up the arrows??"

I had a sudden change of tactics and wanted to boost our chance to damage the monster.

"Yeah!!"

"Let's do that!!"

One of the two "mages" agreed and quickly lighted up every arrow that was going to be shot.

With flaming arrows, we thought that it'd work.

Yet somehow, none of our flaming arrows did any damage.

Even though we got better at shooting them, it still wasn't enough to damage the damn monster.

"It's our turn!!"

Suddenly, it was our turn to attack.

The front part of the monster was already on the ship.

The blue flames were gone, but it was still floating somehow.

We attacked it with all our strength.

Some of us were lucky to have bladed weapons. Me, not so much.

Sparks flew from the clashing of bladed weapons.

But still, it didn't work. Nothing was damaging the monster.

And after a dozen minutes, we had given up.

It seemed to not be hostike even when we had attacked it.

And since we had no more strength left, we laid on the deck breathless.

After it had been a few seconds of quietness, something happened.

'The side of the monster, is opening? No, that can't be right.'

That was what was going on in my mind.

Then, somebody came out.

"...?!?!"

'No... way... Sid??? I-I saw... you died...'

It was Sid.

"A-are you a ghost?!"

"Get up Max, I'm not a ghost. Dumbass."