My New Life As A Kid Goddess: Book 3 - Kingdom Goddess Arc 2

Arc 2: Kingdom Goddess - Chapter 96

Winter was a terrible season for life in general as it stunted or outright killed many forms of life. Only through the miracle of hibernation could plants and animals survive the harsh cold and hope to wake up when the spring thaw came, though sadly not all did. Even the land itself was stunted by means of permafrost and sheets of ice. Frozen lakes in particular could be extremely devastating on the local biosphere as it locked away a source of water and food.

Generally you had to be in a pretty freaking cold place for a lake to freeze though, as generally it was just the surface itself that did so. Surprisingly the water temperature can be pretty resilient to drastic changes with things like size, depth, wind, and even how many streams enter or exit all being contributing factors. In this particular kingdom it seemed it got cold enough for surface freezing of ice with less than one foot thickness.

The reason this all even became relevant information for me is due to a particularly strange prayer that I had revived today. There was a small town near a rather large lake in the south-eastern corner of the kingdom that had sent out their prayers en mass to me about a rather startling threat to their way of life. Something this winter had caused the stirring of monsters beneath the ice and driven it to attack anything that went out on the lake.

This was all a very new development, as of today actually. There was an incident involving a pair of fishermen who had gone out into a particularly icy are to catch some dinner. All in an instant they had been attacked by a huge serpent like sea monster that rose up from the icy water. Unfortunately one of them had been snatched up in its jaws leaving his friend stumbling around on the ice. That soon changed however as the ice began to crack and shift even more. The panicked man ran for his life and remembers seeing at least two other sea monsters fighting with the first for the remains of the man.

Of course I had teleported over as soon as I had gotten the prayer from the townspeople. The surviving fisherman had been in a state of panic so much so that he had been unable to form a prayer to me himself, so it was when he got back to town and got others involved that I finally received it. Not that most people even believed him though, the man rambling about monsters and such. It was only a dozen or so that did on account of an old legend about the lake monster.

Monsters living in lakes were pretty common around the world where I came from so it made sense that this kingdom would have one or two stories about them. In this world however it seemed they were actually real, very unlike the hoaxes I was used to. The fact there were three of them was extra cause for concern as they were clearly able to reproduce. This made it a bit of a relief too as it meant they were just animals of some kind. If I had to speculate they were probably hibernating for the winter and were woken up by... Something.

So here I stood on the icy edge of this rather large and likely deep lake. I was dressed up in my normal winter clothing even though the cold couldn't harm me at all. Figured I'd continue looking the part. Behind me stood the surviving fisherman, a human man named George, who had come back with me to verify the death of the monsters in vengeance for his friend. Understandable I suppose.

While I didn't particularly fear a family of lake monsters I had come here with as much information as I could gather, which in this case was really the description from the only eyewitness. Apparently these beasts were big enough to swallow a man in one bite which pretty typical for lake monsters. They were also like a mix between a fish and a lizard with scales of yellow, green, and white. Pretty nasty sounding customers, though no match for a goddess.

Using my goddess vision I had managed to locate nearby lifeforms and spotted a rather large one somewhere near the bottom of the lake in front of where we were standing. Down there the water would be warmest, as counter-intuitive as that sounded, so would be the most comfortable place for the creatures. At long distances my ability to detect creatures was still a bit hazy so even if this was only one of them the others would come after I activated my plan.