Chapter 115: Heart of the Leviathan
The giant machine kraken, the Arena Warden, rose from the darkness like a mountain waking up. Its single, house-sized red eye locked onto the four tiny figures floating before it.
For a long moment, there was only a deep, humming silence. Then, it let out a roar. It wasn’t a sound they heard with their ears, but a deep vibration that shook their bones and made the water itself tremble.
"Okay, new plan," Chris said, his voice a nervous squeak. "We leave the shiny rock and go home. Anyone with me?"
No one answered. They were too busy dodging.
Two of the Warden’s massive tentacles shot forward with incredible speed. They weren’t just tentacles; they were enormous, coiling metal arms, each one tipped with a spinning energy drill that whined as it tore through the water.
The drills slammed into the cavern floor right where the team had been floating, sending up a huge cloud of rock and silt.
"Spread out! Don’t let it corner you!" Ryan commanded, his own heart pounding in his chest. This was a whole different level of threat. The small machine sharks had been like guard dogs. This was a dragon.
The team scattered in four different directions. The Warden’s giant red eye swiveled, trying to track them all at once. It was smart. It chose to focus on Chris, who was the biggest and slowest of the group. A different kind of tentacle, one ending in a huge metal claw, shot out and tried to grab him.
"Whoa! Not the face! Not the face!" Chris yelled, swimming backward as fast as he could. He looked like a panicked turtle paddling for his life.
Scarlett and Ryan fired their armor’s small energy blasters at the tentacle. The bolts of light hit the thick plating with a dull thump and bounced right off, doing no damage at all.
"Our weapons are like peashooters against that thing!" Ryan realized. Brute force was not going to work. They needed a plan.
"I need to find its weakness!" Emma’s voice cut through the chaos. "I need a safe spot to analyze it! Draw its attention!"