Chapter 78: Two Monsters
Lucy stood on a platform of ancient stone at the bottom of the Grey Sea. The slab was massive and weathered, etched with crumbling runes whose meanings had long since been lost to time.
Around him, a howling cylinder of wind magic roared upward in a towering spiral, keeping the crushing ocean at bay. The gale twisted and screamed as it climbed, its currents thrashing his drenched black hair and tugging at the shredded remnants of his cloak.
The sea pressed against the air tunnel like a leviathan’s mouth held barely ajar. Water churned in violent, suspended waves mere inches beyond the barrier, the pressure alone enough to snap bone if it collapsed. Yet the tunnel held. Narrow, flickering bands of fire still danced within the winds, maintaining the structure, though barely. The walls of air shimmered, trembling with strain.
Lucy’s chest rose and fell in heavy, ragged breaths. Not only from exhaustion, though the near-drowning had nearly claimed him, but from the toll of his magic. Holding back the sea with a sustained tunnel of this scale had drained a hefty portion of his near-limitless divine mana, more than he expected.
And worse, the leviathan hadn’t died.
He had struck it with one of two fire-forged cylinders needed to part the ocean. The impact had been explosive, brutal—but not fatal.
It had retaliated immediately, lunging with a scream like underwater thunder. Its smoke-wreathed flesh, mottled with streaks of burn and rot, had coiled around him in a flash. Jagged, transparent fangs had crushed down on his armor, shearing it apart like paper. Then the beast had vanished, retreating into the grey waters above, marked only by scorched streaks across its sinuous, half-corporeal form.
Lucy still couldn’t see it, but he felt it. His hollow, bloodshot eyes never left the dancing distortions in the sea beyond. He watched its ripples. He listened with something more profound than his ears. He felt it through the tether of rage.
Because it wanted to kill him.
And Lucy wanted to kill everything in Seraph’s Hollow.
A distant voice pierced the roar of magic.