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.

"Lucy!"

It came from above, faint, familiar—but he didn’t look. His gaze stayed locked on the sea. Every fiber of his being was tuned to the tension in the water. Any moment now...

His right hand clenched slowly, fingers trembling. He had no sword—lost to the beast’s jaws, likely shattered in its gullet. He had no shield. Nothing but the radiation coursing through his body like wildfire. The nuclear pulse simmered beneath his skin, silent and lethal. Alongside it surged the Crucible of Grace, burning steadily, a second heart pulsing divine wrath and healing through his veins.

Over the past few months, he had discovered two things about the intangible monsters of Seraph’s Hollow.

First, they could be struck at the moment they launched an attack. Their material form flickered briefly into solidity, then and only then.

Second: his atomic radiation disrupted their phasing—at least, it had with Caelgorrs’ fog. He had no way of knowing if it would work on this one.

But he had no choice.

It was a gamble.

And he was going to take it.

Then he felt it.

The ocean shuddered. The current shifted. And a pressure wave rippled forward like a fist through smoke.

The beast was coming.

Head-on.

A low rumble pierced the wind tunnel—then, without warning, something shattered through the barrier.

CRACK.

A rush of seawater exploded inward as the wall of magic buckled. Lucy’s world tilted for a split second—salt and pressure slammed into him like a hammer. But with a desperate surge of divine will, he shoved his arms outward, and the wind roared back to life, sealing the breach. The tunnel quivered violently, barely holding. It felt like trying to dam the ocean with a toothpick.

But the breach had served its purpose.

The leviathan had arrived.

It burst from the sea like a green comet, its colossal body trailing smoke and shadow. Scales glinted like tarnished jade beneath the flickering light, and its yawning jaws gaped wide enough to swallow Lucy whole. Rows of teeth shimmered like shattered glass, each fang longer than his forearm.

There was no time to think.

Lucy dove sideways into the grey sea.

Cold swallowed him instantly. The world blurred into murk and chaos. Behind him, the beast’s bulk thundered past, a living freight train wrapped in smoke and searing rage. Its momentum drove it straight into the opposite side of the wind tunnel with a deafening CRASH, distorting the air-wall but not breaking it.

Then it plunged back into the sea.

Lucy breached the tunnel again just as the last coils of its serpentine body slipped away, already fading, turning translucent.

But not fast enough.

His feet struck the stone floor. He twisted, coiling mana through his arm. Radiation surged through his veins—burning, precise, wrathful.

He aimed for where the beast’s midsection would be and punched.

BOOM.

His fist struck solid flesh. Smoke erupted from the point of contact as radiation poured into the creature’s gut. A sickening, high-pitched shriek split the water. The leviathan spasmed violently, then vanished into the Grey Sea, its form shredding back into incorporeality.

Lucy’s heart thundered in his chest. His arm still smoked.

"Come back, you overgrown gecko."

And as if summoned by the thought, he felt it—rage.

Hot, primal, and fast. It was already behind him.

Circling.

Hunting.

The wind cracked behind him again.

This time, Lucy was ready.

Before even a droplet of seawater could slip through, he snapped the air shut, patching the breach with divine precision. The tunnel groaned but held.

And then it came.

The leviathan lunged through the wind tunnel like a torpedo, its jaws gaping wide, death incarnate. But Lucy didn’t retreat.

He ran.

Each footstep splashed against the thin layer of water coating the stone floor, his boots kicking up spray as he charged directly toward the incoming beast.

At the last second, he dropped into a controlled slide.

His body skimmed across the wet stone, water sloshing around him, and the cold seeping into his armor. Above him, the green titan soared overhead, its underside exposed—scales writhing with smoke, flesh glistening in the flickering firelight.

Lucy stared up at it, a savage grin blooming across his face.

He clenched his fist.

Mana and atomic radiation surged into his arm, igniting his veins with power and pain. Then he slammed his fist into the creature’s belly.

CRACK.

Radiation exploded outward, flooding into the beast’s core. Its form flickered out of its incorporeal state.

Lucy imagined organs boiling, tendons snapping, and muscles liquefying under the force. The thought drove him forward. He planted his palm against the creature’s underside and kept it there as it slid across his body.

He pushed more energy into it.

More than before.

The leviathan let out a shriek that shook the entire tunnel, rebounding off the wind walls in jagged echoes. The sound was pain. Pure and primal.

Lucy laughed.

A manic, ragged sound—half relief, half madness. The high of battle flooded him. After the near-drowning, the crushing despair, the bone-deep exhaustion—this felt good. For once, he was winning. Dominating.

"Die, you beast!" he thought.

But this wasn’t a mere beast.

And Lucy’s greed cost him.

Through the wind magic, he felt it—a shift. A flicker of movement in front of him, sharp and fast.

Still beneath the leviathan, he realized too late: its tail had dropped like a hammer.

WHAM.

The blow struck him clean across his side, slamming him into the curved wind barrier like a fly on glass. The impact cracked the wall and shattered his bones.

His body bounced off and hit the stone floor hard, twitching.

Pain lanced through every fiber of him.

The Crucible of Grace surged to life, reforming mangled bone and torn muscle in an instant—but Lucy screamed.

It hurt.

The Crucible didn’t spare him agony. It just kept him alive.

He forced himself to rise. His vision swam. Muscles spasmed. Bones realigned with sickening pops.

No time to recover.

No time to breathe.

The leviathan had already circled through the sea, and once more, it broke through the barrier.