CHAPTER 185: SPLIT APART!

The leviathan descendant’s pupils, slit and molten with abyssal light, dilated as they fixed on the gathered squads.

The pressure around it warped the water like a living force, currents bending inward, debris twisting as though gravity itself had been rewritten. The creature didn’t roar at them, not because it didn’t want to but because there was no need.

It’s presence alone was a soundless scream that tore across the senses of everyone in the vicinity, prickling the backs of their necks and making their instincts scream in terror.

Beasts on this level were non-engagement, as they were far too powerful for even the stronger maritime officers to handle, especially within its natural aquatic habitat.

Now however, they were face to face with it, and then the abyss moved with it.

~BOOM~BOOM!~

A sudden sonic boom echoed across the environment, and the trenches surrounding the West Perimeter detonated into swarms.

A flood of Abyssal monsters erupted from the shadows, eel-beasts, spine-backed raptors, hammerhead titans, manta-like horrors with serrated wings, and serpentine predators whose scales shimmered with crawling runes.

All of them charged at once, as though called by their progenitor’s will.

Kaen’s eyes widened a fraction, "DEFENSE LINE! FORM UP!"

But the beasts were already upon them. The first wave struck like a tidal storm, slamming into the combined squads with explosive force.

All of the various students braced for action, blades and condensed spells flashing, but the sheer mass of creatures churning the water threatened to swallow all of them whole.

Zeus laughed like a maniac, shattering a hammerhead’s jaw with a compressed punch that rippled backward and caved the creature’s skull. "NOW WE’RE TALKING!"

Miranda warped space around her, bending a serpent’s attack mid-lunge, but a second beast nearly clipped her from the flank, until Serah dropped from above, spear driving through its neck in a perfect spiral cut.

"Watch your blind spots," Serah warned, even as she slid her spear free.

"Duly noted," Miranda exhaled.

Orphelia’s blades of condensed water carved intricate arcs, each stroke clean, economical, slicing beasts apart. Her chanting was steady, focused despite the chaos around her.

Lucian was a blur. His afterimages danced like drifting shadows, each creating a feint or misdirection. He darted behind an incoming predator and struck its spine with a condensed burst of kinetic mana, severing the creature’s movement in one instant.

Albedo crashed through the front line, Havoc & Ruin still trailing black-violet spirals. He fired three shots, tight, microscopic slashes of graviton force that imploded the skulls of three beasts with whisper-quiet detonations.

Lilian spun around him like a crimson vortex, her blood crescents now threaded with abyssal ichor she had stolen directly from the battlefield. Each slice was heavier, corrupted blood used against corrupted bodies.

Elara focused, contracting nature mana into drilling bursts that acted more like underwater railgun rounds than spells. She pierced through fin after fin, joint after joint, crippling beasts with surgical precision.

Fade tore through beasts with surgical mana-blades, her movements sharp as snapped glass. Dorian followed her lead, keeping his mana output tight as he got into his own groove.

But as all of this was going on, and hundreds if not thousands of Abyssal Sea Beasts had already been slaughtered, with more coming in hot, the leviathan descendant above them all had not moved.

It was still watching, still waiting and learning about all their strengths and weaknesses.

The group continued to fight for a bit before Kaen suddenly shouted out, noticing the various runes on the Leviathan-Descendants chest beginning to ignite.

"IT’S CHARGING! BACK! EVERYONE BACK!"

Everyone tried to run away, but barely any of them could move fast enough to avoid the full totality of the attack the descendant launched. The vicious creature opened its maw, and the Abyss answered its call.

A shriek, made of immense pressure, mana and something older, tore through the water in a straight beam of condensed abyssal energy.

The entire trench lit with black-blue light as the beam shot upward, carving through coral pillars, splintering walkways, and ripping the water apart with violent turbulence.

The squads of students and Maritime Officers all scattered. Some thrown by the mana pressure while others were dragged in various directions by the turbulence. Some simply were tossed into the ferocious water current like dolls.

Albedo shielded Elara and Lilian with a compressed mana barrier that cracked instantly but held long enough for the beam to pass overhead.

Lucian was thrown across the battlefield, slamming into a coral archway hard enough to fracture the structure.

Miranda warped her own position several meters away to avoid being bisected while across from her, Zeus braced with both arms and was still hurled backward like a stone from a slingshot.

Kaen didn’t move, instead making the split second decision to slash forwards, his blade igniting with dense mana as he carved into the beam itself, not stopping it, but diverting its trajectory just enough that the squads weren’t annihilated.

Serah backed him, her spear rotating so fast her form blurred, shredding a side-wave of abyssal pressure that would’ve collapsed the students’ regulators outright.

But the leviathan wasn’t done.

Its tail whipped outward, sweeping hundreds of meters of ruin in one stroke. Coral towers collapsed instantly. Debris spiraled. The water convulsed like an earthquake.

"DOWN!" Kaen roared out loud, but it was far too late for anyone to react to.

The impact split the battlefield apart and sent all the students and officers in various directions.

Dorian, Fade, Miranda and members of another squad were all swept east, while Zeus, Veronica, Lira, and Athena and others were thrown west.

Lucian, Orphelia, and two officers, dragged down into a newly opened chasm while Lilian, Elara, Albedo, pulled into a spiraling whirlpool formed by the leviathan’s pressurized aura.

Kaen and Serah alone kept their bearings, but even they were forced apart by the ripping currents that hurled everything outward.

A deluge of Abyssal beasts surged into every newly opened pocket of space, swarming each separated group like vultures.

Kaen cursed, a rare, sharp sound.

"REGROUP!" he barked through the comms. "ALL SQUADS, FIND HIGH GROUND AND REPORT LOCATION!"

Static hissed.

The pressure interference was getting worse.

Serah’s voice cut through, distorted, "Outer ridge, northwest, Kaen, the leviathan’s power is distorting comm signals when paired with the Abyss!"

The channel blinked out as she finished her sentence.

Albedo righted himself instantly, stabilizing the whirlpool by shooting graviton pellets into the pressure points of the current. Lilian anchored herself and Elara with blood tendrils fixed into coral fragments.

Elara gasped for breath, "This current, it’s artificial! The leviathan’s aura is creating, "

The coral beside them cracked open as more beasts poured through.

"Talk later!" Lilian snapped, slinging blood forward.

Lucian plunged deeper, controlling his fall until he righted himself by kicking off a sinking stone slab. Orphelia drifted near him, dazed but uninjured. Two officers stabilized above them, one already bleeding.

Beasts closed in immediately.

"We fight," Lucian said simply.

Zeus recovered upside-down, shrugged, and punched a charging predator so hard its spine shattered, "Anyone alive shout if you hear me!"

Miranda warped beside him, "Your volume is effective for locating allies, at least."

"We’re heading toward the old perimeter gate!" another officer shouted.

"Then that’s where we regroup!" Miranda called.

Elsewhere, Kaen slashed through a massive serpent, shouting into the comms as he forced mana into the transmission line.

"All units, Rendezvous Point Delta! Nearest stable ground! Repeat, Point Delta!"

Static.

Another roar, and one that everyone heard. The leviathan descendant shifted again, its enormous body undulating across the trench, runes igniting with deeper, darker brilliance. Abyssal energy spiraled outward, triggering underwater quakes that split the battlefield even further.

Albedo’s head snapped upward, and he immediately saw the runes and the shift in the water currents, alongside the deep blue glow building in the creature.

"It’s preparing a second pulse!"

Elara’s eyes widened, "But this one... it’s bigger."

Lilian swore, "It’s going to wipe out the entire perimeter!"

"MOVE!" Albedo commanded.

The three of them surged forward, beasts slamming into them from all sides. Albedo shot graviton slugs downward, using the implosions to propel them upward faster.

Lilian formed a blood vortex around them, shredding anything that came close while Elara flicked her hand and summoned a spiraling nature drill that carved through a manta-beast that blocked their path.

Lucian felt the shift in the water even from hundreds of meters away. His pupils slit for a moment, instincts blazing.

"It’s charging again!"

"Then move!" one officer shouted, "Go! NOW!"

Miranda wrapped her mana around space and twisted, grabbing Zeus and an entire cluster of wounded students, displacing them meters at a time.

Kaen kicked off shattered coral, slashing through another wave of approaching beasts. "Rendezvous at Delta! If you’re not there when the pulse goes off, you’re dead!"

Serah broke through a group of ring-fanged predators, muscles tight, eyes sharp, "Kaen. If the pulse detonates, it’ll collapse the ridge! We won’t be able to all group up," Serah said.

"Then find another high ground to meet up. Find a safe zone first and talk to us!" He roared as the final seconds ticked.

The leviathan descendant’s maw opened again, light pouring from its throat like a rising sun of the deep. The entire battlefield dimmed as the abyss swallowed every natural color.

Pressure surged all around the various groups as currents roared, everything felt like it was about to end, but no-one held back, slaughtering every beast in their path as they looked for safe-zones.

As Albedo was leading Elara and Lilian, his own pupils narrowed, as he spotted a path. Not safe, not by a longshot, but the best option for them, leading into a dark space.

"This way!" he shouted to Lilian and Elara while Kaen’s voice cut through the comms, static blocking them from hearing him clearly.

"FIND A SAFE SPOT. ONCE WE SURVIVE AND ARE STABILIZED, WE REGROUP!"