Thalor turned to look at him again, and the blue glow in his eyes made them look otherworldly. "Just tell her the truth..."
"My mother can sll lies from a long way away. In a literal sense."
"Ocean dwellers have very sharp senses when it cos to spotting lies. She’ll know right away if you try to trick her, and you’ll never get another chance for it to happen again..."
"I’m an honest guy." Rick nodded.
They got to five hundred ters. Outside of hydro-vision’s range, it was completely dark around them.
Normally, the water pressure at this depth would crush a human body like an empty can, but Rick didn’t feel anything but the soft current flowing by. The temperature had dropped to near freezing, and it was so cold that Rick could see his breath making tiny bubbles.
But again, he felt fine.
"Look..." Carmilla pointed to the water outside Liora’s barrier and said, "The corruption is getting thicker."
Rick looked where she pointed and felt his stomach drop. The water inside the golden sphere stayed clear.
Outside the barrier’s protective field, the ocean had turned into thick, purple-black muck. It moved in ways that defied the water’s natural flow.
Rick sotis saw corrupted creatures swimming through the dark. Huge shapes moved with the grace of a predator, always just out of sight.
"We’re basically a glowing target in the dark," Natasha said, already thinking about how to use the situation to their advantage.
"Every corrupted creature within kiloters can see Liora’s barrier... This is bad for our strategy..."
"Would you prefer that we directly touch the corrupted water?" Liora asked in a calm voice, and it felt close to sarcasm.
Natasha stopped for a mont, her ice-blue eyes narrowing a little. "Well, that’s a good point."
"Yeah... we better not."
They went down through the bathypelagic zone, getting faster and faster as they passed the thousand-ter mark. The galodon seed fine at these depths because its ancient body was built to handle pressure that would kill smaller fishes.
Thalor used soft whistles and ntal commands to guide the shark through the dark with instinctive accuracy.
Without warning, Rick’s bond resonance turned on. The sense of danger surged through him, causing his spine to tingle with fear.
"Wait..." He said, "Sothing’s coming," and tried to figure out where it was coming from.
"I sense danger... and it’s not just one thing...! There are multiple large threats."
A second later, Zara’s demonic senses ca to life, and her eyes glowed red even in the water. "Confird."
"I can sense a big threat moving quickly around us all."
Thalor’s face turned white. He blew a quick whistle, three sharp notes that made the galodon move forward quickly.
"Wait a second! We’re about to go into the trench zone, and things get real down there—"
WHAM!
The blow ca from directly below and hit the galodon’s belly hard enough to make the huge shark lurch violently. Rick and Zara held on to the dorsal fin so he wouldn’t fall off.
Carmilla put an arm around Liora to keep the priestess in place. Natasha made ice handholds and froze herself to the back of the galodon.
A massive, corrupted giant squid erged from the dark depths below them. The suckers on its tentacles were as large as dinner plates, and each tentacle stretched at least fifteen ters long.
The creature’s body was a horrible mass of purple-rotted flesh, and its eyes glowed with evil intelligence that showed it was more than just an animal.
The squid wrapped two of its tentacles around the galodon’s tail and tried to pull the shark down into deeper darkness. Thalor whistled in a panic, telling his mount to fight, but the squid’s grip was too strong.
"She’ll fight, but she can’t do it by herself!" Thalor yelled. "Please help her!"
Zara didn’t need to be told twice. The demon general smiled with pure joy at the battle as she dove off the back of the galodon and into the water.
Her eyes were blazing red with demonic energy crackling along the edges of her twin blades as they appeared in her hands.
"Hahaha! I’ve been waiting for this shit...!"
"Finally so real danger is happening, and I can’t wait to fight it!" Zara’s voice ca through the water perfectly when she turned on Demon Queen’s Wrath.
From her body, crimson shockwaves pulsed outward in circles of pure destruction. The energy hit the giant squid hard, and two of its tentacles just broke off, cut cleanly through by the demonic power.
The purple corrupted blood made the water cloudy, and the red glow of Zara’s energy mixed with it in a creepy way.
Natasha stayed on the back of the galodon, making precise magical gestures with her hands in the water. "Glacial Tempest, oceanic variant!"
Ice magic erupted around the squid’s last tentacles, freezing the water in a growing sphere. The corruption made the ice form a little more slowly, but Natasha made up for it with raw magical power.
In just a few seconds, four more tentacles froze solid, stopping the creature from moving for a short ti.
Sebastian floated by Rick’s head and kept writing. "Hey, look, the ice mage is too strong in water."
"Who would have thought this would happen?"
"Good enough observation," Natasha said, not even looking at the chibi butler as she froze another tentacle that was growing back.
Liora kept the Sanctified Sphere going with her full attention, unable to fight directly without letting the barrier fall. Carmilla stayed close to the priestess and protected her from any threats that got past the others.
When three evil eels tried to sneak through the chaos, Carmilla’s sword beca a blur of silver light and cut them down before they could get to Liora.
Rick used bond resonance to keep track of everything, and his heightened awareness let him keep track of every moving part of the battle at once.
"Zara, the left tentacle is regenerating! Strike it again!" he thought.
"On it!" Zara dove toward the tentacle that had been pointed out, her blades flashing.
"Natasha, stop the beak! It’s trying to bite the galodon!"
Ice magic activated imdiately, encasing the squid’s massive beak in a prison of shimring crystals.
"Carmilla, three o’clock, small eels that have been corrupted are coming!"
Guardian’s Resolve flared up as Carmilla turned to face the new danger.
Natasha froze the giant squid all the way through, and then Zara broke the frozen mass with a point-blank Demon Queen’s Wrath. The galodon ate the biggest pieces that were left, which seems to an that it thought corrupted squid was still nutritious to eat.
"There’s still more! Wave two is coming!" Rick yelled as his sense of danger scread again.
Dozens of corrupted eels ca out of the dark, each one about three ters long and crackling with purple lightning. They rushed toward the glowing barrier like moths to a fla, moving in a scary way.
Carmilla’s Guardian’s Resolve was fully activated, and her sword moved so quickly that it turned into a silver light blur. She killed dozens of eels to keep Liora safe, showing complete dedication.
Rick turned on Draconic Presence, and his aura of intimidation spread out. Half of the eels ran away in a panic, unable to get over their deep-seated fear of dragon power.
The rest of the eels died quickly because of Carmilla’s sword work and Natasha’s ice spikes.
Thalor warned, "This is just the warm-up," as he led the galodon deeper.
"We are at a height of 1200 ters. And there’s forty-five hundred more to ridia Citadel."
"Let’s not lower our guard and expect ambush all the ti."
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