Chapter 293: The Ocean Is His Domain

Then the Queen of Atlantis answered him.

"RRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...!!!"

The sky shook.

Erza’s roar struck the Atlantic with such overwhelming force that the ocean beneath her collapsed downward before exploding outward. The pressure spread across the water in every direction, raising enormous waves while the air itself distorted around her. Clouds overhead were torn apart by the force, opening a vast clearing in the night sky directly above the battlefield.

Leviathan received the roar head-on.

Its enormous golden eyes widened as the pressure crashed against its body. For the first time since the battle began, the colossal creature was being driven backward without Erza ever touching it. Its claws tore through the ocean in an attempt to anchor itself, throwing mountains of water into the air, yet its serpentine body continued sliding farther and farther away beneath the sheer force of her voice.

But the roar didn’t stop with Leviathan.

It kept traveling.

The sound rolled across the Atlantic like an expanding shockwave, racing toward Davenport and the surrounding coastline. By the time it reached the port, the soldiers had already seen the ocean withdrawing strangely from parts of the shore as the pressure disturbed the water ahead of them.

Then Erza’s voice arrived.

Every soldier covered their ears.

The port shook beneath their feet. Loose equipment was thrown across the concrete, vehicles rocked on their suspension and the remaining damaged windows shattered almost simultaneously. Waves crashed against the coastal defenses while alarms disappeared beneath a sound so enormous that the soldiers could no longer hear themselves shouting.

Yet Davenport was only the beginning.

Erza’s roar continued across Liebus.

Cities far from the battlefield heard a deep, impossible sound rolling through the night. Windows vibrated inside homes, birds erupted from trees in enormous flocks and people stepped outside in confusion, staring toward a horizon where there was nothing to see.

Then the sound crossed beyond Liebus.

Across the sea, distant coastal nations began hearing it as well.

At first it arrived as little more than a low vibration. Glass trembled faintly inside buildings. Animals became restless. People stopped conversations because they could feel something beneath the ordinary sounds of the night.

Then the roar reached them.

Not with the same destructive force Davenport had endured, the enormous distance had weakened it. but clearly enough that people separated from Erza by hundreds upon hundreds of kilometers could hear something roaring somewhere beyond the horizon.

Nobody there knew what it was.

Nobody knew that somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, a woman was standing before a mythical beast and answering its challenge.

The roar continued spreading until distance finally began consuming its power.

Back above the Atlantic, Erza’s voice gradually weakened.

The last echoes rolled across the ocean and disappeared into the night, but the consequences remained. The clouds above the battlefield had been torn apart, the Atlantic churned beneath enormous waves, and Leviathan had been driven far from where it had originally faced her.

For several seconds, Erza remained completely still.

Her silver-white hair slowly descended around her shoulders as the violent wind weakened. She exhaled calmly, almost as though she hadn’t just sent her voice across an enormous portion of the world.

Her violet eyes never left Leviathan.

The colossal creature wasn’t unharmed.

Blood began running from the openings along the sides of Leviathan’s head, tracing dark streams across its scales before dripping into the Atlantic below. The enormous beast shook its head violently as though trying to recover from the sound that had struck it from every direction, while its golden eyes struggled to remain focused on Erza.

More blood fell.

It struck the ocean in heavy drops before spreading across the disturbed surface, staining the water around Leviathan while the creature’s enormous body swayed.

The damage beneath them was even worse.

Erza’s roar hadn’t existed only in the air. A tremendous portion of its force had traveled directly through the ocean, where sound carried through the water and struck everything unfortunate enough to remain near the battlefield.

The surface slowly began filling with marine life.

Small fish appeared first, hundreds of them rising motionlessly between the waves. Larger creatures followed from farther below, their bodies carried upward by the disturbed currents. Even several whales that had been too close to the path of the roar floated lifelessly in the distance, while countless smaller creatures beneath them had suffered the same fate.

What had been an ocean battlefield moments earlier was becoming a graveyard.

Erza lowered her gaze.

For a brief moment, her violet eyes moved across the destruction she had created. Dead fish covered entire sections of the water, larger marine animals floated among them, and blood from Leviathan continued spreading between the waves. The consequences would extend beyond what she could see; destroying so much marine life in a single area would disturb the ecosystem and the food chain long after tonight’s battle ended.

Erza understood what she was looking at.

Yet her expression didn’t change.

Her attention simply returned to Leviathan.

Then her eyes widened slightly.

Something was happening to its wounds.

The blood flowing from the sides of Leviathan’s head began slowing. Torn flesh around the damaged areas shifted almost unnaturally, pulling toward itself as though invisible threads were drawing the wound closed. Split tissue pressed together, the bleeding weakened further, and within moments the injuries caused by Erza’s roar were already beginning to disappear.

Erza stared.

Then a delighted smile slowly spread across her face.

"Oh..."

Leviathan lifted its head.

The wounds continued sealing.

Erza watched the torn flesh knit itself together, and instead of frustration, a delighted smile slowly returned to her face. So that was it. The beast hadn’t survived this long because she lacked the strength to kill it. She simply hadn’t been trying to kill it in the first place.

From the moment the battle began, Erza had been testing Leviathan—letting it attack, matching its strength, provoking it into revealing more. She could have pushed harder. Much harder. But what would have been the fun in ending everything with a single overwhelming strike?

And now, seeing its regeneration, she was glad she hadn’t.

"Now that’s what I expected from you."

Her white wings spread behind her as her aura began rising again. The ocean beneath her trembled, but even now, Erza wasn’t releasing everything. She was simply raising the game another level, curious to see how much more punishment Leviathan could endure before finally breaking.

She leaned forward, violet eyes glowing with unmistakable excitement.

"Come on. Let’s play a little harder."

Leviathan’s golden eyes locked onto her.

The creature roared and threw its enormous body forward, its serpentine form tearing through the Atlantic with enough speed to raise walls of water behind it. Erza accelerated at the same instant, becoming a streak of white light as she rushed directly toward the colossal beast.

Neither attempted to avoid the other.

The distance between them vanished.

Leviathan attacked first.

Its enormous body twisted through the ocean, but instead of trying to strike Erza with its claws again, the creature rotated its entire serpentine frame. Its tail tore free from the Atlantic several kilometers behind it, dragging an enormous wall of seawater into the sky before sweeping toward Erza from the side.

Erza turned her head.

The tail was already there.

She raised both hands and caught it.

The collision produced a tremendous shockwave across the Atlantic, blasting the surrounding water outward while Erza’s body was pushed several meters through the air. Her fingers sank between Leviathan’s enormous scales as she tightened her grip, and for a moment the difference in size made the sight almost ridiculous. Leviathan’s tail alone dwarfed her entire body, yet the instant Erza stabilized herself, she stopped moving completely.

Leviathan growled and pulled.

Erza didn’t move.

Its enormous muscles contracted beneath the scales as the creature tried again, sending waves rolling outward from the rest of its body, but Erza simply floated there with both hands wrapped around its tail.

Her violet eyes brightened.

"My turn."

Erza twisted her waist and pulled.

Leviathan’s golden eyes widened as its entire colossal body was suddenly dragged sideways. The mythical beast rose from the Atlantic section by section, millions of tons of seawater pouring from its scales while Erza continued turning as though she were swinging something far smaller.

Then she brought both arms down.

Leviathan followed.

The enormous creature smashed into the Atlantic.

The impact sent a mountain of water into the sky. Waves exploded outward from the collision while Leviathan’s serpentine body disappeared beneath the surface, descending through countless layers of disturbed water from the sheer force of Erza’s throw.

Erza released its tail and rose above the resulting waves, watching the dark ocean below.

For several seconds, Leviathan didn’t return.

Erza smiled.

Then golden light appeared beneath her.

Her expression changed.

Deep below the surface, something was glowing.

The light rapidly intensified until an enormous section of the Atlantic shone gold from underneath, and Erza barely had time to recognize what was happening before Leviathan’s Solar Beam erupted from the ocean.

The golden ray struck her directly.

Erza crossed her arms in front of herself as the blast swallowed her entire body. The force carried her upward and backward through the sky, pushing her hundreds of feet from where she had been hovering while the beam continued pouring out of the Atlantic beneath her.

Erza gritted her teeth.

Her wings spread.

She forced herself to a stop.

The Solar Beam continued crashing against her crossed arms, golden energy spilling around her body and illuminating the clouds above the ocean. Erza slowly lowered one arm despite the pressure and extended her hand toward the sea.

Cold gathered around her fingers.

The temperature dropped sharply.

Moisture in the air froze as several enormous spheres of ice formed around Erza, each one growing rapidly until they dwarfed buildings. More appeared behind them, suspended across the night sky while the Solar Beam continued forcing against her remaining arm.

Erza’s fingers curled.

"Go."

The first sphere launched downward.

It accelerated like a meteor and struck the ocean hard enough to explode through the surface. A second followed, then a third, each enormous mass of magically hardened ice descending toward the golden glow beneath the water.

Leviathan stopped firing.

Its head moved aside just as the first projectile reached it.

The ice tore past its face and continued into the depths.

The second wasn’t as easy to avoid.

It smashed into Leviathan’s shoulder, breaking several scales before burying itself into the flesh beneath them. Blood erupted into the surrounding water as the creature twisted away, only for another sphere to strike farther down its body and penetrate between its scales.

Leviathan roared beneath the ocean.

Erza’s smile widened.

She moved her hand again.

The remaining spheres changed direction.

They weren’t simply falling anymore.

They were following him.

Leviathan twisted through the depths with astonishing speed, its enormous serpentine body bending between the incoming projectiles while ice tore through the water around it. One sphere passed beneath its stomach, another grazed its side and ripped away several scales, while a third struck the end of its tail before shattering into thousands of frozen fragments.

Then Leviathan plunged deeper.

The golden shape disappeared into the darkness.

Erza watched from above for barely a second before folding her wings against her back.

"You aren’t escaping."

She dove.

Her body struck the Atlantic and disappeared beneath the surface.

The world changed instantly. ℴ

The violence of the waves above became distant as Erza descended through the dark blue depths, silver-white hair floating around her while faint light from the surface gradually disappeared. She could see the trails Leviathan’s enormous body had left through the water, and she followed them downward without hesitation.

Far below, two golden lights appeared.

Erza slowed.

Leviathan’s eyes.

The creature had stopped running.

Erza’s smile returned as she accelerated toward it, but Leviathan suddenly vanished from her sight. Its enormous body curved through the darkness with far greater freedom than it possessed above the surface, circling around her before Erza could properly determine where it had gone.

The water behind her shifted.

Erza’s eyes widened.

She turned.

Leviathan’s jaws were already open.

There wasn’t enough time to escape.

Its enormous mouth closed around her.

The last thing visible in the darkness was Erza’s violet eyes widening as rows of colossal teeth came together, trapping the Queen of Atlantis completely inside Leviathan’s jaws.

Then the golden glow disappeared into the depths.

TO BE CONTINUED.