Chapter 298: The Sky Disappeared.

Deep beneath the Atlantic, Leviathan continued swimming through the darkness, its enormous serpentine body cutting through the ocean with enough force to disturb the water for miles around it. The creature believed it had finally ended the battle.

Erza had disappeared between its jaws, swallowed completely before she could escape, and nothing had emerged since.

But Leviathan had made a terrible mistake.

Erza was still alive.

She stood somewhere deep inside the creature’s enormous throat, surrounded by walls of living flesh so vast that the space around her resembled a grotesque cavern rather than the inside of a creature.

Thick strands of saliva stretched between the fleshy walls, clinging to her clothes and boots whenever Leviathan’s movements caused them to sway against her. The passage beneath her descended farther into darkness, leading toward a stomach large enough to consume creatures that would have dwarfed ordinary whales.

For almost anything else, being swallowed would have meant death. The slippery flesh alone made standing nearly impossible, and every movement of Leviathan’s body threatened to drag whatever it had consumed deeper inside.

Erza, however, stood perfectly calmly.

Her violet eyes adjusted to the darkness without difficulty as she looked around with genuine curiosity. Rather than attempting to escape immediately, she placed one hand against the fleshy wall beside her and slowly ran her fingers across it.

Sticky saliva stretched between her fingertips.

"Fascinating..."

Erza rubbed it between her fingers, studying the substance with almost childish interest before looking farther down the enormous throat.

"So this creature really swallowed me."

A smile appeared on her face.

It was such an unfamiliar experience that, for several seconds, Erza almost forgot she was supposed to be fighting. She had spent countless years being the predator. She knew the sensation of crushing prey beneath her claws and swallowing creatures that had once believed themselves powerful enough to challenge her, but she had never experienced the opposite side of that relationship.

"So this is what my prey sees when I devour them."

Her smile widened at the thought.

"A little disgusting."

She glanced around once more.

"But interesting."

Leviathan suddenly changed direction outside, causing the entire fleshy passage to shift violently. Erza’s silver-white hair moved around her shoulders, but her feet remained firmly planted while everything else inside the creature was pulled deeper toward its stomach.

Erza looked downward.

"No."

She raised one leg.

"I’m not going that way."

Her violet eyes gleamed with amusement as she placed her foot against the thick flesh beneath her.

"Let’s see how long you can keep me in here, big snake."

Then Erza stomped.

The impact traveled directly through Leviathan’s body.

A tremendous shockwave erupted through the surrounding flesh, spreading outward from Erza’s foot and traveling through the creature’s neck. Muscles contracted violently around her as blood vessels ruptured beneath the impact, while the force continued outward through layers of flesh that should have been strong enough to withstand enormous underwater pressure.

Outside, Leviathan stopped.

Its colossal body jerked violently in the middle of the ocean.

The creature’s golden eyes widened as an unfamiliar pain suddenly erupted from inside its own throat.

RRRRAAAAAAOOOOOORRRR!

The roar became distorted underwater as Leviathan twisted in agony. Its enormous tail struck the ocean floor, tearing through rock and sediment while clouds of sand exploded upward around its body.

Inside, Erza heard the roar through the creature itself.

Her smile grew.

"Oh?"

She lifted her leg again.

BOOM!

Another kick struck the inner wall of Leviathan’s throat.

The flesh buckled beneath Erza’s foot as the impact traveled through the creature again. Internal tissue tore under the concentrated force, and blood began leaking from the damaged flesh around her, mixing with the saliva covering the passage.

Erza stared at the blood.

Something changed in her expression.

The curiosity in her violet eyes became excitement.

"There we go."

She struck again.

Leviathan convulsed.

Its body slammed against the underwater terrain as it desperately attempted to dislodge whatever was hurting it from within. Rock formations shattered beneath its weight, and the impact disturbed the ocean floor so violently that enormous clouds of sediment swallowed everything nearby.

Far above them, the consequences reached the surface.

The Atlantic began swelling.

Water rose into enormous unstable waves as Leviathan thrashed deep beneath it, each movement displacing an unimaginable volume of ocean. The surface bulged upward before collapsing again, sending waves racing away from the battlefield toward the distant coastline.

But Leviathan didn’t care about the surface anymore.

For the first time since swallowing Erza, the creature understood that its prey wasn’t being digested.

Its prey was attacking it from the inside.

And deep within its throat, surrounded by blood and living flesh, Erza raised her foot again with a delighted smile.

She was having far too much fun.

Erza looked down.

Blood had begun collecting beneath her feet, spreading through the enormous passage faster than before. Every movement of Leviathan’s body caused the dark pool to shift around her boots, while fresh blood continued leaking from the injuries she had created.

Erza watched it for a moment before an amused smile appeared on her face.

"You’re surprisingly weak on the inside, big snake."

She slowly raised one hand.

The temperature dropped instantly.

The blood surrounding her boots froze first, turning solid beneath her feet before the cold rapidly spread outward. Frost crawled across Leviathan’s inner flesh in branching patterns, freezing the blood vessels and tissue around the damaged section of its throat. Within seconds, an enormous portion of the passage had become rigid beneath a thick layer of ice.

Erza closed her fingers.

The frozen section shattered.

A violent cracking sound traveled through Leviathan’s body as the frozen flesh broke apart under the pressure. Large portions of damaged tissue collapsed away, leaving a terrible cavity inside the creature’s throat while blood immediately poured from the exposed wound.

Leviathan’s entire body convulsed.

Its agonized roar traveled through its own flesh so powerfully that Erza could feel the vibration beneath her feet. The creature thrashed against the ocean floor, smashing its enormous body through underwater rock formations as it desperately reacted to the pain coming from within.

Erza’s eyes brightened.

She was about to attack again when something caught her attention.

The wound was changing.

"Hm?"

Erza leaned slightly closer.

The damaged tissue was repairing itself.

What should have been a devastating internal injury was already closing. Flesh stretched across the exposed section as new tissue formed at an unnatural speed, damaged blood vessels reconnecting while the enormous cavity gradually filled itself. Even the section Erza had frozen and shattered was being replaced.

Erza stared at the regeneration with open fascination.

"Oh..."

Her smile slowly returned.

"Now that’s interesting."

She touched the newly formed flesh with her fingertips. It was warm and alive, as though she hadn’t destroyed that same section only moments earlier.

Erza’s excitement immediately returned stronger than before.

"So you can regenerate too."

She straightened and rolled one shoulder, looking around the enormous throat as though Leviathan had just given her an entirely new reason to continue.

"Then get ready for round two, big snake."

The agony began again.

Erza struck another section of Leviathan’s throat, forcing the creature to twist violently beneath the Atlantic. Another attack followed before it could recover, then another, each one damaging the creature from somewhere it couldn’t properly reach.

Leviathan finally abandoned the depths.

Its enormous body turned upward.

Erza noticed the change immediately. The entire passage tilted beneath her as Leviathan accelerated toward the surface, moving faster and faster through the water. She remained inside its throat, watching curiously as the creature suddenly seemed far more interested in reaching open air than trying to crush her internally.

Then Erza felt something else.

The air changed.

She stopped.

For the first time since being swallowed, the constant pull deeper into Leviathan weakened. Pressure shifted through the creature’s throat, and the air around Erza seemed to be drawn in a different direction.

Her violet eyes narrowed.

"What are you doing?"

Leviathan broke the surface.

Its colossal head erupted from the Atlantic, throwing an enormous curtain of seawater into the air. The creature stretched its neck toward the cloud-covered night sky and opened its jaws impossibly wide.

Deep inside, Erza suddenly saw light.

She instinctively raised one arm across her eyes.

A golden flash illuminated the darkness.

The transformation was immediate. The enormous throat that had resembled a pitch-black cavern only seconds earlier became flooded with brilliant golden light, revealing every wall of flesh around Erza. The intensity continued rising until even her enhanced vision struggled against the sudden brightness.

Erza instinctively raised an arm across her eyes as the darkness surrounding her vanished beneath an overwhelming golden radiance. In less than a second, the enormous throat was illuminated from end to end, every strand of saliva, every wall of flesh and every pool of blood becoming visible beneath the rapidly intensifying light.

Erza lowered her arm slightly.

She recognized that energy.

It was the same attack Leviathan had fired at her earlier.

"The Solar Beam...?"

The realization came just as the golden energy surged upward.

Leviathan wasn’t generating the attack at its mouth.

The Solar Beam was traveling from deeper inside its body, burning upward through its own throat with Erza directly in its path. Flesh scorched and tore apart around the advancing energy, but Leviathan didn’t care about the damage it inflicted upon itself.

Its regeneration would repair that.

Erza, however, was supposed to disappear with everything else.

Her violet eyes widened as the golden light reached her.

"Oh, you clever...."

The Solar Beam swallowed her.

At that same moment, Leviathan exploded from the surface of the Atlantic.

Thousands of tons of seawater erupted around its colossal body as its head rose toward the cloud-covered night sky. Its enormous jaws opened, and the energy that had already burned through its throat finally escaped.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM...!!!

A colossal pillar of golden light tore upward.

For an instant, night ceased to exist over the Atlantic.

The Solar Beam climbed through the sky like an artificial sun, illuminating the ocean so brightly that the surface reflected gold for miles around Leviathan. The enormous cloud layer above began twisting around the ascending pillar, pulled into a vast spiral until the sky itself resembled a whirlpool opening around the beam.

The light climbed higher still.

From distant coastlines, the horizon suddenly shone with an unnatural brilliance. Had the attack erupted over a populated city, anyone looking outside might have believed morning had arrived hours too early.

Leviathan continued firing.

It wasn’t merely trying to hit Erza once. The creature sustained the Solar Beam, allowing that destructive energy to continuously pass through the exact section of its body where it had trapped her. Its own internal flesh was being burned apart again and again, only for its monstrous regeneration to begin repairing the damage almost immediately.

Eventually, the golden pillar weakened.

The last stream of energy vanished into the upper atmosphere, leaving the enormous spiral in the clouds slowly turning above the Atlantic.

Leviathan closed its jaws.

Hot vapor escaped from its nostrils in thick streams. Portions of its mouth were still glowing from the tremendous heat, and its golden eyes burned almost like flames as it stared upward.

For several seconds, Leviathan remained completely still.

Nothing moved inside its throat.

No kicks.

No shattered flesh.

No irritating little creature attacking it from within.

Silence.

Leviathan’s breathing gradually steadied.

This time, it believed the prey was gone.

Then its golden eyes widened.

The change was immediate.

Leviathan’s head snapped upward.

Its golden pupils contracted as it stared into the enormous opening its Solar Beam had carved through the clouds. The creature remained strangely motionless, its enormous body floating above the restless Atlantic while hot vapor continued pouring from its nostrils.

Its instincts were screaming.

Something was above it.

Leviathan continued staring into the cloudy night, searching for whatever had triggered that sudden warning. At first, there was nothing except the enormous spiral of clouds still turning around the path of its Solar Beam.

Then something appeared within them.

A shadow.

Leviathan’s eyes narrowed.

The shadow grew larger.

And larger.

Until the creature finally understood that what it was looking at wasn’t another cloud.

It was ice.

An absolutely colossal mass of ice was descending from the heavens.

Leviathan’s golden eyes widened.

The iceberg was so enormous that even Leviathan appeared small beneath it. Its jagged underside slowly emerged through the cloud layer, stretching farther and farther across the sky until the mythical serpent that had towered over ships and coastal structures ..suddenly looked like little more than a serpent beneath a falling mountain.

The clouds couldn’t contain it.

They split apart around the descending mass, revealing more of its impossible size as moonlight reflected across kilometers of frozen surface. Pieces of ice broke away from its edges during the descent, each fragment itself large enough to crash into the Atlantic like a meteor.

Leviathan didn’t roar.

For perhaps the first time in the battle, it simply stared.

Its instincts had recognized the danger before its eyes had.

Then the clouds above the iceberg scattered.

And Leviathan saw her.

Erza was alive.

She hovered high above the Atlantic, her silver-white hair whipping violently around her while one hand remained pressed against the colossal iceberg beneath her. Compared to the frozen mass she had created, Erza was almost impossible to see nothing more than a tiny figure holding something that should have required the strength of a god to move.

There were burns across her clothes and body from the Solar Beam.

But she was smiling.

Leviathan’s body trembled.

The attack that had burned through its own flesh specifically to destroy her hadn’t killed her.

It hadn’t even ended her excitement.

Erza looked down through the broken clouds and found Leviathan staring back at her.

Her smile widened.

"There you are."

She pulled her arm backward.

The enormous iceberg moved with it.

Leviathan’s eyes widened further as the entire frozen mountain shifted above the clouds. For one impossible moment, the colossal mass seemed almost weightless in Erza’s hand.

Then her expression became delighted.

"Survive this, big snake!"

Erza threw it.

The sky disappeared.

The iceberg came crashing downward with terrifying speed, ripping through the remaining clouds as its enormous shadow spread across the Atlantic. The air screamed around its edges, fragments of ice breaking away while the ocean beneath Leviathan began sinking under the approaching pressure.

Leviathan finally roared.

Its enormous body twisted across the water as golden energy immediately began gathering inside its jaws.

TO BE CONTINUED.