Chapter 1337: No Air for Mercy

Seraphina’s body stretched in a heartbeat. Scales flowed over her limbs and torso, and broad dragon wings unfurled from her back. She crushed the sand underfoot and launched straight into the sky, taking the high angle to sweep her gaze across the entire shoreline.

Beach, reefs, open water—everything fell into her sightline. She watched for a long moment and still didn’t spot anything closing in. Down below, only the retreating surf had left a mess of wet streaks across the sand.

Seraphina’s eyes tracked those marks... then drifted back.

One patch of water hadn’t soaked into the sand at all.

Andona stepped out of the shield at the same time. She tightened her grip on her sword and cut the blade flat across the beach. The edge-force shoved aside the top layer of sand, carving a ruler-straight line through the shore.

When that sword light skimmed past the wet patch, the "water" twitched—barely.

Andona saw it.

She didn’t swing again. Instead, she lowered the blade slowly. With the tip angled toward the ground, a golden magic circle spread out beneath it, dense lines crawling over the damp sand as they converged on that patch.

Above them, Seraphina tucked her wings and became a plunging shadow. She reached out with a dragon claw, talons locked on that same wet spot. One more drop and she’d rip it—and the sand underneath—wide open.

But right as the claw was about to land, both Seraphina and Andona froze mid-strike.

Every eye on Elira’s wings snapped open.

Strange runes lit up deep inside each one, and the glow linked together across the span of her Divine Sovereign Moth wings like a circuit coming online. She gave a single, light flap, slipped past the golden array, and stopped in midair between Seraphina and Andona.

Then she extended one finger and tapped the air.

The wet patch collapsed toward the center. As the water pulled away, a small octopus was revealed, curled up on the damp sand and trembling so hard its whole body shook. A few tentacles were tucked tight to its belly, and at their tips, bloodstains still clung—unwashed by the sea.

Elira looked down at it.

Her moth wings spread again, and a heavy pressure poured out from between the runes. One rune after another surfaced into full clarity. Light tightened around the little octopus. The sand first slid outward—then the whole ground dipped, like something had pressed down from above.

The next moment, the little octopus exploded inside the light.

Blood and shattered droplets sprayed in every direction. One splatter shot straight for Elira’s face. She clicked her tongue and flicked her hand; a transparent shield snapped open in front of her and caught every speck. The blood slid slowly down the barrier, not a single drop touching her.

Elira leaned forward and studied the mess on the sand, then whispered to herself, dead serious, "Next time... don’t use so much force."

Then she lifted her head toward the sea, eyes brightening.

"Delicious octopus! Here I come!"

Before the words even finished, she was already beating her wings and streaking forward.

Out on the water, Ataneya and Voruun were still locked up, neither side able to settle it.

Ataneya tightened her fox tails again and again, trying to bind Voruun’s huge body completely. But an octopus was absurdly flexible. As long as there was even a narrow gap between the tails, Voruun could flatten his body and have his tentacles slide him through. Even when most of him was already boxed in, he always slipped out before the cage fully closed.

Voruun couldn’t truly suppress Ataneya either.

A few tentacles would finally manage to coil around a fox tail, and the second he tried to drag it down into the sea, Ataneya would just fire back with brute force. Her long tails tightened from multiple angles, and the pressure traveled down the tentacles and back into Voruun’s core. Those tightly wrapped tentacles couldn’t hold—one after another, they were wrenched apart.

One was too slippery to catch.

The other—you could catch her, but you couldn’t move her.

So they stayed deadlocked on the surface, spray exploding nonstop between tentacles and fox tails.

That was the scene Elira arrived to.

She hung in the air, eyes glued to Voruun. Her wings beat faster and faster. The runes on her Divine Sovereign Moth wings pulsed in sequence, and the rune-eyes rotated with her gaze, all of them turning to lock onto him.

"So big... so many..."

Elira swallowed.

"I really want to eat him."

She arced through the air and went straight to the side of Voruun’s massive head. The many eyes on her wings opened wide, staring him down. Inside each pupil, the light kept shifting, cycling through dazzling colors.

Voruun rolled an eye to look at the little thing that had flown right up to him.

A flying brat, that’s all.

He didn’t even pull back the main tentacles fighting Ataneya. He just lazily drew a thinner tentacle up from beneath the surface and flicked it toward Elira.

The instant the tentacle tip touched Elira’s shield, a muffled thump rang out. The transparent barrier bowed inward, impact rippling across it in a spreading wave.

Elira—and her shield—got shoved backward. She beat her wings several times and still couldn’t stabilize right away.

She slid all the way down toward the water. Right as she was about to splash in, a fox tail reached in from the side and caught her cleanly, holding her up.

On the beach, everyone saw it. They were just about to climb onto Seraphina’s back when Namyanna had already raised her trident.

The sharp prongs stabbed straight into the sand.

The sea responded immediately—swelling into a rounded bulge. Water peeled up off the surface, rising into the air and condensing into a huge sphere. With a soft pop, a thin membrane formed over it like a film.

One by one, everyone passed through that watery skin and into the sphere. Their clothes didn’t even get wet.

Ahead, Elira used Ataneya’s tail like a springboard and lifted back into the air. Not only was she not scared off, she looked even more determined to eat Voruun.

Alive. Kicking. All limbs intact.

Sure, his temper was nasty, but that just meant the meat would be fresh.

Elira stared at him, a thin line of drool already slipping from the corner of her mouth. Her Divine Sovereign Moth wings opened all the way behind her, blinding light pouring out of every rune and turning every flying droplet into glittering sparks.

That was when a rain of blades and waves of energy pressed in from the distance.

Dense attacks crisscrossed over the sea, sealing off the space in front of Elira. Ethan and the others arrived fast, stepping across the rolling swells, forming a new line in front of her.

Ethan raised a hand. Energy in his palm compressed inward, starting as a vague point of light. As power gathered, the point swelled into a bright, solid sphere.

He snapped his arm and threw it.

The energy ball shot forward on a straight path to meet the arrowstorm. The moment it struck the first arrow, it expanded violently. White ripples shoved outward from the collision point. Wherever they passed, arrows snapped, and scattered energy was washed clean away.

In a single spread, the obstacles in midair were cleared. Only a few fading specks of light drifted down toward the sea.

Ataneya seized the opening, whipping her fox tails. The long tails skimmed the surface in a sweeping arc, stirring up towering spray and turning the water around Voruun into chaos.

Inside the water sphere, Namyanna tightened her grip and drew the trident back through the membrane. Ripples spread across the sphere’s surface—then it smoothed out again, unbroken.

She lifted the trident tip and aimed it at Voruun’s enormous body.

The air around them began to collapse toward a single point. First, a transparent circular edge appeared. Then everything inside it—moisture, vapor—was squeezed out, and even the air itself was pulled away.

The space sealed, becoming a suspended patch of vacuum.

The seawater under Voruun lost its support.

A force lifted his massive body upward. Tentacles dragged streams of water as they left the surface, and he was pushed bodily into that circular vacuum zone. The boundary tightened immediately, locking him inside.

Elira rose slowly until she was directly in front of him.

All the rune-eyes on her moth wings aligned on the target. Light gathered into tiny bright points deep in their pupils, then flowed along the rune-patterns like veins. When the points finally connected into a single network—

several piercing lasers fired from her wings, cutting through the vacuum and striking Voruun’s broad flesh.

Being out of the sea already made Voruun miserable. With the surrounding air completely stripped away, he couldn’t even leverage himself to struggle properly. His body bobbed up and down inside the vacuum, tentacles flailing uselessly, twisting in outrage with nowhere to push off.

Elira watched with intense focus.

She adjusted her wing angle, letting the beams sweep across Voruun evenly. The light weakened, then sped up, never lingering in one place for long. Vacuum couldn’t carry sound, but the boundary shook constantly with Voruun’s thrashing, transparent ripples spreading across it in rings.

Gotta control the heat.

Absolutely can’t scorch it.

While everyone’s attention was locked on Voruun, the water in the distance shivered with a soft, gentle ripple.

It wasn’t dramatic—at first glance, it looked like nothing more than a normal undercurrent. But it moved against the direction of the surrounding waves. The swell rolled toward shore; that ripple cut diagonally across the surface, hiding its strength beneath the water.

Namyanna’s fingers tightened around the trident.

She felt an unfamiliar force first—then finally saw the ripple moving against the tide. Water was its cover. The mild rise-and-fall was just the mask.

She stopped caring about Voruun trapped in the vacuum. Drawing the trident behind her, she tapped the water’s surface with the tip of her foot.

An ice-crystal lotus bloomed beneath her.

When the first petal opened, a thin frost filmed over the sea. When the second petal unfurled, the ice spread along the ripple and surged outward. By the time the lotus fully opened, the cold had already pushed through the surrounding water. The rolling swells slowed inch by inch. Even the droplets hanging in the air crystallized into tiny beads of ice.

Whatever was hiding under the water sensed the danger and sprang up from the surface.

It had barely cleared the waterline when the cold chased it.

Transparent ice sealed around the outer edge of the ripple, freezing it in midair.

It couldn’t sink back down.

It couldn’t rise higher, either.

Inside the vacuum, Voruun was still struggling. The moment he felt that familiar presence, his big round eyes went glossy with relief.

Finally—backup!

But there was no flowing air here, and moisture couldn’t disperse. His tears just pooled in his eye sockets, wobbling back and forth in those huge eyes...

and no matter how hard he blinked, they wouldn’t fall.