Chapter 233: Regenerative Ability

The concrete ledge exploded into fragments as the massive tentacle slammed down. Evren leaped backward through the air, while Zephyra dissolved into black smoke, slipping through the flying stone chips.

Ten feet above them, Amber twisted in mid-air, her golden wings beating fast to dodge a second sweeping limb that rushed past her boots like a falling tree. The razor-sharp bone hooks along the sucker edges clipped an iron girder, slicing through three inches of rusted steel with a loud screech.

She pulled up into a sharp climb, gaining altitude beneath the cavern rafters. Her golden eyes tracked the churning water below, where the monster’s body shifted beneath the foaming waves.

Evren landed firmly on the rim of a large rusted intake pipe jutting out from the cavern wall. Beside him, Zephyra reappeared on an iron crane bracket, her whip-blade already uncoiled and humming with dark mana.

"It’s faster than something that size has any right to be," Zephyra called out, her eyes locked on the churning water below.

In the center of the lake, the Sanguine Kraken thrashed its massive limbs, creating huge waves that slammed against the outer walls of the reservoir. Two thick tentacles shot out of the dark water straight toward Amber, their red suckers snapping open and shut like hungry mouths.

Amber didn’t retreat. She angled her golden wings downward, diving into a steep spiral between the two oncoming limbs.

Her twin sabers cut through the air in a blur. With a metallic hum, her blades sliced clean through the left tentacle, severing a thirty-foot section of rubbery flesh.

The severed limb splashed down into the pool, turning the dark water around it into a frothing red foam.

"Got one!" Amber yelled, pulling up into a hover with a sharp grin. "Their hides can’t stop molecular severance!"

Before the words completely left her mouth, the stump on the Kraken’s body began to boil violently. Thick red bubbles erupted from the wound, and dozens of fleshy tendrils lashed out from the raw meat.

In less than seven seconds, the muscle and tissue knit together and expanded. A brand-new tentacle burst out of the stump, fully grown and lined with fresh rows of jagged bone hooks.

Amber’s eyes widened in disbelief as the new limb whipped through the air, missing her wingtip by inches. "It regrew! It completely replaced the limb in seven seconds!"

"It has a regenerative ability," Evren warned, his Kinetic Flow tracking the creature’s internal mana pathways. "Cutting off individual arms won’t slow it down. It has enough vitality to keep regrowing limbs all day."

Angered by the sting of Amber’s blades, the Kraken let out another loud screech. Its huge body expanded like a balloon, and it suddenly blasted a massive stream of pitch-black liquid straight from its funnel.

The black fluid hit the air and instantly vaporized into a dense, oily cloud of corrosive ink. The acidic fog spread across the reservoir within seconds, eating away at the rusted metal fixtures and filling the cavern with choking black smoke.

Visibility vanished almost completely.

Amber pulled higher toward the ceiling to get above the mist, while Zephyra pressed her back against the cold stone, scanning the darkness with narrowed violet eyes.

"I can’t see the body," Zephyra said, coughing softly against the acid fumes. "The ink is blocking my shadow vision."

Evren pulled up the high collar of his combat jacket, his SS-Rank constitution effortlessly resisting the toxic air. Below them, three unseen tentacles whipped blindly through the black fog, smashing into support pillars and snapping iron girders in half.

The entire subterranean reservoir trembled as tons of cracked concrete collapsed into the deep water.

Evren closed his eyes and relied entirely on Kinetic Flow. In his mind’s eye, the chaotic cavern resolved into clear lines of motion and mana.

Beneath the thick cloud of ink, he could sense a massive, radiating core pulsing deep inside the Kraken’s forehead, right behind the thick calcified armor plate between its eyes. That was the heart of the beast, pumping endless regenerative mana into every limb.

"Amber, Zephyra, listen to me," Evren spoke calmly through the soul-bond. "Its tentacles are just a distraction. The beast core is behind the stone plate on its forehead."

"How do we get to it?" Amber asked in his mind, banking hard to dodge a blind tentacle swipe through the smoke. "Every time anyone gets close, it covers its head with six limbs."

"We hit it all at once from three different angles," Evren replied. "We don’t give it room to guard."

Evren laid out the plan. Zephyra would use her shadows to snare the lower limbs, pinning them to the submerged pillars so the creature couldn’t curl them upward.

Amber would dive from the ceiling at full speed, using her twin sabers to slice away the upper tentacles and crack open the calcified armor plate across its skull.

The moment the shell cracked, Evren would drop down with maximum Gravity Domain to lock the beast’s head in place, driving his cleaver into the exposed core with the full power of Heavenly Lightning.

"Can you hold those tentacles, Zephyra?" Evren asked aloud, glancing toward the crane bracket.

"If Amber gives me an opening to strike, I’ll anchor them to the bedrock," Zephyra replied with a fierce glint in her violet eyes. "They won’t budge an inch."

"And I’ll crack that shell wide open," Amber said from high in the rafters, her grip tightening on the hilt of both sabers as golden mana hummed along the star-metal.

The corrosive fog began to thin slightly as the cavern’s draft pulled the smoke toward the upper ventilation shafts. Below them, the gigantic head of the Sanguine Kraken surfaced once more, its eight red eyes scanning the darkness with raw fury.

It raised all eight tentacles high into the air, churning the black lake into a boiling maelstrom as it prepared to bring the entire chamber down. Evren took a slow breath, centering his footing on the edge of the pipe.

"Get ready," Evren said in a low, steady voice.

Golden lightning began to spark along the length of his Frost-Bane Cleaver, buzzing with intense high-voltage power. His mana coiled tightly around his body, ready to expand.

Above them, Amber flared her wings to maximum brilliance, radiant golden light piercing the black smoke like a miniature sun. Down along the wall, Zephyra’s shadow aura swelled outward, dozens of dark tendrils coiling around her arms and whip-blade.

The Kraken sensed the sudden surge of mana and let out a roar. Evren locked eyes with Amber, then with Zephyra.

"Now!" Evren shouted.