Amid a storm-tossed sea, where colossal waves rose and crashed into each other at unpredictable intervals, my body floated a few feet above the water. A kind of transparent mbrane—yet deep black, like smoked glass—completely surrounded .
My arms and legs thrashed from side to side as I dangled upside down, struggling desperately to control my direction. Despite all my effort, the attempt was nowhere near successful.
At the sa ti, gunshots echoed nonstop as Victor, Rupert, and the rest of the reaction team opened fire on the wind-like tentacles that kept advancing, twisting like ravenous creatures determined to reach us at any cost.
Arthur, on the other hand, remained focused, watching the aquatic anomaly through his binoculars. I had no idea what he was seeing, but considering his reaction seconds earlier—the sudden loss of color in his face, the rigid grip on the binoculars—it probably wasn't anything good.
“We don’t have much ti left!” Rupert shouted above , his voice loaded with impatience: “There are too many... it’s impossible to stop all of them from getting close!”
“If you already know that, then shut up and keep shooting!” Victor snapped back, his voice trembling with tension—almost as anxious as Rupert’s.
“What do you think I’m doing?!” Rupert yelled in return, nearly swallowed by the thunder of gunfire ricocheting around us: “Hell, this job doesn’t pay nearly enough for this!”
Upside down, my eyes stared up at the sky. Dozens—no, hundreds—of tentacles surged toward us like twisted arrows. There were probably only a few seconds left before everything fell apart.
In that tiny, precious, terrifying interval—before the tentacles reached the team mbers behind us—all I could do was flail my arms and legs awkwardly, almost comically, in midair.
Taking another glance back, I realized the tentacles were already close enough to the reaction team that, to , the world began to slow down.
It was as if everything moved in slow motion: sweat dripping down their faces, fear carved into their eyes, small tears sliding down their cheeks. Every detail—every tremor, every held breath—was sharply visible to .
(Shit!) I cursed inwardly as I witnessed the scene before : (If you’re going to launch into the air out of nowhere, at least try to control this damn flight, you idiot!) I thought as my stomach flipped and the world spun like a completely unhinged whirlpool.
At the exact mont that thought crossed my mind—while the world still moved in slow motion—I felt my body stabilize in the air. The mbrane around suddenly beca strangely steady, almost delicate, yet completely responsive to my will.
Then, almost simultaneously, I felt sothing gently tearing through my skin: black wings, as deep as a starless sky, unfolded from my back.
The other wings—the ones attached at my tailbone—beat lightly and in perfect sync, matching the motion of the newly ford upper wings as if both sets were parts of a single flawless chanism.
In the next instant, everything happened at once: ti around snapped back to its normal flow, and my body shot upward, ascending toward the sky with a force and speed I had never felt before.
As I flew, the voices of the reaction team—as well as Victor, Arthur, and Rupert—kept echoing relentlessly in my ears. It was a chaotic mix of desperation and disbelief, fractured by a rising sense of dread.
“You... could’ve... warned... us first!” Rupert bellowed, his voice hoarse and chopped by the wind in uneven bursts. Every word ca out in jolts, as if he had to fight for space against the turbulent air.
I ignored him and turned in the air while continuing to fly. My eyes scanned the wind-like tentacles snaking behind us—they were still in pursuit, maintaining a steady speed.
It didn’t seem like they would catch us, but that didn’t an I could let the situation drag on. Keeping up this escape would be, honestly, a massive headache.
Besides, sohow, I felt I was capable of far more than just sprouting wings from my back. I didn’t know exactly where that confidence ca from—it was irrational, almost instinctive—but it was there, solid. I just... knew. Deep in my chest I could feel it: if I truly wanted to, I could do it. Simple as that.
With that whirlwind of feelings and sensations, I raised my hand toward the wind-like tentacles. The dark mbrane surrounding my body began to move slowly, flowing as if responding to my command.
It didn’t detach from the rest of ; it simply seed to concentrate a larger portion of itself around my hand, pulsing subtly as it gathered there.
The dark mass—dense like living smoke—slid down and wrapped around my arm. Then, like a dam breaking, all that darkness tore away from and expanded in a sudden surge, skimming precisely around the reaction team mbers—including Victor, Rupert, and Arthur—before rushing toward the pursuing wind-tentacles as if it had just found its true target.
The darkened sea surged upward with violent force and crashed against the tentacles, swallowing them completely until they looked like spears molded from tar. In the very next instant, their movent stopped almost unnaturally, simply hanging there in the air—rigid and silent. Instinctively, I mimicked the gesture and slowed myself down until coming to a complete stop.
The tentacles draped in my darkness remained motionless, though small spasms rippled through their shapes—erratic, desperate jerks, as if they were still trying to break free from the shadowy prison holding them in place.
I stared at that endless mass of tentacles, dozens of them twisting silently, then lowered my gaze to my own hand—open, relaxed. For a mont, I shifted my attention between the tentacles and the hand that controlled them. Then, with a subtle thought and an innocent expression that contrasted with everything around , I clenched my fingers tightly.
When I looked back up at those tentacles wrapped in pure darkness, for a mont I couldn’t do anything but marvel at the sight.
It was as if an incomprehensible force—sothing far beyond the reach of logic—was crushing them without rcy. Then, all at once, they simply exploded.
A brutal blast tore through the air, followed by an unforgiving sequence of detonations as tens of thousands of tentacles burst one after another.
The sound was grotesque and deafening, an unending echo of flesh being torn apart, like the world itself was being shredded right in front of .
I watched the scene with an innocent expression, though inside I was completely stunned. The others didn’t look much different. The mbers of the response team seed at a loss for words— mouths hanging open, eyes wide, a collective expression of pure and absolute disbelief.
In the heavy silence weighing over the air, Arthur was the first to break the stillness. His slightly parted lips barely managed to release a short phrase, almost a raspy whisper: “My God...” There was no emotion in his voice—no surprise, no fear. Just the raw confirmation of sothing he had already feared to be true.
Unfortunately, our problems didn’t end there. A new sound echoed—this ti a chilling boom coming from the sky, spreading out in every direction. It was low, deep, almost guttural, and it made everything around us tremble as if the air itself were cracking apart.
The sound waves began to vibrate through the ground and the walls, and everyone instinctively brought their hands to their ears, trying to block at least so of the noise that seed to bypass the body’s defenses and pierce straight into their heads.
You don’t have to be a genius to understand what just happened. Whatever that thing up there was, it was clear I had just pissed it off—a lot.
As if reading my thoughts, Rupert let out an uneasy half-smile before saying: “I think that anomaly didn’t like what you just did...”
I ignored Victor’s words for a mont—along with the deafening roar of the anomaly in the sky. My eyes swept across the sea below. Now that I was higher up, I could finally grasp the full scope of the situation and... it wasn’t good. Not at all.
Before, underwater, I hadn’t realized the true scale of the anomaly, all I had seen was a distorted outline, an impossible-to-define shadow. In the end, the only part that had actually surfaced had been its mouth.
Yet even from up high, I couldn’t see its body—not a single part of it. Only the mouth. And that mouth, which I had already considered enormous, revealed itself to be far more monstrous than anything I could have imagined in the beginning.
Comparing its size to Mount Everest didn’t seem like an exaggeration anymore. In fact... the view from above was genuinely terrifying. Not that I’m afraid of water or anything like that, but staring at the true scale of that anomaly was undeniably unsettling.
As I drifted into my own thoughts, voices began echoing behind —first one, then another, each more shocked and incredulous than the last. Until soone muttered, almost choking on the words: “My God... what the hell is that thing?”
“It’s huge... I can’t even see where it ends” murmured another voice, the tone muffled and uneven, as if the very sight had knocked the breath out of them.
“How the hell are humans supposed to fight sothing like that?” another voice added, dripping with such deep hopelessness it seed to drain the air around us.
At the sa ti, Victor and Rupert’s voices overlapped: “Were you able to establish contact?” Victor asked, his voice carrying the urgency of the situation.
“Nothing” Rupert replied, impatience dripping from his voice: “It’s all still static. Maybe because we’re in the middle of nowhere... or because of those things out there. I have no idea. All I know is this: we’re completely on our own here”
“Shit... things really aren’t getting any better for us” Victor muttered, a nervous, crooked smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he tried to hide the growing tension.
While the two of them kept talking, my eyes stayed fixed on the anomaly hanging high in the sky. It hid behind thick, shadowy clouds, as if it were feeding off the darkness itself.
Sohow, I could feel that this was far from over. Not that I had any obligation to deal with it—after all, this wasn’t so ga where I had to defeat a boss to move on to the next level.
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