After tearing through the Wooden Wolves he knew like the back of his hand, Martin quickly reached the huge lake that stretched for miles and served as the Baby Kraken’s ho.
He slowed at the shore for a mont and looked across the clear water.
Strange how different this felt from his older solo runs. Back then, being alone had carried a quiet emptiness with it.
This ti, he felt only anticipation.
With Ao Tenshin perched on his head, he stripped off his weapons and armor and stored them in his inventory.
The little Dragon Turtle tapped eagerly against his hair, as if she had been waiting for the lake all along. When he glanced up, she was already fixed on the water.
Clad in nothing but beginner clothes, he dove in. The water was clear, yet the lake ran so deep that he couldn’t see the bottom, much less the creature slumbering below.
Sunlight spilled through the surface in wavering bands, growing thinner the deeper he went. The water pressed coldly against his skin, and the silence below felt heavier than it should have.
The mont he slipped beneath the surface, Ao Tenshin shot out of his hair and swam downward. She kicked through the water with bright, eager strokes, and the gleam of her tiny armored legs and head let him keep track of her.
He tried to follow, but that was foolish. No one could outswim the Queen of the Lake, Ao Tenshin.
"Angel, careful of the Baby Kraken!" Martin shouted, only for a rush of bubbles to flood his vision and blind him for a mont.
The last ti he’d truly swum like this was back in school. He’d been athletic enough as a teenager to be better than average in the water, but even then he couldn’t hold a candle to the Dragon Turtle. At least his form was still solid.
His warning ca just in ti. A tentacle surged up from the depths.
What did Ao Tenshin do?
She ignored it and kept descending.
Just before it could hit her, she suddenly accelerated and veered aside, slipping cleanly past the strike.
Martin’s eyes widened. She really was the Queen of the Lake.
The Baby Kraken didn’t let up. More tentacles joined the fray and lashed at her from different angles, but once again she shattered every expectation. She dodged them all, and by the end of her twisting maneuvers, the tentacles had tangled together, their muscles quivering as they struggled to pull free.
Martin nearly forgot to keep swimming. Girl, you wrecked it. Damn.
For a mont, he felt ridiculous for ever trying to keep up with her in the water. Down here, Ao Tenshin did not look like a cute companion. She looked like she belonged to the lake more than he ever could.
Had she been training down here this whole ti, or was she really just this absurd in the water? Still wondering, Martin descended with her until the two of them ca face-to-face with the monster.
Soon enough, its octopus-like head erged from the gloom, covered in countless scars running from top to bottom. Each scar was actually an eye socket, and every eye snapped open the mont it sensed Ao Tenshin and Martin.
But that wasn’t what shocked him most.
It’s chained?
At the very bottom, black chains coiled around the Baby Kraken, leaving only its tentacles free to move. Thick links bit into its massive body and disappeared into the lake floor below, as though the darkness itself were holding it there.
The closer Martin drifted, the stranger the water felt. The cold pressing against his skin did not deepen, yet sothing around him seed to ease by a fraction, as though a weight he had never noticed had shifted.
Ao Tenshin slowed beside him for the first ti. She did not rush the monster. Instead, she drifted close enough to brush his shoulder and stared at the chains with wide, unblinking eyes.
The Baby Kraken’s many eyes snapped between them, but not all of them. So kept jerking downward, toward the places where the chains vanished into mud and stone. The monster did not look rely trapped. It looked contained.
A dark aura bled from the links, faint enough to disappear into the water and heavy enough to make Martin’s skin crawl. One of the lower chains looked different from the rest. Its black sheen was broken by a pale line running through a single link.
He had no idea what those chains were really doing, but one thing settled deep in his gut with absolute certainty.
If they gave way, the Baby Kraken would not be the only thing changing.
Martin summoned his shield and spear.
If that pale line was a weakness, then he needed a weapon built for a direct, piercing charge. The spear was the obvious choice.
He triggered Solitary Edge.
A sharp aura flared along the spearhead and ran down the weapon in a thin, luminous streak, as though the water itself were being split around its edge.
Then he leaned forward and tried to swim, but with a shield in one hand and a spear in the other, the water turned him clumsy. He kicked, pulled, and pushed ahead with awkward effort, barely gaining a few ters before the lake dragged at his limbs and robbed him of montum.
Ao Tenshin noticed at once. She darted back to him, made one quick circle around his shoulders as if sizing him up, and then slamd her little armored head into the middle of his back.
The shove cut through the weight of the water, and Martin shot forward hard enough for the cold current to split around him. He tucked the shield in closer, tightened his grip on the spear, and adjusted the angle until the glowing tip lined up with the pale crack below.
Martin locked onto the crack as the Baby Kraken’s eyes widened and its tentacles lashed harder around it. He drove the spear forward.
The spear struck the cracked link in a bright streak of force that flashed through the water and sent a heavy jolt through both his arms. For one terrible heartbeat, the chain held, but then the black link shattered.
The entire lake jolted around him. The chains let out a harsh tallic shriek, and all hell broke loose.
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