Chapter 1342: The Bubble Takes Its Time

An oval-shaped zone spread across the surface of the sea.

Inside it, every wave froze in place. The water was forced downward into a shallow bowl, while the rim kept rolling outward like it was being peeled back. Voruun sat dead center in that oval, and even his tentacles were being tugged by the energy field—no longer whipping as freely as before.

He glanced at the pink energy sphere... then at the distant stretch of ocean that still hadn’t been sealed off.

Voruun knew he couldn’t block this. Instinct screamed at him to run.

But the anger boiling in his chest wouldn’t let him accept losing to these people again.

Several tentacles began slapping the sea in a steady rhythm.

Each strike shoved a pulse of power toward the center. The tentacles tightened their range, forming a ring, and a new energy sphere slowly took shape between them.

Voruun was going to meet it head-on.

Except he didn’t get the time.

Before his charge-up could finish, the pink sphere—still drifting forward—suddenly accelerated.

Pink light skimmed across the sea. Wherever it passed, the air split to either side, and even the clouds overhead were shoved away by the aftershock, leaving a wide, empty stretch of sky.

The sphere hit Voruun head-on.

The three fused forces detonated at once, and the pink radiance spread from the impact point, swallowing Voruun’s massive body and the surrounding seawater in a single flood. The sea surface collapsed inward, while the outer wall of water surged away in every direction—only crashing down once it reached calmer water farther out.

When the light finally faded...

Voruun had only half a body left.

The missing portion didn’t leave clean cuts or intact flesh—just jagged, uneven stumps. And even those stumps were moving. The wounds writhed as new tentacles pushed out one after another, already repairing what had been destroyed.

Elira didn’t stare at Voruun’s regeneration.

Instead, she turned and looked at Kaelira, Seraphina, and Ataneya.

Her eyes moved between the three of them, and her face filled with pure regret.

Because in Elira’s heart, one stubborn thought still refused to die:

Voruun was edible.

Down on the seafloor, Namyanna kept the vacuum bubble rising.

The bubble wasn’t large, but the pressure around it kept climbing. She controlled the outer seawater while maintaining the emptiness inside, making sure it wouldn’t destabilize before it reached Voruun.

Right as her focus narrowed on the bubble—

a gunshot echoed from far away.

In a pitch-black cavern cut into the seabed, a small shark hovered at the entrance. A mantis shrimp sat on its back, the muzzle of a gun poking out of the darkness, watching coldly as a compressed air round launched from the weapon.

The projectile shot out of the cave. The sea parted in front of it, squeezed into a straight, narrow channel. It tore through the dim ocean and headed straight for the middle of Namyanna’s back.

Her frost shield had only just started to rotate when the air round slammed into it.

The ice shattered on contact.

Shards flew past her. The compressed air mass punched through the broken shield and kept coming, closing the final distance so fast she could already feel the pressure behind her—water being shoved aside by the incoming force.

But it didn’t hit.

The instant the attack entered a small zone around Namyanna, its speed dropped—then began collapsing from the edges. By the time it reached her body, the tight compressed structure had completely unraveled, dissolving into nothing inside the vacuum.

Around Namyanna, a vacuum zone had formed again.

The outermost seawater—under her control—ran in opposing currents. Closer in, dense ice crystals hung like glittering dust, constantly obstructing anything that tried to push through. At the core, the seawater had been stripped away entirely, maintaining a true empty pocket.

Ice resistance. Current resistance. Vacuum resistance—stacked together.

Anything that entered was slowed layer by layer until it couldn’t even hold its shape.

In the cavern, the mantis shrimp didn’t linger. It tapped the shark’s back lightly, and the shark flicked its tail and slipped into the dark, carrying it away.

A shadow streaked along the ocean floor.

By the time Namyanna spun her trident, ready to hunt them down, the small shark had already burst out from another angle—close enough to show itself near her.

It stared at the vacuum slow-field ahead. Its body paused for a beat. It could feel the conflicting currents in that zone, and it could see the ice chips floating inside, almost completely motionless.

The hesitation lasted only a moment.

The shark tucked in its fins, angled its head down, and dove straight like a spear.

A shark headbutt.

Its hard skull smashed into the seabed. The rock layer dented inward, cracks racing across the ocean floor. When the first slab gave way, the nearby seabed lost support too, breaking and collapsing in a chain.

Rubble tumbled into the darkness as a bottomless-looking rift yawned open—widening into a deep trench.

The shark didn’t fall with it. The instant the impact landed, it twisted its body. Its thick tail swept sideways with the momentum of the turn.

The high-speed tail fin squeezed the surrounding water to a single point, condensing another compressed air mass. The projectile fired off toward Namyanna at the center of the vacuum zone—while the shark used the opposite push to rocket backward.

The seabed kept collapsing under Namyanna’s feet.

She didn’t drop.

A sheet of ice had already formed beneath her, holding her steady. While碎rock continued to tumble into the abyss around her, Namyanna stood on that small floating slab, watching with a frankly amused look.

The shark’s air mass entered the vacuum zone and slowed again and again. In the end it stopped a short distance in front of her, fell apart, and never touched her.

Namyanna lifted her trident, her voice traveling through the water.

"I know you’re here. Quit wasting your time." Her tone sharpened. "Go back and tell your boss—once I’m done dealing with this thing, your boss better wash up and... wait to die."

No answer came from the dark.

Namyanna didn’t bother chasing one. She refocused on the rising vacuum bubble, slowly spreading her fingers to strengthen her control over the surrounding sea.

The bubble’s boundary expanded outward.

It was still a small bubble, but it was steadier than before. The outside currents couldn’t force their way in anymore. Namyanna raised her palm and kept pushing it toward Voruun near the surface.

Another compressed air round shot out of the darkness.

Same path as before—straight at Namyanna. It slammed into the vacuum zone, got chewed down by the double drag of ice and currents, then lost cohesion inside and vanished completely.

This time, the mantis shrimp and shark weren’t expecting to hit her.

The moment the gun fired, the small shark was already turning deeper into the sea. Using the recoil and thrust from the shot, they accelerated, slipping into the murk before Namyanna could give chase—swimming toward even deeper water.

Up in the sky, Elowen waited...and waited.

Her patience finally snapped.

She stepped past Seraphina’s wing and simply jumped.

Her skirt fluttered up in the rush of air as the sea rushed closer. Before her feet even reached the surface, ice-crystal mist was already blasting from the soles of her shoes.

The instant her toes touched the water, the frost fog spread across the surface. The rolling waves halted in place as a clear layer of ice unfurled from beneath Elowen’s feet, covering the nearby sea in a widening sheet. Even the droplets still hanging in the air were seized by the cold, turning into tiny pellets of ice that fell around her.

On Seraphina’s back, the others watched helplessly.

Couldn’t they just let Namyanna have one clean moment?

This was literally her home field.

They’d been expecting Namyanna to be down there charging up some huge hidden move, but what rose from the sea was only a small bubble. No blinding light. No new waves. It just drifted toward Voruun at an almost leisurely pace.

Elowen took one look at it and already knew what was coming.

She lifted a hand. Cold air braided together behind her. An ice-crystal chair rose from the frozen surface, backrest and armrests forming in a swirl of white mist. Elowen sat down, crossed one leg over the other, adjusted into a comfortable position—

and settled in to watch the show.

Down on the seabed, Namyanna wiped sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand.

Holding that vacuum bubble for so long—while dealing with the mantis shrimp and the shark’s constant interference—had taken far more out of her than anyone watching could tell. Only after she was sure the bubble had locked onto Voruun did she dismiss the vacuum zone around herself.

Seawater rushed back in, pressure slamming together with a dull, heavy thump.

Namyanna gripped her trident and threw her arm upward.

The trident speared through the seawater in a straight line toward the surface. Namyanna stepped into the water channel it carved and surged upward after it.

The trident burst out first, throwing up a tall plume of spray. Namyanna broke the surface right after and landed solidly on the ice Elowen had made.

She looked once at the small bubble drifting toward Voruun and nodded, satisfied. Then she reached out. The trident—still spinning in midair—curved back and flew into her hand.

Cold gathered behind Namyanna again.

A second ice chair rose from the frozen sea. She put away her trident, leaned back, and sat beside Elowen, turning her gaze toward Voruun like she’d bought front-row seats.

On Seraphina’s back, everyone went completely speechless.

You two are really making yourselves at home.

But Voruun—locked by that drifting vacuum bubble—was not feeling at home at all.

He’d just finished repairing the half of his body that had been blown away. The new tentacles still felt unfamiliar, barely responsive, and that slow-approaching little bubble was already in his sightline. The less he could read its power, the more he refused to let it come close.

Several tentacles slammed down onto the sea.

Seawater exploded upward. Voruun rotated his tentacles, gathering the flying water into one mass. The water ball hung in midair—neither falling nor scattering—held tight as he started shaping it into something else.