Chapter 108: It Works

"Up to the villa!" Evren shouted over the rising wail of coastal sirens. "Thirty seconds to gear up!"

They didn’t waste a single step.

Evren, Amber, and Zephyra sprinted up the private beach stairs, bursting through the terrace doors of the Royal Peninsula Villa.

Zephyra kicked off her barefoot stance and pulled on a pair of high-ankle tactical combat boots from the entrance rack, lacing them tight in three swift tugs.

Meanwhile, Amber zipped a fitted, reinforced leather combat vest over her athletic wear as Evren strapped on dark combat boots and threw a lightweight tactical jacket over his shoulders.

With a flick of Evren’s wrist, his Spatial Storage Ring flashed.

The two curved, S-Rank dragon-bone twin sabers materialized in his grip. Pale crystalline mist rolled off the polished bone edges, humming with dormant power.

Amber reached out to take them, but as her fingers wrapped around the twin hilts, she paused.

She turned to look at Zephyra.

Zephyra was buckling a combat belt around her waist, her violet eyes fixed on the distant plumes of black smoke rising from the resort strip.

"Zephyra," Amber called out softly.

Zephyra looked up.

With a warm, sisterly smile, Amber flipped the left dragon-bone saber around in her hand, offering the hilt directly to Zephyra.

"We share this household, Z," Amber said with pride in her voice. "Take my left blade. Let’s show these beasts what we can do."

Zephyra’s eyes widened slightly in surprise.

An S-Rank weapon forged from Glacial Wyvern bone was a priceless national treasure. Yet Amber was handing it over without a shred of hesitation.

Zephyra reached out and wrapped her fingers around the grip, the dragon-bone hilt resonated instantly with her touch, feeling light and perfectly balanced. "Thank you, Amber."

Evren smiled proudly. Then, with another mental command to his ring, a rush of sub-zero mist flooded the room.

The massive, five-foot Frost-Bane Cleaver materialized in Evren’s right hand. Freezing white vapor rolled off the dark steel, instantly frosting the floorboards beneath his boots. With an effortless flick of his wrist, Evren rested the giant cleaver casually across his broad right shoulder.

"Stay in formation," Evren ordered. "Amber holds the high angle, Zephyra covers the flanks, and I take the center. Let’s move!"

They sprinted down the coastline like three streaks of lightning.

The public beach half a mile south was pure pandemonium.

Over a thousand tourists were screaming and running in every direction. Beach umbrellas were crushed into the sand, abandoned towels and coolers littered the boardwalk, and resort security guards were firing standard mana sidearms in a desperate retreat.

Emerging from the churning tide were dozens of bloated, six-legged beasts covered in jagged purple barnacles and sharp chitin plates.

Level 42 Abyssal Beach-Scuttlers.

One of the creatures snapped its front pincers, lunging straight toward a mother clutching two small children against the resort’s concrete seawall.

Before the beast could close its claws, a flare of red-golden light erupted from the sky.

Amber’s ten-foot wings beat with thunderous force as she descended like a vengeful angel. Her dragon-bone saber swept downward in a searing arc of pure solar light.

SHING!

The slash cleanly bisected the scuttler from head to tail, instantly cauterizing the monster into two smoking halves before it even touched the sand.

"Get behind the seawall! Run to the highway!" Amber commanded.

The mother scrambled to her feet, weeping with gratitude as she ushered her children up the resort stairs toward the evacuation zone.

On the sand below, more beasts were clawing their way through the surf, shrieking hungrily as they swarmed toward the beach.

"Evren, the tear is expanding!" Zephyra called out, kicking a scuttler back into the water with a sharp side-kick.

Evren looked up at the jagged dimensional rupture hovering ten feet above the crashing waves. Purple and black lightning crackled around its edges, venting a suffocating cloud of abyssal mana that warped the air.

"Killing beasts on the sand won’t stop it," he said, shifting the heavy Frost-Bane Cleaver in his grip. "The dimensional core is inside. We close it at the source!"

"Right behind you," Zephyra replied, dropping into a low sprint.

Amber folded her wings, landing beside them with her saber burning with golden flame.

Without a second of hesitation, the three of them leaped off the wet sand, diving straight through the swirling purple vortex.

A disorienting flash of spatial distortion washed over their senses, followed by the metallic tang of pressurized ocean water.

A second later, their boots splashed into ankle-deep, dark seawater.

The bright morning sun of the Sapphire Coast vanished, replaced by the eerie, subterranean gloom of a pocket dimension.

They stood inside a massive sunken cave. Tall black pillars reached up toward a stormy purple sky, while glowing coral on the walls cast green and violet light over the water below.

SKRRR-CLICK! SKRRR-CLICK!

Echoing through the cavern was the sound of hundreds of claws scraping against wet stone.

More than thirty Level 45 Abyssal Coral-Stalkers perched on the basalt ledges and crawled out from the deep tide-pools. Razor-sharp coral spines covered their long, armored bodies, and their pale red eyes glared at the three intruders with wild hunger.

SCREEECH!

The swarm rushed forward, launching a coordinated ambush across the dark water.

"Let me take the front," Zephyra whispered.

Evren nodded. "Show them who you are, Z."

SWOOSH!

Zephyra vanished.

Her boots kicked off the wet rocks, leaving a fine spray of ocean mist in her wake. She crossed forty feet in the fraction of a second, sliding low beneath the snapping pincers of the lead coral-stalker.

Holding Amber’s dragon-bone saber in a reverse grip, Zephyra whipped her right arm upward in a blinding diagonal slash.

The razor-sharp edge punched cleanly through the beast’s thick throat plate, severing its head in a single fluid stroke.

HISS!

Two more beasts leaped at her sides, swinging their jagged coral spines through the air like spiked maces.

Zephyra spun on the ball of her foot.

Her shoulders moved smoothly, without any stiffness or nerve pain. With a swift flick of her fingers, she flipped the saber into a forward grip, parried the spiked tail with a loud metallic ring, and blurred behind the monster.

In one clean, reverse thrust, she drove the saber through the base of the beast’s skull.

Zephyra pulled the blade free, hot black blood hissing against the crystalline bone edge.

A breathless laugh bubbled up from her chest as she looked down at the weapon in her steady hand.

"It works..." she whispered, a smile breaking across her lips as she locked eyes with the remaining beasts. "It doesn’t hurt at all!"

Above her, Amber’s wings flared. "Clear the left flank, Z! I’ve got your back!"

Amber swept her saber, unleashing two crescent waves of radiant crimson light that slammed into five advancing stalkers, blasting their armored shells into burning fragments.

Evren charged straight through the center.

Three heavy stalkers lunged at him simultaneously, snapping their razor pincers.

Evren didn’t even slow down. Gripping the five-foot Frost-Bane Cleaver with his right hand, he channeled the raw density of his SS-Rank strength into the blade and swung it in a massive horizontal arc.

WHAM!

A freezing wave of sub-zero mana and crushing kinetic force erupted from the giant cleaver.

The blow hit like an industrial battering ram. The three Level 45 beasts were smashed completely in half, their chitin carapaces shattering into frozen shrapnel that scattered across the basalt floor.

Within two minutes, the entire opening wave lay slaughtered across the dark tide-pools.

The cavern fell deathly quiet, save for the rhythmic dripping of water from the glowing coral stalactites.

Zephyra stood in the middle of the shallow water, her chest rising and falling rhythmically, completely unharmed. She cleaned the dragon-bone blade with a quick flick of her wrist and looked back at Evren, her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining like dark stars.

"First wave clear."

Evren rested the Frost-Bane Cleaver across his shoulder and walked up to her, resting a proud hand on top of her silver hair. "Flawless execution, Zephyra Nightshade."

Before Z could reply, the dark waters at the center of the cavern suddenly stopped dripping.

GLUB... GLUB... GLUB...

A massive, violent whirlpool began tearing through the central pool, sucking thousand-pound boulders into its spinning vortex.

The entire cavern groaned as the temperature plummeted.

ROOOOOOOAAAAAAR!

A deafening roar shook the stone pillars to their foundations.

Rising from the depths was a colossal nightmare... a forty-foot monstrosity covered in thick, volcanic obsidian plates, with six burning purple eyes locked directly on Evren and four jagged coral claws, each as large as a minivan.

Mutated Abyssal Coral Behemoth (Level 50 Rift Boss).

The monster raised its massive right claw into the air, gathering a crackling sphere of volatile purple dimensional lightning as it prepared to obliterate the entire cavern floor.

Evren stepped calmly in front of Amber and Zephyra, shifting the Frost-Bane Cleaver to his side as his eyes turned deadly cold.

"Z, Amber, step behind me," Evren muttered softly. "It’s time to test a new skill."