When Skadi finally snapped out of her trance, she made a startling realization: the churning ocean beneath them had plunged into an uncanny, breathless quiet! The terrifying horde of Seaborn that had just been throwing themselves into a suicidal frenzy was now completely silent, as if rendered mute overnight.
Skadi could hardly believe her own eyes. Where had all those creatures gone—the ones thrashing through the foam just moments prior? How had everything grown so deathly still in the blink of an eye?
"Just like that... you wiped them out?" Astonished, she looked up at Jeanne, who was leaning over the wyvern's saddle, watching the waters below. Skadi was certain of one thing: whatever had just transpired had everything to do with Jeanne.
"Well, this immediate sector is cleared," Jeanne mused, staring down at the rolling waves. "Honestly, it's a good thing I gave this a dry run first. If I had relied on it in a real emergency without testing it, we would've run into serious trouble! A calamity on this scale can't be stopped by me blowing a horn alone—it requires a proper ritual setup!"
While the two spoke, the waters beneath their mount were far from tranquil. It was as though a phantom reaper was stalking the depths, mercilessly harvesting the lives of those grotesque ocean dwellers.
Masses of Seaborn were surging toward the affected zone from miles away, using their own bodies and flesh to form a living wall against this unnatural disaster—almost as if they had faced such a divine calamity before.
The hive mind knew this terrifying sonic wave hadn't engulfed the entire ocean yet. As long as they used their own flesh to absorb the expanding ripples, the deeper waters further out would be spared from total annihilation.
In an instant, the ocean transformed into a horrific battlefield between two forces. Dark currents, infused with the sacred power Jeanne had invoked, swallowed every Seaborn in their path, while countless swarms threw themselves into the breach, sacrificing their bodies to delay inevitable death.
Far beneath the surface, the secret observers from Aegir watching through remote monitors were beginning to question their own sanity. How was the scene on their screens even possible? Were they hallucinating?
Regardless of how it was happening, one realization sent a chill running straight down their spines: if this land-dweller could purge an entire stretch of sea using that artifact, she could dismantle an Aegirian city just as easily.
The Seaborn—the very monsters Aegir viewed as an existential threat—were being reaped like common weeds by the roadside under that strange power. Against a force like that, Aegir's sprawling underwater metropolises might as well be fragile microscopic organisms.
"Keep recording!" the senior operator ordered, his voice tense as he adjusted his console. "Transmit all telemetry to the High Council immediately. Whatever happens next is far beyond our pay grade!"
The veteran technician calmly manipulated his drone, capturing as much footage as possible to send back to headquarters.
This was a major breakthrough. Even if they had no idea who the young woman standing beside the rogue Abyssal Hunter was, a power of that magnitude was something the higher-ups couldn't afford to ignore.
"What a shame... the wave's power is starting to taper off," the younger technician sighed, leaning closer to his monitor. He could see the tide of death losing momentum. The Seaborn had managed to hold the line, albeit at a catastrophic cost.
Every Seaborns within fifty miles had perished instantly. Across a radius of nearly five hundred nautical miles, countless organisms had disintegrated while attempting to block the spreading shockwave, their pulverized flesh dissolving into nutrients for the seabed.
Even further out, gargantuan, leviathan-class Seaborn were migrating toward the kill-zone under the absolute directive of We-Many. They threw their massive bodies into the dying wave, allowing the tide of death to consume them so that the rest of their species might endure.
"That was already an unthinkable demonstration of power... Wait, hold on! What did she just say?" The young operator froze, straining to listen to the drone's audio feed. "This was just a test?! She said affecting the entire ocean requires a specific location and... a ritual?"
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the surveillance module. If the land-dweller wasn't deliberately feeding them false information to throw off potential eavesdroppers, then Aegir was facing a situation far more terrifying than they had ever imagined!
The woman possessed the power to eradicate the Seaborn—which meant she possessed the power to wipe out Aegir just as easily. She wouldn't even need to march an army to their gates; she could simply stand on a shore, set up her ritual, and sound that horn.
The two technicians continued to monitor the conversation high above the clouds, secretly wishing their drone's audio transmitter would break down so they wouldn't have to hear any more horrifying details.
"Land-dwellers..." the younger technician murmured, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a trembling hand. "They may be primitive compared to us, but we certainly can't underestimate them! Still, there's no reason to panic. Aegir's technology remains the undisputed pinnacle of Terra!"
His voice pitched slightly higher on the last sentence—a clear tell that he was trying to reassure himself. It sounded less like pride in his nation and more like a desperate attempt to keep his composure in the face of an existential threat.
"If you're going to act calm, at least stop shaking," the older man mocked lightly, though his own eyes were fixed on the screen. "You're holding my coffee cup. Look at me—no matter what happens, you have to maintain a steady pulse."
"If you want to lecture me, try lighting the right end of your cigarette first," the young man retorted bluntly, pointing at the unlit filter currently pressed against the veteran's lips.
The room fell silent once more. As firsthand witnesses to this impossible event, both men were gripped by a primal fear—the terrifying realization that their lives, and the fate of their entire civilization, rested in the hands of an unknown stranger.
Yet there was nothing they could do. The reconnaissance drone hovering near the clouds only had transmitting capabilities; it wasn't equipped for long-range communication.
Establishing contact required a military-grade relay platform—equipment far beyond the reach of low-level surveillance techs like them. If they hadn't happened to monitor this specific sector today, they might never have known that such a dangerous entity existed on the surface.
"I didn't expect this thing to be quite so potent," Jeanne admitted, looking down at the endless carpet of floating monster carcasses. "If those sea creatures had individual minds, I'd probably be branded as some kind of sky-demon right about now."
The immediate sea had turned into a massive graveyard for the Seaborn. Countless smaller organisms floated motionless on the surface, waiting to be decomposed by the salt water—or devoured by surviving members of their hive.
Seeing that the living beasts had retreated from the area, Jeanne boldly reached down as the wyvern swooped low, scooping a few floating carcasses out of the water to examine them up close.
"There aren't any visible external wounds," Skadi noted, turning one of the sea beasts over in her hands. She tried to look analytical, though she was far from an expert on biological research. "They look perfectly healthy on the outside. If you want a real answer, you'll need a scholar to run proper tests. I can only tell you if the meat looks fresh."
Skadi was brutally honest about her limitations. Back in Aegir, she had been a combatant, nothing more. Judging meat quality was about as far as her scientific expertise went.
"Fair enough," Jeanne chuckled. "When you head back to Rhodes Island, bring a couple of these specimens to Kal'tsit. That woman seems to know almost everything under the sun—I doubt a mystery like this would stump her."
"I can agree with that," Skadi nodded. Kal'tsit's blunt manner of speaking wasn't always pleasant, but no one could deny the sheer depth of her knowledge.
"What's on your mind?" Jeanne asked, noticing the Abyssal Hunter staring blankly into the distance. Skadi clearly had something heavy weighing on her heart.
"I was just thinking..." Skadi murmured softly, her voice barely carrying over the wind. "If we had met you years ago... would so many of my comrades have had to die in our fight against the Seaborn?"
Skadi already knew the answer in her heart, but the thought had taken root, forcing its way to the surface. It was a heavy, painful weight that dragged her spirits down whenever she reflected on the past.
She couldn't help but remember her fallen brothers and sisters in arms. A profound sorrow welled up from deep within her soul, wrapping around her heart like a cold chain.
"It wouldn't have been that simple," Jeanne said gently, looking out over the endless horizon. "Setting aside whether I even possessed this horn back then, your nation's complete isolation from the outside world would have made any real cooperation impossible."
Jeanne turned her eyes back to the dark waters below. Beneath the surface, the relentless tide of Seaborn had finally managed to absorb the last lingering echoes of the horn's call. A small opening had formed in the wave of death, allowing the surviving swarm to breach the perimeter.
It was time to head back. This wasn't the place to launch a full-scale battle—not to mention she lacked the proper ritual grounds to channel the artifact's full strength. Fighting any longer out here would just turn into a useless war of attrition.