After half an hour of constant fighting, the Krakens finally stopped coming out. The dead silence fell and Nemmoxon could only hear the water passing by her closed ears. Gently landing on the sea floor, she looked around for any camouflaged ones.

‘Nothing, but just in case.’ She used another lightning breath. As the dust was settling down, she became optimistic that no more are coming.

“Let’s push ahead, the first wave is done,” Nemmoxon told Zaleria as she detected the Aboleth-Kraken cave.

Zaleria slowly swam behind her, she had been holding her breath for half an hour but she still felt fine. Dragon’s endurance was extremely high.

The moment they approached the cave, the sea floor split open and sucked Zaleria in. “BLUH!” She gasped and air escaped her lungs. ‘Something is mixed with the water..I feel numb..’ Zaleria thought as she started drowning. The combination of the high pressure and whatever was in the water was crushing her lungs.

“ZALERIA!” As Nemmoxon screamed, a massive tentacle grabbed her neck and pulled her to the cave with a massive amount of force.

“The big ones always fall first, this is why your parents died and you survived last time!” The Aboleth-Kraken growled from inside the cave.

Nemmoxon realized, judging by the size of the tentacles, he had grown massive in the past couple hundred years. He was no more a half-blood Aboleth-Kraken, this was a full-fledged, grown monstrosity between Krakens and Aboleth.

Nemmoxon turned her long neck and bite the tentacle over and over until it snapped. CRACKLE! She then unleashed another lightning breath at the injured tentacle in the hope to shock the whole monster.

“That stings, do you think your weak breath will do anything when your parents failed?” The Aboleth started laughing, the one he was worried about was just the white-haired mage. That one can never reach this place.historical

He instantly caught Nemmoxon with multiple tentacles and started dragging her body through the small crevices in the cave, trying to shatter her bones.

She grabbed with her claws to the rocks and used her repulsive breath to try and resist the Aboleth’s pull but it was in vain, he far outmatched her strength. She might have been faster but she was stronger, but her speed didn’t matter in such a narrow cave and with how many tentacles he had.

Zaleria could hear Nemmoxon growling inside the cave but she couldn’t help. It wasn’t a creature or magic that was pulling her down, it was an underwater volcanic ravine that was sucking her in. That massive crack was exerting so much pressure it was unreal and all she could do was fight to get swallowed.

‘I’m running out of air, fire can’t live without it. At this rate, I will really die.’ Cain’s enchantments can’t save her from this. “If only I could have some air, this pressure will be nothing..’

..

Up on the surface, Cain felt his enchantments trembling, Zaleria was dying.

“What?” He immediately jumped from the ship and floated above the water trying to discern her exact location. He quickly found it.

‘Directly below here, about ten thousand feet deep. Damn that almost three hundred times the pressure on the surface!’ Cain starts thinking of a way to extract Zaleria before her life end, she was a dragon so she could probably last for a minute.

‘Should I send a projectile? No, I might hit her. She I try to create a portal from this distance? No, I might cut her off she happened to be in the same place as the portal. I can’t dive to that depth, I can’t split the sea either..’

“Everyone, back away!” Cain shouted as he decided to go with the portal and hope Zaleria doesn’t mind losing a limb.

The magic that started to gather above Cain as he concentrated on creating a portal from such a large distance was mind-boggling. In numbers, Cain had to spend 1 MP for each five foot, which was a total of 2000 MP. More than what most ancient dragons have.

As Cain still had enough magic, he decided to give Zaleria a temporary spell that he was trying to develop. It was still unstable and with unknown side effects, but, it make the caster able to breathe seawater.

Even Ariel started sweating seeing such a concentrated amount of Mana seep from his body into the glowing blue magic circles covering the sky.

And then in instant, all that magic got sucked into his hand and was released downward with a loud BANG!

The magic quickly traveled downward and eventually reached the struggling Zaleria. ZON! As the portal opened and she took a long-awaited whiff of the surface air. Her aim was the cave.

As the portal opened on the surface and the water gushed out, it suddenly froze solid with a loud rumbling. Cain smiled as he knew Zaleria was going to change the landscape underneath.

CRACK! Zaleria froze all the water around her to support her body against the pull and rushed toward the cave, she surprisingly can breathe but her entire body was screaming in pain. IT was fine as the pain only fueled her rage.

Using her claws to drag her massive body on the seafloor, she smashed the rocks and ran straight through the cave walls.

The Aboleth-Kraken immediately felt that the Ancient red dragon has been released, she was a problem. Quickly, the entire cave started boiling from the heat she was exerting, “GRAWWWWWWA!” She growled tearing apart his tentacles and freeing Nemmoxon.

Zaleria wasn’t swimming, she was using her claws to hold to the seafloor and run which threw the aboleth in a loop. She was too fast for something her size, under such pressure.

Zaleria opened her jaw in an attempt to use her fire breath in the direction they were sensing the Aboleth, the thing was still hiding deep in the cave.

“No use! You reds can’t use your breath weapon underwater!” The aboleth laughed, she was going to drown with such a move.

~Hit me with your breath~ Zaleria sent a message to Nemmoxon, she had a plan.

Nemmoxon didn’t have the time to think or argue with an ancient red. She grabbed Zaleria from the tail and shocked her at full power.

‘I once had a friend who had a weird taste, she married a blue dragon. She told me that noticed water becoming burnable if hit with enough lightning. Let’s try it here shall we?’

As the electricity traveled through Zaleria’s spine and to her jaws, water started evaporating and separating between her fangs. She didn’t know what kind of air that was, only that it was burnable.

Unknown to her. That was hydrogen and Oxygen, one of, if not the strongest burnable combinations. Combined with her full-power breath, it was going to be a disaster.

Cain was patiently looking at the water awaiting any signal, the silence have been killing him. It was then that he saw a bright flash of light, followed by a massive shockwave that blasted the seawater up to the sky with enough power to lift the ship with it.

Cain instantly used Lisworth’s resilient sphere to protect himself while keeping the prismatic dome to protect the ship. What in the nine hells did that dragon do underneath?