CHAPTER 80: SO LONG DEMON

The final moment stretched like eternity.

Lucy flew toward the Leviathan’s gaping jaws—those glassy, venomous fangs open wide to crush him. His body screamed from overexertion, mana blazing through every vein, wind magic roaring behind him like a jetstream. He was moving faster than he ever had in his life.

And yet, it all felt... slow.

Time bent around pain and purpose. Bones knitted themselves back together with brutal speed, nerve endings flaring like fireworks. He barely registered the pain anymore. Not when his entire body was locked onto the single goal of ending this thing.

Its snake eyes fixed on him—cold, furious, intelligent.

It hated him. It loathed that a human had managed to scar it, burn it, poison it. If those eyes could speak, Lucy imagined they’d say something like:

’How dare you crawl into my domain? How dare you bleed me?’

And weirdly enough... that’s what he was thinking too.

’How dare he? How dare he survive all of this?’

He clenched his teeth, the wind shrieking in his ears.

Lucy wasn’t scared, nor was he thinking.

But he was alive.

With a roar that ripped from somewhere deep and damaged, Lucy flung his fist forward, all his mana compressed into that strike like the weight of the world. It wasn’t just power. It was every step, every scream, every moment in the Hollow burned into one blow.

Then—

Nothing.

His fist stopped short.

His entire attack—everything he’d built—missed.

The Leviathan lunged, jaws closing where he’d just been.

But Lucy had already dropped beneath it, his voice calm, cracked, and grinning.

"Four feet behind me."

His eyes were wide and wild. Laughing like a man who’d just broken the rules of godhood.

And that’s when the delayed strike hit.

BOOM.

A sickening, muted crunch echoed beneath the waves. A hole the size of Lucy’s chest exploded clean through the center of the Leviathan’s skull. Smoke and radiation leaked from it like an exorcised curse.

The beast didn’t roar.

It simply stopped.

The incorporeal haze that had cloaked its form flickered—and died. The radiation had shredded whatever ghostly nature it once had. Now it was just flesh. Dying flesh.

Its massive body, once so impossibly powerful, collapsed midair like a broken god, crashing toward the stone platform below.

And Lucy?

He fell with it.

He didn’t even try to brace himself. His limbs were jelly. His mana—gone. All of it. Spent in one final, glorious overkill.

He’d emptied the tank completely for the first time since being drafted.

The wind barrier trembled.

With no divine energy left to hold it, cracks formed in the cyclone of golden air above. Threads of seawater slithered inward like curious ghosts, and the pressure of the Grey Sea pressed tighter against the tunnel walls.

Lucy, sprawled on the stone below, bleeding, broken, grinned up at the corpse he’d left behind.

"About damn time," he muttered, and let the darkness pull him under.

Darkness pulled at him.

But through it, a voice tugged harder.

"Lucy! ... Lucy! Wake up."

He couldn’t. His limbs were bricks. His bones might’ve been glass. Even thinking was a chore.

Still, an annoying best friend has a way of ruining a perfectly good near-death nap.

Something shook him violently. His skull rattled. Nerves flared. Golden and violet light bled into his vision like a broken sunrise underwater. He couldn’t tell if he was floating or drowning.

Then a shape came into focus. Blonde hair. Emerald green eyes—wild with panic.

"No one dies on the hero’s watch! Come on!"

Lucy squinted, groaning like a man who’d been hit by several ancient sea monsters—and then dragged back from the afterlife by a drama queen.

"...I’m awake, goddamnit," he croaked, each word like dragging gravel across his throat.

Llarm’s face cracked into the widest, most blinding smile imaginable—relief pouring off him like the Grey Sea.

"I thought—! Never mind. We need to go. The barriers are collapsing! I’m holding it back, but it’s slipping—seconds, Lucy, we only have seconds!"

Lucy coughed violently. Water sloshed around him. The once-controlled cyclone of wind now felt like a soft breeze in the face of a hurricane. ’He’s right,’ he thought grimly, noting how the liquid had already crept up his chest.

He sighed like a man being asked to take out the trash after fighting a god-beast. "Then fly us out of here, hero."

Llarm didn’t respond.

Lucy glanced at him.

The elf’s eyes were locked on the far-off ceiling above. A sheer vertical distance that no wind could traverse in time. His head lowered.

"We’d never make it..." Llarm said, voice small, ashamed. "I’m not as strong as you. I’m sorry. You’re the only one who could—if you could activate your wind again, even just for a second—"

But Lucy was already closing his eyes.

He felt the sea pressing in like a cold hand on his neck. Heard the strained groaning of air against water. Heard Llarm’s choked breaths trying to keep it all from crumbling.

"Well..." Lucy muttered with a tired smile. "Guess we’re dead then."

But just as he cracked one eye open to look at Llarm, something fell.

A monstrous shadow spiraled down through the collapsing tunnel. It was huge, ugly, green, mixed with blotches of glowing violet. His vision was blurry from the mana depletion, but even in that state, he knew exactly who it was.

And then came the voice.

"Well, Lucy the Human, that was one hell of a show!"

Thunderous. Smug. Wild.

His favorite frog.

Bruma.

Her bulky frame filled nearly half the collapsing cylinder, plummeting straight toward them like divine intervention in amphibian form.

Lucy calmly pointed upward. "Llarm, could you scoot me a bit to the right?"

Llarm followed his gaze, screamed, then shoved both of them sideways.

Bruma landed with a seismic thud that cracked the stone beneath them. The water rippled violently.

"Bruma?!" Llarm shouted. "I thought you left!"

She scratched her head with those thick, three-fingered hands. "Let’s just say I had a change of heart."

A loud, metallic creak interrupted her—the wind barrier was beginning to give. Water now spiraled above, ready to come crashing down.

Bruma’s voice snapped like a whip. "Llarm! Compress the barrier. Make a fifteen-foot wind bubble. Now!"

"I—"

"Do it!"

Llarm obeyed instantly. The wind screamed tighter, smaller, condensing around them. The rest of the Grey Sea rushed in like a predator, slamming into the vacuum they’d left behind.

As the protective cylinder collapsed, the sea claimed what remained inside.

Lucy caught a glimpse of the Leviathan’s enormous corpse—its green flesh torn, head cratered. It hovered briefly in the vacuum above them before the ocean’s hunger took hold. A wall of grey water surged in, grabbing the body like a forgotten toy and yanking it upward into the abyss.

Lucy grinned faintly. His eyelids were heavy, his limbs like wet rope, but he still managed to whisper under his breath:

"So long, demon."

The new barrier held—but barely. Now the ocean loomed above them, a dense ceiling of pressure and silence.

Lucy floated in the shallow water, groaning. "Okay, and now what? He can’t hold this long."

Bruma grinned, then did something Lucy had never seen her do.

She lifted her arms, spread them wide, and exhaled.

"Graviton Pulse."

The world around them shuddered.

The water bulged outward as if repelled by an invisible dome, stabilized by force alone.

Lucy felt the gravity flip—not vertically, but outward. A crushing pressure rippled from Bruma’s core, pushing against the walls of their tiny prison. Space bent, the barrier stopped flickering, and the water settled.

Bruma’s muscles were locked in place, massive green arms trembling, holding the entire force of the sea at bay.

"You’ve got one hour," she said through clenched teeth. "Rest up, Lucy. After that, you’re back on wind duty."

Lucy gave a lazy, half-conscious salute. "Yes, ma’am."

Then he blacked out again. Because apparently, fighting magical sea beasts was the easy part.