CHAPTER 115: HEART OF THE LEVIATHAN

The giant machine kraken, the Arena Warden, rose from the darkness like a mountain waking up. Its single, house-sized red eye locked onto the four tiny figures floating before it.

For a long moment, there was only a deep, humming silence. Then, it let out a roar. It wasn’t a sound they heard with their ears, but a deep vibration that shook their bones and made the water itself tremble.

"Okay, new plan," Chris said, his voice a nervous squeak. "We leave the shiny rock and go home. Anyone with me?"

No one answered. They were too busy dodging.

Two of the Warden’s massive tentacles shot forward with incredible speed. They weren’t just tentacles; they were enormous, coiling metal arms, each one tipped with a spinning energy drill that whined as it tore through the water.

The drills slammed into the cavern floor right where the team had been floating, sending up a huge cloud of rock and silt.

"Spread out! Don’t let it corner you!" Ryan commanded, his own heart pounding in his chest. This was a whole different level of threat. The small machine sharks had been like guard dogs. This was a dragon.

The team scattered in four different directions. The Warden’s giant red eye swiveled, trying to track them all at once. It was smart. It chose to focus on Chris, who was the biggest and slowest of the group. A different kind of tentacle, one ending in a huge metal claw, shot out and tried to grab him.

"Whoa! Not the face! Not the face!" Chris yelled, swimming backward as fast as he could. He looked like a panicked turtle paddling for his life.

Scarlett and Ryan fired their armor’s small energy blasters at the tentacle. The bolts of light hit the thick plating with a dull thump and bounced right off, doing no damage at all.

"Our weapons are like peashooters against that thing!" Ryan realized. Brute force was not going to work. They needed a plan.

"I need to find its weakness!" Emma’s voice cut through the chaos. "I need a safe spot to analyze it! Draw its attention!"

"On it!" Ryan yelled back. He and Scarlett zipped around the Warden’s massive head, firing their useless weapons to annoy it. It was like two gnats trying to bother a bull.

The Warden roared again in frustration and turned its attention to them, giving Emma the opening she needed.

She dove behind a massive, crumbling Precursor archway, a safe distance from the fight. Her visor lit up with streams of data as she deployed three tiny, almost invisible sensor drones.

They swam out cautiously, scanning the Warden from different angles, feeding information back to her.

"Okay... I’m seeing something," she said after a tense minute. Her voice was strained with concentration. "Its armor is thickest on the front and tentacles, but there are maintenance panels on its back.

They are still too strong to break through. But... its movements aren’t random. There’s a pattern. It favors its right side for drill attacks and its left for grapples. It recharges its weapon systems every thirty seconds from a primary power conduit located right at the base of its head."

"A power conduit," Ryan repeated. That was a start. "Can we hit it?"

"Not yet. It’s protected by an energy shield," Emma replied. "But the shield flickers for a split second when it reroutes power to its main systems. Zara, your Master Control Cipher... can you get into its systems? If you can cause a small shutdown, just for a moment, it might create a bigger opening for us."

Zara, who had been hiding behind another piece of ruin, grinned. This was her kind of fight. "Hacking a piece of ancient, angry Precursor technology? It’s like my birthday," she muttered.

She held out her arm, and a complex web of blue light projected from her gauntlet. The light shot through the water and connected with the Warden’s huge body. On her visor, a flood of alien code appeared. It was a chaotic mess, a fortress of digital defenses.

"I’m in," she said, her fingers dancing over her wrist-mounted keyboard. "Their security is tough, but it’s old. It’s not used to modern intrusion methods. I’m looking for the weapon control system... ah, there you are."

The Warden was still trying to swat Ryan and Scarlett, while Chris was bravely hiding and offering helpful comments like, "Watch out for the big pointy thing!" Suddenly, one of the Warden’s drill tentacles just... stopped. It went completely limp, its drill sputtering and dying.

"Got it!" Zara shouted in triumph. "Its central targeting system is confused! I’m causing a loop in its command code! It’s trying to figure out if it’s attacking or making a sandwich! It won’t last long!"

The giant machine seemed confused. Its head tilted, and its big red eye blinked. It was the opening they needed.

"Emma, now!" Ryan called out.

"The power conduit shield is flickering!" Emma confirmed. "And I see it! The central processing core is right above the conduit. It’s the brain! If you can take out the power and the brain at the same time, that should finish it!"

"Scarlett, you and me," Ryan said. "You go for the core. I’ll go for the conduit. Let’s end this."

Scarlett just gave a sharp nod, her eyes locked on the target.

Ryan took a deep breath. System, Chrono-Haste!

For him and Scarlett, the world slowed down to a crawl. The Warden’s slow, confused movements became almost frozen. The water felt thick, like swimming through honey. The bubbles from their own breathing rose in lazy, slow-motion spirals.

They shot forward. In the slowed time, they were like two silver bullets. They easily dodged the now-sluggish tentacles and arrived at the back of the Warden’s head in a heartbeat.

Ryan saw the power conduit Emma had described. It was a thick, armored cable pulsing with a faint blue light. He reached out and placed his hand directly on it. Energy Siphon!

A torrent of brilliant blue energy flowed out of the conduit and into his hand. It felt like grabbing a lightning bolt. The Warden’s remaining lights began to flicker and dim as Ryan drained its power source dry.

At the exact same moment, Scarlett was above him. She held her Shadowfang Dagger high. The blade turned from solid metal into a shifting, smoky shadow. She didn’t slam it down. She pushed it forward gently.

The ethereal blade passed through the Warden’s thick armor plating as if it were nothing but air. She plunged the dagger deep inside, right into the machine’s central processing core.

The effect was instant.

The Arena Warden shuddered violently. A low, groaning sound came from deep within its body, the sound of a dying giant. Its massive red eye flickered once, twice, and then went dark for good.

The light from its tentacles and armor faded away. With a final, heavy sigh, the colossal machine went limp. Its tentacles drooped, and its huge body began to sink slowly and silently back into the crushing darkness from where it came.

Silence. The battle was over.

The team regrouped in the now-quiet cavern, their breathing heavy in their comms. They had done it.

In the spot where the Warden had been, the Heart of the Leviathan now floated freely, pulsing with a gentle, inviting rhythm. Ryan swam forward and took it. It was cool to the touch and hummed with a quiet power.

As soon as his fingers closed around it, the Prime Warden’s voice boomed through the water, seeming to come from everywhere at once.

"A stunning victory! Against all odds, the team from Sector Gamma has defeated the Arena Warden and claimed the Heart of the Leviathan! They are the winners of the second event!"

Chris let out a huge whoop of joy that resounded in their helmets. "We did it! We actually did it! I can’t believe we beat that giant calamari!".