Chapter 229

The stone beneath the cracked area glowed faintly brown as geomantic energy coursed through it, hardening the broken edges. It wasn’t enough to stop the next barrage completely, but it slowed the damage.

Meanwhile, Kharnek let out a roar that nearly drowned out the hiss of the ocean. “Then we fight

forward!

” He sprinted down the bridge, heavy boots hammering against stone, axe gleaming in the faint moonlight.

Varik followed close behind, spear in hand, movements sharp and disciplined. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, northerner!”

Kharnek laughed as he ran, the sound somewhere between battle fury and joy. “Try and keep up, soldier!”

Ludger couldn’t help but sigh as he reinforced another section of bridge. “Of course they’re showing off again…”

He glanced up just long enough to see Kharnek and Varik collide with the first line of sahuagins at the front. Water splashed in every direction as metal met scale, and the air filled with hissing and the dull crunch of steel splitting bone.

Ludger turned back to the cracks spidering through the bridge behind them. “Gaius, I’ll hold the line here,” he said, his tone sharp and steady. “Patch the base; I’ll stop them from turning it into a swimming lesson.”

Gaius gave a curt nod, sweat already beading on his brow from the strain. “Just don’t die doing something stupid.”

Ludger smirked faintly, mana already gathering around his fists. “No promises.”

He stepped toward the advancing sahuagins, red flickers of Rage Flow beginning to crawl up his arms like fire veins. The monsters hissed and lunged, and the battle for the bridge began in full.

Ludger didn’t wait for orders—he moved.

His mana flared in a low hum that rolled through the bridge like thunder trapped beneath stone. He dashed forward, faster than the eye could follow, the soles of his boots cracking the surface as he launched himself ahead of Varik and Kharnek.

“Kid—!” Kharnek started, but Ludger was already gone.

He hit full sprint, Rage Flow roaring through his veins, then bent his knees and

jumped

.

The leap was explosive. Air burst beneath him, scattering droplets from the waves as he vaulted over both men and the front rank of sahuagins. For a heartbeat, he was weightless—then he came down behind the first cluster of monsters, landing in a crouch that shook the bridge.

The sahuagins shrieked in surprise, spinning around to face him. Their throats swelled again, blue light flickering in their mouths as they prepared another barrage.

Ludger exhaled through his nose. “Too slow.”

He charged—low, fast, hands open.

The first sahuagin spat, but he was already inside its guard. His right palm slammed into its chest with a sharp

crack

, the air rippling from the force. The impact launched the creature backward like a projectile, straight into the next one behind it. Both went down in a wet tangle of limbs and scales.

Another fired at him from the left. Ludger twisted, sweeping his arm out in a wide arc. His palm struck the creature’s face mid-attack, the compressed water exploding harmlessly into spray as the monster’s head snapped sideways.

Two more tried to close in, claws raised. Ludger stepped into them, driving both palms forward in rapid succession—

thump, thump

. Each strike landed like a hammer, sending the sahuagins crashing into their allies behind them.

Within seconds, the neat firing line turned into a flailing heap of scales and screeching bodies. Their formation broke, and the water bullets stopped.

The bridge trembled under the sudden chaos.

Kharnek let out a barking laugh behind him. “Hah! That’s one way to clear a path!”

Varik didn’t laugh, but his eyes flicked toward Ludger briefly, just long enough to register the precision in every motion. “Impressive,” he muttered, before charging into the fray beside Kharnek.

Ludger shook out his hands, steam curling from his fingers where Rage Flow burned through his veins. The monsters were still struggling to regroup.

“Not bad for a warm-up,” he said quietly, and then he moved again—back into the fight before anyone else could catch up.

More of them came—too many. The sea turned violent, the dark water boiling with movement as fresh waves of sahuagins leapt out, claws flashing under the water. Their screeches carried over the roar of the waves, and every splash against the bridge sounded like the prelude to another attack.

Ludger gritted his teeth. “They’re not stopping…”

He slammed his palm to the bridge, sending a ripple of hardened stone up along the edges, forming a waist-high wall to buy a few precious seconds. It wasn’t much, but it gave the others room to breathe.

Then, without warning, a flash of orange lit up the sky.

A cluster of sahuagins mid-leap froze in midair—just long enough for the fireballs to hit. The explosion sent steam and burning flesh scattering across the water. Flames bloomed above the sea, painting everything in shades of red and gold.

Lucius stood near the rear of the formation, his right hand extended, the air around his fingertips shimmering with heat. Another fireball flared into existence—clean, stable, perfectly controlled—and shot forward, detonating against a group of climbing sahuagins trying to reach the bridge supports. The smell of burned salt and scales filled the air.

“Not bad,

Hakuen

,” Kharnek shouted over the chaos, cutting through a lunging sahuagin with a downward sweep of his axe. “Didn’t take you for a pyromaniac!”

Lucius didn’t answer, his face focused and calm even as he hurled another spell. “If you’re done yelling, keep them away from the edges! I can’t hit what I can’t see!”

The barrage of fire kept the monsters from overwhelming them entirely. Each explosion lit up the ocean, the dying embers drifting across the waves like fireflies.

But for every creature that burned, two more emerged. The sea behind them shimmered faintly blue—dozens of new shapes gathering just beneath the surface, their eyes glowing in unison.

Rathen stabbed his sword through a sahuagin’s chest, breathing hard. “They just keep coming!”

“They’re not retreating,” Varik growled, parrying a blow with the shaft of his spear. “They’re

pushing

us.”

Gaius looked toward the ocean, eyes narrowing as the water itself began to swirl unnaturally. “No…” he muttered. “Not pushing.

Summoning.

There’s something down there calling them.”

Ludger turned sharply, his pupils narrowing as he focused his Seismic Sense through the stone beneath them.

And what he felt made his jaw tighten. A vibration—a heartbeat—deep beneath the waves. Slow, massive, deliberate.

Something was coming. He raised his voice, sharp and clear over the chaos. “Everyone, brace! This isn’t the main wave yet!”

The ocean answered him with a deep, rolling tremor that shook the bridge like thunder. Then it split open again.

This time, the ones that surfaced weren’t the usual swarmers—they moved with speed. A dozen of them breached the water in formation, their scales darker, their bodies thicker, armored in patches of hardened coral that gleamed under the sunlight. Each carried a trident forged from living coral and metal veins pulsing faintly with mana.

“New ones!” Rathen shouted. “Armed types!”

Lucius reacted instantly. Flames burst to life in both his hands—two perfect spheres of compressed fire. He hurled them toward the oncoming sahuagins, the explosions lighting the air in blinding orange. But the flames didn’t reach.

The lead sahuagin spun its trident in a tight spiral, deflecting both fireballs with a spray of steam. The next two followed suit, using their weapons to break apart the spells before landing cleanly on the bridge.

Ludger’s eyes widened slightly. “They

blocked

them…”

The creatures landed in perfect rhythm, tridents slamming into the stone with a sharp

clang

. The force rippled through the bridge, cracking the surface where they stood.

“They had improved,” Gaius muttered. “Guard elites. And they’re not here to scare us off.”

Kharnek didn’t wait for strategy. The northerner roared, gripping his massive axe with both hands and charging across the bridge. “Then they’ll die the same way as the rest!”

Ludger opened his mouth to tell him to hold position—then sighed. “Never mind.”

The sahuagins braced as Kharnek closed in, their leader stepping forward. It raised its coral spear, the surface of it glowing with the same faint blue light that had filled the ocean moments before.

Kharnek swung first. The axe came down with a roar and the full strength of a man who could crush boulders barehanded. The impact rang out across the bridge, a sound like thunder striking iron.

But the trident met it mid-swing.

Sparks exploded.

The clash shook the entire span. Coral ground against steel, producing a harsh, shrieking sound that set everyone’s teeth on edge.

Kharnek snarled, pushing down harder. The stone under his boots cracked from the strain, dust rising around them. “Fall, damn you!”

The sahuagin’s muscles bulged as it locked its stance, its webbed feet gripping the bridge. The monster hissed through its fanged mouth, its eyes gleaming with a cold, alien focus. For a moment, it was pure deadlock—raw strength against unnatural precision.

But the sahuagin didn’t budge. With a twist of its trident, it redirected Kharnek’s strike and forced him a half-step back, the axe blade scraping sparks as it slid free.

Varik moved in immediately, stabbing at the creature’s side, but the trident spun again, deflecting the blow with effortless fluidity.

Ludger’s jaw tightened. “They’re not just stronger…”

Gaius nodded grimly. “They’re smarter as well.”

More splashes echoe d from the dark waves as another group of armed sahuagins rose from the depths, eyes glowing like lanterns.And for the first time that day, even the ocean seemed to hold its breath.

Ludger exhaled slowly, eyes on the horizon. Another wave was forming—darker, heavier. Hundreds of glimmers beneath the surf, all tridents, all armed.

He could feel their rhythm through the bridge, through the pillars on the sea. His fingers twitched.

He could end this.

A dozen ways spun through his mind, traps, pulses, the kind of tricks that made even Gaius squint at him afterward. But every move like that was another secret burned. Another hidden card he’d never get back.

Damn it.

He tasted salt and iron in the wind and made his choice.

“Gaius!” he shouted.

The old mage’s head snapped toward him. Ludger’s tone alone carried the message.

“Jump! Take everyone with you!”

Rathen blinked. “What—?”

“Now!”

Gaius didn’t argue. He slammed both palms into the bridge. The entire span bucked underfoot as his magic detonated downward, stone moving;, then flexing like a spring. A ripple of force surged through the columns, and the next instant the platform itself

launched

.

Lucius, Varik, Kharnek—everyone—shot skyward in a column of rising stone and mist, carried high above the oncoming tide.

The sahuagins roared from below, sensing weakness, thinking the humans were fleeing. They were wrong. Ludger stayed.

He spread his hands wide, palms open toward the sea, and drew everything he had through the channels of his arms. The air thickened. Static crawled over his skin as the ocean wind warped around him.

Brown earth-mana bled into gold, then white—the color of pure compression. Both hands came together with a sharp clap.

“Turtle Shock Wave

!

”

The world convulsed.

A blinding column of energy ripped from his palms, thick as a tower base, spiraling with shards of stone. It struck the closest enemies first, turning the first rank of sahuagins into steam and gore—and then tore forward, widening, howling, vaporizing everything in its path.

The bridge shook like a living thing under the recoil. Cracks raced outward in spiderwebs beneath his boots. He forced more mana through the channel, refusing to let the beam falter until it met its target.

The blast carved a tunnel through sea and sky alike, an incandescent spear that slammed straight into the island in the distance. For a heartbeat, the horizon itself went white. Then came the sound—like the ocean screaming.

Waves rolled back from the impact, scattering the remaining sahuagins in tumbling fragments. The bridge heaved, groaned, and then settled, steaming under the pressure drop.

Above, Gaius and the others were still suspended on their lifted section of stone, staring down in open disbelief at the scar he’d left across the world.

Ludger lowered his hands, smoke curling from his fingertips. His chest rose once. Twice.

He muttered under his breath, voice flat, almost amused through the exhaustion. “Guess that counts as showing off.”

Everyone fell back onto the fractured bridge with a heavy

thud.

Dust and mana fog drifted around them, carrying the bitter scent of scorched salt and vaporized flesh.

Everyone’s eyes were on Ludger. He stood near the edge, smoke still curling from his fingertips, chest rising and falling with measured breaths. In front of him, a gouged trench of boiling water and pulverized coral stretching all the way to the island, where a pillar of steam still climbed into the clouds.

Kharnek was the first to speak, his voice somewhere between a laugh and disbelief.

“By the ancestors… what in all the frozen hells

was

that?”

Lucius didn’t answer. His pupils were pinpricks, face lit by the dying glow of the mana storm. He’d seen powerful spells, but nothing like this. The bridge still

hummed

underfoot, as if trying to remember what just happened.

Rathen wiped the salt from his beard. “That… that’s not a simple technique.”

Varik simply frowned, studying Ludger like a puzzle that refused to make sense. “

Turtle Shock Wave.

” He said the words carefully, as though tasting them. “That’s what he called it?”

Lucius turned, incredulous. “He really did name it that?”

“Apparently,” Rathen muttered. “Sounds like something a kid would name after blowing up a sandbox.”

Before they could press the point, Ludger’s voice cut through the ringing air. Calm, sharp.

“Save it. We’re not done.”

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