A thunderous roar split the air.
Outside the door, the sea monster, upon sighting them, seemed to descend into a frenzy, hurling its massive bulk against the wooden barrier with such force that it left the onlookers aghast.
Through the splintered gaps in the door, Green and the others could see more of the creatures being drawn from the distance, slithering closer, until despair began to seep into their hearts.
By raw combat power alone, the apprentice sorcerers in this room would be fortunate to fell even a single beast—and that only if Raffie could summon her vine sorcery.
The group braced their shoulders against the door, fighting for every heartbeat of time, when suddenly the only one who still seemed calm—a strange young male apprentice—shouted, "There is still hope!"
Without further explanation, he bolted toward a freshly torn breach in the hull. At once, the others guessed his intent, a spark of hope igniting in their eyes.
They recalled the scores of lifeboats suspended along both flanks of the vessel, each secured by ropes to the guardrails of the deck above.
From Yorkris's fifth-deck cabin, the deck was a mere five or six meters overhead—well within climbing range for those with the strength to ascend the dangling ropes.
The male apprentice seized one first and began to scramble upward. The others, catching on, dashed for the ropes in turn.
Yorkliana, frail and one-eyed from injury, was carried on her brother Yorkris's back. Green's leg wound hindered him little; years of hard labor had left him with the strength to climb with ease.
Raffie, however—pampered since birth, a girl of delicate constitution, and with a wound to her shoulder—could scarcely cling to the rope, let alone pull herself upward. Her face betrayed rising anxiety.
The stranger with a wooden stake through her abdomen was already half-dead, bleeding out and barely conscious; meanwhile, the barricade of furniture had been shoved aside by the monsters outside the door…
Yet the climbers were struck dumb by an even greater horror.
From the depths beside the ship's hull, three gargantuan "sea serpents" emerged, their bodies writhing upward toward the deck.
Dear gods… could these monstrous serpents truly hunt in packs?
The vessel's hull alone rose more than thirty meters—meaning these "serpents" must be of unimaginable length.
A deafening crash erupted above, and the air turned sharply cold. To their dread, they saw the nearest serpent being sheathed in a creeping frost, the ice spreading at a pace visible to the naked eye.
A mournful, muffled bellow followed. The ship began to tremble violently, as if some colossal thing were rising from the abyss. Then the sea erupted, revealing a monstrous octopus head, its wail churning the waters into towering waves.
An octopus…? No—a nightmare given flesh.
And then came the dreadful realization: the so-called serpents were merely the creature's tentacles.
If that were true… just how enormous was this beast?
To apprentices who had never seen such horrors, it was a vision straight from the legends—a living catastrophe.
The tentacle beside them, now frozen stiff, sagged lifelessly and slid into the sea with a boom, sending a tempest of wind and spray across the ropes. Green clung on for dear life.
A despairing cry rang out. Looking down, he saw the male apprentice who had climbed highest plunging into the sea—an almost certain death in such waters.
But he was not alone—Raffie too had been torn loose by the gale. By fortune or instinct, she conjured a vine in midair, latching onto a rope to suspend herself above the waves.
Yet magic demanded strength, and hers would last mere minutes. She hung there pale as paper, lips pressed tight to hold back tears, eyes shimmering with unspoken plea, her body trembling uncontrollably.
Only Yorkris and Green could aid her now, but Yorkris was spent from carrying his sister. That left Green.
She looked at him with that fragile stubbornness—too proud to beg, yet clearly afraid.
Though she was the haughty daughter of a city lord who scorned his common birth, she had never wronged him nor abused her sorcery against him. They were, after all, bound for the same distant land of the Magi.
Green clenched his jaw, slid down to the lifeboat at the rope's end, secured himself there, and began hauling the conjured vine upward with all his strength. Years of hardship had left him with the stamina for such a feat, and he pulled her back from the brink of death.
Panting heavily, he slumped against the lifeboat. Raffie, still shaken, stared at him, eyes bright with tears. Her gaze unsettled him more than he cared to admit.
Before he could speak, she flung herself against him, sobbing into his chest.
Her warmth, her scent—he froze, unsure where to put his hands. The words he had planned died in his throat.
Only after a long while did she release him, her face flushed as she caught his flustered expression and laughed softly.
"Well? Are you planning to spend the rest of your life dangling here with me?"
He stammered an awkward denial, aware—disturbingly—that he had been moved by her. Shoving the thought aside, he offered to carry her up. She agreed at once, wrapping her arms around him as her breath warmed the nape of his neck.
Suppressing the strange tension in his chest, Green began the climb. Yorkris, seeing them safe, reached the deck and pulled the rope to aid them.
At last they collapsed against the guardrail, chests heaving—only to be struck dumb by the sight before them.
The vast deck, over a hundred meters long, was a pitted battlefield strewn with hundreds of dead sea monsters. In its center twitched a severed tentacle, bleeding foul green ichor. Among the carcasses lay the bodies of sailors and a few apprentices—some mangled beyond recognition.
Another crash drew their eyes to the ruins of Wizard Dira's cabin. The sorcerer stood there, face flushed, eyepatch gone to reveal a whirring mechanical eye of unsettling design.
Beneath his feet lay a sea monster's corpse encased in unyielding ice, which he guarded fiercely, conjuring a towering ice shield against the colossal tentacle's strikes.
Elsewhere, the surviving sailors fought to keep the beasts from reentering the ship. Among them, Green recognized two apprentices who had once emerged from Dira's chamber—now wielding sorcery so fearsome it defied belief.