Among those guarding the entrance to the cabin, four figures stood out with an unmistakable air of might.
One, naturally, was the legendary knight Baron, his bare torso gleaming with dark, corded muscle. Wielding a massive axe, he cut down the sea monsters that sought to force their way inside with a frenzy bordering on the divine.
Another was the ship's boatswain—a man who, despite having crossed paths with Baron many times, had never been seen in combat until now. Armed with a greatsword, his blows rivaled the knight's in sheer force, earning him the stunned respect of all who beheld him.
The remaining two were none other than the wizard's apprentices who resided in the sorcerer's chambers: a young man named Yun Li, and a young woman, Bibiliona.
What left Green and his companions utterly dumbfounded was that these two did not merely employ the legendary witchcraft of rumor—they wielded it with a power and strangeness so profound it defied belief.
Bibiliona, faced with the gargantuan forms of the attacking sea beasts, was visibly tense. Yet with the sailors shielding her, none of the creatures could draw close. Hidden behind their ranks, her golden hair floated outward in a halo, and upon her brow blazed a golden vertical eye, staring with imperious authority at any monster that dared approach.
This golden eye seemed a construct of some extraordinary elemental force, sending shimmering ripples through the air around it.
With a sharp, breathless cry, she unleashed its gaze. Any sea beast caught in it for more than a heartbeat shrieked in agony; moments later, their bodies withered as though utterly drained of moisture, collapsing into ghastly mummified husks.
In but a few moments' glance, Green counted no fewer than five leviathans felled beneath that uncanny golden stare. Yet the effort clearly taxed her, and with a faint gasp the eye dissolved into nothingness.
As for Yun Li, the little white mouse perched upon his shoulder seemed entirely oblivious to the chaos. He himself regarded the surrounding horrors not with arrogance, but with a cold, detached indifference—a gaze that weighed them as mere curiosities, his lips curling with faint amusement.
His sorcery was all the more unnerving for its invisibility. Without a single sign or flourish, sea monsters around him were abruptly left in ruin—severed limbs, missing heads, and in one case, an entire beast vanished save for a serpent's tail less than twenty centimeters long, the cut so smooth it gleamed like polished glass.
Green, Raffie, Yorkris, and Yorkliana could only gape, stunned into silence.
No wonder they lodged in the wizard's chambers—against such prodigies, neither Yorkris nor Green, nor even Raffie with her own mastery of witchcraft, could hope to stand.
Raffie's expression darkened; she knew the truth of her own art. Her so-called sorcery relied entirely on her father's enchanted instruments. Without them, she could not conjure even the simplest spell. She did have another trump card—a second potent artifact gifted by her father—but her magic reserves were barely enough to rouse it, and even then, she doubted she could match either of these gifted apprentices.
For she knew the gulf between herself and these two—hailed as once-in-a-century geniuses of the wizarding world—was vast beyond measure. And judging by the sheer magnitude of their spells, Raffie suspected they possessed not learned power, but an inborn, awakened gift.
Elsewhere on the deck, Wizard Dira floated some five meters above the planks, his billowing grey robe snapping as if caught in a hurricane. His face flushed unnaturally red, and the delicate gear over his eye spun with furious speed as he chanted in a low, arcane tongue, preparing a spell of terrible might.
Overhead, two colossal black tentacles, each more than thirty meters long, crashed down again and again. The deck had already been smashed open in several places, the cabins beneath shattered, and faint, terrified cries of surviving apprentices rose from below.
Then, without warning, every soul on the deck shuddered involuntarily. An oppressive darkness seemed to smother the sky, and in its midst a small, grey flame bloomed in Dira's hand.
Silent, unassuming, and seemingly without heat, the flame nonetheless gripped the heart with primal dread, as though it could devour sight itself. Even Yun Li and Bibiliona, ever composed, paled at the sight.
"Deathfire…" Dira's weakened voice, almost a whisper, slithered into every ear as if murmured from beside it.
In the next instant, the flame touched one of the writhing tentacles—and from the waters below erupted a scream so immense it seemed to tear the sea apart. Waves surged violently as the leviathan thrashed in agony, its immense limbs withdrawing like lightning, its massive head vanishing into the deep.
"Master!"
"Great Wizard!"
Sailors and apprentices cheered in relief, but Dira merely raised a hand to silence them, forcing his trembling body under control. His cold, venomous gaze swept across the surviving sea monsters on the deck as he descended.
A wizard's kindness, after all, rarely extended to his enemies. Even the gentlest among them, in their pursuit of higher truths, had slain more lives than could be counted.
His eyes fell upon the corpse of an ice-entombed beast, and a sinister smile touched his lips.
"Well, well… it's nearly time. Since you Ulado sea monsters refuse to honor the pact with the Wizards' Alliance, you shall face our retribution."
At his words, the frozen scales of the creature began to writhe. Before the horrified onlookers, the massive beast collapsed into a mere hide, from which poured countless palm-sized centipedes, their bodies a dark violet-black.
Worse still, each bore four pairs of translucent wings along its back—and atop each winged body sat a pair of dead, glassy eyes.
"At last… after so many years! Ulado sea beasts, taste the nightmare crafted by the sages of old, a bane made for none but you. In your centuries of peace, perhaps you have forgotten the terror of mankind's wizards—then remember it now, and tremble!"
Dira's voice broke into a mad howl.
The monsters could not understand human speech, but their instincts screamed. That swarm of vermin was not prey, nor rival—they were doom itself. Many sea beasts flung themselves into the waves without hesitation.
A low, thrumming buzz filled the air as thousands of the winged centipedes emerged. At first their wings hung limp, but within moments they began to beat, lifting the creatures into a frenzied flight toward the remaining monsters on deck.
They ignored humans entirely, as well as the severed tentacle of the giant octopus, focusing solely on the living sea beasts.
The monsters roared in terror. Their proud scales were as paper before the centipedes, which burrowed into flesh with suicidal fervor. Even when half their bodies were torn away, the insects continued to dig inward, as though nothing in existence mattered but reaching the deepest recesses of their victims.
Watching the scene, Dira's voice was a dark, triumphant purr.
"Hmph. If the parasites wrought by the genius of the ancients could be slain so easily, they would be unworthy of their name as the Ulado's bane—and we wizards would not deserve our title as masters of a thousand worlds."
His tone grew almost exultant.
"They live but a single day. Yet in that day, their sole purpose is to lay their eggs within every Ulado they find—and those eggs hatch in but half the turn of a sandglass…"