The biggest difference between the battle against the Leviathan and every other battle that I had engaged in over the last two weeks was the lack of fear.

Jarek had been afraid all the time. Worried for his friends, worried for his family, not trusting Samantha.

Samantha had a different kind of fear—a worry that Jarek would just ignore her, that she would die due to Jarek not following her instructions properly.

The Leviathan was surfacing like a whale in the middle of the ocean, his smooth grey skin broken by jagged ridges along its spine.

He was probably aware of us, judging by how he was approaching us, while we were simultaneously approaching him.

There was something thrilling about this upcoming battle. I was looking forward to it, which was rare, from Jarek’s perspective.

There was no more self-doubt, no latency due to the combat shadow. I knew the best course of action, I didn’t need to be told it.

Imitating Iron Man, I used the Mana Cannons on both my palms to propel myself forward with a burst of steady air.

It was something that Jarek had struggled to perform elegantly. Moving in one direction, or a gentle parabola, had been his limit. For Samantha, it was virtually impossible to describe the minute shifts in posture and mana flow.

But now I could hover seemingly as easily as Dawnbreaker.

We flew together towards the Leviathan.

“Get ready to dodge,” I said, watching as the Leviathan built up mana in one of his fins. “Three, two, one…”

With an incredible rush of force and brute mana, a hundred-foot wall of water surged towards us. If it was just water, we would have been able to withstand it, but it was reinforced by mana, making it all the more deadly.

There was only one direction to run—up.

I flew up well above the wave, feeling the sinking pit in my stomach at the jolt. I could feel my lips borne down by gravity, but I turned my gritted teeth into a smile.

That was just the Leviathan’s opening salvo.

With a heavy slap, the same fin, which was now above the water, slammed down onto the water.

The resounding crack would have popped my eardrums if I had less Physical Defense. The sound wave itself was an attack, an attempt at disorienting my sense of balance. But the main attack was the geyser of water that was now soaring up towards me.

I was high enough in the air that I had plenty of warning. I flew to the side, along with Dawnbreaker, and the geyser missed, falling back down to the water, causing massive ripples and disturbances next to the relatively peaceful Leviathan.

“You could say he’s just… testing the waters,” I said, as Dawnbreaker and I paused to catch our breath.

Dawnbreaker shot me a frown. “What’s the plan? What did you learn?”

“Those attacks took nothing out of him—he could do that all day. He’s recycling the mana that he sends out into the water, somehow. He is deceptively fast, and he probably is sensing us perfectly using Mana Sensing or sensing the water in our bodies. His core is buried under the tallest ridge on his back, and I’m guessing those bony ridges provide plenty of armor. Let’s try to get closer and see what one of your golden beams can do.”

Temporarily canceling the Mana Cannons on my hands, I let myself fall towards the Leviathan.

Mana Sensing told me Dawnbreaker was following behind me.

Even as we drew closer, I could tell the Leviathan was watching us and ready. The moment our descent started, he already started splashing around from the surface of the ocean.

A geyser streamed towards me, narrow enough that I was able to dodge by activating one of my Mana Cannons.

But then the Leviathan lifted itself up, so much of its bony torso and body was visible, and then crashed back down onto the water, creating a full bubble-like wave that pushed out all around it.

Essentially, the Leviathan was leaving us with two choices. We could push through the tsunami-like wave approaching us, or we could retreat and let the wave die down.

The problem was that this was most likely the Leviathan’s most basic skill. Every time we would try to close, it could ward us off.

If I were to try to tank the wave of water coming towards me, the collision would deal a few health points worth of damage, but then moving towards the Leviathan would be like swimming upstream, and I would be at a disadvantage when the Leviathan’s next attack came.

I gestured for Dawnbreaker to go first.

Dawnbreaker flew past me. Thick threads of her unisuit extended out in front of her, between her and the tidal wave approaching us, forming a cone pointing directly towards the wave.

A golden aura extended from the tip of the cone that Dawnbreaker had created with her unisuit.

I rushed to position myself behind Dawnbreaker, just in time for the wave to reach us.

The initial crash of water would have been incredibly disorienting, but I was already focused on Mana Sensing.

Dawnbreaker’s conic combination of suit and aura was crushed by the tidal wave, but it took the brunt of the force.

We both started “swimming” quickly towards the Leviathan.

Rather than waste points in Agility, though, I was propelling myself using a Mana Cannon. But rushing against such a powerful, continuous current was enough of a challenge that we were barely making progress towards the Leviathan.

It was hard to tell visually, because the Leviathan was so large, but I could tell that all six of his various fins were dedicated to putting distance between us and him.

The Leviathan wouldn’t run away from a fight, but he also knew that he fought best at a distance.

As the Leviathan propelled itself away from us, we were also caught in his wake—he was continuing to build the current that was pushing us away.

We continued chasing.

The rate we were closing the gap at was marginal, but that wasn’t the point.

Abelino had yet to make his move.

He had been useless against the Sea Snake, but with a creature the size of the Leviathan, with less maneuverability, he was in the prime position to deal damage.

Sure enough, just a few more seconds into the chase, Abelino’s first volley fired towards Leviathan.

The Leviathan’s front fins seemed to scoop down into the water, lifting a massive amount of the ocean up above its head, simultaneously starting to dive down under the surface of the ocean for cover.

The volley of Mana Crystals tore through the water, and cut into the Leviathan’s bony skin.

Using Mana Sensing, I studied the effects of the Mana Crystals.

With a creature the size of the Leviathan, the cuts—even though they were several feet deep—were only flesh wounds.

But this was actually good for us.

The biggest challenge when fighting a creature on the level of a Zone Lord was information.

Leviathans generally had two different builds. One option was more focused on killing opponents with high pressured streams of water, or ice bullets, etc.

The other build was the city-killer build. These massive waves the Leviathan was causing weren’t devastating for individuals like Dawnbreaker or me, but they would rapidly drain a city’s D-rank shield.

Everything we’d seen so far indicated this Leviathan specialized in destroying cities, and Abelino’s volley only further validated that hypothesis.

Instead of skills, this Leviathan was stacking stats. His Physical Defense was impressive, even for a Zone Lord. So impressive that he probably didn’t have daunting skills. The amount of destructive mana that he could imbue into a wave was awe-inspiring, and his skill of recycling that mana as the water washed back over his own body was almost broken. Almost broken because the trade-off had to be the lack of mana control and mana density—I’d bet my life that he didn’t have specialized, focused mana attacks.

The biggest fear of any knowledgeable City Lord would be a Leviathan with this much Physical Defense—a city-killer Leviathan—ramming its own body against a city’s shield.

It would take a C-rank city shield to stand against this creature’s attacks, so we were actually incredibly fortunate that we were fighting it in the middle of the ocean.

This would be fun.

There was no need to worry about casualties. The Leviathan’s defense was so high that our attacks would have to be incredibly focused, which meant the quality of the corpse—a D-rank corpse hundreds of feet long—would be impeccable.

With the Leviathan’s altered direction—he was heading underwater, now, and away from Abelino—we were fighting against less of a current, which meant we were closing on the creature even faster.

It was only a matter of time.