I came to with an excruciating pain going through my back. Ugh, I could really do with stopping being kidnapped by random people! “Wake up, little wormy human!” A deep voice boomed. “Good. You are finally awake. I prefer my food to be alive and conscious when I am preparing to eat it.” I opened my eyes, but everything was still dark.

“Wait what?! Where am I?!” I questioned.

“You are in my lair!” The voice exclaimed joyfully.

“And may I ask, WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU?!” I screamed the question.

“I am the mighty leviathan Perezoso!” Perezoso announced.

¨That's… a strange name. What does it mean, stupid?¨ I questioned

¨HOW DARE YOU DISRESPECT MY NAME?! YOU WILL DIE!¨ Perezoso growled.

¨Weren't you planning to kill me anyway?¨ I asked, laughing.

“Ow!” I yelped, and Perezoso turned to look at me. He growled deeply, and I whimpered nervously.

“Get up human. It’s time.” Perezoso growled mysteriously. I didn’t want to know what time it was for, but I mustered, “Time for what?” Instead of answering, Perezoso dragged me up to the surface of the water, where I could see the darkening sky and the leviathan.

It was a giant sea serpent-like creature that looked to be the size of an entire island. All over its back were shiny purple spines that probably would have skewered me with no problem. Its tail looked like a giant version of a dolphin’s tail, and fins stuck out of it from each side. Each fin was about as long as I was tall. 8 tentacles stuck out from the bottom of the leviathan, all with triangular tips with things extending from it looking suspiciously like human-sized scythe blades. When I saw its face, I gulped in fear. The face of the leviathan was a large green and purple circle with dents everywhere. Its eyes were glowing neon yellow with dark, red pupils; its mouth full of sharp teeth that could probably bite through a dragon with no problem.

Perezoso roared, making the water around us shudder. “Would you stop doing that!” I yelled over his roar, “I think you’re shattering my eardrums!”

“Pathetic human!” Perezoso exclaimed, “You can’t even face off against my roar!”

I realized that Perezoso probably didn’t know that I could shapeshift, and since I was in human form, while Perezoso was insulting me and saying something about how pathetic humans were, I turned into a seagull, got out of the water, and shifted into a peregrine falcon. However, when I tried to fly out of the area, Perezoso merely laughed and informed me, “Pathetic little human. You cannot escape so easily! I’ll let you test your mettle against this barrier! If you manage to get past it, I’ll let you go!”

If he is so confident in this barrier, there is probably no way I am getting past it. In what way does he even have a weakness? I thought for a long while, and then, I had a great idea. I must use his arrogance against him. He underestimates me, thinking that I am a normal pathetic human! But I am not simply a pathetic human! I am one of the most powerful mages in potential! Surely a single leviathan should be beatable! I will challenge him to a duel! But wait! He knows that I can shapeshift! Maybe he won’t underestimate me! Wait a second… Maybe I can change into a leviathan! But that would probably be too exhausting! Since the number of energy points I use scales to what form I assume, shifting into a leviathan would probably cost me more than 3/4 of my whole energy points or something! I can’t do that! Wait… then Perezoso might overestimate me! He doesn’t know that I have a limited amount of energy points! So then he might be extra cautious to be sure that he won’t be caught off guard. Since he’s expecting a trap, then I’m not going to set a trap, and I”m going to catch him off guard by doing normal things! Yes! I’m gonna say that there’s no trap and use reverse reverse psychology on him!

With that in mind, I went over to challenge Perezoso. “Perezoso the leviathan! I reject your challenge for me to get through your barrier! Instead, I shall challenge you to a duel! WINNER TAKES ALL! THIS WILL BE A BATTLE FOR LIFE AND FREEDOM! THIS WILL BE A DUEL TO THE DEATH, AND you, my friend, Perezoso the leviathan, YOU SHALL PERISH TODAY!!” I boomed.

“I ACCEPT YOUR CHALLENGE! YOU SHALL LIVE TO REGRET THIS! Well, you won’t because you will die today, but I digress… ANYWAYS, I SHALL NOT BE PERISHING TODAY. YOU WILL DIE TODAY! AND YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING TO STOP IT, SHAPESHIFTER!” Perezoso drew himself up, and I steeled my nerves, my heart thrumming in my chest.

Perezoso let loose an ear-splitting roar, which temporarily deafened me. I got ready to fight. I drew Astrapi with lightning speed and ironically fired a lightning arrow straight at Perezoso’s eye. Perezoso gestured, and a barrier with arcane symbols on it immediately popped up, making the arrow bounce back at me. I shifted into a turtle and swam underneath the arrow. Luckily for me, the leviathan’s barrier seemed to negate the effect of the lightning arrow where it would make lightning go through water and probably turn me into a deep sea soggy barbecue.

I used my fire Elementalism and sent wildfire of fire through the water as a surprise attack. Obviously, Perezoso expected the flames to be extinguished in the water, so he was in for a painful surprise when the flame burst out of the water and incinerated one of his tentacles.

“HOW DARE YOU HARM ME, I WILL WEAR YOUR SKIN AS A CAPE!” Perezoso growled.

While he yelled at me, I slipped into stealth mode by shifting into zooplankton. When I approached the waterline, I shifted into a dolphin, leaped out of the water, shifted back into a human, and used Revanis to grapple myself onto Perezoso’s back using the spines on his back. I used my will and checked my energy points.

My total energy point pool was larger than it used to be. I still had 1,379 energy points left. That meant that I could cast around 14 spells along with Elementalism. I pulled out my bag of shurikens as Perezoso shifted around, trying to eject me from his back.

I pulled out some shurikens and used Shuriken Strike infusing the shurikens with fire, shearing off all of Perezoso’s spines and tanning his back. Perezoso howled in pain, bucking around like a crazed horse. I got launched off and slammed straight into the barrier. I slumped as I fell into the water. Using Astrapi, I shot a barrage of 20 lightning arrows at Perezoso. It was then that I realized that Perezoso had a really slow reaction speed. He didn’t realize that I was beside him until I used Revanis to drag myself onto his back, and he only managed to block my barrage of arrows the instant before they hit him. I decided to make a plan.

I swam around him. I shot 20 lightning arrows from his front, 20 fire arrows from his left side, 20 air arrows from his back, and 20 ground arrows from his right in the span of about 20 seconds. Perezoso blocked the lightning arrows, narrowly dodged the fire arrows, ducked under the ground arrows, but was finally hit by the air arrows. When he attempted to retreat underwater, I stopped him with a force arrow pulling him up. “Ah ah ah!! You can run, but you can’t hide! When you go down, I’ll just drag you back up, you big coward!”

“FINE! I’LL DO IT YOUR WAY! YOU WILL SUFFER A WORLD OF PAIN FOR WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO ME, STUPID PUNY HUMAN!!” Perezoso roared.

He unleashed a 40-foot tall wave that looked like a tsunami’s angrier bigger brother that came crashing on top of me. I blacked out, and then my vision was fuzzy. When my eyes opened again, my head hurt like a hammer had smashed into it. Perezoso was still in slow motion, slowly inching his way towards me, openly showing his weakness of slowness. I turned into a basilisk lizard and ran straight at Perezoso.

Perezoso noticed the tiny me running at his bulky figure, and laughed, “Hahaha! So the challenger approaches… in the tiny form of a puny lizard? Hah! You must be much stupider than I thought! Prepare to drown then! The only reason you were not drowning earlier is because of my spell! But you no longer have its effects! In your tiny lizard form, you will sink to the bottom like a rock and drown like a rock!”

I paid Perezoso no attention and got into the rhythm of running across the water on my new feet. While Perezoso blabbered on about the 1000 ways he’s going to torture me or something, I snuck up behind him, turned back into a human, and climbed his back to reach his face. “Hey! Where did you go! I wasn’t done with my speech yet!” Perezoso suddenly stopped talking about how he was going to make me suffer. He looked up, down, left, and right. He still couldn’t find me. When he tried to turn around to see if I was behind him, I suddenly whipped out my shurikens and sent an entire volley of Shuriken Strike again infused with fire straight into the glowing red pupil of his neon yellow left eye. He howled in pain, which sounded like a volcano. The shockwave made me fly back 10 feet.

I landed on a rock and I stumbled across it. My breath was completely knocked out of me. I caught my breath and searched for my staffs. I found them and gripped them tight. I aimed and then threw Kosmar at the leviathan’s eye. The leviathan’s eye was so large that it was impossible to miss and Kosmar collided with the leviathan in the pupil of his left eye.

The leviathan roared again and I flew back another few feet. Luckily, this time I didn't crash into a rock and instead crashed into the water. I sank below the waves. I frantically swam for the surface, and then I realized that I could just turn into a fish. Suddenly, a jet of water shot straight at me, breaking my concentration. Instead of picturing the fish I wanted to shift into, I visualized a jellyfish, which was what I turned into as I got blasted into the depths of the ocean. I formed a forcefield in front of me to protect me from further attacks as I visualized a flying fish to turn into.

The forcefield protected me from quite a few attacks as more powerful streams of water came to attack me. It seemed like the ocean was amplifying the effects of the leviathan’s water magic. I spotted Kosmar, bobbing around aimlessly in the choppy water. I feinted at Perezoso, flying straight at him and turning into a human midair. As he lunged at me, I took the chance to get Kosmar back.

I led a relentless assault with Kosmar and Revanis in each hand, it would be easier with some of my abilities, but the leviathan's magic seemed to be negating some of my abilities. Kicking things off with a shift into a hawk, I landed on Perezoso’s back with no problem. When he slashed at me, I pirouetted away and took out my shurikens to shear off two of his tentacles. He howled in pain, but it didn’t matter since I was prepared for that, tuning the sound out by putting sponges in my ears.

When Perezoso launched me off of his back using his tail, I landed nimbly on a rock, which I jumped off of and landed back in the water as a shark. Perezoso swung one of his tentacles at me. I turned back into a person and grabbed the tentacle.

The swinging motion hurled me out of the water and I threw a few fireballs at Perezoso’s eyes. Something semi-translucent suddenly slid out in front of the eyes and the fireballs bounced harmlessly off.

I stared at the substance, shocked by what had happened. Another one of Perezoso’s tentacles lashed out and grabbed me. I struggled to break free, but another lashed out and captured me.

“FOOL, YOU THOUGHT THAT YOU COULD KILL ME?!” Perezoso roared with laughter. I concentrated on flames and tried to make some appear. A few small sparks appeared but were nowhere near enough to damage Perezoso.

Perezoso saw the small spark and laughed, “That is all you can create?!”

An idea popped into my head and I yelled “Do you want to see who is more powerful?! You obviously are really powerful, but don’t you want to see how powerful I am? Then, you can know how powerful I am!”

“Hmmmmmm… Mortal, you overestimate your own power and you underestimate me. I accept your challenge. I will give you a minute to rest and prepare yourself. I will go into my armored form. You will get 1 minute to destroy me. When you fail, I will obliterate you and turn you into dust particles floating around in the ocean!” Perezoso bellowed.

“Alright! Deal!” I smirked, as I would have a 1-minute head start. I pretended to start to rest, as Perezoso closed his eyes in concentration to prepare himself to shift into armored form. However, I didn’t let him. I had to catch Perezoso off guard or there was no way I could win, as it seemed as if he had been toying with me the entire time.

“DIE!” I let out a battle cry as I summoned the largest fireball that I ever summoned before, which probably didn’t say much, but I launched it at Perezoso just as extra scales started to grow on his pre-existing scales. Somehow, my fireball hit the one spot that had not been layered with the extra scales yet: Perezoso’s chest.

“How dare you, mortal!” Perezoso howled, “Have you no honor? Attacking your enemy when they are unprepared is cowardly!”

“There is no loss of honor in this battle! This battle is purely about survival! I may be dishonorable in this fight, and it’s not because I want to stay alive, but I am needed to save other people’s lives!” I yelled back.

“Have it your way, little ant! I might’ve given you a chance, but you have angered me far too much. I have been rotting away in this prison for far too long. Yet, I have not forgotten who I am. I AM PEREZOSO THE LEVIATHAN OF THE VOID SEA, DESTROYER OF LIFE, ETERNAL GUARDIAN OF THE MYSEUKAR TREASURE, LORD OF THE LEVIATHANS, THE UNSTOPPABLE JUGGERNAUT, AND I WILL REIGN!” Perezoso announced, and he barreled straight at me, crashing through about 50 large boulders as he charged.