“Not on my watch.”
Aeliana’s vision snapped into focus—
And there he was.
Luca.
Before her.
Standing between her and the Kraken’s attack.
His estoc gleamed, locked against the massive tentacle, void-starlight crackling along its edge. The force of the impact sent shockwaves through the battlefield, his coat billowing, his stance unshaken.
Despite the blood dripping from his lips.
Despite the wounds along his ribs.
Despite the fact that he was barely standing.
He was still there.
Aeliana glared at him, her body still wracked with pain, her breath uneven, her cursed veins pulsing with unstable energy—
And yet, her rage burned hotter than all of it.
“You—” she seethed, her voice raw with fury. “You absolute bastard—!”
Luca barely glanced at her, only shifting his eyes to the side for the briefest second. And of course—of course—
He smirked.
A slow, infuriating smirk, blood still dripping from the corner of his mouth, his stance still defiant against the sheer force of the Kraken’s limb.
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“Shouldn’t you worry about yourself?” he mused, his tone laced with amusement. “You see, we need to get out of here first, don’t we?”
Aeliana’s fingers twitched, nails digging into the stone beneath her. Every ounce of pain, of hatred, of betrayal poured into the words that tumbled from her lips—
“Just you wait.” Her voice was low, venomous. “I will make sure—”
Luca chuckled.
It wasn’t mocking.
It wasn’t cruel.
But it was enjoying this.
He was enjoying her hatred.
Enjoying the way her rage curled around him, the way her words dripped with the promise of violence.
It infuriated her.
“—that I’ll be the one to kill you.”
His smirk widened.
“Now that’s the spirit.”
And with that, he pushed back against the Kraken’s limb, his blade flaring with void-starlight as he knocked the monstrous tentacle aside, his body moving with that same reckless grace.
Even as his wounds deepened.
Even as his breaths became just a fraction heavier.
Aeliana’s entire body shook.
From the pain.
From the power raging inside her.
From him.
She didn’t understand him.
She would never understand him.
But that didn’t matter.
Because she would not let him die here.
Not until she got her answers.
Not until she had the chance to kill him herself.
The Kraken shrieked, its abyssal cry shaking the very cavern itself. Its severed limbs writhed and regrew, grotesque tendrils stitching themselves back together in mere moments. But it wasn’t just healing.
It was adapting.
BOOM!
Another tentacle descended, cutting through the air like a falling mountain. The sheer force of it sent shockwaves blasting across the battlefield.
Lucavion moved.
SWOOSH!
He twisted, stepping into the attack rather than away from it, his body slipping just beyond the crushing impact. The tentacle obliterated the stone where he had just stood, fissures cracking outward like a spiderweb. But even as the dust rose, his estoc was already in motion.
「Void Starfall Blade: Crescent Ruin」
A flash of black starlight. A single, seamless arc.
And the tentacle split apart.
The Kraken shrieked again, but it wasn’t done.
Its monstrous body pulsed—then twitched.
Tiny pores along its remaining limbs flared open, releasing a barrage of high-speed, obsidian-like darts.
They howled through the air, shrieking toward Lucavion like a rain of death.
‘Tsk.’ His eyes flickered, calculating their trajectory in an instant.
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
Lucavion’s blade danced.
Each flick of his wrist sent void-starlight slicing through the poisoned projectiles. He weaved between them effortlessly, his movements precise—too precise, as if he had seen this pattern a thousand times before.
Aeliana, still collapsed, barely managed to track his movements. Her body was screaming, her cursed veins pulsing erratically, but she could see it.
His steps. His rhythm.
Like a shadow slipping between cracks in reality itself.
Like a monster playing with its prey.
And then—
CRACK!
A monstrous glow built up in the Kraken’s gaping abyss of a maw.
Aeliana’s breath hitched.
It wasn’t just a physical attack anymore.
The cavern shuddered as an impossible force condensed within the Kraken’s core, dark tendrils of purplish-blue energy spiraling together, forming a concentrated mass of outerworldly starlight.
The air collapsed inward.
And then—
BOOOOOOM!
A pillar of cosmic destruction erupted from the Kraken’s maw, a beam of raw, unearthly devastation aimed straight at Lucavion.
There was no dodging it.
No blocking it.
No—
Lucavion moved.
But not alone.
One second Aeliana was on the ground, her fingers still digging into the stone, rage clouding her vision.
The next—
Lucavion’s arm wrapped around her waist.
Her breath vanished.
And then—
SWOOSH!
They blurred.
The world twisted around them, the very air shattering as Lucavion dragged her into his speed.
The cosmic beam annihilated everything in its path, carving a molten scar into the cavern, the sheer heat of it causing Aeliana’s skin to prickle even from a distance.
But she wasn’t looking at the attack.
She was looking at him.
Lucavion’s grip was solid, unyielding despite his injuries. His expression was calm, almost bored, as if he had seen this exact moment play out in his mind countless times before.
His coat billowed as he landed lightly atop a crumbling stone platform, releasing her the second they were clear of the blast.
Aeliana stumbled, her body still weak—
But her glare was fierce.
“You—!”
Lucavion smirked, taking a casual step forward, his estoc resting lazily over his shoulder.
“You should be thanking me, you know,” he mused, his voice still carrying that infuriating amusement.
Aeliana’s nails scraped against the stone.
I will kill him.
But not here.
Not yet.
Because the Kraken wasn’t done.
Lucavion’s eyes flicked back to the monstrous abyss before them. The creature’s wounds were sealing faster. Its attacks were growing smarter.
‘Ah… so that’s how it is,’ he thought, rolling his shoulder. His free hand wiped the blood from his lips as his smirk widened.
Lucavion’s eyes widened, a flicker of realization sparking in their depths. The chaos of the battlefield seemed to fall away, the relentless shrieks of the Kraken fading into the background as his gaze locked onto the destruction left in the wake of the cosmic beam.
A molten scar stretched across the cavern, the sheer power of the attack having carved a path of annihilation through stone and earth alike. The edges of the chasm glowed with residual heat, the air rippling with a lingering, suffocating pressure.
“So that’s what I was lacking…” Luca murmured, his voice a mixture of fascination and something almost akin to satisfaction.
Aeliana’s vision swam, her body still shaking, her cursed veins burning like fire beneath her skin. She barely registered the ground beneath her as Luca set her down, his grip firm but uncharacteristically gentle.
She wanted to curse him. To scream at him. To tear him apart for every single thing he had done, for every word he had spoken, for every lie he had let her believe.
But she had no strength left.
No breath.
Only a fractured, searing pain coursing through her—an agony that felt as though it would devour her from the inside out.
And Luca?
He was staring at the destruction as though it held the answers to the universe itself.
His lips parted, barely more than a whisper escaping them.
“Void.”