Iakopo stood atop a crumbling building, his eyes scanning the chaos below.

Placid City was slowly being turned into a giant ruin.

The air was thick with smoke and the screams of the dying.

A giant Drakes horde was charging from Placid City’s beach—hundreds, perhaps thousands of monsters.

This is the end, Iakopo thought.

He gritted his teeth, knowing what he had to do.

He flew as far as possible from the citizens and as close as possible to the monsters.

With a heavy heart, he raised both his hands, calling upon his Space Water.

The air around him distorted.

“Everyone, get back!” he shouted to the remaining Water Riders below.

They scrambled to obey, recognizing the danger of what was to come.

“Hi’iaka, Kainoa, Lukaloa! Raise the protections!” Iakopo transmitted his words to them through Space Water.

His Shield and Retinue flew closer to him and raised massive shields made of Ozone Water.

Ozone Water, a specialized defensive technique passed down through the Kane Family, allowed them to create protective fields that could withstand tremendous force. It was a necessary counterbalance to Iakopo’s destructive Space Water, allowing his allies to fight alongside him without risk of being caught in the crossfire.

Iakopo took a deep breath and then released his power.

“[Shatter],” he called the SKill, this time holding nothing back. He called upon the full entity of his powers and prayed that the distance he had put between himself and the rest of the people would minimize the damage.

The effects were immediate and devastating.

Space itself seemed to fracture, jagged lines of nothingness spreading outward from his palms.

Buildings caught in the effect simply... came apart, split by the same forces tearing through the fabric of reality.

Drakes caught in the radius of his attack didn’t even have time to screech.

For a time, this approach seemed to be working. Hi’iaka, Lukaloa, and Kainoa used Ozone Water barriers to contain the ripples of Space Water that spurted wildly even outside the cone of destruction Iakopo had created in front of him.

And while the Drakes tried to push through, Iakopo expanded the scope of his Skill, killing them by the dozen with each passing second.

Still maddened, the Abyssal Creatures didn’t stop and kept trying to break through.

Their massive bodies simply disintegrated, torn apart, swallowed by the lines, and spat back as gory pieces of flesh.

The Ozone Water cracked several times before Hi’iaka and the other two could repair it, barely able to contain Iakopo using so much of his power at once.

He was single-handedly destroying the horde.

“There’s too many of them!” Kainoa shouted, his voice strained as he maintained the barrier.

Hi’iaka gritted her teeth, her own barrier flickering.

“We have to hold on! Just a little longer!”

But as the battle wore on, the strain began to show.

Containing Space Water, even through Ozone Water, wasn’t easy.

Iakopo’s sister and his cousins could feel their Mana draining at too fast a rate to keep this up for long.

Thankfully, the giant horde had been reduced to barely a hundred monsters by then, with Iakopo choosing to start fighting them individually until most of the mosters had disappeared.

Soon, with the dust settled and Iakopo retreating back to the city, he could survey the damage.

Three-quarters of the city had been razed to the ground by Space Water.

Hi’iaka, Kainoa, and Lukaloa had raised barriers

As the dust settled, Iakopo surveyed the damage.

A large section of the city now lay in ruins, but the immediate threat had been neutralized.

He felt a pang of guilt for the destruction he had caused but pushed it aside.

There would be time for remorse later if they survived.

“Yalena,” he whispered, his voice barely audible over the distant sounds of battle. “Where are you?”

At the edge of the destruction zone, Hi’iaka, Iakopo’s sister and Shield, stood with Lukaloa and Kainoa, the two main members of his Retinue.

“By the Deep,” Lukaloa panted, bent over his knees. “I’ve never seen him use Space Water like that before.”

Kainoa nodded grimly.

“This is why we trained in Ozone Water. Without it, we’d be as much a danger to ourselves as to the enemy when fighting alongside him.”

Hi’iaka started giving orders.

“We need to focus on protecting the civilians. Iakopo can handle the rest of the Drakes, but we need to make sure the civilians can be evacuated. He shouldn’t need our help anymore.”

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They nodded in agreement, ready to spread out to gather the terrified citizens of Placid City and put them on boats.

But their hopes were dashed as a monstrous roar echoed across the city.

From the direction of the beach, a colossal form rose.

It was a Drake, but one unlike any they had ever seen.

Its body was easily ten times the size of the largest it had faced so far.

“What in the name of the Deep is that?” Lukaloa gasped.

[Drake (Boss) - Lv. 68]

The giant Drake’s eyes scanned the battlefield from afar, and then it took flight.

They immediately recreated the Ozone Water barriers.

But this time, instead of having to deal with Space Water, the trio was targeted by the Boss.

Before Iakopo could do anything, the Drake’s claws were upon Kainoa’s barrier.

Kainoa poured every ounce of his strength into his Ozone Water barrier, praying it would be enough.

It wasn’t.

The Drake’s massive tail whipped forward, slamming into Kainoa’s barrier with earth-shattering force.

For a moment, the Ozone Water held, shimmering brightly as it strained against the impact.

Then, with a sound like shattering glass, it broke.

Kainoa didn’t even have time to scream.

The Drake’s tail continued its arc, catching him squarely in the chest.

The force of the blow sent him flying, his body crashing through the wall of a nearby building with a sickening crunch, killed in one blow.

“Kainoa!” Hi’iaka screamed, her heart-wrenching at the sight of her cousin dying.

Lukaloa, his face pale with shock and fear, moved to stand beside Hi’iaka.

“We can’t beat that thing,” he said, stumbling back and his voice shaking.

Hi’iaka shook her head, tears streaming down her face.

“We can’t leave the civilians. We have to hold on just a little longer.”

But the giant Drake was already moving again, its massive form bearing down on them with terrifying speed.

Hi’iaka and Lukaloa stood their ground, pouring every last drop of Mana of their strength into their Ozone Water barriers.

The impact when it came was like nothing they had ever experienced.

The Drake’s claws raked across their barriers.

Hi’iaka felt her arms trembling with the effort of maintaining her Shield, her vision blurring as exhaustion set in.

Beside her, Lukaloa let out a cry of pain.

His barrier was flickering, weakening under the relentless assault.

Iakopo, in the distance, was closing in, preparing a spell but hesitating to strike in fear of killing his kin in the aftermath.

“I can’t... I can’t hold it,” Lukaloa gasped, his face contorted with effort.

With a final, earth-shattering blow, the Drake Boss shattered Lukaloa’s barrier.

The man had just enough time to turn to Hi’iaka, a look of sorrow and regret on his face before Drake’s jaws closed around him.

Hi’iaka screamed, a sound of pure anguish that cut through the chaos of battle.

Her own barrier faltered, flickering out of existence as her concentration shattered.

The giant Drake, blood dripping from its maw, turned its attention to her.

Hi’iaka stood frozen. S” I’m sorry, brother,” she whispered. “I wasn’t strong enough.”

The Drake’s claws descended, and Hi’iaka was no more.

Assisting powerless at the scene, Iakopo felt a sudden, wrenching pain in his chest.

He stumbled, nearly falling from his perch atop the ruined building.

“Hi'iaka,” he gasped.

He turned to the monster, who was now facing him with a smirk glinting across his eyes.

Rage and grief overwhelmed him.

He extended his arms at his side, seeing the Drake trying to move for the civilians.

He clapped his hands together and unleashed the most powerful Skill he had.

[Earthquake]

Seemingly, nothing happened in the wake of his hands clapping.

But then, the giant, overpowered Drake, felt something wrong in the air.

The monster turned to look at Iakopo and saw that small vibrations were propagating from the point where the man had clapped his hands.

Slowly but with a scary momentum, the space in front of Iakopo started to fracture.

It wasn’t as dramatic as [Shatter], but it quickly and surely grew through a spiderweb of resonating cracks in the air that quickly converged upon the Boss.

With his Mana completely spent by this attack, Iakopo’s form slowly precipitated to the ground, while the Boss, not fully understanding what was happening, found itself surrounded by warps in the fabric of space around it.

Space Water flowed in waves around the Drake, mounting more and more powerfully, sprouting in all directions, including toward the Drakes that had survived the last engagement.

The Boss roared in defiance, but the sound didn’t escape its vicinities. The space around him had already been cut off from the rest because of Iakopo’s Skill.

Then, the first line of [Earthquake] impacted the Boss’s body.

In a rather anti-climactic manner, the Boss found itself being torn to pieces in a bubble of space separated from the rest, completely shredded apart without even being able to realize what was going on.

As the creature went through the Mana-fueled meat grinder, Iakopo fell to his knees on the ground, close to the torn-apart body of his sister.

All anger drained away, leaving nothing but a hollow ache in his chest.

“Hi’iaka,” he whispered, crawling towards his sister’s broken body. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

But it was too late to apologize.

Hi’iaka was gone, along with Lukaloa and Kainoa.

In the distance, the tremendous Skill, the only thing able to kill such a powerful monster, reached the civilians.

Iakopo looked at them, imprinting deep in his mind the images of silent slaughter in front of him.

It was his fault.

No one else’s.

* * *

Hours later, Iakopo had gathered Hi’iaka’s body in his arms, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

It was in this state that Yalena found him.

She arrived alongside Maui, but it was too late.

The city was in ruins, and the survivors were few and far between.

Yalena’s heart broke as she saw Iakopo still cradling his sister’s body.

She approached slowly but still with her Star Water flowing around her, not sure about the man’s mental condition.

“Iakopo,” she said softly, kneeling beside him. “I’m so sorry. I came as fast as I could. We were held back by Cultists.”

He looked up at her, his eyes red and swollen from tears.

“They’re gone,” he said, his voice hollow. “All of them. I couldn’t... I wasn’t strong enough to save them.”

Yalena placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“It’s not your fault,” she said, though she knew the words would bring little comfort. “We... we need to preserve the bodies. For proper burial.”

Iakopo nodded numbly, allowing Yalena to work her Star Water magic.

The silvery substance flowed over Hi’iaka’s body in a spell that would prevent decay.

As Yalena moved to do the same for the other fallen Water Riders and later would for the civilians, Saikai approached.

“Lord Iakopo,” he said, his voice gentle. “We need to move. I have gathered the survivors above our vessel.”

But Iakopo didn’t respond.

He remained kneeling, his gaze fixed on the ruined city around them.

Saikai knelt beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“My lord, please. You need to come back to your senses. The people here still need you.”

Iakopo turned to look at him, his eyes hollow.

“I should have known better,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I should have been stronger. I should have protected them.”

Shaker’s heart ached at the defeat in his master’s voice.

“You did everything you could, my lord. No one could have asked for more.”

But Iakopo shook his head, turning away.

“It wasn’t enough. It will never be enough. They’re all dead because of me.”