Angel Monarch

The first one to know about their prey arriving was Will. He felt a large shape moving in the sea kilometers away. Just the sheer displacement of water was enough for him to have an idea about its location.

They quickly sent away Lucy to get Sera and Bea, then when they finally arrived it was time for the confrontation.

Before setting out on this expedition they knew that this battle is going to be different, because within the water only Sarah and Will can fight effectively. Faith and Lucy can also cause issues for the monster, but no one else really... Except Vicky, her attacks are effective against anything, but no very powerful.

The plan was to keep the beast near the surface, so everyone can at least have some way of attacking. This is going to be Will's and Sarah's job, delivering attacks while distracting.

They got onto their hippogryphs, except the people who can fly themselves. Sera watched Hellfire and Lucy rise into the air with envy, she let herself have a second of longing before focusing her mind to the fight.

But she did ask Kastral to speed up and leave the others in the dust.

While most were flying, Sarah just turned into her water elemental form and blended in seamlessly with the waves. The last person who weren't in the air was Will, instead he swam out far into the sea and transformed.

His body elongated, the feet turned into twenty meter long tentacles, his head became shark-like with four eyes on each side and multiple rows of sharp teeth. Arms grew out as well, four of them two with hands and two with deadly scythes. His coloring was just like the sea which provided excellent camouflage.

The speeds of his body increased drastically as well, nearly reaching Kastral who wasn't even trying to go fast.

Sera flew through the sky while scanning the water for the large shadow of the beast.

It took them a few minutes of flying, but she finally spotted it. Her eyes couldn't pierce the waters, all she saw was a gigantic shadow at least hundred meters, and it was strange... Its movement was off, not fluid enough, like it had too many moving parts out of sync.

She couldn't figure it out for a while, but Will didn't have this problem. He saw exactly what caused the disharmony and he realized a very important detail that the scouts didn't...

'Those idiots made a fucking typo! It was Colossal Sea Devourers... plural!'

In the water ahead of Will instead of one gigantic monster, there were dozens if not hundreds of creatures. All of them were the same, about 15 meters in length with bodies that looked like a squid... or more like had a small resemblance to one.

They had some small tentacles near their front, and four long ones for grabbing prey, but their bodies were more similar to a whale's. Their tail was made up of a large whale-like fluke that propelled them forward, the smaller tentacles helped with maneuverability.

Their mouth was made up of four segments which could open wide to bite and crush any victim they catch with the four powerful tentacles. The eyes on the side of their heads constantly scanned the waters, but they didn't see Will hiding bellow them.

He observed their movement for a long while before finally realizing why did they count as one monster. They were a hivemind or at least there was a leader that controlled all the others.

'Maybe it will be easier than we thought, I only have to take out one for all of them to die!'

He was hoping that was the case, because killing all of them without even one slipping away was basically impossible.

The next thing he did was trying to find the leader which proved to be extremely hard, but after watching for half an hour he finally spotted it. A beast larger than the rest, they were all surrounding it like a protective shield.

He didn't hesitate for a second and shot out like a torpedo from under their formation. He used his scythe arms to cut two monsters nearly in half, then with his powerful mouth he bit onto the lead monster's head crushing it nearly instantly.

It didn't even last a second and their leader was already dead... Or at least that's what Will thought.

As it turned out just because it was bigger than the rest didn't mean it was the source of their connected mind. He quickly released it from his maw and began moving away from the dense middle part of their formation. They tried to stop and hold onto him, but each of their tentacles was way smaller then his own.

Using his hands, scythes, mouth and everything possible he killed his way out of this predicament and led the monsters closer to the surface of the sea.

From the air Sera finally saw the truth about the Colossal Sea Devourer, and with this information everything clicked into place.

They didn't hesitate and all of them soon began massacring the weird looking squids.

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Sera using the speed of Kastral and her ten meter long lance began skewering the giant monsters left and right. Every time one of them died by her weapon she had to dismiss and re-summon it.

On the other hand Hellfire opted for a less direct approach and began throwing fireballs into the sea. It wasn't really effective, but it did kill one or two beasts.

What was more interesting is the shadow that kept popping up on a squid, then with an invisibly small stab wound moved on. Faith was basically performing lobotomies on the go, and her stabs always found their marks.

Bea was using her powers to make algae grow into a dense forest of plants, which easily contained a dozen or so squids.

And on one part of their formation a dense black smoke reined killing every creature within... Except one.

Lucy's strength was truly remarkable after her evolution. Her powers increased to proportions none of them thought possible for an ascended. And it made Sera really excited for her own level up.

They were great at killing these pests, but there was clearly one person who was better than the rest.

Sarah made a small scale whirlpool and each creature that went into it got crushed by the others. She was using the corpses of the dead creatures to kill even more of them.

As the killing went on a large portion of the sea became red from all the bloodshed, but something didn't seem right. No matter how many of them died they didn't try to retreat, which was great for their mission, and also raised red flags in Sera's mind.

'Where's their leader? Did it already escaped and these ones are just sacrifices to make it more believable... Or, maybe these weren't even the monster?'

The more she thought about the clearer the picture gotten, and the paler her face had become.

'Dammit!... How did I not think of that!'

"Kastral, relay a message to every hippgoryph, get high into the air as fast as possible!"

He turned his head towards Sera, but seeing her scared expression he knew something bad was about to happen. Quickly he climbed into the air as well, and after reaching about two hundred meter he leveled out and finally asked what was going on.

"We made a huge mistake... Those monsters in the water!... They aren't the monster at all... they are what the real creature uses as bait!"

He swiftly understood what she meant and looking back down on the bloody sea, they caught a glimpse of the real beast.

Within the water Will started to get confused a lot sooner than Sera. With each kill more questions rose in his mind.

'Where is their leader? We nearly killed all of them, where is it hiding?'

He killed two more, than looked and felt around to find another prey, but their was none... They were all dead.

'Well... what now? Can I maybe use any one of these for evolution?'

He swam towards a corpse, than touched it but nothing happened. He then tried another, then another, then another, but even after trying nearly all of them including the largest of them... He still didn't evolve.

Soon Sarah appeared next his huge body looking as confused as him, neither of them could speak in their transformed forms, but with just movements they conveyed enough information.

They agreed on moving to the surface and talk with the others about what to do next.

After swimming for only a few second though, a large shadow appeared bellow them and moved with swiftness that should have been physically impossible for a monster this size.

Will noticed it too late, and it was already dragging him down in its maw when he realized what happened. It was biting down on his mid section making his escape out of the question.

On the surface the bloody seawater seemed tranquil, but in the deep darkness a battle was only just beginning.