There were many reasons Illya had chosen Aria as her target. According to her analysis, Aria was a Metal Path witch—one gifted with the meta ability to alter the very composition of substances. An ability that, inconveniently enough, harmonised almost too perfectly with Illya's own.
Dangerous as that power once was, time had eroded its edge. In her later years, Aria no longer possessed the stamina to wield it effectively. Age had dulled both her strength and her endurance, leaving only the hollow shadow of the formidable witch she had once been.
And then, there was the final, almost laughable factor. Her father had once told her that handsome people blend easily among the masses. Illya could never quite make sense of that logic. Blending in had little to do with the symmetry of the face. Still… humans did amuse her, in their strange, arbitrary wisdoms.
After carefully gathering Aria's ashes, Illya turned her attention to the battlefield. With deliberate precision, she restored the fractured space around her—just as her father had once taught her.
When the hallway was once again seamless, she released her nanobots upon Aria's lifeless armor, watching as they swarmed and consumed the metal until not a fragment remained.
Elsewhere, the search for the missing general had already begun. Her squad would awaken soon, and the hunt would spread. But none of that concerned Illya. Her path lay elsewhere—towards the pirate fleet of Commander Iris.
Flight was always an option, of course. Yet Illya found herself descending instead, her form breaking apart into countless silver motes that cascaded like a falling tide. In the next breath, she was beneath the waves, streaming forward in her nanobot form.
She could not explain why the ocean called to her so strongly now. Perhaps it was the echo of Aria's memories lingering in her system. Whatever the reason, the sensation of water flowing against her, carrying her, surrounding her, felt refreshing. Almost… liberating.
Beneath the waves, life teemed in every direction. Vast silhouettes of sea monsters glided like living mountains, schools of fish scattered in glittering ribbons, reptilian beasts twisted their scaled bodies through the currents, while amphibians and even insects drifted along hidden routes.
None seemed disturbed by the mettalic swarm gliding steadily in their midst.
Where humans would inspire fear, she inspired only curiosity. A few creatures even circled her, twirling around her, as if she were a new playmate in their endless games.
"..."
Their antics slowed her. With a thought, Illya allowed her body to change.
Her surface rippled, plates of nanobots shifting like liquid mercury. Nanobots folded inward, dissolving into the current. A wave of reassembly swept across her frame, scales knitting together, fins blossoming where arms had been, a dorsal ridge cutting through the water like a blade.
Her face stretched forward. Jaws lengthened. Rows of jagged teeth slotted neatly into place, each one locking into her new skeletal grid.
She felt the drag of water sliding along her hide. Her tail formed in a shiver of metal, then flexed with sudden strength, propelling her forward in a burst of speed that hummed through her frame.
Sound shifted. Vibrations thrummed along her gills—foreign organs, yet oddly natural. Even the smallest ripple ahead translated into clear, precise awareness, as if the ocean whispered directions straight into her mind.
In moments, the humanoid was gone, leaving a shark to swim in her place.
Yet her disguise failed to scatter her companions. Instead, more creatures gathered around her, fascinated by her sleek body. They danced beside her fins, darted under her belly, spiraled through the currents in joyous swarms.
"… Here I thought humans were complicated."
With one flick of her tail, she surged forward, breaking free of their encirclement. The sea blurred past her in streaks of blue and silver, and her playmates tumbled in her wake, left to chase shadows.
As she swam toward the coordinates of the pirate fleets, Illya noticed the water shifting.
The greenish-blue around her slowly darkened, bleeding into a crimson hue. Before long, the sea had turned completely red, the kind of color that made it seem as though she was swimming through blood.
"The pirate fleets are surrounded by mutated megalodons…" she recalled. A faint smile tugged at her lips. "This might be a fortunate opportunity."
At her command, and the nanobots responded at once. Her sleek body began to expand, the frame stretching wider and longer as more nanobots poured into her form through her storage unit. Her fins broadened, her tail grew heavier, and her jaws lengthened into a colossal maw lined with serrated metal teeth.
Within moments, the blue shark was gone. In its place loomed a great blue Megalodon, a behemoth of the sea whose very movement sent ripples tearing through the blood-red waters. Her sapphire eyes gleamed faintly, reflecting the silent authority of a predator that no creature dared to challenge.
Sensing her presence, several megalodons made the mistake of lunging toward her. But as soon as they drew close, their instincts turned against them. A primal warning growled in their blood, urging them not to challenge this creature.
The massive silhouettes circling the crimson waters moved like a single mind, a pack without a champion. Their mutations had twisted them into hunters that thrived in groups rather than as solitary beasts.
Yet hunting was hardly necessary anymore—ever since the Pirate Queen began feeding them the bodies of her enemies, this stretch of ocean had become a banquet. It earned a name that carried through whispers and fear alike, The Red Sea.
But now, before them swam something different. An intruder that did not just look like one of their kind—it embodied the presence of a true apex predator, more megalodon than the creatures themselves. For once, the pack hesitated.
The duty instilled in them—to defend the Pirate Queen's vessels at all costs—wavered under Illya's overwhelming presence. The blood-hazed waters grew eerily still, as if the sea itself held its breath.
Then, a shrill chorus crackled into Illya's comm system.
"Who… are… you?"
It wasn't a single voice but many, layered over one another, a warped symphony that scraped against her neural core. The horrid resonance reverberated through her mind like jagged glass, each syllable tearing at the edges of thought.
Illya paused. The fact that they could speak—that there was room for dialogue—stayed her hand from the slaughter she instinctively desired. Conversation, for now, would suffice.
"Are you the pets of the Pirates?" Her voice carried across their minds, firm, almost disdainful.
"Pets…" The megalodons echoed, as if the word itself gnawed at them.
"If not, then why have you forgotten how to hunt for yourselves?" Illya pressed, her tone sharp as steel. "What became of the true rulers of the seas? How could you degrade into slaves—mindless beasts obeying a tyrant who feeds you scraps of her enemies? Where is the hunger that once made your kind feared?"
Her words struck the hivemind like harpoons. "If any of you had the courage to deny me," she continued, "you would have already charged without hesitation."
Silence fell—a silence heavy enough to bend the waters themselves. The swarm lingered, unsettled, but not a single beast dared move.
"I am no liberator," Illya declared, her voice like a dark tide. "Nor am I a conqueror. I am the one who will end the pirates. And if any of you stand in my way… not one of you will leave this sea alive."
Soon enough, the pirates arrived, their vessels looming above the gathered packs of megalodons that lingered at the edge of the Red Sea, as if waiting for something, or someone.
"The time for speeches is over," Illya said, her voice carrying like a blade through water. "Your first test stands before you. My words are simple… if you choose to follow them."
She cut through the waters, slipping past the encirclement of the megalodons, her massive form streaking toward the fleets above.
The pirates spotted her silhouette and shouts of alarm rippled across their decks.
"They are coming," Illya intoned darkly, her words still echoing in the hivemind. "Make sure none of them leave here alive."
Then, without hesitation, she surged upward. Her colossal jaws clamped around the metallic hull of a pirate ship. Steel shrieked and splintered beneath her bite before collapsing inward, torn apart like paper. Blood rushed into the water as bodies poured out, and Illya drank deep of the chaos, savoring the iron taste.
Screams filled the sea, muffled by waves, until only silence and bubbles remained. The megalodons watched her rampage unfold, hesitant at first. But as shredded limbs and half-devoured corpses sank into the crimson depths, something primal awakened in them. Hunger. Rage. The echo of what they had once been.
In an instant, restraint shattered. The packs surged forward as one, a storm of teeth and fury crashing into the pirate fleet. The Red Sea boiled with violence as Illya's command was enacted, not through obedience, but through shared bloodlust.