POV: Aika
Unlike the other two, Aika didn't have a target in mind. She was looking around the island for something impressive. While the others made their way toward the island's interior, she instead wandered toward the exterior.
As she walked, she passed several Stegosauruses and other massive herbivores grazing peacefully along a wide dirt trail framed by broken electric fencing and tall, sun-bleached ferns. The ground was muddy in places, thick with foliage, and the remains of old viewing platforms jutted out from behind the trees like skeletons of the past. She looked at the dinosaurs for a moment and said, "Nah. The quest specifically said predators."
Seeing nothing of interest in that direction, she turned back toward the Visitor Center, hoping to take another look at one of the maps, silently wondering why she hadn't just brought one with her in the first place.
But as she approached the sprawling ruins of the center, her eyes caught something she hadn't noticed before—a large stadium-like structure off to the side, hidden partially behind collapsed palm trees and overtaken railings.
Curious, she went to investigate.
She entered through a rusted gate and found herself in a massive Mosasaurus arena—bleachers curved around a colossal lagoon, their seats cracked and overgrown with vines. Screens that once displayed educational videos now hung in shambles, their shattered surfaces glinting in the light. The air was thick with salt and decay, and a heavy mist rolled off the water's surface.
She chuckled and said, "Going by monster movie logic, there's probably a giant shark or something in there. Just kidding."
Then, with a grin, she picked up a loose chunk of debris and tossed it into the center of the lagoon. As she turned to walk away, the still air behind her exploded—the sound of water being breached with incredible force.
She spun back around just in time to see the Mosasaurus erupt from the lagoon, its massive jaws wide open as it launched into the air before crashing back down with a thunderous splash that sent waves slamming against the concrete walls.
Aika smiled wide. "Hello~."
With zero hesitation, she walked toward the edge of the lagoon in excitement, eyes sparkling with adrenaline. She could see the shadowy figure of the mosasaur circling beneath the surface, its outline distorting beneath the rippling water.
She activated the communication spell and said excitedly, "Found a big one in the water. Going to take it out!"
Then she cut the spell before anybody could respond.
Aika quickly stripped down to nothing but her underwear and folded her clothes neatly in a pile. She then started stretching for a few minutes, smiling mischievously as she did so.
I wonder what my master would think if he saw me like this, she thought, as all kinds of explicit scenarios ran through her head for a brief moment before she regained control of herself and reminded herself to focus, And that there would be time for her fantasies later... and possibly chances to make them reality.
Shaking her head and reminding herself to focus once more, she began casting spells on herself to help her adapt to the environment she was about to enter and to increase her chances of winning. After finishing her preparations, she re-strapped her wasp knives to her waist. Then she turned and faced the water with a huge smile on her face.
She screamed at the top of her lungs, "I'm having sushi for dinner! Yay!" and dove into the water.
She moved gracefully with incredible speed, as if the water did not affect her at all—which, thanks to the magic she had cast, was exactly what was happening. Her eyes scanned the deep blue water of the immeasurably deep habitat of the mosasaurus.
To her surprise, she observed that it was teeming with life—tons of fish, large and small, some as big as humpback whales or even slightly larger, and some as tiny as little minnows. There was coral, and just about everything you could imagine in the depths. There was even vegetation and huge stone formations that seemed to be there quite naturally. It was the most impressive man-made habitat she had ever seen or heard of.
As she continued to observe, she noticed that none of the other forms of life were predatory—or at least they didn't appear to be. Even the largest of the other water-dwelling creatures in the area that she could observe appeared to be filter feeders. That's when she realized what was going on.
This was a nightmarish cage for all the other forms of life. They were put here, allowed to thrive, likely for years—maybe even decades—until they had a functioning peaceful ecosystem… to act as an endless supply of food for the mosasaurus.
"That's kind of twisted", she thought to herself, "but also very effective", she mused.
She was shaken out of her thoughts by an explosion of movement as all the living things around her scattered. They had sensed it before she had, likely an instinct born of living in the area for so long...
The mosasaurus was coming.
A wide grin made its way onto Aika's face.
Showtime, she thought, and lunged to the left just as the mosasaurus's massive maw rose from the depths with great speed and little sound to snap at the place where she just was.
From behind the rock formation where Aika hid, she could see the creature's massive body moving with powerful grace and speed that far surpassed what its size would suggest. The mosasaurus righted its body and began scanning the surroundings, feeling abnormal vibrations in the water. It quickly swung its tail into one of the rock formations, turning it into dust, only to find nothing.
About 20 yards away, Aika stepped out from her hiding spot and fired the incredibly dense ball of compressed water she had used magic to make from her fingertip, pointing it at the mosasaurus like a gun.
"Bang," she said with a lazy half-smile as she fired.
The mosasaurus turned toward her in confusion, not realizing that the initial vibration it had felt was a rune that Aika had placed on the far rocky formation to distract it. The next thing the mosasaurus knew—its left eye had exploded with pain... quite literally, in fact.
A roar that shook the entire environment around it ripped from the creature's throat. It had never known pain like this its entire life. It had been the unchallenged apex predator—nothing could so much as touch it. And now, for the first time, it was feeling pain. The excruciating pain of having half of its sight robbed from it.
Quickly, its pain turned into fear. And its fear then turned into anger.
It whipped its head around, and with its one good eye, saw Aika there, making faces at it. Unable to understand what the strange tiny invader was doing, the mosasaurus somehow still understood it as provocation—which made it even more enraged.
It bolted toward her at lightning speed. But the moment the mosasaurus began to move, Aika dove into the depths like a torpedo.
"I'm bored, let's play tag!" she shouted, cackling at the top of her lungs as the mosasaurus chased her.
She darted past a massive coral reef and lightly touched it with her left hand as she passed, placing a rune on it with her magic in that brief moment. The rune was incredibly simple, but her smile only became more mischievous after she placed it.
3… 2… 1... she counted down in her head.
And then, without looking back, she heard the mosasaurus's confused roar and laughed once more. She had placed a simple sound amplification rune. And as the mosasaurus—now moving at its top speed and abandoning its silent and stealthy approach from earlier—displaced the water with its massive speeding body, the sound of movement was amplified 1,000-fold for about a second and a half.
The massively amplified sound happening right next to the mosasaurus shocked its senses and even caused a momentary concussion, confusing and filling the mosasaurus with fear at the invisible attack that came from seemingly nowhere.
For a moment it stopped swimming, but momentum still carried it forward—slamming it into the massive coral reef. Blood spewed from many small cuts all over its body as it struggled to regain its senses.
When it was finally able to regain control of itself, it glared forward, expecting to have to find the tiny invader all over again...
But the mosasaurus didn't have to.
Aika was right in front of it, about 100 feet away from its face, doing routine stretches and jumping jacks as if she was back at school in the gym. Noticing the creature had recovered, she stopped doing jumping jacks and looked at the creature with a pout.
"Aw, come on! I was almost done with my set. You've been pretty useless today, but could you be just a little more useless for me? I've only got like four left."
Once again, somehow understanding that it was being mocked, the mosasaurus surged toward her in a fit of rage. And Aika once again took off.
"It's okay! My chest is far too buoyant in this water anyway—it makes exercising very difficult!" she shouted over her shoulder, laughing hysterically.
What the mosasaurus couldn't see was that after every comment, after every provocation, as she darted away from the mosasaurus, her face was deadly serious with grim determination in her eyes. Every move was calculated, and she knew this had to go perfectly.
She needed the creature angry.
She needed to take advantage of its seemingly enhanced intelligence so she could lure it into her trap.
It's almost time, she thought. I'm running out of mana, but I think I calculated the route and the distance perfectly—and the sonic trap gave me enough time to catch my breath.
She took a deep breath once more.
Okay, let's do this, she thought, and suddenly she picked up speed—rocketing straight down toward the depths, toward the circular rock formation in a massive ring that she had seen far in the depths with her enhanced vision when she first scouted the area.
After a couple of minutes, she finally made it to them—the mosasaurus hot on her heels. She bolted around the inside of the rocky pillars, going the full circle, tapping each one with her right hand as she did so—her right hand having the other spell already formed and ready to be placed.
There were six pillars in total, spaced apart quite widely but still making a perfect circle. She split her remaining mana equally among each of the pillars, injecting as much as she could into each rune she placed.
Finally, she completed her task, and with her remaining mana that she had calculated for combat, she moved to the very center of the pillars and collapsed, exhausted, looking up at the mosasaurus as it bolted toward her—sure of its victory—its massive jaws open wide, ready to tear her to pieces.
3… 2… 1... Aika counted down in her head. By the time she had reached "one," the mosasaurus's jaws were a couple of feet from her—but she was smiling like a lunatic because her plan had worked.
Right before she was about to be eaten, there was a disturbance in the water all around them. Knowing what was coming, she stopped swimming and let the pressure from the water pull her down below the mosasaurus's location.
Looking up, she grinned in triumph as she saw her plan come to fruition.
From the runes placed on the pillars, extremely condensed and pressurized water in a thin, almost invisible line shot toward a single pinpointed location… exactly where Aika had calculated the mosasaurus's head would be. Six pressurized streams of aquatic destruction converged on a single point, slicing through the mosasaurus's head as they did so.
Blood, bone, teeth, and viscera rained down as the six streams not only penetrated the creature's head, destroying its brain, but the six streams also collided with each other—the rebounding force causing an explosion that pushed water destructively in all directions from the origin point, acting almost like a controlled explosive.
With the last of her strength, Aika swam up and grabbed one of the mosasaurus's teeth, miraculously still intact. She grinned and kissed the tooth—the rune she had placed on her lips before she dove into the water lighting up, activating the spell. It teleported the object the rune was placed upon, and anyone holding it, to the other rune that it was connected to, acting as its anchor point.
Suddenly, both Aika and the tooth were teleported out of the habitat—right next to Aika's neatly folded clothes.
Aika laid still for a moment, making sure she was okay. And then she breathed a sigh of relief.
"The one part of my plan I wasn't sure of turned out okay," she said with a smile. I knew my devil body wasn't so weak that it would get the bends from something like being teleported from the depths of the ocean, she thought to herself.
She slowly stood up, took a deep breath, and shouted at the top of her lungs, "Master, I did it! Hunt complete! Come give me a reward while my clothes are still off!"