The charge of the deep-sea guardians was a silent, terrifying avalanche. Their colossal, crab-like forms scuttled across the ocean floor, their massive claws raised, their single, glowing eyes fixed on the tiny bubble of life descending into their domain.
"Kafka, hold the shield!" Jin-Woo's telepathic command was a rod of steel. "Kikoru, with me! We break their formation!"
Kafka gritted his teeth, sweat beading on his forehead despite the cold of the abyss. He poured every ounce of the Progenitor's will into the bubble, reinforcing it, thickening the energy wall. The first guardian slammed into the shield, and the impact felt like a tectonic plate shifting. The bubble held, but a web of cracks appeared in the energy field for a terrifying second before sealing themselves.
Jin-Woo and Kikoru shot out of the bubble. The moment they passed the barrier, the crushing pressure of the deep sea hit them, a force that should have turned them to paste. But Jin-Woo was now part Kaiju, his body shrugging off the pressure as if it were a minor inconvenience. Kikoru's suit, enhanced by the Progenitor's essence and now glowing with a brilliant golden light, groaned but held, its internal systems compensating heroically.
They were two tiny figures against a legion of titans.
"Aim for the joints!" Kikoru yelled over their private comm.
"Aim for the eyes!" Jin-Woo corrected her. "They are the power conduits!"
They split apart, a trident of shadow and gold. Jin-Woo was a blur of motion. His draconic wings were useless here, but his body was a torpedo. He activated his Kaiju-form limbs, his hands becoming scythe-like blades. He rocketed toward the nearest guardian, weaving through its clumsy, crushing claw strikes. He moved with a grace that defied the water's resistance, and plunged his blades deep into the creature's single, massive optical sensor.
The guardian let out a silent, psychic scream as its red eye imploded. Its systems short-circuited, and the colossal machine collapsed, kicking up a mushroom cloud of silt from the ocean floor.
Kikoru's approach was less subtle. She was a brawler, a golden berserker. She met another guardian head-on. It swung a claw the size of a locomotive at her. Instead of dodging, she activated her suit's full power, her new axe materializing in her hands. She met the claw with her own weapon, the impact creating a massive, silent shockwave that distorted the water for miles.
Her axe blade, now humming with a mixture of JDF technology and the Progenitor's raw life-force, cut deep into the guardian's pincer, shearing through the alien metal. With a roar of exertion, she tore the claw clean off. The guardian flinched back, its only weapon gone, and she used the opening to launch herself at its eye, her axe held high.
While they fought, Kafka became the anchor. He guided their fragile bubble of life slowly, inexorably downward, toward the central brain-organism. The remaining guardians, seeing the two smaller threats decimating their ranks, changed tactics. Several of them ignored the fighters and charged the bubble directly.
"Jin-Woo, they're coming for me!" Kafka's panicked thought echoed.
"I see them," Jin-Woo replied, having just dispatched a second guardian. He was too far away to intercept them in time. "Hold on."
He didn't send his knights. He summoned something new.
From the shadows of the two colossal guardians he had just slain, their own forms began to rise. Corrupted, twisted versions of themselves, their broken eyes now glowing with Jin-Woo's signature violet. The Shadow Leviathans.
The new shadow soldiers, born of the abyss and already adapted to its pressure, met the charge of their living brethren. It was a silent, titanic clash of machines and their ghosts, a battle fought in the crushing darkness at the bottom of the world.
Jin-Woo and Kikoru, now free from the guardians, raced toward the true target: the Bio-Monarch on its throne.
The being had remained motionless, observing the battle with cold, analytical detachment. Its single, crimson eye tracked their approach. It registered that its pawns had failed.
[Inefficient,] it projected, its voice a wave of pure psychic force that made their teeth ache. [Direct intervention required.]
It rose from its throne. Its elegant, humanoid form began to shift. The white bio-material of its body rippled and tore, sprouting new limbs, new armor plating. It grew, expanding to a colossal thirty meters in height. Two massive, wing-like fins sprouted from its back, and its hands elongated into razor-sharp talons. It had become a perfect, deep-sea killing machine.
It raised a hand, and the water itself obeyed. A massive, high-pressure current, a literal underwater hurricane, erupted from its palm, aimed directly at the two attackers.
Kikoru, caught off guard, was sent tumbling end over end, her suit's systems screaming with warnings.
Jin-Woo, however, met the current head-on. He morphed his own arms into massive, Kaiju-like shields, anchoring himself to the ocean floor. The water raged around him, but he did not move.
The Bio-Monarch focused its attention on him, seeing him as the primary threat. It charged, its movements impossibly fast, a blur of white in the darkness.
It was a battle of gods at the bottom of the sea. They exchanged blows that would have leveled mountains, their impacts creating vast, empty cavities in the water that imploded with catastrophic force. The Bio-Monarch was strong, fast, and wielded the ocean itself as a weapon.
But Jin-Woo was more. He was a Monarch, a Kaiju, a warrior, and a general.
While he held the Bio-Monarch's attention, Kikoru recovered. She saw Jin-Woo locked in a desperate struggle. She knew she couldn't match the new creature's power head-on. She needed a different approach.
Her gaze fell on the massive, pulsating brain-organism that the throne sat upon. That was its power source.
"Kafka!" she yelled into the comm. "Get me to the brain! Now!"
Kafka, witnessing the battle with wide, terrified eyes, understood. He guided the bubble, their last bastion of safety, on a collision course with the colossal organism.
The Bio-Monarch saw the maneuver. It blasted Jin-Woo back with a wave of psychic force and turned to intercept the bubble.
But Jin-Woo was ready. [Ruler's Authority,] he projected, his own telekinetic power slamming into the Bio-Monarch, holding it in place for a single, critical second.
It was all the time Kafka needed. He drove the bubble directly into the soft, yielding flesh of the brain-organism. The moment they made contact, he dropped the shield.
The crushing pressure of the abyss returned, but they were now inside the enemy's very heart.
"Go!" Kafka gasped, the effort draining him.
Kikoru didn't need to be told twice. She shot through the gelatinous interior of the brain, her suit's sensors guiding her toward the central nerve cluster. She raised her axe, channeling every ounce of her enhanced, god-touched power into its blade.
The Bio-Monarch roared in fury, finally breaking free of Jin-Woo's hold. It turned to see its power source compromised. It was too late.
With a final, triumphant scream, Kikoru plunged her axe into the central ganglion of the Architect's oceanic heart.
A wave of pure, bio-electric energy erupted, and the entire, miles-wide organism convulsed in a final, agonizing death throe. The crimson light in its veins flickered and died. The Bio-Monarch froze, its single red eye dimming, its power cut off at the source.
Jin-Woo appeared before it, his faceplate retracted, his eyes cold and victorious.
"Checkmate," he whispered.
He plunged his own blade-arm deep into the Bio-Monarch's chest, and the last Architect weapon on the battlefield shattered into a million pieces of white dust.
The battle was over. The Crimson Tide began to recede. But as the adrenaline faded, they were left with a new, terrifying problem. They were three beings, miles beneath the surface of the ocean, with no shield, no vehicle, and a very limited supply of air.