Thankfully, my biggest fears did not come to pass. A dozen water bullets formed around me as I slowly began swimming backwards, and while I did so, I willed them to fire off directly toward the open mouth of the Leviathan.

  It was a big target, so there wasn’t much aiming needed, but they slammed into the open mouth of the massive creature, hitting the back upper jaw. It only took a couple of the bullets for it to slam its mouth shut and abruptly stop its charge before snapping back open, looking toward me and roaring with what I could clearly feel was anger.

  If the roar it let out when it first made its appearance in the ocean was one of announcement, then this one was filled with bloodlust. It was angry. I could feel it in my bones. I think before it simply was going to kill me for the sake of killing me, but now it really had a reason to come kill me.

  Well, shit. It’s not like I was going to win this battle by becoming friends with the damn thing. I had to damage it eventually, so this was inevitable. Of course, I didn’t just stand there, or better yet, float there in the water after the water bullets hit it.

  When it opened its mouth to let out that anger, I had already begun repositioning myself toward its flank, and a dozen more water bullets formed above my head.

  Woosh!

  Another volley of bullets took off and roared into the side of the Leviathan just below its head. I wasn’t able to swim far enough to truly target the rest of its body, and in fact, I was still within striking range, so I kept up these volleys for as long as I could.

  Thankfully, and I truly mean thankfully, after the first and second volley I realized I could definitely keep this going some more. My energy didn’t seem to be depleting one bit. Being in the water like this is apparently where I’m meant to be. Of course, I had no complaints about that.

  Now I think I’ve become faster than any human in the history of Earth has ever been in the water but it still doesn’t compare to the speed and powerful movements of the behemoth of a creature in front of me. It snapped its head in my direction once more, and barely a second later it was ready to eat me in my entirety once again.

  So, of course, I fired off another volley of bullets into its mouth, but the beast simply shrugged them off.

  Fuck.

  So I dismissed the skill and quickly did the only other thing I could do.

  Ocean’s Maw.

  The massive head of a creature that resembled the beast in front of me roared into existence. Even while it was underwater, I could hear the sound of rushing waves in my ears. In fact, I think this was the loudest it had ever roared in any previous iteration of me activating the skill.

  Matter of fact, to double down on that, I think it was the largest it had ever looked in any iteration of me activating the skill. Holy shit.

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  There were two maws of creatures that resembled each other, one of flesh and blood, the other made of water and mana, clashing into each other like two massive lions meeting on the open plains of the African savanna, or better yet, two natural disasters taking physical form and colliding to see who could rightfully claim the throne of supremacy between them.

  There could only be one king on the mountain, and the skill and the Leviathan would decide.

  BOOM!

  RUMBLE!

  The force of the collision was so strong that I was quite literally pushed away through the waves, unable to control what direction I thrashed about in for a couple of moments while the aftereffects of the collision remained strong in the waters around me.

  By the time I got myself back under control, the creature was back in front of me, and this time it let out a roar that physically shook the insides of my body, causing me to cough up a mouthful of blood. But I didn’t give in. Even as water rushed into my body because I was forced to open my mouth, I let out the skill once more.

  “OCEAN’S MAW!”

  As the skill roared to life, I didn’t bother waiting to see what the result of this one would be before I frantically swam to the surface of the ocean.

  After breaking the surface of the water, I coughed up whatever was in my system as quickly as I possibly could. Although I was very compatible with being underwater for long periods of time, I wasn’t entirely a damn merman just yet. I couldn’t live without oxygen, and I didn’t have gills. I needed to surface every now and then, and swallowing water definitely didn’t help with that.

  A couple of moments later and I could finally breathe properly again.

  There was a trail of blood running down my lips from whatever that roar did to me earlier, but there was no time to worry about that as I dove back down to see the creature bearing toward me like a heat-seeking missile, and I was the target.

  Just my luck, the ebb was here, and I had no time to wait for the flow to attack it, nor could I risk bypassing the ebb for the sake of power now. So I quickly held out my spear horizontally before me, and even though the mouth of the creature was open from top to bottom and wider than the length of my spear, that didn’t count for its teeth.

  I braced myself for the contact, only for it to ram straight into me, my spear somehow getting lodged in between the crevices of its teeth. As it rose up into the sky, I was dangling in its mouth with nothing but my spear lodged in the wedges of its teeth preventing me from falling inside.

  All I could do at this point was hope and pray that it managed to hold on and the Leviathan wasn’t able to snap its jaw shut with me inside of it. Then I reached the apex of its leap, and I could feel the creature turning back down toward the ocean. I was only dangling there since I was now hanging outside of its mouth, and I could see just how high it had taken me.

  “MOTHER FUCKER!”

  I let out an involuntary yell as the feeling of weightlessness took me for just a moment, almost like that feeling you get right before the roller coaster hits the big drop. Except this is no damn ride. This is real life, and I can’t just sit here and let this thing slam me into the water.

  My mind scrambled as I hung helplessly in the air while the Leviathan began driving me down toward the water. What to do, what to do, what to do. In the heat of it, I didn’t have many options.

  Actually...no... why I’m sitting here trying to think of what I should do when there’s quite literally only one thing I could do.

  Well, maybe two, but letting go of the spear and falling into the water didn’t seem like a good idea either, so the only real logical option I had was to use my most powerful skill, this time from the inside of its mouth.

  So far, I’ve only ever used my spear as a conduit for Ocean’s Maw, but I don’t remember the skill saying anything about having to use a weapon. Why couldn’t I use my hand? Why couldn’t it be materialized exactly where I willed it to?

  I took one hand off of the spear, the other gripping tight, and aimed it above my head into the mouth of the Leviathan and muttered two words.

  “Ocean’s Maw.”