"Save me, Lord Nos..."
The apprentice who had been thrown off the airship continued to struggle and wail, being sucked into the surging maelstrom.
"Bring me up!" Nos shouted, injecting a sufficient amount of hydrogen into the airship. Bit by bit, the airship rose into the air just before being drawn into the giant whirlpool.
As the airship lifted from the water, everyone present let out a collective sigh of relief. If they had been pulled into that vortex, they would all have been doomed.
Nos's hands were trembling, and after surviving a life-threatening ordeal, he no longer held back. He quickly took out a palm-sized crimson crystal, and with an anguished expression, he used his Mage's Hand to send it into the sky. After a moment, it exploded with a brilliant red light, causing a sudden change in the environment. The thick fog that had shrouded them dissipated rapidly before their eyes.
Lynn surveyed the area. In just a few seconds, the dense fog covering a radius of two to three kilometers had vanished. It seemed that the range of the whirlpool was smaller than the previous one.
Barbara, quite unhappy, asked, "If you had something so useful, why didn't you use it earlier? We almost died underwater."
"This is the bone marrow of a Feathered Serpent. It can temporarily neutralize the mist, but the range and duration are limited. There's only one of these; we must not use it lightly," Nos explained gravely. He gazed into the distance, as the nearby white fog had dissipated, but the fog in the distance was slowly converging toward the center.
They couldn't afford to delay any longer!
"Quick, everyone, get moving, and throw these things down there!" Nos urged the others to throw the wooden barrels on the airship in the direction of the vortex.
The barrels, filled with an unknown liquid, quickly fell onto the sea surface, flowing into the massive whirlpool.
Shortly after, Lynn made an astonishing discovery. The previously turbulent waters were slowly calming down.
"What's going on? Is the massive whirlpool subsiding?" Hank, too, was taken aback, but the next moment, they realized they had jumped to conclusions. The extraordinarily calm sea seemed to be boiling like a raging fire, emitting a continuous stream of bubbles.
After a moment, a massive tentacle extended from the giant whirlpool, slamming heavily onto the sea surface. The entire sea seemed to tremble for a moment, and a ten-meter-high giant wave leapt into the sky, its spray soaring into the clouds. The terrifying force was chilling. And this was just the beginning; more and more colossal tentacles emerged from the sea, each covered in menacing barbs that glowed with an eerie blue light, indicating their exceptional sharpness, like a group of serpentine dragons writhing on the surface.
Nos, however, was excited beyond restraint. The information he had received was accurate, and the liquid indeed plunged the 'Eye of Death' into a state of frenzied madness.
"Now, Hank, adjust the cannon's aim and take it down!" Nos yelled at the others.
If it were possible, he would have loved to do it himself, but apart from the unreliable apprentices, he was the only one capable of operating the airship right now.
Should they really attack this?
Hank stared at the enraged 'Eye of Death' below, continuously swallowing his saliva. It seemed they had provoked an entity they shouldn't have.
Nos, frustrated by Hank's hesitation, wanted to kick him off the airship, but he turned to Lynn and said, "It's your turn, Radak!"
Lynn glanced at him and immediately took over the position of the gunner, adjusting the angle of the crystal cannon with the switch. About three seconds later, he pressed the lever.
A substantial amount of condensed magical energy gathered at the half-meter-wide barrel, and with a thunderous roar, an extremely brilliant blue light burst forth, carrying destructive force as it fiercely struck a certain point on the sea surface.
Rumble!
An intense explosion set off a chain reaction, causing the sea to instantaneously sink. But in the next moment, an enormous amount of seawater rushed madly inward.
The power of the advanced magic crystal cannon was astonishing. Even with the airship stabilized by alchemical enchantments like [Wind Barrier] and [Rapid Lift], it still shook violently under the powerful recoil.
However, this crucial shot was missed.
Nothing but splashing water could be seen.
"Radak, what happened to you?" Nos said with great disappointment. Firing this cannon required several high-quality mana stones, and the power came at a high cost!
Hank, Eva, and Barbara also looked at Lynn with strange expressions.
The 'Eye of Death' was so massive, and yet he managed to miss it?
"Cough, my bad, let me try again!" Lynn said somewhat embarrassed. From such a distance, he had instinctively aimed using a ballistic trajectory, but it turned out that the cannon fired in a straight line!
To make it easier for Lynn to aim, Nos quickly lowered the airship to an altitude of 300 meters.
This time, Lynn readjusted the crystal cannon's trajectory. A few seconds later, another thunderous roar rang out as an extremely brilliant blue light crossed over the constantly swaying tentacles and struck a spot on the sea surface.
Could she have missed again?
The idea crossed the minds of Nos and the others, but they quickly realized they were mistaken. As a massive amount of seawater evaporated, a colossal figure hidden beneath the sea's surface was revealed.
The Eye of Death!
Everyone present widened their eyes and gazed at this figure. Its visible body length was over twenty meters, and if you included the tentacles, it might break the hundred-meter mark. Its jet-black body seemed to be forged from steel, with a triangular head and a pair of blood-red eyes that exuded a fierce and terrifying aura.
Before everyone could recover from their shock, another beam of magic crystal cannon light appeared. Lynn didn't wait for the airship to settle from the intense recoil before launching another attack.
With the displaced seawater not having rushed in yet, this shot directly hit the body of the Eye of Death!
The jet-black, steel-like body was pierced by the dazzling beam, revealing a massive, bone-deep wound. A large amount of blood gushed out from it, dyeing the nearby sea surface a deep green.
An angry roar resounded through the sky, and the sea seemed to come to life, constantly churning. Dozens of thick, sturdy tentacles reached out and slammed down, creating waves several meters high on the sea surface.
However, the airship was simply too high, and no matter how large the waves on the sea were, they couldn't harm Lynn and the others inside.
Even the psychic screams, after crossing a distance of three hundred meters, had become extremely weak.
One after another, the magic crystal cannon shots landed on the sea surface, creating a series of scars on the colossal body of the Eye of Death.
Normally, even with magic crystal cannons capable of penetrating defenses, severely injuring a thinking behemoth would not be an easy task.
However, after consuming the liquid from the barrels, the Eye of Death had lost its sanity and only knew to continuously swing its tentacles and launch attacks on distant enemies.