On the rocky coast of a beach in the Hobbit Territory, before a chain of mountains that rose like a natural wall against the ocean winds, an unprecedented scene of war was unfolding.
Dozens of colossal creatures marched out of the ocean depths. Giants.
Ancient beings were emerging one after another, dragging themselves from the white foam onto the sand, each step making the ground tremble.
They differed from one another; some had bluish, thick skin like fish scales.
Others bore hundreds of eyes that blinked out of sync, each eyeball turning in different directions.
There were those that walked on many legs or those whose arms multiplied like tentacles.
The peoples of the Sea Race called them the Giants of the Depths.
Descendants of the Cyclops who ruled the Ringus Sea, the offspring of crosses with countless ocean races.
There was no fixed pattern in their forms; only two things were similar: their enormous size and their prodigious strength.
Like Dragons, simply reaching maturity was enough for them to be classified as level-A or even S monsters.
But the invaders were not limited to the Giants. Beside them, a horde of creatures of the Sea Race marched — octopus-men; fish-men; shark-men, every kind of race.
Any race capable of breathing for long periods out of the water had been summoned under the command of the current ruler of the sea, Mandrake Ocluno.
Not everyone answered the call. Some tribes turned their backs on the plan, others considered the hurried invasion madness and sent only criminals, mercenaries and cannon fodder.
Yet among those summoned there were truly lethal figures.
The Sea Race suffered from an illness similar to that of the Beast Race.
Under the peaceful rule of Balord, the Whale-Man, they had prospered in tranquility, but that very stability had weakened their elite combat power.
Still, unlike the beast-people, the sea peoples spread across vast territories, and among them there were races that lived centuries or millennia.
Thanks to this, they were not devoid of champions. Four of them stood out.
Ku, the Crab-Man, the most skilled trident warrior in the entire Sea Race.
Ludo, the Orca-Man, Lord of the Frozen Seas, whose strength had already become the stuff of epics.
Balord, the Whale-Man, a peaceful ruler who, when provoked, also displayed immense power.
And the most feared of all, a creature without a name and without a tribe, known only as the Pistol Shrimp.
The latter was a legend. There was no official strength ranking in the Sea Race, but among those four, everyone knew he was the strongest.
And that fact was being proven in real time on that beach.
A young swordsman, with messy brown hair and eyes of the same color, ran for his life.
Jino Britz, newly named Sword Emperor, was facing the most insane fight of his life.
At his side, the Ebony Wolf Skoll advanced, affording the swordsman small moments of respite.
Ahead of them, a strangely shaped being charged with an impossible speed for its form.
The Pistol Shrimp. Its right appendage struck violently, each impact generating supersonic shock waves that echoed like cannons.
Each blow was accompanied by the phenomenon of sonoluminescence, blue and silver flashes blinking in the air like compressed lightning, distorting vision, breaking the logic of reality around them.
Every strike was a disaster.
Dodging by a hair from yet another Sonic Pistol shot, Jino Britz felt his body shudder from the displaced air that nearly swallowed him.
The discharge exploded behind him, blowing the sand into a blue-silver flare, as if a bomb had detonated.
He gritted his teeth and for the hundredth time wondered why Rygar had said with such confidence that he would be able to defeat this monster.
Of course, Rygar's confidence was not unfounded.
After all, in another timeline — Oldgar's — Jino had indeed been the one responsible for defeating the Pistol Shrimp.
But that was a detail Jino knew nothing about. To him, the fight felt mortal.
Each shot left trails of devastation. With every shock wave, craters opened in the sand, the entire beach turning into a lunar field of fissures and gigantic holes.
The ground gave way, sank, cracked under the violence of the supersonic waves.
Getting close to it was a distant dream.
The Shrimp fired those Sonic Pistols as if they were casual strikes that required no effort whatsoever.
And to make things worse, it was not only destructive, it was fast. Unimaginably fast for a creature with that robust, strange body.
With each blow it repositioned itself with agility, ready to fire again, always at the exact angle to prevent any approach.
Jino could not help but imagine what it would be like if an entire tribe of that race existed.
A line of warriors capable of firing endless sonic weapons. The mere thought gave him chills.
But he was mistaken.
The being before him was not just a Pistol Shrimp. He was the last.
Even in times when others still existed, none possessed the ability to fire so many times in succession, nor to sustain such power without destroying their own bodies in the process.
Nature was fair in its own way: despite granting lethal weapons, it had not given a body strong enough to withstand them.
Only this Pistol Shrimp was different. Special.
He was born with an absurdly resilient body and abnormally potent mana.
Many said he had arisen as the will of the sea itself, born to take vengeance for the tragedy that exterminated his race.
Others believed he was an artificial creation, the result of experiments by the now-extinct Pistol Shrimp Tribe.
The truth was known only by a few in the world.
He was the last Pistol Shrimp, born with the Laplace Factor.
To atone for the crimes he had committed in the past by using such power, he swore servitude to Ruler Balord for a thousand years.
But Jino knew none of that. To him, this guy was a cheater.
An ironic and slightly hypocritical thought, considering that Jino himself had been born with a heavenly talent for swordsmanship.
In any case, none of that mattered now.
If it weren't for the Wild Dash and the unpredictable maneuvers of the North God Style, with their feints, jinks and irregular angles, he would have been pulverized long ago.
The Flow of the Water God Style could not cut through the devastating wave of the Sonic Pistol.
While running, rolling and advancing across the ruined field, Jino analyzed the enemy.
'If it were Master Gall Farion…' he thought, recalling the strength of his former instructor.
'He would probably win. He would cut the opponent before he could fire.'
But then he thought of another figure. 'And if it were Lady Reida?'
Even the Water God, with all her experience and mastery of the Deprivation Sword Realm, would have serious difficulties.
It was hard to imagine whether she could cut the Pistol Shrimp before being swallowed by the sonic impact.
A single hit, just one, would be certain death even for her.
But Jino was neither Gall nor Reida.
He was Jino Britz.
He was more versatile. And he was not alone.
Little by little, he began to adapt. With each shot, he learned to read the movement, to identify the right moment to counterattack.
His body reacted and adapted more and more.
Like the Pistol Shrimp, Jino needed only one thing.
A single strike.
A single definitive cut.
And more and more Jino felt that that moment was approaching.
---
The fight between Jino, Skoll and the Pistol Shrimp remained at an impasse.
Still, the mere fact that they kept the enemy occupied was a victory in itself — for across the rest of the beach, the combat was decidedly inclined in favor of the Kingdom of Gaia.
Up to that moment, there had not been a single casualty among Gaia's ranks.
The Giants of the Depths fell one after another. The Sea Races were killed or violently pushed back into the ocean.
Part of that massacre was a direct consequence of Jino holding the most dangerous warrior of the enemy army.
But there was another factor that differed from Oldgar's timeline.
Taes and Kilian were not dead in this timeline.
While Ornthorn, the Dragon Hunter, fought a duel against Ludo, the Orca-Man, the entire rest of Gaia's contingent was free to crush their opponents without equivalent opposition.
Taes was also a North Emperor, an unstoppable force on the battlefield.
Giants fell beneath his blade of fire one after another. Against him, even Rank-S creatures became minor obstacles, slain after a brief fight.
Baron, the Red Ogre, was also ferocious.
With his fists and brute strength, he was tearing giants to pieces, smashing them against the ground, tossing them at one another as if they were dolls.
He seemed eager to prove his worth.
In the skies, Aisha was calm, mounted on Ezkalor.
With the power of the Clairvoyant Eye, she could mark her opponents from great distance.
She gathered large amounts of mana into Wind, Lightning and Stone spells, then fired them like a sniper.
Each casting was capable of bringing down giants with a single strike.
In a short time, six of them had already fallen under her strategy.
Among the forces gathered there on the side of the Kingdom of Gaia, no warrior was below the level of Saint.
Warriors and mages who, alone, would be considered elite in other parts of the world, were gathered by the hundreds.
Moreover, at the forefront of the slaughter, two Sword Kings rampaged across the battlefield.
Eleonor Hangel and Weys Adoldia.
Together, they led the vanguard.
It was in that carnage that the Sea Races began to understand the foolishness of the attack.
There had been little strategy, no real preparation, just the desperate summons made by their foolish leader, Mandrake.
The first to perceive the inevitability was Ludo, the Orca-Man. While facing Ornthorn, he already knew he would lose.
But the worst was seeing his troops throwing themselves against the enemy as if they were sushi on a cutting board.
Then, without hesitation, Ludo activated his sonar, and a wave of vibration swept the field. His voice echoed in the minds of those who had taken part in the call:
"I am not in command of this attack… but if anyone still intends to survive, fall back now!"
He did not wait for a response.
He turned and fled toward the sea. Ornthorn pursued him.
Still, Ludo reached the ocean, gravely wounded but alive.
His retreat was only the spark.
Soon, other tribes began to hesitate.
The official commander of the forces, an octopus-man — Mandrake's nephew — bellowed hysterical orders to hold the line, but more and more sea warriors preferred to break ranks.
But not everyone heeded the calls to withdraw.
The Giants of the Depths, sons and descendants of Esterópes himself, ignored the pleas.
They would not retreat, for their loyalty was not to transient leaders but to the blood of their progenitor.
And the Pistol Shrimp did not retreat either. He would follow Balord's order above all else.
The Whale-Man had personally ordered him to come, and until he heard an order to withdraw from the same man, he would not fall back. He did not know the meaning of the word surrender.
Even in the face of certain death.
-----
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