Lucien whispered silently as he accepted his fate, waiting for his body to be chewed and crushed—but the expected pain never came. Instead, a thunderous, ear-piercing cry erupted from the monster holding him.
The agonizing cry lasted only a second, leaving the air in dead silence afterward.
'Ha...?'
Lucien couldn't see what was happening; his body was already too broken, and even breathing properly was a struggle. He felt himself suddenly drenched in murky blood as the tentacle holding his leg vanished.
Then he felt his injured body plummeting downward at a terrifying speed. His mind unconsciously supplied to him: dropping from such a height would surely kill him.
But before Lucien could hit the ground, a pair of arms embraced his body mid-air.
A choked voice followed the warmth, one that seemed to have finally lost all reason.
"Stay… stay with me, please. Lucien. Cien. Cien… Cien. My salvation. Stay with me."
Feeling the unresponsive body in his arms and the heavy scent of blood, Zephyr—who had just unconsciously activated his 'Gaya skill' to save him—held Lucien even tighter as his floating form landed on the ground.
He knelt in a daze, burying his head in the latter's neck, and whispered frantically.
"No, No, No, No! You can't do this to me! Not after you're the only one I have left!"
Being blind, the brilliant golden message that appeared before him went unnoticed.
Had Zephyr been able to see it, he would have realized that right now he could aid Lucien with nothing more than a thought.
______
Gaya's Skill:
Absolute Celestial Domain
(Omnipotence) — Unranked (1)
Activated.
Everything within the domain would be sealed and brought under absolute control.
Here, there is only one master.
They could wield any skill in existence, bending reality itself to their will.
______
Earlier, after being mercilessly tossed far away by the tentacle for the second time, Zephyr's energy—frantically searching for Lucien—had felt Lucien's breath dimmed.
He was on the brink of madness.
In that moment, as Zephyr lunged toward the monster direction once more, ready to tear it apart with his bare hands, a strong force erupted from deep within his body.
The same force that had obliterated the monster—the same force that made him float, the same force that heightened his perception of everything around, instantly sharpening his senses even in blindness.
Now, that energy coalesced into a bright shield around him and Lucien, stretching outward in every direction throughout the dungeon, completely sealing everything, living or not, that it voraciously engulfed.
However, the more it stretched, the more mana it demanded from Zephyr. It reached a point where his mana—that was as vast as a bottomless sea—started to run dry.
At the center of it all, Zephyr's mind had stopped functioning. He was driven by a single thought: he had to save the person slowly growing cold in his arms. If Lucien were conscious, he would've noticed that the consequences of using the gaya skill were already surfacing on Zephyr's face.
The skill was ravaging his brain far more severely than it had harmed Lucien, who had only felt his temper rise slightly after using his own Gaya skill twice—because Zephyr's Gaya skill was far stronger.
Even stronger than Erick's.
It was one of a kind in existence.
Zephyr pressed his face to Lucien's neck, greedily inhaling the familiar scent. Amid his pounding heart—the only sound in the dark—and his trembling hands clutching Lucien, a few broken words escaped him.
"R-right… heal… I need to heal him."
At that moment, he was a mess.
His only desire was to save Lucien.
But… but…
Did he even possess a healing ability?