Hiss!
A thick, purple-red beam of Mana tore across the sky, cleaving through the waves and gouging two trenches in the floodwaters, each dozens of meters deep.
The three Noah's Arks immediately scattered, their outer Magecraft barriers tightened to the limit as they fled the rift carved open by the blast.
The ships on the flanks—Numbers 2 and 3—reacted fastest, escaping unscathed.
But Ship 1, carrying the main fighting force, became the beam's primary target.
The priestesses and priests of the Temple of Ea poured every last ounce of strength into steering the ark clear, barely slipping out of the beam's kill zone in time.
Even so, the glancing blow was enough to dim the magic barrier instantly.
Hundreds of gemstones powering the defensive spells shattered, crumbling to dust.
The ship lurched violently, tossing its passengers side to side in the wind and waves until their guts felt like they might come up their throats.
Judging by the timing of that blast, Apsu would catch them in no more than five to seven minutes.
And even before it reached them, the Ether storm whipped up by its wings and the Mana beams spewing from its maw could capsize all three Arks within three to five minutes.
They had to buy time until the ritual was complete.
Samael's mind spun furiously, his anxious gaze sweeping the cabin.
But everywhere he looked, the familiar faces were pale, bloodless, and broken, dousing whatever spark of hope tried to rise in his heart.
All of them… heavily wounded.
Even Merlin, the one most skilled at clinging to life, had already linked his Mana to his future self—only that had allowed him to repeatedly cleanse the black tide. Now, he too was running on fumes.
Sending anyone out there now would be sending them to die.
What else… what else could he do?
Think! There has to be something!
The ancient serpent clutched his head, calculations colliding and dissolving in his mind, every possible path reeking of blood.
Maybe… gather all the gravely injured and have them burn themselves out, one after another…
Snap!
Samael slapped a hand to his forehead, crushing the thought, jaw clenched, expression cold.
No. They had come this far—something had to change.
If he simply obeyed the so-called Mandate of Heaven and let his wounded friends march one by one toward their fated ends, then what meaning had all his efforts held until now?
"Roar! When everyone else falls, that's when the true protagonist steps in to save the world!"
In the middle of his turmoil, a clawed hand emerged from the shadows and clapped his shoulder, its tone brimming with self-satisfaction.
"That's right! It's the jaguar!"
Jaguar Warrior leaned in close, orange-yellow eyes sparkling, her lips twitching as she spoke with her familiar verbal tic.
"You go out there, you might die…"
Samael's lips tightened, his voice low.
"Hey, don't underestimate a jaguar. When a feline gets angry, we're plenty fierce, meow!"
The once playful goddess lifted her chin slightly, patting Samael's shoulder with a light hum. Her eyes gleamed with feline pride—the look of a predator defending its territory, claws bared.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Hundreds of split beams rained down from the sky, glancing off all three Arks to varying degrees, rapidly eating away at the outer Mana barriers.
Of the thousands of Magi, priestesses, and priests keeping the spells active, nearly half collapsed in exhaustion, groaning as they fell unconscious.
At this rate, the surrounding thunder and storms would rip the Arks apart long before Apsu even reached them.
"Ten minutes should be enough, right?"
The lighthearted question rang in Samael's ear, and he nodded without thinking.
"Alright then, it's decided!"
By the time he realized what he'd agreed to and tried to stop her, the Jaguar Warrior was already flexing her wrists, stepping up to the fractured solar calendar stone, and placing her hand upon it.
As her claws slid out with a metallic click, she seemed to remember something. Turning back with a grim expression, she muttered, almost to herself.
"Samael, Kuku really likes you. If she ends up hitting me over this later, you'd better help stop her!"
Boom!
Before Samael could react, her claws sank into the cracked stone as easily as cutting tofu, prying free the round core at its center.
In the same motion, her feline jaws opened wide in an exaggerated arc, and she swallowed the fist-sized core whole.
"Pfft!"
On the bed, Kukulkan's face blanched like gold leaf. Her features twisted in pain as she coughed up golden-red blood.
"What are you doing?!"
Samael's face darkened instantly, and he started to raise a hand—only for a slender, soft hand to seize his right arm in a firm grip.
"Just hold out for ten minutes, and I promise I won't hit you again!"
The Feathered Serpent God fixed her gaze on the figure wrapped in golden sunlight. Her voice was low, her eyes distant and deep.
"Tezcatlipoca… I'll give you one more push."
In the next breath, the Mayan goddess slit her left wrist, letting her hot, golden blood spill over the Jaguar Warrior.
The sunlight swirling over the warrior's body erupted, boiling into violent red-and-black flames.
Then the goddess herself dissolved like a dark, sinister mist, spreading to fill the entire hold.
Suddenly, a crimson haze clouded everyone's vision. Within that hallucinatory scene, they could make out a smoky, shifting monster lounging upon a throne of bones.
Beneath the likeness of a Mayan altar, warriors chosen for sacrifice knelt fervently on the stone floor.
One by one, they seized obsidian daggers, drove them into their chests, tore out still-beating hearts, and laid them upon carved stone plates—smiling in grim satisfaction as they fell dead.
The vision of twisted time and space vanished as abruptly as it came, dispelled by the sound of the cabin door creaking open and a chipper hum.
"Hmph! Now you'll see what happens when you make a jaguar angry!"
The ship gave a faint lurch as a fierce deity—wreathed in smoke and mist, blazing with red-black fire and streaks of blood—sprang skyward, landing on the back of the massive Ether dragon and unleashing wanton destruction.
"Jaguar Kick!"
"Jaguar Punch!"
"Jaguar Eye!"
"Mad Dog Bite!"
"(⊙o⊙)… Uh—wrong, wrong—Jaguar Bite!"
Across the purple-red-scaled back of the dragon, the small but blindingly fast feline ripped through the Ether body's flesh and bone, tearing a path from its head all the way to its tail.
Apsu's enraged roars echoed through the sky as its dorsal fins flared, spitting dense beams of Mana like sheets of rain.
Samael's memory jolted—wasn't the ruler of the Mayan First Sun, the "Smoking Mirror" Tezcatlipoca, renowned as a Grand Class Berserker, even when riding a mortal vessel, so long as his full form was revealed?
Looking up at the roiling Ether storms and the two figures locked in combat, the ancient serpent felt a sudden flash of hope.
"What can you do? Quickly!"
"Even with the Sun Era's authority from me, her Mad Enhancement won't last long!"
Kukulkan clutched Samael's arm, dragging the shepherd king out of his daze before another fit of coughing brought blood to her lips. She collapsed, spent.
Samael caught the benevolent goddess who had done so much for humankind, cradling her to let her rest. Then he turned toward the central cabin, where preparations had not ceased, and roared—
"King Gilgamesh—begin the Great Offering!"
"Samael-sama, preparations are complete!"
Amid the lurching caused by wind and thunder, Siduri clung to the railing, answering in a steady, solemn voice.
At the same time, the sacred, ancient epic rang out in the Akkadian tongue, echoing through the ark.