Leveling Up by Seducing Milfs-Chapter 184. The Empress Who Only Watched

They arrived too late.

Rick and his team broke through the outer district of Meridia Citadel, where chaos was already happening. The corrupted Kraken had gotten to the city three minutes before them, and those three minutes had been terrible.

Living coral buildings shattered, their bioluminescent glow flickering like dying stars. Normally, the water currents flowed in neat patterns, but now they swirled around in a chaotic way, bringing debris and hurt ocean dwellers through the streets.

The Kraken’s huge body took up most of the plaza, and its tentacles were thrashing around in all directions. Every time they moved, the water shook and knocked people down.

The Guardian’s body leaked purple corruption energy like poisonous blood, which spread through Meridia’s clean water and ruined everything it touched.

But the fact that the ocean dwellers were already fighting back gave Rick a little bit of hope. Ocean dwellers quickly set up defensive barriers around groups of civilians.

As they tried to push back the corrupted tentacles, tridents crackled with oceanic lightning. Mages used water magic to make shields and attacks, giving people time to get out.

Even without orders from its empress, the city was fighting back.

Rick yelled through bond resonance and out loud at the same time, "Carmilla, Natasha, get the civilians out to safety!"

"Get those innocent ocean dwellers who can’t defend themselves to the outer districts where corruption hasn’t spread yet!"

"Liora, get ready to cast your strongest spell of purification!" He kept coordinating. "We need to weaken the Kraken so that you can completely cleanse her!"

"Zara, you’re with me on offense!"

"Alright! Let’s fucking go!" Zara nodded while punching her fists.

His partners immediately broke up, but years of working together in battle ensured the plan proceeded smoothly. Carmilla dove toward a building that had fallen down, where ocean dweller children were trapped under the rubble.

Her supernatural strength let her lift coral beams that would crush normal people.

Before the corrupted water could reach scared civilians, Natasha flash-froze it, making ice walls that directed people to safe areas.

Liora stood near the city’s main temple, where divine energy was already building around her like a golden sun. The spell she was getting ready to cast would take a lot of time and focus, so the rest of them had to keep the Kraken from targeting her.

Zara smiled even though things were bad, and demonic energy crackled around her claws. "My body is tingling with excitement of this huge fight!"

"Let’s show this squid bitch what happens when you attack a city we protect!"

Rick turned on Draconic Sovereignty right away, and the forty percent stat boost flowed through his body as he focused on protecting these fifty thousand people.

His dragon scales appeared on his skin, protecting him from the corrupted water. Wings grew out of his back, letting him move as quickly as the Kraken’s tentacles.

But Rick immediately noticed a problem with Myrissa. She swam straight toward her corrupted partner, disregarding the danger and sobbing the entire time. "Kraken! It’s me...!"

"Please, stop this at once! All of these ocean dwellers are your family!"

"We’ve been together for two hundred years!"

"Ah, fuck! I hate it when someone tells a literal corrupted monster to ’stop,’ as if that would actually make a difference." Rick said in his mind with frustration.

A corrupted tentacle hit out of instinct, trying to crush Myrissa against the floor of the plaza. Rick stopped the blow with Resonant Shield, which appeared just in time to block it.

The impact still knocked Myrissa over, but she was still alive and confused.

"You can’t get to her back like this, Myrissa!" Rick grabbed the princess by the shoulders and made her look him in the eye. "The corruption is too strong!"

"She’ll kill you without even knowing what she’s doing if you get too close!" 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

"But...! I have to try!" Myrissa fought against his grip, her voice breaking with desperation. "She’s afraid and confused!"

"I can still feel pieces of our connection! She doesn’t want to hurt anyone, but she can’t help it!"

Another tentacle reached out to them. Rick turned on Sovereign’s Command, which gave him temporary control over the corruption as the demon king.

The tentacle stopped in the middle of its strike and shook as two opposing wills fought for control. Rick won, but only for three seconds before corruption took over again.

Three seconds was all it took. Rick took advantage of the opening to pull Myrissa behind a coral pillar that was still standing, using it as cover.

"Then assist me in diminishing her from a distance! Even if your words are ineffective, your ocean magic can still extend its reach to her!"

Myrissa’s voice, which was musical, broke on a sob, but she nodded. As she channeled two hundred years of partnership into a magical attack that was both an attack and a plea for recognition, her trident started to glow with blue-white energy.

Meanwhile... Ocean Empress Nerissa Abyssryn stood at her crystal window high above the plaza and watched her kingdom burn.

She had heard the sirens. The ward systems are screaming about a breach of internal corruption.

She was alarmed by the reports of the Kraken’s collapse. The emergency evacuation protocols went into effect without her direct order because her kids had learned to take care of themselves when their mother was too numb to care.

She should go down there. It is her job to lead the defense.

She was the Ocean Empress, the kingdom’s most powerful water mage. She was the only person who could have stopped this disaster with just one spell.

But her body wouldn’t move. When faced with a crisis that needed real feeling, fifty years of shutting down emotionally had turned into physical paralysis.

Her hands were perfectly still on the windowsill, as if they were made of the same coral that made her palace.

After that, she saw him. Rick Rolland, a man with numerous titles, appeared before her.

Only a few hours ago, the young man from the surface had moved her to tears for the first time in fifty years.

While fighting the corrupted Kraken head-on, he was also in charge of rescue efforts in several battle zones at the same time. His form, which looked like a dragon’s scales, moved between tentacles with precision speed, keeping the Guardian’s attention away from civilians.

He planned every move to protect other people, not to improve his battle effectiveness.

Nerissa saw Rick stop a tentacle that was going after a group of ocean dwellers and couldn’t swim fast enough to get away. Rick absorbed the impact himself, while Draconic Sovereignty absorbed the intended damage.

There was blood in the water around him, but he didn’t back down. Instead, he used the moment of contact to send Crimson Devastation through the tentacle, sending demonic and draconic energy back to the Kraken’s main body.

Even though it was clear that it was dangerous, Myrissa was there too, fighting with him. Her second daughter, the one who had been with the Kraken since she was fifty.

Even from this distance, Nerissa could see the tears streaming down Myrissa’s face. She understood the pain of fighting someone you loved.

In just two minutes, Rick saved Myrissa three times. First, he thwarted a tentacle strike that threatened to crush her head.

Second, he rescued her from a stream of dirty water that tried to slither down her throat. Third, a piece of debris fell from the Kraken’s thrashing body.

Rick always put himself between Myrissa and danger without thinking. He took damage that should have been hers every time.

And every time, he went right back to coordinating the rescue efforts, as if his injuries didn’t matter.

Nerissa’s eyes moved to the other ocean dwellers on the surface. The knight woman with red hair was the only one evacuating the eastern district.

Her supernatural strength let her carry a lot of ocean dweller children at once. The ice mage had turned a whole section of corrupted water into a quarantine barrier, which stopped the corruption from spreading any further.

The priestess shone like a golden sun, and her divine energy was already cleaning up the corruption around her and healing civilians who were hurt from a distance.

Even though the demon woman fought in a chaotic way, she was protecting instead of destroying. She cut through the corrupted tentacles with brutal efficiency, but Nerissa saw that she angled each strike to push the tentacles away from populated areas instead of just trying to do as much damage as possible.

They were keeping her people safe. People who lived on the surface and owed Meridia nothing were putting their lives on the line for ocean dwellers they had just met a few hours before.

And she remained right there, watching. She felt paralyzed, knowing that moving would force her to confront emotions she had suppressed for fifty years.

Nerissa’s hands began to tremble—just a little, but enough for her to notice.