The Crown’s Entrapment

Devas chuckled at Xenia’s naive words before he spoke and further explained the situation.

p-a- n-d-a-n-0-v-e-l、(c)om “We guardians might be the rulers of this realm, but that doesn’t mean that all the creatures under our care in this realm would obey everything we say,” Devas explained at length.

“There are some powerful creatures out there born from their stubbornness. Those would occasionally challenge our authority whenever they could, and we, unfortunately, can’t just simply kill them or punish them. Unless they commit the crime of harming or killing other creatures for no valid reasons, they’re basically untouchable.”

“Don’t worry. Belmont can only, at best, hurt you,” Polo plainly reassured her. “He can’t kill you. After all, no one can kill an intruder from outside of this realm except for us guardians…”

Xenia nodded. So it would seem that she was truly the best choice in trying to retrieve that trident from the sea serpent…

Turning to Devas, she curiously asked, “How about you, Lord Devas? Can’t you retrieve it?”

Devas scratched his head and replied, “I can’t meddle in Polo’s affairs. The waters are his territory to rule and guard, so it’s forbidden for other guardians to cross that line. Doing so will get me punished by the Almighty.”

“Then how about me?” Xenia asked further. “Won’t I get punished for meddling as well?”

“No, you won’t. You’re already an intruder, so your life solely depends on the jurisdiction of us four guardians of this realm…” Devas clarified.

Xenia nodded in understanding. “Fine then. Let’s not waste time and get that trident back.”

Turning her attention back to the Guardian of the waters, Xenia half expected her words to start something along the lines of her being quickly thrown off the deep end. Perhaps she expected that Polo would teleport her out of this waiting area and out into the waters, not even giving her the chance to prepare herself.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, nothing happened. Instead, an awkward silence settled between the three of them as her words lingered in the air.

“Uhm…”

“What is it?” Polo scoffed.

“Well, where do I even start trying to look for it?” Xenia awkwardly asked. “You said that this sea serpent took it, but where is it?”

“Oh, that? He’s right over there.”

Xenia blinked as she followed Polo’s thumb towards the outside of the room. Sure enough, right through the glass, she saw a massive wall of scales passively swimming out in the distance. Coiled around its tail, a shimmering shaft of blue glinted against the sun’s light coming from above. The trident looked absolutely tiny in comparison to the beast, and it wasn’t really giving her much confidence that she could out-muscle the massive serpent.

“Well? On with it,” Polo stoically shooed her away. “I’m expecting you to be done in three hours or less.”

“Three hours?!” Devas exclaimed in protest. “You can’t expect her to be done that quickly when it took you twice that to even wrangle it under control!”

“I’m not asking her to defeat it. I’m merely asking her to retrieve my trident,” Polo coolly replied. “Surely such a task wouldn’t take that long.”

Tuning out the background noise, Xenia could help but stare at the task ahead of her. Moving closer to the glass, she could already tell that the serpent was as long as a massive caravan. Sure, Polo did say that she didn’t have to defeat the serpent, but how would she go about such a task?

Looking around, Xenia quickly spotted a small hatch that would open up into the open waters outside. Without even thinking, she pulled it open and went outside, quickly holding her breath as she steadied herself against the currents.

‘Alright… Now what?’

Hoping that her lung capacity would be more than enough for this endeavor, Xenia made her way to the massive serpent. Thankfully, its massive size made it easy to sneak up on it. Unfortunately, it also meant that one wrong move might end with her being crushed underneath its massive girth.

‘This thing is massive!’ she inwardly thought, her gaze zeroing in on the trident coiled around its tail. ‘How am I supposed to even pry that trident out of its tail??’

Biding her time, Xenia observed as the serpent seemingly relaxed, coiling in on itself as its tail met its equally massive head. Blinking, Xenia went through one plan after the next, all of them quickly being discarded as the sheer size of the sea serpent made it impossible for her ideas to work.

‘Again, brute force wouldn’t work… Sneaking up on it now would be suicide with the way its tail is right in front of its head… Maybe… Would that work?’

Gauging the remaining breath she had in her chest, Xenia nodded to herself before she went ahead and swam right up to the serpent’s tail. Taking a look at the trident, she noted its position before she went ahead and made her way up the serpent’s face. She stilled her beating heart as she braced herself for a fight. Only… it didn’t happen.

‘Wait… Is this thing really ignoring me?’

Swimming around, Xenia looked at the beast’s eyes, checking to see if it even tried to track her movements. Sure enough, the serpent was indeed looking at her. Only, it didn’t bother even trying to attack her. It seemed to be content in watching her, a seemingly smug aura emanating off the beast as it looked at its newest plaything.

‘Okay then… That works for me, at least…’

With the situation thoroughly scoped out, Xenia began digging deep into herself and willed for the light inside her to come. There was no way that it would even defeat the beast, but it might just be enough to blind and surprise the thing enough for it to let go of the trident on its tail.

Well, that was assuming that she even knew how to will her light to come to her.

‘Come on…’ she inwardly wished, hoping that her training would actually pay off. ‘Dig deep… Stress yourself out, Xenia!’

Thinking about all of the worst possible emotions that she could call upon, the quickest one that came to her call was her was… desperation.

The moment her chest heaved, she knew she had overestimated herself.