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Siwoo and Deneb had positioned themselves at the eastern edge of the city.

Meanwhile, the massive Kraken was dragging its enormous body from the docks, swinging its gigantic tentacles as it entered the plaza.

The tunnel-sized mouth on its head never stopped chomping on the flying fish darting around, while the smaller mouths on its suckers helped devour them.

Its long, slit pupils rolled before locking onto Siwoo and Deneb.

Though it was moving in their direction, it wasn’t an attack.

It wasn’t threatening them either.

But when a monster that size greedily gobbled up entire swarms of fish, the sheer force of its movements alone was enough to cause destruction on the scale of a natural disaster.

-KUGUGUGUNG!

A long tentacle whipped sideways and smacked the bell tower, ripping it clean out of the ground and sending it flying past the city walls.

Now he understood why people said size was a cheat code.

No matter how strong Siwoo was, if one of those tentacles landed a direct hit, there wouldn’t even be a body left to recover.

“? ?~”

Meanwhile, under Siwoo’s protection, Deneb was finishing her spell.

A spell that was sung.

Each beautiful note, like a celestial melody, sent waves through the air, amplifying her mana with every vibration.

By then, violet sparks crackled all around her, sending deep, resonant tremors through the air.

The Gemini’s original ranking was 22nd.

Since the twins shared a single bowl, it dropped to 21st.

Even without Albireo, the level Deneb could wield alone was at the beginning of the 20th rank, the realm of a Grand Witch.

Siwoo was just surrounded by an absurd number of high-ranking witches, but in reality, Grand Witches were the top 1% of all witches in existence.

They were beings that defied the natural order.

And Deneb was proving just how powerful her magic truly was.

As the melody built toward its climax, a mass of condensed mana shot into the sky.

The lightning, flashing and staining the night sky entirely purple, pronounced destruction in rhythm with Deneb’s dirge.

This brilliance was nothing like natural lightning.

A blinding flash turned Siwoo’s vision pure white for a moment, followed by a massive spear of mana slamming into the Kraken’s head.

Three of the octopus’s tentacles, raised too late in a desperate attempt at defense, were instantly vaporized.

-KUGUGUGUGWANG!!!!

A burst of white light, then a deafening explosion half a second later.

“KIEEEEEEEEK!!!!”

Then, another heartbeat later, the Kraken let out an ear-piercing scream.

It thrashed wildly, like an octopus dropped into boiling water, flailing its remaining tentacles in a frenzy, smashing everything around it.

“How was that? This is what happens when I stop holding back.”

Deneb wiped the sweat from her forehead and walked up beside Siwoo.

Her attack was on an entirely different level compared to what she had used against him before.

She had been holding back considerably at that time.

If he had taken a hit like that, no matter how tough he was, he would’ve been dead on the spot.

But Siwoo’s expression remained tense.

“.......”

Because in that blinding light, like hundreds of flashbangs detonating at once.

He had watched every second of Deneb’s attack landing on the Kraken.

The moment that razor-sharp mana spear made contact with the octopus’s body, Siwoo saw it...

A transparent scale, something that shouldn’t exist on a normal invertebrate, shattered her strike into pieces.

Like rainwater seeping between cracks in stone, the concentrated waves of mana spread through its entire body, flowing along its scales.

“Mr. Siwoo?”

“Ms. Deneb, I don’t think it’s over yet.”

“What? That can’t be right.”

At first, Deneb looked skeptical, like she couldn’t believe it.

But soon enough, her expression mirrored Siwoo’s concern.

“KIEEEEEEK! KIEEEEEEK!”

The Kraken’s shrieks didn’t stop.

Its massive body twisted and thrashed, but its movements were too long and violent to be just death throes.

“But that was a direct hit....”

“Isn’t there a stronger spell in Gemini’s magic?”

“There is, but... not without my sister....”

This didn’t make any sense.

There aren’t many detailed records about the Witch of the Deep Sea, but in her prime, she ranked 21st and commanded five monstrous beasts in battle.

Even considering how managing multiple familiars would divide her power, Deneb should’ve been more than capable of taking down that octopus.

Especially when she’d used nearly half her mana and spent almost a full minute chanting before launching a direct hit.

Was there some unexpected variable?

A powerful mystic code? Or maybe the spell’s attributes were just a bad match?

“That thing’s covered in scales. They deflected Ms. Deneb’s spell.”

“What? You saw that?”

Even in all that chaos, Siwoo had noticed something that even Deneb, the one casting the spell, had missed?

There were plenty of things to be shocked about, but they didn’t have time for that now.

“KUOOOOOO—!!!”

The kraken roared again.

Its dark, murky body started shifting colors, like a painter’s palette smeared with muddy pigments.

A bellow filled with pure rage and hatred came crashing toward Siwoo and Deneb.

-BANG! BANG! BANG!

Before, it had moved like it was lazily walking into a banquet, but now it was rampaging like a predator on the hunt.

It charged forward at a speed that was on a whole different level from before.

The force was so intense that the entire building beneath Siwoo and Deneb shook as if it was about to collapse.

“No way...! It’s already finished regenerating....”

Deneb was right.

The limbs that had been completely vaporized had regrown as if nothing had happened.

Isnane regenerative power and strength.

And the sheer, natural disaster-level destruction of that massive body.

“I’ll try again. Cover me one more time.”

Deneb started gathering mana again, preparing to chant.

“Can we even make it in time? I could handle small fry, but that thing... I don’t think I can stop it.”

“There’s still some distance left!”

“Maybe we should take a second to observe....”

“JUST COVER ME!”

Siwoo shut his mouth.

Truth was, something about Deneb’s plan didn’t sit right with him.

His instincts, honed from dodging death time and again, screamed a warning.

It was now the octopus’s turn, not theirs.

But before Siwoo could even respond, Deneb had already started chanting, and there was no way he could just leave her to fend for herself.

Just as Deneb stubbornly kept up her incantation...

A shadow swept across the sky.

A limb, much longer than the other tentacles it had been using, lashed out like a whip. It was a hunting leg, hidden beneath its body until now.

Because of its sheer size, it looked slow, but the centrifugal force at its tip sent it whipping through the air at near-sonic speed.

“Ms. Deneb!”

“Kyaa!”

Siwoo grabbed Deneb’s waist mid-chant and rolled with her out of the way.

Calling it a dodge was generous.

It was more of a desperate, full-throttle escape.

-BOOOOOOM!!!!

The Kraken’s limb slammed down, splitting the city in half.

A deafening boom rang out, the ground trembling like an earthquake had struck.

The tentacle, which had flexibly retracted, came crashing down again right above Siwoo and Deneb as they fled.

“Bloom!”

Siwoo gritted his teeth and copied the mana, allocating all of it solely for physical enhancement and the ribbon.

If he could use dimensional shift, he wouldn’t have to suffer through this ordeal, but the swarms of fish flying around the city posed a problem.

If his teleportation coordinates overlapped with anything, it could lead to a disaster, so he couldn’t use it carelessly.

-BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!

The Kraken had closed the distance even more, now striking with two additional tentacles, unleashing a devastating barrage.

Calling this an ‘attack’ seemed ridiculous when it was reshaping the entire terrain along with the buildings.

Even with his spirit body’s durability and tough armor, if he got hit directly, there wouldn’t even be bones left to recover.

The shockwaves alone, from its rapid strikes coming from every direction, sent out debris like an explosion, making it feel like a bomb had gone off right next to them.

“Fuck.”

“Mr. Siwoo, I can move on my own now.”

“If you’ll excuse me for a bit longer, I’ll be faster.”

“...Alright.”

Though his little mother-in-law could seem quirky and clumsy at times, but she was undoubtedly a witch.

Most people would be screaming their lungs out in a situation like this, yet she stayed completely composed.

Deneb began to chant softly, her voice carrying like a lullaby.

With her beautiful voice laced with mana, a surge of vitality and strength filled Siwoo’s body.

And so, their deadly game of tag with the Kraken dragged on until dawn.

2.

One thing was clear.

This world only had day and night—there was no dawn or dusk.

One moment, the sky seemed to be brightening, and the next, the sun had suddenly shot up to its peak, burning away the thick swarms of flying fish, and just like that, the Kraken, after laying waste to the city, slunk away into the sea like it was retreating.

The city, which had collapsed without leaving even rubble behind, was restored as if time had rewound to when they first arrived.

A perfectly closed loop, for this was a world doomed to repeat the same day over and over.

“Haah....”

Both of them let out a long sigh, confirming that the chaos had finally passed.

Running for their lives from an enraged Kraken had drained every ounce of strength from them.

“At least a day here isn’t 24 hours.”

“...With a world of this scale being isolated, unless it’s someone like Duchess Keter behind it, there are bound to be all kinds of restrictions keeping it in check.”

Deneb slumped down onto a wooden crate.

But when she noticed an unknown black liquid seeping into her nightgown from the crate, she immediately cast a cleansing spell, wiping away the dust and sweat from both their bodies.

“...Shall we go over our strategy?”

“Yeah.”

At the very least, they had survived, and they’d gathered valuable information.

They decided to use the relatively clean interior of the church as their base and began their strategy meeting.