The summoners finally reached the surface, wondering what they should do next. They looked around, making sure that everyone had resurfaced.
However, not long after they came up, a massive alien suddenly came out of the water.
"Urrrr!" It produced a unique echo from its mouth as only the upper part of its body came out. The duchess was knocked up into the air by the alien while her familiars surrounded it.
The alien had a humanoid body. If one lowered their vision, they would see the alien's foot finally reaching the surface. The depth alone was supposed to be 50 meters (164 feet), but the upper body they could see was as tall as 40 meters (131 feet).
It had two hands and feet like those of a human, but its head was clean—no eyes, no nose, only one mouth.
On its back was a half sphere like a turtle shell with numerous massive tentacles rampaging. Now that they could see the alien clearly, they realized there were numerous mouths on the alien's front body.
More importantly, the entire body was actually covered in black skin. This was the first time he saw an alien with a black cell covering its entire body.
"What is this?" Nathan widened his eyes in shock. He had never seen anything .
"What are you doing? Get away! Retreat to the city!" Lena shouted.
As if not planning to let them go, the mouth on the alien's body suddenly closed before opening again, letting out a deafening roar.
"Arrgh!" The summoners and familiars covered their ears while screaming in pain.
Even Nathan felt like his eardrums were about to burst.
But before he could summon Nidhogg and Jinwu, a massive arrow suddenly hit the alien as the water started to rise and flood all those mouths with water.
"!!!" Nathan glanced to the side, finding Selena's massive avatar. Just like them, Selena was covering her ears, but she still managed to control her avatar to shoot an arrow, though the arrow just got destroyed without being able to put a single scratch on the alien's body.
Fenrir suddenly emerged from the water and bit the alien's hand, only to realize that he barely had the strength to do anything to its skin.
In the end, he ripped apart the little flesh he could from the alien, which alerted the alien as one of its tentacles struck Fenrir.
It was supposed to impale him, but Fenrir's body was much tougher than it expected, which ended up blowing him away instead.
Fenrir crashed into the water, but he still managed to give enough time for Selena to regroup with the rest of the group.
"We need to get away now! We'll just be in the duchess' way if we don't evacuate!"
The summoners couldn't help but agree. Although they wanted to fight alongside her, they would just become her burden.
"Nidhogg!" Nathan finally summoned his dragon. "Amphitrite!"
Amphitrite waved her hands, manipulating the seawater to launch all of them onto Nidhogg's back. "Let's run!"
Without hesitation, Nidhogg flapped his wings.
The alien seemed to have noticed their movement as it tried to reach them.
However, two of her familiars clasped their hands as they summoned five massive chains out of nowhere, restraining the alien's body.
The alien used its tentacles to destroy the chain while Lena waved her blade, unleashing her sword strike to cut its right hand.
The powerful sword strike reached its target, but to her surprise, it only left behind a small wound.
"It's so tough! This is an elite class alien… No, even stronger than the one described in the book." Lena gritted her teeth.
"This is not good. What are we supposed to do? Are we going to leave her behind?" One summoner asked.
"We can't leave her there. If we leave, other aliens will surely catch up and mess with her. And eventually, the duchess will…" Another summoner couldn't bring himself to finish his sentence, but everyone knew what would happen after the duchess got surrounded.
"But what can we do?"
They didn't know what to do. If they returned, they would become a burden. If they didn't return, the duchess might die.
Nathan bit his lips, trying to think of a solution. They truly had no way of defeating the alien, but he couldn't face Flora if Lena lost her life here.
After all, this was originally a mission to find whale remains.
"Remains?!" Nathan widened his eyes in shock. He hurriedly turned to Selena. Because he was too occupied with the aliens, he didn't see whether Selena found the remains or not.
As if knowing what Nathan wanted, Selena pointed to the side, showing the bones in the avatar's right hand.
Amphitrite even nodded, confirming that this was a whale's bone. Although the bones themselves were half-destroyed, as long as there was a medium to pinpoint the summoning, Nathan should be able to summon what he wanted.
If the myth was accurate, there might be a chance to rescue the duchess and retreat safely with everyone.
Besides, Nathan had prepared for such an unexpected situation.
Nathan gulped down, his expression turning grim. "Everyone. Can you listen to my plan?"
On the ship, Flora had been standing on the deck, staring in the direction where Nathan was going. She couldn't help but furrow her eyebrows after hearing the shock wave that had even reached the ship. All the soldiers were already preparing for combat.
"That's the black dragon!"
As they approached the ship, Flora couldn't help but hear Nathan's shout. "Floraaaa! Is that ready?!"
"!!!" Flora widened her eyes.
Last night, Nathan came to her after the discussion. "Flora. There's something I'd like to do."
Flora was shocked at that time, not expecting this request. However, this request reminded her of what happened in the mine.
Nathan's request was, "Can you draw a summoning circle on the ship? I don't know what's going to happen, but there's a high chance the fifth familiar might need to be summoned to help us escape from any kind of predicament."