With startling ferocity, they then attacked him in a swirling frenzy, a storm of jagged teeth and shimmering scales.
"Argh!"
Nereus barely managed to summon a thinly crafted water veil shield in time to block the first attack, but it shattered on impact, sending him careening through the water.
'Damn it this weak Mer body isn't built for sustained melee, especially in this state... let's see if I can pull off a miracle!' Nereus complained, his arms already aching from overuse.
With his essence reserves basically empty he tried to once again end things quickly by calling upon the Leviathanic Domination again—but this time nothing came.
Seeing an opening the barracudas closed in again.
"Get. The fuck. Off!" Nereus fought back, dodging, punching, and twisting.
His fingers were bloody from bashing his tiny webbed hands against the thick scaled assailants again and again.
"AHHH" he wailed as one barracuda took a chunk out of his tail.
Meanwhile another slammed into his ribs with such force he felt bone give.
Soon enough blood began to cloud the sea around him as another struck his back, sending him hurtling into the trench wall.
His vision swam but through the blur he could see several hungry and beckoning jaws already coming for him.
'This...isn't good. I need to move like NOW'
At that moment, against his body's wishes he tried to move himself from the impact crater he rested in.
Alas all he could manage was a crimson tinged cough that escaped his lips joining the cloud of crimson coming from the gaping wounds on his body.
But even through the pain, even with the possibility of death being merely seconds away, something stirred inside him.
The Leviathan bloodline—though too scant to reactivate the Dominations' effect so soon—was still reacting.
Each blow he took. Each wound he sustained. Even each breath drawn through shattered ribs.
It didn't weaken him.
No, no if anything it did the opposite.
THRUM
His veins pulsated rhythmically with heat.
CRACK
CRACK
CRACK
His broken bones then began knitting themselves together with a breakneck speed, the chunk of his missing tail began regenerating, but most shocking of all was that his eyes started illuminating like drowned suns, brilliant azure wreathed in silver.
"ARGHH", he screamed— but not in pain this time, but in fury.
At that moment the barrage of barracudas then arrived to finish him off but this time Nereus didn't dodge.
WHOOSH
Just as the first and largest of the barracudas went in for the kill with reckless abandon, Nereus wasted no time and grabbed its jaws in an iron grip.
RIPPP
With a seemingly effortless flourish, he then tore the beast open, and kept pulling until soon he was holding the two bloody halves of the fish in either hand.
Witnessing this scene did little to dissuade his assailants though as another was soon poised to attack—ready for it however Nereus then performed a barrel roll around it. Catching its fin on the way around, he then dragged it straight into a wall of sharp coral.
BANG
But at that moment,
WHOOSH
Another slashed at his face— but anticipating this he headbutted it in counterattack, before then snapping its spine with a spin tail swipe empowered by a water propulsion burst.
At this point he was no longer dodging death.
He had become death.
Three. Four. Five.
They began to fall, one after another, leaving streaks of cloudy black blood trailing through the water.
"And then there were two" he muttered smugly.
All of this may seem like it happened perceptibly slow and one by one, but in truth his shocking offensive happened in the space of a few breaths to any onlookers.
The final two circled hesitantly, but Nereus was already in motion. He summoned two more water crescent blades.
SWISH
SWISH
And in a seemingly effortless spin and flourish, bisected the last assailants smoothly.
With the battle having now ended for sure he floated there a moment, surrounded by mangled bodies, the drifting cloud of blood, his breathing ragged, chest heaving, muscles screaming.
His arms were coated in red, his skin bruised and torn, but his very veins and the glow in his eyes… they both still burned with a visible molten intensity.
"Whew that was definitely a workout!", he said looking down at his hands.
They trembled, but not from fear.
Instead from the rapid strengthening his body had undergone during the fight. Each time he'd bled, his bloodline had pushed harder to keep him alive, evolving his limits.
He dragged himself through the water, searching the remains. He found three pristine starfish, still glowing with stored sea essence, and without hesitation, Nereus swam toward the remaining starfish, carefully collecting the undamaged ones along with some scraps of the barracudas.
Judging from the size of the barracuda Nereus knew that they would be a good source of nutrients and sea essence which would in turn allow his cultivation to progress by leaps and bounds.
A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "And to the victor goes the spoils of war," he then muttered to himself.