Raising Beast Cubs to Find a Husband-Chapter 64: The Guardian of the Old Dynasty.

"You cannot be serious," Caspian hissed, his hand tightening around the hilt of his black crystal sword. "Primrose, that is a Kraken. It eats whales. It sinks dreadnoughts. It does not want a check-up."

Primrose ignored him, swimming steadily toward the colossal wall of tentacles. "Look at the way it’s listing to the left, Neighbor. And the ink discharge is sporadic, not defensive. It’s stressed."

"It is a monster!"

"It’s a patient," she corrected. She reached into her dimensional storage bag—the one usually reserved for emergency snacks—and pulled out a massive slab of dried Shadow-Tuna jerky.

She waved the meat in the water. The scent drifted toward the beast.

The Kraken froze. Its giant yellow eye, the size of a carriage, swiveled down to look at the tiny, floating fox-girl. The vertical pupil dilated.

"Hi there," Primrose spoke softly, her voice projected by the water magic. "Does it hurt? Is it a big ’ouch’?"

The Kraken let out a low, pathetic gurgle that vibrated through Primrose’s ribcage. A massive tentacle, thick as a tree trunk and covered in suction cups the size of dinner plates, slowly uncoiled and drifted toward her.

Caspian surged forward, ready to intercept, but Primrose held up a hand. "Stay back. You’re radiating ’Aggressive King’ energy. You’re scaring him."

"I am supposed to be scary!" Caspian argued, though he stopped moving. "I am the Terror of the Seven Seas!"

"Well, right now, I need you to be the Nurse," Primrose said. She turned back to the monster. "Okay, big guy. I’m going to come closer. No eating the dentist, alright? That’s bad for your insurance."

She tossed the Shadow-Tuna. A smaller tentacle snatched it from the water with lightning speed and shoved it into the beak. The Kraken chewed gingerly on one side of its mouth, wincing.

"See?" Primrose whispered, swimming closer until she was hovering right in front of the deadly beak. "He can only chew on the left. It’s a right-side molar issue."

She peered into the abyss of the creature’s maw. It smelled like ancient brine and rotting fish.

"Oh, wow," Primrose grimaced. "That is... yeah, that’s nasty."

"Report," Caspian demanded, hovering ten feet back, sword still drawn but lowered slightly.

"It’s not a toothache," Primrose called back. "It’s a foreign object. There’s a rusted harpoon tip lodged in the gum line, right between the beak plates. It’s infected. The poor thing has been swimming around with a spear in its mouth for who knows how long."

The Kraken groaned, a sound of pure misery.

Primrose patted the massive beak. "I know, I know. It sucks. But Dr. Primrose is here." She turned to Caspian. "I can’t pull it out alone. It’s wedged in deep, and the infection has swollen the tissue around it. I need leverage."

Caspian stared at her. He looked at the monstrous beak that could snap him in half. He looked at the determined, tail-less fox floating in front of it.

He sighed, sheathing his sword. "You are the most reckless creature I have ever met."

"Flattery later. Surgery now," Primrose ordered. "I need you to use your magic. Construct a brace to keep his mouth open so he doesn’t accidentally chomp us when I yank it. Then, I need your strength to help me pull."

Caspian floated down beside her. He looked the Kraken in the eye. "If you bite her," Caspian warned the monster in a low, deadly voice, "I will turn you into calamari rings for the entire kingdom."

The Kraken blinked slowly, seemingly understanding the threat. It opened its beak wide.

"Okay, holding structure... deploy," Caspian muttered.

He raised his hand. Teal mana swirled from his fingertips, but this wasn’t fluid water magic. It crystallized into glowing, geometric pillars of hard light. Complex runes spun within the pillars, reinforcing the structure like magical rebar.

"Mouth is secured," Caspian said, his brow furrowed with concentration. "Do it quickly. The smell is atrocious."

Primrose swam inside the mouth. It was slippery, dark, and terrified her on a primal level, but she pushed the fear down. She found the harpoon. It was an ancient piece of jagged iron, corroded and nasty, buried deep in the soft grey flesh.

"Okay," Primrose planted her feet against the beak ridge. She grabbed the end of the harpoon with both hands. "On three, Caspian! You grab the shaft, I’ll guide the angle so it doesn’t tear more skin."

Caspian moved in beside her. His large hands clamped over hers on the metal.

"One," Primrose counted.

The Kraken whimpered, its tentacles thrashing the water outside, kicking up clouds of sand.

"Two."

Caspian braced his shoulder against the beak, his muscles coiling under his armor.

"THREE! PULL!"

They pulled. The suction was immense. The flesh held onto the metal with a sickening squelch.

"It’s stuck!" Primrose grunted, slipping on the slime.

"No," Caspian snarled, his eyes glowing. "It is moving."

He didn’t just pull with his arms; he pulled with the water. He manipulated the current around them, creating a vacuum force to assist.

SCHLUCK.

With a sound like a giant boot being pulled out of mud, the harpoon tip flew free. A geyser of black, foul-smelling ichor erupted from the wound.

"Gross! Gross! Gross!" Primrose screamed, paddling backward frantically to avoid the splash zone.

Caspian, who was holding the harpoon, wasn’t so lucky. He got sprayed right in the chest armor.

"Ugh," He gagged, dropping the rusted metal. "I am going to burn this armor."

Outside, the Kraken let out a shriek—not of pain, but of sheer, unadulterated relief. It thrashed its tentacles joyfully, creating a current that tumbled Primrose and Caspian over and over like socks in a washing machine.

When the water settled, the Kraken was looking at them with a completely different expression. The yellow eyes were soft. It reached out with a smaller, more delicate tentacle.

"Careful," Caspian warned, wiping slime off his face.

The tentacle gently tapped Primrose on the head. Then, it tapped Caspian.

"I think he’s saying thank you," Primrose laughed, wiping the water from her eyes. She reached into her bag and pulled out a large jar of healing salve she used for the Cubs’ scraped knees. "Here. Rub this on the gums. It’ll taste like mint."

She tossed the jar into the creature’s mouth. The Kraken swallowed it happily.

Slowly, heavily, the Guardian of the Ruins shifted. It moved its massive bulk to the side, revealing a dark, towering archway that had been hidden behind its body.

The path to the Old Palace was open.

"After you, Doctor," Caspian gestured, though he kept close to her side.

They swam through the archway. The transition was instant. The moment they crossed the threshold, the water changed. The pressure lifted. The cold remained, but the oppressive darkness was replaced by a soft, eerie phosphorescence radiating from the stones themselves.

They were in a massive courtyard.

"Incredible," Caspian whispered, his architect brain taking over. "Look at the load-bearing columns. They aren’t carved; they were grown from crystal and fused with marble. Look at the veins in the stone... they are mana-circuits. This entire building is a machine."

Primrose looked around. It was a ghost town. The buildings were intact, but empty. There were no fish here. No seaweed. Just silence and humming stone.

"Where is everyone?" Primrose whispered. "If this was the Palace, shouldn’t there be... remains?"

"The Deep keeps its secrets," Caspian said, scanning the area. "Or perhaps they fled before the end."

They swam deeper into the complex, guided by the pull Primrose felt in her chest—the same pull that had led her to the restricted library.

They entered the Grand Hall.

It was a cavernous space, large enough to house a whale. The floor was a mosaic of glowing gemstones depicting the history of the sea, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic light like a heartbeat.

But what caught Primrose’s attention wasn’t the floor. It was the statues.

Lined up along the walls were eight massive statues, each fifty feet tall. They depicted the progenitors of the Eight Clans in their primal forms. The Imugi coiled around a mountain. The Tiger roaring at the moon.

Some were damaged. The Imugi’s head had fallen off. The Tiger was missing an arm.

But at the far end of the hall, standing apart from the others, was the Fox.

It was a statue of a Nine-Tailed Fox, carved from white jade that seemed to glow with an inner light. Unlike the fierce poses of the others, the Fox was sitting, its tails wrapped around its body in a protective circle. Its head was bowed.

"The Traitor," Caspian murmured, reading the inscription at the base. "That is what the texts call her."

Primrose swam up to the statue. She felt dwarfed by it. "She doesn’t look like a traitor," Primrose whispered. "She looks..."

She swam up to the face of the statue. The stone eyes were closed. But carved into the cheeks were grooves. Deep, eroded tracks that ran from the eyes to the chin.

"She’s crying," Primrose realized. "The sculptor carved her crying."

She reached out. Her hand trembled as she placed it on the cold cheek of the giant stone fox.

ZAP.

A shock of cold electricity shot through Primrose’s arm, straight into her heart.

It wasn’t pain. It was emotion.

Grief.

Overwhelming, suffocating grief. It hit her like a tidal wave. She didn’t see a vision. She didn’t hear words. She just felt the raw, unfiltered heartbreak of a woman who had to leave everything she loved.

I didn’t steal it, a voice echoed in the back of Primrose’s mind. It wasn’t her voice. It was ancient, melodic, and shattered. I didn’t steal it. I became it.

"Primrose!"

Caspian’s voice sounded far away.

Primrose gasped, pulling her hand back. She was crying. Real tears, hot and salty, mixing with the ocean water.

"I felt her," Primrose choked out, clutching her chest. "Caspian, she didn’t betray anyone. She was... she was saying goodbye."

Caspian swam up to her, gripping her shoulders. "What did you see?"

"Nothing. I just felt... sadness. So much sadness."

Primrose wiped her eyes. She looked down at the base of the statue.

There, hidden between the stone paws of the Fox, was a small, unassuming door. It didn’t have a handle. It didn’t have a keyhole.

It had a depression in the center. A depression shaped like a human hand, inlaid with silver circuitry that looked like veins.

"A resonance lock," Caspian analyzed, shining his light on it. "I have seen designs like this in the forbidden archives... theories of ’Living Stone.’ But this predates our magic theory by thousands of years."

"It’s not magic," Primrose said, a strange certainty settling over her. "It’s lineage."

She swam down to the door.

"Primrose, wait," Caspian warned. "If that is a blood seal, it could drain you dry."

"It won’t," she said. "Because I’m a fox."

She didn’t hesitate. She bit her thumb—hard enough to draw a bead of crimson blood—and pressed her hand into the stone depression.

The blood didn’t dissolve in the water. It was absorbed by the silver veins in the rock. The door hummed, the silver lines glowing bright violet.

RUMBLE.

The sound was deep, like the earth grinding its teeth. The heavy stone door shuddered. Dust plumed into the water.

Slowly, grinding against millennia of sediment, the door between the Fox’s paws began to open.

A burst of strange, crystallized air bubbles escaped the chamber, singing as they hit the water. And from the darkness inside, a voice echoed.

It wasn’t a speaker. It was the stone itself vibrating, a voice woven into the architecture.

"BLOODLINE RESONANCE VERIFIED. THE CYCLE RESUMES. WELCOME, OPERATOR OF THE SECOND SEAT."

Primrose froze.

Operator?

That wasn’t fantasy terminology. But it wasn’t quite science either. It sounded like... a title. A function.

She looked at Caspian. The King of the Deep looked just as confused as she was, his eyes scanning the impossible machinery visible through the crack in the door—spinning rings of stone and floating runes.

"Operator?" Caspian frowned, looking at the glowing runes. "I thought you said this was a fantasy game."

"I did," Primrose whispered, staring into the abyss beyond the door. "But I think the developers forgot to tell us about the engine."