For the next few hours there was nothing but slaughter as Kain led an ever-growing force of undead through each Boss Room on the tenth floor. No living creature was spared as the Abominable King and his scourge swept aside everything that stood against them like a tsunami of death. The Imperial ROUSs were eventually outnumbered by the twisted mockeries of their own kind, the Imperial Alpha Wolves were hunted like the prey they had viewed Kain as and their bodies were used to further increase the apocalyptic horde to even greater levels.

When the Imperial Minotaur Herd tried to use their overwhelming strength to force a retreat, they were buried under an ocean of risen corpses and made to join the ranks of the unliving. The Fungus Emperor could not use his spores to control or disorient the undead and even their master was unaffected and thus the Mushroom Monarch was unable to hold back the tide. The Yggdrasill Treant could not stop the Invader either and ended up joining the Fungus Emperor as a undeath-infused form of non-animal life. By the time the storm broke upon the Imperial Lizardmen, even the Over-Emperor could see the writing on the wall.

There was only one hope left for the Over-Emperor, and it lay in the area just before his throne room. Up till then, the undead could walk about freely, but the Naga Empress was his ace in the hole. Even the ocean of undeath would be unable to prosper in the aquatic realm that the Naga Empress ruled…

…

Kain left the undead behind as he entered into the ninth area. He fully expected the ‘twist’ that the so-called Over-Emperor had in store for him and welcomed it with great pleasure. He had never been forced to do battle in an aquatic environment, as the 9th floor, which had held the Naga Queen, was mostly just small ponds and rivers. Kain had a bunch of new things he wanted to try, and this room seemed the best suited for that.

Kain hopped through the open door which, like all the others before it, was actually a portal and found himself in a bubble deep underwater. Heavily armed Naga swam about just outside of the bubble and mocked him from their supposed safety.

“Hee hee hee! Silly land-walker, you have no choice but to go back, lest you drown here!

“Your undead can avail you naught here, fiend! Accept defeat before the might of the deep!”

“Surfacers have no ability here! If you even step one foot outside your bubble, we will drag you to a watery grave and let the Empress feast upon your flesh!”

Kain seemingly stood there and took the hostility, but in truth he was preparing something. It was an old story that the Creator never had the chance to replicate, nor the desire to be so cruel as to do so. It was the idea that if you put a frog in pot and slowly raised the heat then the frog would boil alive because it had become used to the temperature but unable to realize the cruel situation it was in. Thus, Kain spread out his power over the entire zone and slowly brought the temperature up bit by bit.

Thirty minutes had passed, and the water was getting warm.

An hour had passed, and the water was getting hotter.

Two hours had passed, and the water was now hot.

Three hours had passed, and the water was bubbling in some places.

Five hours had passed, and the Naga began to realize the fate in store for them and lost themselves to terror.

Eight hours had passed, and the Empress was now rushing towards the bubble as fast as possible. All of her kin were dead as they had boiled alive and now only the colossal matriarch of the Naga remained, although she now was in great pain due to the increased temperature. Water in the arena had begun to vaporize and the room was no longer solely filled with liquid water, but now had a buffer of steam at the top.

Her massive size prevented her from moving fast enough to deal a blow to the entryway, but she was in such a bind that she had no other recourse but to put everything into dealing with the Invader.

“Why was I such a fool? Why did I not realize the heat was rising, that the realm that I ruled was slowly being boiled? What a fool I am, to let my kin perish in such a way!”

Her tentacles were a mix of octopus and squid tentacles, but also had some of the features of her more serpentine subjects. With each movement she was exposed to high levels of pain and each time she pulled water into her so she could move forward she winced as the boiling water scaled her flesh and with every bit of water that passed over her gills, she writhed in agony. The Naga Empress surged forward despite the pain but soon realized that there were others swimming in the boiling water.

“Ah! My people! You yet survive! Come and aid your Empress in defeating the devil who has invaded our home and subjected us to this genocide!”

Those that were swimming paid the massive woman no mind and kept patrolling.

“Do you defy your Empress?! Are you not afraid of the impending death that awaits us all if the Monster is not stopped?!”

Aside from their silent swimming, only twisted laughter could be heard from the ever-increasing numbers of her kin that swam about seemingly unhindered by the heat.

“No… No! This cannot be! It cannot be! To turn my mighty and majestic people into such horrors! That fiend! Does that devil truly despise us so much that it would pervert our glorious existence in such a way?!”

The laughter only grew louder, but while it only made the Naga Empress more furious, it also served another purpose. The longer that the leviathan was stalled, the more damage she would take from the temperature. As the smaller, nimbler Naga kept just out of reach of their former monarch who wanted to give them a final rest, they delayed her attack on the bubble ever more. It was like a grown person trying to grasp at gnats that were flying about them, one or two may be caught and crushed, but most would be just out of their grasp or slip through their fingers. With each wave of the hand and with each thrash of the tentacle the Matriarch of the Deep was made hotter and hotter and more and more exhausted.

“No…! I…. can’t… die like…. this….”

After 11 hours of the water heating up, the second to last boss of the tenth-floor boss rush was defeated. She sunk down towards the bottom of the arena as the temperature of the water slowly began to crawl downwards. Five minutes after her death, her eyes opened once again. Imbued with the power of undeath, the unliving Naga Empress slowly gathered her bearings and journeyed back to where she once stood watch.

One whole day after Kain had journeyed into the ninth area, the water was at room temperature and the Abominable King stepped out of his safe bubble, greeted by the undead Naga who had once mocked him. He slowly got used to turning water into air and converting one type of atom into another, and over the course of another few hours he became able to change water into breathable mixtures of air subconsciously. From then on it was only a matter of controlling the flow of water around him and once he mastered that he became able to rocket through the deep like Aquaman.

…

“I am doomed!”

The Over-Emperor wailed in misery as the last of his guardians boiled alive.

“He is coming here, and he will destroy me! I had such a short life! Why, cruel world, did it have to end this soon?! What sadistic god engineers such monstrosities and makes them befall such innocent people such as I?! I only wished to build up my realm, expand to the surface, conquer it and its people and make the men slaves and the women breeders! What is so wrong about that?!”

As the Over-Emperor cried in despair, he did not hear Kain enter. Only when Kain yelled at him did he notice the Invader had come to claim his life.

“EVERYTHING IS WRONG ABOUT THAT, YOU FUCKING ASS-HAT! EVEN I STOP SHORT OF HAVING PEOPLE BE SLAVES AND BREEDERS!”

The Abominable King and the Over-Emperor finally met face to face. As one of them prepared for a badass fight to the death, the other prepared himself for a last-ditch effort to keep himself alive. The Over-Emperor stood up from his seat and towered over 55 meters above the ground level. He leapt into the air and landed in front of Kain in a pose that the Creator knew all too well.

“It was a joke! I didn't mean I would actually do that! Please spare my life! I beg of you! I will do anything you ask, so let me live!”

The self-described conqueror of the surface had gotten into a dogenza position and was groveling before Kain like a wimp.

“This… is not what I was expecting….”