Chapter 558 - Squid Games

Eric’s thoughts raced as Battletime took hold. He no longer bothered to hold back as he took a handful of steps straight up, peering out into the strange sea so sharply demarcated from the increasingly choppy waters they floated upon as rain clouds out of nowhere rumbled overhead.

A cold spike of dread pierced his gut when he actually saw something looking back at him from the inky darkness of the alien mercury waters.

Giant crystal blue eyes glared back at him from a grey, fleshy stalk bursting from the strangely flowing liquid as the air filled with another awful siren call.

“Dicio Ventus Impermeabilis! Plures Dies!” Eric roared, his furious focus burning away the vile taste of his own fear as the air filled with a fresh siren dirge.

An alien siren song that abruptly cut off as Eric collapsed back down to the deck with a groan, head throbbing as the sudden crashing of his Qi Pool as he acted instinctively. Rashly. A crimson orb now whirling about his head at blinding speed after he boosted his runic shout with the essence of Dominion.

He glared and spat as Rachel cried out in surprise, gazing at him through eyes leaking blood, as were her nostrils and ears.

“Fuck, it’s a sea titan! A kraken, of all things! It’s sonic roars are fatal! Why! Why is it here?” A panicked Vu sobbed as the monstrous abomination swam closer, and closer still… chilling them all with just how massive it truly was, as it soared over the enormous rig.

Vu and most of his clansmen then flinched and crashed to the ground with desperate cries when it opened its enormous mouth and roared again.

And they heard nothing at all from the titanic sea monster that had just revealed a second octopedian limb covered in glaring eyes and lamprey-like sucker maws that would devour whatever those hideous limbs wrapped themselves around.

Which meant that they could now hear the voice roaring from the towering deep sea rig they had sailed up to just fine.

“Vu! You stupid fool! What are you doing, here? We already warned you about the perils of playing music!” Roared a wild-eyed man covered in ink tattoos and little else. A pair of fur-clad men beside him glared down at the boat, arms crossed over their chests, all of them radiating the pressure and killing aura of serious Bronze classers back on Earth.

And not weak ones, either.

Vu paled. “It was necessary cover!”

“Not necessary if you alert the kraken that’s already come way too close to the Black Sea’s edge! The fucker’s right next to our rig, you fool!”

“The counsel has voted to censure your entire operation, Master Liang! No one will be permitted to trade with you, lest they’d suffer the wrath of the counsel!”

The sigil-covered cultivator’s eyes widened. Locks of greasy hair blowing in the wind framed a rough-hewn face filled with outraged disbelief. “That those fools would dare!”

“It’s even worse,” Vu breathlessly continued. “They voted to purge you entirely!”

Those words earned deathly silence from the entire crew of dozens of powerful Bronze that Eric had heard trading shouts, insults, and laughter as they readied themselves and what looked like truly massive artillery guns, aimed at the sea titan.

“But the vote failed to pass!” Vu hurriedly continued, wincing before the killing glare of scores of hard-eyed cultivators, any of whom could have slaughtered the entire crew on his ship… save for one.

“Too many honorable stomper guilds for them to squeeze that bullshit through. Too many oaths made. But they’re fucking weasels. You know they’ll try something else, which is why we wanted to trade supplies you’ll need, before it’s too late!”

Cultivator Liang cursed under his breath. “Fine. But all talk of trade means nothing until we drive away that beast!” He glared down at Vu. “And you’re giving us a 20% discount, for nearly imperiling us all!”

Vu’s eyes widened with righteous indignation… before wilting under the man’s glare. “Fine. Fine! Now let’s unload my cargo before that thing gets any closer!”

This earned a cold laugh, then a curious frown from Liang. “You all should be brain dead turnips by now. How come you’re still standing with only a trickle of blood coming out of your ears?”

One of his fellows whispered into their leader’s ear. “Sound barrier?” The man scowled at the shimmering perimeter of the ship, lips curving in a curious smile. “So, you hired another who embraces the unorthodox. Excellent! Introduce me to your wujen, and I’ll offer him a fair cut, if he helps us drive the kraken away before it becomes a right nuisance!”

Vu blinked at this as the air rang with the steely sound of cables and platform being hastily lowered, with plenty of room to fit multiple panicking seafarers or priceless goods with every haul… and no sign as to what exactly was powering it.

“Wujen? Master Liang, we hired on no one!”

Liang’s smirk turned to a hooded glare. “Then you’re a fool.” The lowered platform stopped. “You have an unknown wujen who failed to declare himself, embracing unorthodox arts who you would dare invite to our rig without oath, contract, or binding?”

Vu’s features paled, his look of panic growing with each word uttered, like condemnation from on high that would doom them all.

“Please, Master Liang. We only came to trade! I would never—”

“It was me!” Eric shouted.

Vu and his anxious-looking clan turned his way with wide, disbelieving eyes.

Rachel hissed in surprise, fists nervously clenched, pinning him with her gaze.

Eric grit his teeth and forced himself to continue. Hating that he was being made to reveal himself, but after his own foster mother had indicated with a single teasing comment that taking pains to blend in could be equated with nefarious intentions in this culture, it was painfully obvious that discretion wasn’t an option here. Especially not with paranoid cultivators.

“I’m the one who cast the spell!”

Cultivator Liang crossed his arms, scowling down at Eric. “You? You’re the wujen who failed to declare himself?”

Eric sighed. “I’m the passenger who saw his shipmates were in trouble and acted. That’s all. I don’t know anything about being a wujen…”

This earned a cold chuckle before the man abruptly grimaced, along with his crew. For the kraken had just let out another roar painful even to the man radiating so much compressed energy Eric was pretty sure he was actually a half-step Silver.

“Then what the hell do you call the ward surrounding your boat?”

“It’s Runic magic. An art I dreamed up myself, on my home world.”

“Impossible!” Snapped one of the men glaring down at them, all of them now muttering their suspicions or disbelief.

“That’s an advanced runic art, tasting of blood magic mixed with Qi!”

“He’s a spy. He must be.”

“Then why did he declare himself, or protect the ship? He would be best served letting the kraken slaughter us all.”

This earned a raised eyebrow replaced by a totally unexpected chuckle from Liang, silencing the other cultivators.

“Now it makes sense. You’re a Contender.”

“So I’m told,” Eric ruefully conceded before a now beaming Rachel and the awed gazes of both Vu and Hai and their fellows. Lena, however, was scurrying back as if she had just seen a ghost.

“Why the hell are you here, seasons before the gauntlet?”

“I was effectively exiled here. Look, there’s no time for debate. That kraken isn’t going away, and if you want my help… I’ll take that profit share you offered.”

Liang’s men cast hooded glances his way while muttering angrily amongst themselves.

An angry debate that immediately froze when dozens of horrified eyes turned to the abomination only now revealing itself in full.

Revealing itself in the form of a massive limb of quivering flesh, lamprey maws and glaring sapphire blue eyes that had just burst through the Black Sea’s strange, mercurial waters to hiss and boil as it dared mortal oceans before slamming down, generating a titanic wave, just feet away from the deep water rig.

The air erupted in panicked shouts and roars.

“Liang! Don’t let it interrupt the ritual!” Hissed an oddly sibilant voice with a pitch that slowed to a crackling warble as Eric’s mind screamed warning and he embraced Battletime to the utmost, no longer daring to hold back, instead taking full advantage of his mastery over gravity, inertia, and momentum just as well as he ever had on Earth, snatching passengers by twos to deposit on the platform before darting back down for one pair after another, none of them pulpifying to jelly as their momentum didn’t shift at all, from their perspective. They effectively seemed to teleport, every last passenger that Eric could find. Then he darted back for what his wildly pinging infravision had marked as a truly sweet set of prizes in the hold… knowing he was missing so many other scattered treasures as he took drastic steps before racing back to the platform once more, far far faster than even most Bronze could easily spot. Right before the massive wave crashed against the rig, rocking even that mighty structure clearly designed to resist category 5 hurricane storms… and capsizing Vu’s precious yacht, immediately claimed by the riotous sea.

Vu’s eyes widened with horror when Eric slowed himself down enough to address Liang from behind.

“No time for us to fuck around!” Eric shouted over the hideous wail washing over them once more. A wail that was much less effectively blocked on the rig than Eric had managed on the ship. “My friends are already collapsing with that beast’s fucking screams! If you want my help… welcome me, now!”

Liang spun around, eyes widening in alarm, before he blinked in surprise at the yacht’s worth of dazed and sobbing passengers, including Triple M, all Vu’s kin and friends, and the bartender as well.

Liang roared with laughter. “Well done, Contender!” He shouted, ignoring the angry glares and awed looks of his fellow cultivators. “Be welcome on my boat. Now cast that ward spell again and any other arts that might distract it!”

Eric, knowing that there was no time to waste, clasped the man’s hand, giving it a shake a bit firmer than he had intended, smelling the stink of ash, animal fat, dried blood and dark arts upon the man.

Liang’s rough-hewn features twisted with awe, before flashing Eric an approving smile. “Damn strong, boy. Both wujen and body cultivator!”

“My path is crooked!” Eric shouted, knowing he dare not hold back, not now.

Liang looked oddly relieved at that. “Of course it is, boy.” He replied, both of them now speaking far faster than any mortal, as if they both had a Quickness of 250 or better. “No one your age could be that fast and strong without paying a bitter price!”

“My Qi Pool is shit! Do you have any cultivator wuxia bullshit talisman or pill that can boost my energy for the duration of a fight?”

Liang’s eyes glittered, lips curving in a trader’s smile.

“Don’t fuck around, Liang!” Screamed the obvious wujen covered in greasy hair and furs even wilder looking than Liang’s own. The man was a hairsbreadth from panic as he sliced his own wrist, his blood moving by his own will along the sigils carved upon the platform. “The kraken’s getting ready to breach more than just a single hungry tentacle. We’re fucking dead if we can’t pull off a miracle!”

As if my magic, Liang presented several black, tarry capsules from which Eric could sense traces of lead, mercury, opium, spirit beast ashes, and an absolute storm of Spiritual Energy.

Liang flashed a bleak smile. “It ain’t pretty. It’s pretty much poison, and you’ll need a week to cleans your foundation. And you’d better have a body cleansing…”

“I’ll take it!” Eric grabbed them all up, immediately popping one into his mouth.

Then he choked back a howl as his world became a crackling storm of lightning crashing into stormy seas rich with salts as magma’s fire set it all to boiling and somehow he was simultaneously a wooden ship lit ablaze by fearsome winds roaring through him.

Fueling a fire so hot that he couldn’t help but howl, taking to the air as his heart pounded, his ears ringing with the sweet tormented screams of 5000 Qi roaring through lymph modes that could most definitely take it!

Even when 5000 Qi turned to 7000.

Then, just seconds later, his blazing stomach was filling his lymphatic system with over 9000 Qi.

His actual dragon gates, his twelve major meridians, were slammed with wild Qi that did absolutely nothing to cleanse even a single one, so thick was the plaque, so undirected was the flow. The storm of Qi only ricocheted back into his physical body… a backlash that would have no doubt destroyed any desperate cultivator trying to force open unthinkably bad blockages.

And perhaps it would have even destroyed cultivators thinking that their warped path and plaque-laden meridians would have actually protected them. A toxic lozenge so hideously sweet and potent that it would have spelled the doom of any cultivator lacking a Silver core... save for the one who actually dared the deed.

A cultivator who really was just a half-step away from being a spirit beast in truth, literally evolved to survive and endure.

And thrive in the heart of peril.

Eric laughed like the madman he was, his physical cells filling with golden light, now screaming with power.

So desperately HUNGRY for it all!

And the phoenix howled, ascending as high as he dared in a mortal boy’s form as he glared down at the hideous swarm of writhing tendrils and eyes and mouths without end.

***

Rachel gazed in dazed disbelief where Eric had been standing, just moments ago.

“What just happened?”

The wild-eyed Cultivator who reeked of blood, death, and terrible power, gave a bemused shake of his head. “I was going to tell him to lick it. Just to lick it! Not swallow the whole damned thing!”

“Fuck! Fool killed himself for nothing!” Roared the ritual master, even now visibly grimacing as the circle and pentagram he stood upon burst into silvery flame.

Rachel’s eyes widened with horror. “No. Why? How did this happen? We just finished a photo shoot. This was supposed to be a joy ride!”

Vu’s haunted eyes gazed where his ship had been. “I lost the yacht. My father’s priceless yacht!”

“We almost got killed, Vu!” Rachel snarled, fists clenched in futile outrage, before she crumpled with horror, gazing up at the massive tendril lifting itself hundreds of feet above from the wildly crashing seas.

She crashed to her knees, feeling the warm blood leaking from her ears and eyes. “And now that nightmare thing is going to kill us all.”

Vu’s haunted gaze was filled with despair as Hai broke down in panicked screams.

He flashed a bleak smile even as he met half a dozen hopeless glares from the savage cultivators that had seemed so intimidating, but were just as fucked as they were.

“So let’s die on our own terms.” And for just a heartbeat, Rachel found her thoughts wandering in the darkest of directions before she felt powerful arms clamp upon her own.

She stiffened and whimpered when a rough voice snarled in her ear. “Get in the rune circle. Now!”

She sobbed and nodded her head as the air filled with that hideous wail that left her so dizzy she couldn’t do anything but collapse, feet away, knowing that she was absolutely dead when the massive tendril soaring higher than any NanDushian structure crashed down toward their rig.

And she could see it. See dozens of sapphire blue eyes glaring right at her! Awful lamprey mouths opening wide as it positioned itself to fall right on top of her…

Before the air flared with a blazing arc of crimson light so furiously bright that she was blinded, the air ringing with desperate cries and screams all around her.

And other words as well.

“Dicio Ventus Impermeabilis! Plures Dies!”

“Brace yourselves! It’s going to crush us!”

Rachel couldn’t help it. Chocking back a sob, she found her eyes helplessly locked onto the massive sky scraper-sized tentacle crashing down into the wildly churning sea.

She blinked in confusion, surprised it it wasn’t whipping down to crush them but was instead shooting strait down into mercurial waters and it was only then she understood, her adrenaline-addled mind only in that moment putting the pieces together she took in the impossibly vast kraken revealing more and more of itself as it rose to impossible heights, soon blocking out half the endless sky.

A sky now raining with black ichor spurting from a stump where one of it’s limbs had once eagerly writhed.

Cleaved free by that blinding flash of crimson light that, from their present distance, was being swung like her brother danced about the backyard with his guandao. Even if it was so far away that she couldn’t make out whoever was swinging that impossible blade at all.

“By Gong’s bloody council, that boy’s actually taking on a kraken!” Hissed a nearby cultivator, his wild eyes wide with disbelief. “Such a thing should be impossible!”

The air rang with Master Liang’s discordant laughter, his lips curling in a bitter smile. “It would be, for any lesser student of The Way.”

This earned the man a confused look from Rachel and fellow unorthodox both.

“He sure as fuck is no Energy Storage cultivator!” Hissed the nearby rigman, shaking his head with either envy or dismay. “Only in my dreams could I get that strong.”

“It’s not about strength,” the ritualist quietly said a heartbeat after his ritual flared to life, the entire platform now graced with silvery flame.

He flashed a bitter smile, seeming to deflate before all their eyes.

“Osirin!”

An anxious Liang darted to his side, gazing at his companion with haunted eyes. “How deep did you go?”

“Deep enough to buy us time, nothing more,” the ritualist quietly said.

Liang paled. “You suspect, don’t youi?”

“Suspect what?” Rachel anxiously asked, ignoring the hooded glares that at any other time would have left her a whimpering mass, begging for mercy. But now, with death just a single roll of the dice away…

“What could be worse than the kraken? He’s down a limb! We should be grateful, right?”

Liang laughed bitterly. “Truly, child? You don’t understand?” He then glared at his own man. “And it’s not a matter of an Energy Storage cultivator’s power, Foom. You should know better!”

The other man flinched, lowering his gaze.

“What are you talking about?” Rachel all but shouted, before Vu held her close. “Shush, Rachel. Please. Don’t push. Not now!”

The wujen’s furious look mollified to a tired sigh. “The kraken is vast, yes? You’ve seen it, haven’t you? How it seems to soar endlessly high. Blotting out the sun. It’s tentacles capable of collapsing even our rig, under a direct hit.”

Rachel flinched, chocking back a whimper as the air rang with distant shrieks and trumpeting blasts. Yet the kraken, so vast that it seemed to take up her vision when she dared to look its way, at least seemed distracted, buying them a few seconds’ precious time.

“I know. It terrifies me! How can it be so big?”

The cultivator sighed. “Because its size is something that cannot be contained. Only here, in a realm that itself knows no limits, can such a thing even exist.”

Rachel blinked at that. “I’m sorry… I’m not sure I understand?”

“Master Liang. Are you saying it’s Dao is tied to its size?” A confused Vu asked.

Liang snorted. “Finally, you show a glimmer of sense. Yes, Vu. That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s infused with the essence of Vastness. Of size. It’s beyond the ken or comprehension of anyone who doesn’t truly understand their Dao. And who, save for transcendent cultivators or cultivators well into core formation, have any hope of such a feat?”

“Someone who survived a fortuitous encounter!” Vu said breathlessly.

The cultivator sighed, giving a sad shake of his head. “More likely a sentinel, come to purge us all.”

Vu froze at those words. “I’m sorry?”

The air rang with Liang’s cold chuckle as the Kraken continued to fill the air with eerie cries and deadly flares of killing intent that even Rachel understood should have ended them all.

“Think, my foolish young associate. You came here on a vessel full of contraband, with an unexpected passenger who reveals a cultivator’s aura at a most convenient time. But only after ascertaining our nature and location. Only after I had showed off contraband utterly illegal for me to own or use, thanks to a corrupt city council.”

Vu blanched in genuine dismay. “Wait, you’re saying Rachel’s fashion model is here to destroy us?”

Rachel lurched back in shock. “No. Impossible! I know Eric. He’s a sweetheart! There’s no way he could be a sentinel. He’s in my fourth-year finance class!”

This earned a raised brow. “Really? How long have you known him? Months… years?”

Her cheeks blazed as the sky rang with lashing tendrils and gigantic blades of crimson flame.

“No.” She whispered, cheeks blazing in sudden comprehension. In utter mortification.

“How long?”

She flinched before Liang’s unexpectedly gentle gaze.

“Two days.”

The formation master smacked his brow. “That’s it. We’re fucked, Liang.”

Liang gave a bitter chuckle, eyes dancing with darkest mirth. “So, we either fall before a sentinel foolish or powerful enough to take on a Dao-infused kraken…”

“Or the kraken wins and devours us all. I don’t like either of those choices, Liang.”

This earned a snort. “Neither do I.”

The air ran with the startled cries of her friends. Rachel’s despair turned to abrupt horror as she was sent crashing to the tilting ground. “Master Liang! How can that be?”

The cultivator’s jaded gaze took in the kraken, who, far from looking the worse for ware… had somehow grown. Grown so vast that the water level was abruptly rising, the deep sea rig screeching as exotic alloys began to warp and bend when alien waters pushed aside the mortal seas to smash against it, all their lives suddenly balanced on too fragile supports, and they all knew it.

Yet what filled Rachel with particular dismay was seeing one ropy half-mile long tendril trading places with fresh limbs that promised death to them all as the hideous kraken spun about swirling waters, filling the air with screeches that, save for a desperate pair of barriers, would have already ruptured their skulls.

“By the golden blood of the ascended… it was holding back!” Osirian fell to his knees, the air ringing with mad, desperate laughter.

Liang dipped his head, taking in the hooded gazes of a dozen desperate-looking cultivators. “Come, brothers. We have one final card left to play. While we still have time.”