Chapter 310
The abyss of a rocky region several kilometers east of Gurzes did not allow even a single ray of light to enter. This area, sprouting with unique rock formations, was a prohibited zone because it was filled with Underfish.
An impatient voice echoed from the inside of a giant cave the size of a dragon’s mouth at the center of the area.
“Oh, no! Oh, no! This is bad!” shouted a blonde little girl in a pink dress and Mary Jane patent leather shoes as she stomped her feet. Her pure black eyes that seemed to contain the Milky Way were darting all over the place. “Come out already! I’m in a hurry!”
She was Dollores, a Bachtasha-rank Chaos, formerly of the doll race. She was staring in a certain direction in the cave where the water current had formed a sphere so thick that one couldn’t see inside it.
“Hurry up and come out, Dopdop!” she screamed.
She had been doing so for days. She normally wouldn’t have been given a reply, but today was different.
A voice echoed from inside the water sphere, “What… is it… Dollores?”
His deep, intimidating voice carried the power of a submarine volcano on the verge of erupting.
“Dopdop! Are you done now?” Dollores asked.
“I am,” the entity inside the sphere responded.
The giant water sphere exploded, making Dollores’s blonde hair flutter like a flag in the wind.
“Wow! You’re so cool, Dopdop!” she said, genuinely impressed by the individual standing in the center of the current.
He was a middle-aged man covered in black scales, with shining eyes and light blue hair flowing like seagrass in the water. He stared at his hands as he repeatedly clenched and opened his fists. His whole scales, combined with the ganoid, placoid, cycloid, and ctenoid scales, clashed against one another, seemingly shrieking.
“At last! I’ve done it! I have become you!” the man shouted ecstatically.
He was Dopper, the Bachtasha-rank Chaos, formerly of the mimic race. He had finally managed to become an exemplar of the man he respected and wanted to become the most.
“I have become you, the entity closest to perfection, the man known as the ultimate merfolk!”
“Uhhh… Sorry to interrupt you, Dopdop, but… I don’t have to keep you safe anymore, right? I’ll get going now, then!” Dollores said, exuding a dark light.
“Where are you going, Dollores? I thought we were going to give salvation to the merfolk together,” Dopper asked.
“Sorry, Dopdop! I have intruders at my house! Can’t you just do it yourself?”
“Does that person know about this?”
“I’ll tell Daddydaddy later!”
Dollores vanished from the cave, filling it with silence.
“I can never tell… what she is thinking,” Dopper mumbled, staring at the space where Dollores had vanished from. He looked up at the ceiling and said, “Well, Dollores’s absence changes nothing. I have succeeded in becoming the exemplar.”
He had at last succeeded in the goal he had dreamed of accomplishing ever since helping Haema Sanguis. He confidently pointed his arm toward the cave ceiling and activated a skill.
[Activating Unique Skill: Extreme Vibration Void Breaker.]
Drops of water vibrated to their limit and sent pulses to their surroundings, leaving a void in their wake. The cave vanished into thin air.
Dopper stared at the empty black sky and shouted, “I, OCEAN KING SQUAMA, HAVE RETURNED!”
***
Pwoo! I hate you, Daddy! Bulgasal cried as it stared at Seong-Hwi, sleeping on a bed of shells with an agonized expression.
Seong-Hwi groaned while experiencing a lucid dream, clenching his teeth so hard that he bled from his gums.
Pwaaahh! I don’t like seeing you in this much pain!
“Kurgh!”
Bulgasal did not know what Seong-Hwi was going through in his dream, but his blood vessels were wriggling like worms, and he was even convulsing. Bulgasal cried, worried as it watched Seong-Hwi’s sorry state, and couldn’t do anything else but walk around Seong-Hwi’s bed of shells.
Pwoo…
It wanted nothing more than to point its trunk at its Daddy and devour all his nightmares, but it couldn’t. It was reminded of its promise with its Daddy every time it raised its silver-grey trunk. Seong-Hwi’s steel-like firm and cold voice echoed inside Bulgasal’s head.
“Fine, then you can eat my dreams every other day. If you don’t keep this promise, then I won’t let you eat my dreams ever again.”
Daddy never went back on his word. Bulgasal was certain that Seong-Hwi would never let it eat his dreams if it broke the promise. As a result, Bulgasal couldn’t do anything but flop on the floor and cry.
Bwaaaaahhh! Bad Daddy! Bwoo! I’m just gonna eat my candy… Bulgasal mumbled as it turned around, unable to keep watching Daddy be in such pain.
Rather than be heartbroken by Daddy’s pain, it decided to stay distracted. Bulgasal blew its nose, and a broken, corroded, double-edged dagger flew out of its trunk. The acinaces dagger, resembling a miniature broadsword, was from one of the scrap equipment storage houses.
Bulgasal initially disliked the dagger because it couldn’t be eaten. If swallowed whole, the dagger would poke its insides like a fish bone lodged in one’s throat. However, Bulgasal realized the dagger's true value shortly after. It was the only metal that it couldn’t absorb—in other words, it was like candy to Bulgasal, who had only been eating chocolate until now.
Bulgasal grabbed the corroded dagger with its trunk and licked it as joyfully as Thumper eating vanilla ice cream.
“You damn… Elephant brat… Who do you… Think I am?”
A voice sounded like a mosquito's buzzing, but Bulgasal couldn’t hear it.
“Who… was that?” Seong-Hwi mumbled.
Pwoo! Daddy?!
Bulgasal quickly turned to the bed of shells where Seong-Hwi, who had lifted his torso off the bed, was looking around with bloodshot eyes.
[Activating Trait: Savior’s Hearing.]
“I heard… a voice just now,” Seong-Hwi mumbled as he heightened his senses and looked around the room, but couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary. “Huuu, it must’ve been a hallucination.”
He pushed aside the clingy Bulgasal and went back to bed. Hallucinations were the norm for him.
***
Two days later, Seong-Hwi revisited the Ocean Prison once Natantes approved his meeting with Lodon. It was a sign that Natantes had seriously considered his hypothesis.
As Seong-Hwi strode forward, pushing through the water of the Ocean Prison’s hallway, someone in front of him said, “Wow! I would believe you if you said you were a merfolk!”
Seong-Hwi stared at the merfolk woman in a white dress. She was Taumafiskur, with light blue scales and pink hair, and Natantes’s eldest daughter.
He replied, “I’m just imitating what I’ve seen during my time here.”
“Hoho, and you’re modest, too,” Tauma said, giggling as she covered her mouth with her hand.
However, she constantly monitored Seong-Hwi with her light blue eyes.
Seong-Hwi ignored Tauma’s gaze and thought, Moving in the water has indeed become much more natural after I obtained Stream Force.
It was as if he had instinctively realized how to use the flow of water. A single step was as efficient as taking two if he moved according to the flow. He was certain this sense would help immensely in underwater battles.
“Hmmm,” Tauma expressed once Seong-Hwi remained silent, then turned forward again.
Seong-Hwi immediately began observing Taumafiskur with a sharp gaze, thinking, Taumafiskur. I… don’t feel any Chaos Mana from her.
Taumafiskur was taking the lead because Natantes had designated her to be Seong-Hwi’s guide. It was officially because she had been the one to arrest Lodon as the culprit, but Seong-Hwi understood Natantes’s intentions.
He wants me to discern whether she’s a doppelganger or not! he said inwardly.
If Lodon had been wrongfully accused, one would naturally be suspicious of Taumafiskur, who had arrested him. However, Seong-Hwi had not felt even a trace of familiarity from Taumafiskur.
It’s too early to tell. She could be a high-ranking Child of the Bachtasha-rank Chaos known as Dopper.
The two of them entered the bottom floor of the Ocean Prison as an odd tension lingered between them. There were no cells or restraints. All Seong-Hwi could see were bubbles filled with black water.
“What are those?” Seong-Hwi asked.
“They’re blackwater cells, where first-class criminals are detained. This blackwater is so heavy that it is known to crush even janateel, the dwarves’ prized creation.” Tauma smiled coldly and continued, “Not even a giant could break out if they were imprisoned here. Would you like… to test it out?”
“I’ll pass. I’m a fragile human, after all,” Seong-Hwi replied slyly.
“Hmph!”
Tauma turned her head and continued forward. There wasn’t a single living criminal inside the blackwater—all that remained were traces of the criminals, of what seemed like pieces of bone. They had likely burst, unable to endure the blackwater’s pressure.
“Is Lodon even alive?” Seong-Hwi asked.
“How would I know whether that damn shark is dead or alive?” Tauma replied coarsely.
He’s alive, Seong-Hwi thought.
He was certain from Taumafiskur’s attitude of how powerful an individual Lodon was. Seong-Hwi and Tauma did not talk to each other after that. After over ten minutes of silence, they arrived at a blackwater cell containing a shark merfolk covered in dark blue placoid scales, seated cross-legged with his eyes closed.
Seong-Hwi could feel explosive mana and high caliber from the large, muscly shark merfolk. He could also feel that his caliber stemmed from a strong sense of self-certainty, belonging to one who had pioneered his own destiny.
A Recorder! he shouted inwardly, immediately realizing that the man before him was linked to the Akashic Records.
The shark merfolk also opened his eyes, sensing the presence of a fellow Recorder. A pair of red eyes, each resembling a red moon shining in a dark blue sky, scanned Seong-Hwi. After keeping his eyes on Seong-Hwi for a while, they shifted to Taumafiskur beside him. He smiled widely and opened his mouth, air bubbles rising as if welcoming her.
“It’s been a while, Taufi. Have you come to see your dear husband?”
***
Otodus stood before his father, Carcharocles, in the Shark’s Nest located in the center of the South Merfolk Town.
“What is that?” Carcharocles asked.
“It is…” Otodus slurred.
“I ASKED WHAT IT IS!” Carcharocles screamed, his white hair fluttering and his red eyes flashing.
“Please see for yourself,” Otodus replied hesitantly as he walked to the throne made of bones Carcharocles was sitting on, holding a box wrapped in red cloth.
Carcharocles snatched the box from Otodus, and his sharp skin teeth tore the red cloth in an instant. His hand subtly shook from the uneasy sensation as he opened the box.
Just then, all the water current around the Shark’s Nest gathered around Carcharocles. The rough current wiped the tears trickling down his cheeks.
“My… son,” he mumbled.
The box contained a head covered in dark blue scales and widened red eyes. It was the head of his eldest son, Lodon.
“It was sent from the Ocean King’s Castle with a message that the sentence for Lodon, a first-class pisciceps, has been carried out,” Otodus said.
However, Carcharocles did not react. He brought his hand toward Lodon’s head to close his eyes, but he pulled away in fear that his sharp skin teeth might damage his son’s head. He clenched his hand to the point that it might break, due to the frustration of not even being able to close his dead son’s eyes. He gritted his sawblade-like teeth, and bloodlust oozed from him.
“You must endure it, Father. An inspector of the Sēmen with the right to expel is currently residing in the Ocean King’s Castle—”
“SILENCE!” Carcharocles screamed, a whirlpool forming around him. “I WILL DESTROY ANYONE WHO STANDS IN MY WAY, WHETHER IT BE THE INSPECTOR OR THE ENTIRE SēMEN!”
A gentle current among the rough and sharp currents that could tear the world apart softly closed Lodon’s eyes.
“Rest in peace… my son,” he said.
The box closed, but a Pandora’s box that must have never been opened inside Carcharocles’s heart had been opened.
He rose from his bone throne and mumbled, “Your lacking father… will play a requiem that will pacify your soul.”
The requiem would be made from the ganoid scale merfolk’s blood and flesh.
Carcharocles’s red eyes, having become completely emotionless after the sorrow passed, flashed as he said, “It is time for war.”