Chapter 144: You are the pillar....
The cathedral of flesh hummed with ancient, suffocating authority.
Standing between Vince and the pulsing azure sphere of the Tide Core, the eight-foot-tall primordial water avatar shifted its weight. It moved with unnatural, terrifying fluid velocity. Before Vince could set his stance, the entity surged forward, its broadsword of pressurized hydro-kinetic energy leaving a luminous cyan streak through the internal fluid.
CLANG!
Vince raised his dark, dragon-scaled forearm to parry, but the blade did not simply bounce off. The moment steel-hard scales met the edge, the avatar’s arm liquefied, bending around his guard like a whip to deliver a crushing point-blank hydro-shockwave straight to his chest plate.
Vince tumbled backward across the fleshy floor, his boots digging deep into the organic tissue to arrest his momentum. He wiped a smudge of dark blood from his scaled jaw, his reptilian eyes narrowing. Physical density alone wasn’t going to cut it here. Every time he swung his scaled fists, the kinetic impact merely dispersed harmlessly into the avatar’s fluid body, allowing the guardian to reform instantly and strike from impossible angles.
The guardian glided forward again, its fluid limbs multiplying into a deadly flurry of liquid blades. Vince ducked, parried, and wove through the relentless onslaught, the sheer fluid pressure stripping small scales from his shoulders.
Then, right amidst the roaring hum of the Tide Core, a sound echoed inside his mind.
"...you...are... the... pillar..."
It was a faint, muffled whisper—neither human nor monster, distorted as if calling from behind a thick wall of ice thousands of miles away. Vince’s eyes flicked toward the Tide Core, but the avatar gave him no room to breathe. It lunged, pinning his left shoulder against an organic wall with a spear of solid hydro-mana.
Tch. I don’t have time for mysteries, Vince thought, his jaw setting tight.
He needed to obliterate the creature’s liquid cohesion in a single, absolute strike. Cold kinetic force wasn’t working, and standard elemental mana would just dissipate in the surrounding ocean fluid. He needed heat—ungodly, explosive thermal energy.
He contemplated Elena’s refined, brilliant flames for a split second, but instantly discarded the thought. Elena’s fire was controlled, precise, and structured. What he needed right now was pure, unbridled, volatile destruction.
He needed Vetra. Her dragonkin fire core didn’t just burn; ignited by her manic battle excitement, it generated a searing, chaotic heat that defied logic.
System, Vince commanded mentally, calling upon the fundamental mechanics of his soul-bond. Access harem bond link. Channel Vetra’s active Fire Core mana.
A pale purple interface flashed across his vision:
[HAREM BOND ACTIVATED: VETRA (DRAGONKIN)]
[DRAWING PASSIVE THERMAL OUTPUT...]
A violent surge of white-hot, explosive energy erupted from the purple crown mark etched into his soul-matrix. Vince’s dark dragon scales flared with brilliant orange-white conduits. The fluid around him instantly began to hiss and boil into violent clouds of pressurized steam.
The primordial avatar sensed the sudden spike in temperature and thrust its broadsword formed from the sleepers hide straight for Vince’s heart.
Vince didn’t dodge.
He reached out his left hand, taking the pressurized liquid blade directly through his palm. The water pierced his flesh, but Vince’s grip tightened around the blade like a vise of solid steel, locking the avatar in place.
"Got you," Vince growled, a dark, ruthless smirk cutting across his face.
He pulled himself along the blade, stepping directly into the avatar’s guard. With his right fist burning with the full, unbridled fury of Vetra’s white-hot dragon plasma, Vince thrust his arm straight through the center of the guardian’s fluid chest.
"Dragon’s Inferno!"
BOOM!
Instead of a physical explosion, a blinding sun of white plasma detonated inside the avatar’s core cavity. The superheated dragonfire spread through its liquid body at lightspeed, turning thousands of gallons of pressurized primordial water into a screaming, whistling shockwave of scalding steam. The avatar didn’t just break apart—it was completely vaporized from the inside out, leaving behind nothing but a sizzling vacuum in the fluid chamber.
Without missing a beat, Vince stepped through the lingering steam toward the pedestal. He reached out with his bare, scaled hand and slammed his claws around the pulsing, azure sphere of the Tide Core.
He yanked it free.
[QUEST OBJECTIVE COMPLETE: SUBDUE THE ABYSSAL TITAN]
[TIDE CORE ACQUIRED]
[WARNING: HOST ENTITY DISSOLUTION INITIATED]
The moment the core detached, the bioluminescent lights throughout the cathedral-like room died simultaneously. The organic walls shuddered violently, and the fleshy conduits began to liquefy, collapsing inward under the crushing weight of the eleven-thousand-meter Hadal depth.
Vince tucked the glowing core beneath his arm and swam into the collapsing tunnel at maximum Dragonkin speed.
He burst into the main exit conduit just in time to see Vetra standing at the threshold. Her claws were dripping with incinerated parasite residue, her face covered in soot and sweat, but her eyes blazed with feral ecstasy as she used her fire magic to blast back the collapsing flesh walls.
"Took you long enough!" Vetra shouted over the roaring collapse.
Outside the vent, Nerissa’s royal trident was locked into the chitinous plates, her body straining as her Siren blood roared to hold the narrowing gap open.
"MOVE!" Nerissa screamed, her teeth gritted as blue blood dripped from her lips.
Vince grabbed Vetra around the waist, kicking off the liquefying floor with enough force to shatter the underlying tissue. They shot through the narrow fissure like a crimson streak, bursting into the open ocean just as the titan’s mountain-sized chitin plates sealed shut forever.
Outside, the three of them tumbled through the pitch-black water, joining Lyrielle and the surviving Vanguard troops on the basalt ridge.
They turned to watch the aftermath. Deprived of its core, the colossal form of The Sleeper did not explode; instead, its translucent flesh rapidly calcified, turning into a rigid, hollow shell of dead coral and dark basalt. With a slow, silent groan that shook the ocean floor, the mountain-sized leviathan collapsed into the floor of the trench, becoming nothing more than an ancient, lifeless reef.
Silence descended over the deep.
Vince exhaled a heavy cloud of bubbles, his dark dragon scales receding back beneath his skin as he reverted to his human form.
"Lyrielle !..." Vince yelled as he reverted
"I’m on it..." she said conjuring another air bubble around him
Standing on the basalt ledge, he held the glowing, azure Tide Core in his palm, its soft light illuminating his face in the pitch-black abyss.
A pale purple notification popped up before his eyes:
[WORLD QUEST PROGRESS: GENERAL NERISSA (SIREN)]
[AFFECTION & RECOGNITION: 20%]
Vince turned to look at the Siren General.
Nerissa wiped the trail of blue blood from her chin, sheathing her trident. Her sharp golden eyes locked onto Vince, filled with a complex blend of guarded respect, shock, and cautious awe. She did not fall to her knees, nor did she offer unearned adoration; she was a proud General of a fallen realm. But as she looked at the human who had just slain an ancient ocean god, her stance shifted, acknowledging his absolute strength.
"You actually did it," Nerissa said softly, her voice carrying through the quiet currents.
Vince tucked the Tide Core into his spatial ring, a quiet, confident smirk playing on his lips as he looked back at the proud Siren.
Twenty percent was a start. And he had all the time in the world to claim the rest.