Chapter 749 — Returned to the Deep... but the Deep Does Not Want You
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
Owen Dyson watched the stone bed in silence, watched the black-robed monstrosity dissolve into a pool of foul seawater that spread across the stone and ran off its edges.
Only when that corrupted water began to drip onto the floor did he take a half step back, his face expressionless, keeping the liquid off his boots.
A stench of kelp and silt, mixed with something rotten, seeped out into the sealed chamber.
"Can you track his soul?" Count Owen turned his head and addressed the mage in charge of this place.
"The soul is gone," said the mage in the moon-rune robe. He traced a complex sigil over his chest, a faint silver light rising in his eyes; after sweeping the whole chamber, he shook his head. "But it did not scatter in an instant—there is no residue of spirit left here. It is more as though something collected it."
"...A soul that was collected. That is even more interesting..." Count Owen's brow furrowed slightly, then slowly smoothed again. "Say nothing of this monster for now, to avoid stirring panic. Master Petori, afterward I will trouble you to purify this place thoroughly—including this black robe and the half talisman—so that no cursed power of the deep sea lingers in them."
The mage bowed his head and answered respectfully, "Yes, my lord."
Owen Dyson nodded, drew his gaze back from the stone bed, and let out a soft breath.
The thick smell of the sea in the air seemed to have thinned a little.
"In any case, it seems those Children of Storms who once turned their backs on the Dyson family have run into some trouble this time... How ironic—they gave themselves to the deep, and the deep does not appear to be treating them kindly," the ruler of Möbius Harbor suddenly laughed. "That is a fitting end for cultists, if nothing else."
"My lord," said the mage called Petori, "our route-exploration plan..."
The black-robed monster's uncanny state had struck fear into every heart. Even a mage of broad learning would feel dread beyond measure before the nameless powers of the deep—those fine scales, those webbed hands, and the sight of the monster finally dissolving into seawater were burned into the minds of everyone present. And now, thinking of the ocean expedition Möbius Harbor was actively preparing at the emperor's command, the mage Petori could not help but feel a certain unease.
"It proceeds as planned," Owen said, and in the blue eyes of this frontier count flickered the fearless light of a challenger. "It was only one cultist who brought about his own ruin. It cannot be allowed to affect His Majesty's plan to open the routes."
"But the dangers lurking in the deep sea cannot be ignored..."
"The ocean has never been safe," Owen Dyson said, turning a calm gaze on the mage. "But we cannot stay forever ashore merely because the land is safe. I will report to His Majesty and give him a full account of this monster—but the preparations for opening the routes must not stop for a single moment."
"Yes, my lord."
...
Time at sea is seldom calm, mostly furious, and always dangerous.
In the eastern waters of the Endless Sea, a nameless archipelago lay encircled and shrouded by storm and magical turbulence.
Thunder and lightning raged across a sky black as pitch, as though they would never cease; each stroke lit up the surging, violent face of the sea. A vast cyclone had formed above the islands the shape of an inverted funnel of terror, and the clouds it commanded joined the sea around the islands, raising between sky and sea a wall of storm like a circling rampart.
This dread spectacle—wind, towering waves, lightning, and magical turbulence all together—hung over the whole archipelago like a prison with no gap anywhere. Look outward from any point among those islands, and it was like staring up from a cage at hopeless, endless walls.
Yet on the Endless Sea, such a sight was in truth the norm.