63 - The Trident of the Sea King (Patreon)

Author note: For the new Patreons that may have missed this post, the chapters up to 65 are on a google doc titled Eternal Star 5. This is where I kept the latest backlogged chapter as advertised on the author notes on the main fic. Apologies for any confusion that I may have caused.

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Not for the first time did Jingye of the Great Arctic bloodline wonder if allying with this shifty human was within his best interest.

It usually never was wise to ally with someone that knew more than you. Sha Parizad of the Ninecloud Court was clearly a man with a plan as he took advantage of the truce that reigned on this nameless island; in the days before the facility’s unsealing, he had approached the young masters of certain factions, seeking aid with ‘hunting for a foundation treasure.’ 

First, he had approached Ziel of the Wasteland, a former prodigy of a past Uncrowned King Tournament, a former hero of the northern and eastern Wastes, a former sect leader of the Dawnwing sect. A concise epitaph, if there ever was one; Ziel had formerly been many great things. But then his sect had been wiped out by the Weeping Dragon and the Stormcaller cultists who ever followed in its wake of destruction, and he had–notoriously, infamously, even in Tidewalker civilization–been reduced to the last survivor of his sect, mutilated by the Sage of Calling Storms himself and forcibly regressed to the level of what might generously be called a Gold, or, more accurately, a walking corpse. 

Unfortunately, the fallen Archlord only had eyes for the Spirit Well, which was a cheap treasure—in comparison to the rest of what Ghostwater had to offer—and declined.

Next, Parizad had approached Ekerinatoth of Ashwind’s gold desert dragons, but the haughty dragons disdained working with humans.

After that, though, Sha Parizad had approached Jingye. Who had a plan of his own for Ghostwater, decades in the making. And this offer of cooperation, coming from an artist of a famed Path that had limited power to affect aura and the natural environment… it presented an opportunity for Jingye.

After his ascent to power, Northstrider had stolen many relics from the deeps, including the legacy relic of Jingye’s own pod; the Gamonga orcas of the Trackless Sea’s northerly regions. Jingye’s pod had struggles of their own, merely living under King Wenye’s eternally wary, jealous eye ensured that they, they–the descendants of a Monarch–had to tread carefully, never standing out too much, always striking a careful balance; working towards the Tidewalker Sect’s goals, but without invoking the jealous, bloody eye of the sharks who ruled over the Sect in the modern era.

Recovering Gamonga’s legacy relic, the Trident of the Sea King, from Northstrider had been a hopeless proposition; but now, with the Monarch of the Hungry Deep believed slain, and with Jingye poised to enter Ghostwater, Sha Parizad’s plans–whatever they were–had fortuitously intersected with Jingye’s own.

Jingye had been suppressing his own cultivation, refusing to advance to Underlord for the entire past decade–all to be the one Truegold from the entire Tidewalker Sect to be selected by King Wenye to enter the facility. Which would give Jingye a chance to search for his ancestor’s relic.

So, when Sha Parizad had mentioned the possibility of an alliance to hunt foundation treasures, Jingye was intrigued.

When, after some prodding, Parizad had revealed that he was seeking the artifacts responsible for Ghostwater’s unnaturally elevated levels of water, blood, and shadow aura, Jingye was… concerned.

When Jingye had demanded two of the three treasures as the price for their alliance, and Parizad had readily agreed, Jingye’s concerns were not alleviated; rather, he became genuinely suspicious. 

The elders of Jingye’s pod had long theorized that the Trident of the Sea King was one of the factors behind Ghostwater’s unusually enriched vital aura; King Wenye himself could not be asked about the matter, of course, but the Trident’s ability to enrich water-aspect vital aura for leagues around it was a known factor in the legends of Gamonga, the trident’s creator. Following from his elder’s theories on the nature of Ghostwater’s vital aura, it was quite possible that other relics stolen from the Tidewalker Sect were present in the trident’s proximity, which only presented additional incentive.

Parizad was no doubt intending to portray himself the weaker party in this negotiation. But Jingye was no fool, as so many Tidewalker sharks were; and it would be a fool’s act to underestimate the prince of the Ninecloud Court, the world’s oldest and wealthiest Monarch faction.

Even if Sha Parizad, understandably, lacked the insight to see the possibility of the Tidewalker Sect’s legacy relics being present in Ghostwater (or maybe he did have his suspicions, but didn’t care?), the mere fact that the prince of the Ninecloud Court was willing to surrender two out of a supposed three foundation treasures he believed to exist on the seafloor… that meant that he was pursuing something else entirely.

Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. 

Not so long as Jingye’s own aims were successful.

Jingye had accepted Sha Parizad’s offer.

It would be a lie to say that Jingye didn’t have reservations on the matter; Sha Parizad was a strange one, even for a human; unreadable in nature, unknown in capabilities, carrying himself with none of a sacred artist’s usual pride. And yet looking down on the best Peak Truegolds of this generation of the world as if they were ants. 

If Jingye hadn’t been supremely confident in his own battle abilities within his own advancement rank, he would have been even warier, and certainly, more insulted.

The opening of the facility had been, briefly, disrupted by the intrusion of a pack of lowly Skysworn of all things (weren’t they supposed to be a police force of one of Ashwind’s lesser northerly kingdoms? Jingye wasn’t sure because, ordinarily speaking, the Blackflame Empire was supposed to be geopolitically irrelevant). 

But after that brief distraction, and after some background politicking that resulted in the five non-Akura factions being allowed to send a few more Golds into the facility–

The two princes had made their move.

Sha Parizad had insisted on descending immediately to the seafloor, cloaked in invisibility; save for a brief moment in which they happened to cross paths with some random human swordswoman. 

The choice to descend immediately was… somewhat unfortunate, of course; Jingye’s pod was wealthy, but not so wealthy that the outstanding treasures present in Ghostwater could be entirely ignored. But Jingye could appreciate Parizad’s desire for haste and discretion, certainly in regards to the trident, and readily agreed to move on immediately to where the Ninecloud Court believed the foundation treasures to be.

Their descent had been… long. It seemed that Northstrider had created Ghostwater by carving out a slice of a complete cross section of the world’s abyssal ocean; both Parizad and Jingye had to resort to potent means to endure the pressures of twelve thousand meters of seawater.

And at the bottom, of course, had been a great circle of Diamondscale Sea Drake nests, and the nests of nastier monsters still; abyssal eels and anglerfish, even lesser krakens. But they had all been within the range of Gold, and, lacking sapience, were easily dispatched with Jingye’s force-path sacred arts.

It was what the nests were encircling, though, that had truly attracted Jingye’s attention.

There was a great font of water at the seafloor, an endless upwelling, a geyser half a mile across endlessly venting forth some of the most enriched vital aura Jingye had ever felt; thick and potent with water, blood, and shadow. Aura so thick it could be seen with the naked eye. A place that even Ghostwater’s strongest monsters dared not approach, but built their breeding environments all around.

It was then that Jingye knew that he had come to the right place.

The problem was that sometimes, every few hours, the font of aura pulsed with massive, shattering forces capable of tearing up the sea and fracturing the seafloor. The crevasse was widening by the day, by hundreds of meters, destroying the breeding grounds and sending the beasts scattering. Was this a symptom of the pocket world’s ongoing collapse?

The next two weeks had been a genuine ordeal. After reaching the base of the crevasse, the very lowest point from which the great font of vital aura emerged, Parizad had taken out from his void key an array of dozens of blasting and dredging and mole tunneling constructs. And, as agreed, Jingye shifted back to his natural orca form, dozens of meters in length.

That had been the beginning of weeks of dangerous undersea mining, Jingye and Parizad advancing and retreating, mostly blasting the base of the crevasse with their best Striker techniques and launcher/burrower constructs, sometimes sheltering from the great forces that periodically shattered the space around the crevasse–forces which Jingye was uniquely suited to survive.

Weeks had been spent on this effort. Weeks. If Jingye hadn’t been capable of literally feeling the distance narrow between himself and his ancestor’s treasure, he would have abandoned the effort long ago to chase the lesser treasures in the habitats far above them.

Eventually, another thousand meters beneath even the seafloor, they had reached a nondescript black wall. Featureless, but inviolate, and yet from which vital aura seeped out in great rivers. Jingye had despaired, but then Parizad, with visible anger, brought out a strange weapon. It felt like a gatestone, huge, fist-sized, but made wrong. A black gemstone of darkened quartz that felt like havoc itself, crystallized into the shape of a bomb.

The scripts reinforcing the black wall had been broken after Parizad shattered space itself. How had he known to prepare for this?

After that, and after several blasts of Parizad’s multiple Celestial Radiance Resonance launchers–a terrifying capability that Parizad had clearly been keeping secret from Jingye–they had finally gained entry to this hidden, secret habitat.

As they wandered the massive, dark halls of this habitat’s labyrinthine underbelly, following a veritable river of vital aura, Jingye had walked warily. If Parizad meant to betray him, that time was now.

Instead, Parizad had been in a strikingly good mood, and chose to… lecture. To lecture him about Ghostwater’s history, about the very nature of vital aura and pocket dimension theory, about Northstrider’s Soulsmithing; all of which converged on this secret, hidden place.

Formerly, accessible only to the Monarch and his chosen, handpicked leaders. Now, collapsing as the pocket world slowly died around it.

Eventually, after hitting an obstacle, they moved from the script-covered tunnels that apparently existed to channel and direct the river of vital aura, and broke through a reinforced door to enter the habitat proper.

Their way lit by Parizad’s constructs, the two princes walked past rooms that had clearly not been meant for experimentation, but for control. Room after room filled with broken-down screens and observation constructs and control system arrays, some of which Parizad stopped to loot… or dominate, integrating his constructs into the arrays, sometimes writing out patchwork repairs to the scripts.

“What are you doing?” Jingye asked curiously, despite himself. 

“Establishing habitat control, obviously,” Parizad said absently, observing a particularly malicious-looking control script that, as far as Jingye could tell, was related to Ghostwater’s infamous dragon habitat array.

In the meanwhile, one of his constructs was burrowing into an array core, subsuming and replacing the heart of the script/construct system with itself. As far as Jingye could tell from a cursory look, this one controlled the habitat’s… water pipes? He was no expert in these matters.

“I apologize if this intrudes on your secrets, but I am curious: why?”

“Hm.”

Parizad didn’t answer at first. He was periodically stopping as they walked, leaving behind constructs of his that were integrating into the habitat’s script control arrays.

On a sidenote that Jingye would be sure to remember, Parizad’s void key was apparently bottomless, or close enough as to make no difference. Over the past two weeks, Parizad had displayed control over hundreds of constructs, some larger than Jingye himself.

“Criminals are treated harshly in our lands. As a result, we don’t have many,” Parizad eventually said. He was clearly devoting the vast majority of his attention to his constructs and Soulsmith workings. “Nine and a half times out of ten, the punishment for thievery, murder, fraud, gross breaking of rank, piracy, rape, brigandry and so on, however minor, is death or forced conscription under soul oath. But, across an area of half a continent, even the small percentage left over–prisoners that are inconvenient to conscript or execute, for any myriad reasons–still multiplies to an objectively large number. Hundreds of thousands.”

Jingye waited patiently. Parizad, who liked to lecture, would eventually get around to answering his question.

“There is a… prison, that we keep far beneath Ninecloud City. Most factions can’t afford to imprison sacred artists, especially in number, especially Lords, but the nature of my family’s madra and Path makes us ideally suited for the task.”

They continued walking, closer and closer to whatever lay at the heart of this place. Corridors of darkness, illuminated only by Parizad’s constructs.

“The prison is shaped like a cylinder, sunken far into the earth, in a single grand room so massive that it has its own atmospheric phenomena. More than half an entire league deep, almost five miles in the vertical and a third of that in the horizontal, made almost entirely of halfsilver. Hundreds of thousands of cells built into the walls, filled with prisoners following every mentionable path under heaven, including Remnants, spirits, and sacred beasts. Imagine that, for a moment. A prison larger than some cities… controlled by only one sacred artist.”

Jingye stopped, horrified. “What?”

Parizad’s thin smile widened, just a little. “That was exactly how I reacted, when my uncle Relliar first showed it to me as a boy. It was… sublime in its efficiency, awe-inspiring in its scale. Optimization of soulsmithing, incarnate. The most wonderful thing I had ever seen, at least by that time in my boyhood. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners. And yet only a single Celestial Radiance artist is needed to control them all. And that is because, precisely in the center of that cylinder, is a single room, scripted as a single point of observation and focal control, maximizing the abilities of the Path of Celestial Radiance, and the mental processing capabilities of the controller. A room that we call the… ‘Panopticon.’ The unitary control point for the world’s greatest prison.” 

Perhaps Jingye’s human form and voice wasn’t yet developed enough to properly communicate emotion. Usually, that would be a mark against Jingye’s advancement. But he knew that it was serving him well here, in his interactions with this strange Ninecloud prince.

They took a few more steps amidst the silent, dark corridors, as Parizad continued softly speaking.

“The Ninecloud Prison is actually one of the city’s larger sources of profit. Factions, nations and empires from far and wide without the means to securely imprison sacred artists–particularly Lords with a certain amount of political status in their homelands, but who are inconvenient to kill for whatever reason–are sent to us for processing and confinement. The Ninecloud Court earns many, many scales from imprisoning Lords.”

Jingye remained carefully silent, preferring not to risk betraying his own thoughts on the matter.

“That is what this place is, in a way.” Parizad waved his hand absently, indicating their darkened surroundings. “The secret habitat from which all others are observed, and when needs be, controlled. Every system, every construct. Every script, every experiment. By establishing enough control over this place, I can… well. The implications should be obvious.”

“I see,” Jingye said disinterestedly, very deliberately continuing to maintain the Ruler technique that brought his normally booming, unconsciously force aura-enhanced voice down to a polite level. “I hope for your luck with this project.”

Parizad gave Jingye a thin smile. “I don’t need luck, not for this.”

Why bother? Jingye wondered. The entire pocket world is going to collapse into the void in a matter of a few weeks. The dimensional anchor on the outside has been broken by the Phoenix–only a Monarch could stop the process now. What could he possibly be hoping to achieve? 

Still, Jingye didn’t want to pry too closely into his partner’s secrets. Sha Parizad was clearly planning something with implications for all of Ghostwater, but at the same time, Jingye did not care. Nothing mattered to him but retrieving his ancestor’s relics.

Jingye still couldn’t get a read on the extent of Parizad’s abilities, but his intuition told him that Parizad was dangerous in a way few sacred artists of the Truegold stage of advancement could even dream of. There was no doubt in Jingye’s heart of his own battle capabilities, but all the same, the sacred orca would prefer to put this… macabre, creepy human far to his back before long. 

This was why it was perilous to interact with surface-dwellers. Who in the undersea would ever even think of imprisoning their own kind? For business and profit, even? A clean death or period of soul-sworn service was the better option, every time. Human madness, all of it.

At a confluence of hallways, they found on the ground a boundary formation that clearly looked like the landing spot of a gatekey, to Jingye’s limited knowledge on the subject. It also functioned as a spatial transportation pad. That must have been how the facility’s leaders, perhaps even the Monarch himself, had typically gained entry to this underground, seafloor habitat. Parizad did not hesitate to gain control over this as well.

Jingye only recognized its nature because it was the same sort of spatial transport arrays that the Tidewalker sect used.

It was just one more piece of evidence in a mounting pile of them detailing the depth of Northstrider’s plunder.

Truly, it was something. That bottomfeeder had not waited a moment after Gamonga’s death before he—a mere Sage at the time—made attempts to buy a few of the late Monarch’s greatest artifacts, only to be thoroughly rebuffed.

He had returned a century later, a Monarch, and had wasted no time on negotiation. He had simply taken. 

Hadn’t it been for that fool Wenye, the Tidewalkers would have been well-defended from such wanton thievery, but in the old king’s infinite jealousy, he had all his equals in the sacred arts slaughtered to solidify his reign, or forced into ascension. Then he paid the cost. Wenye could only watch as Northstrider took and took and took, with utter impunity. All who resisted the Monarch’s will died.

Those were not the actions of a venerable Monarch. Those were the actions of a depraved bandit. A king would hold themselves to a higher standard, but Northstrider could not even bother to pretend to be a king. Instead, at least prior to his death in battle, he had remained the only Monarch in the world that held no territories. His chief concern had been his advancement.

The only territories he even ‘held’ in any sense of the word were his myriad hunting grounds that dotted the seabed, inhabited by dim and unintelligent sea drakes that were mere cattle for that monster’s endless appetite. And his secret laboratories, like Ghostwater itself.

The thief had plundered the Tidewalker sect, and now his plunder fueled the workings of this accursed pocketworld that spawned and propagated horrors beyond mortal imagining, affronts to all sea-dwellers, even dragons, and probably the heavens itself.

At least the wildlife was tasty.

“I have heard rumors of your boundless power, many of which you have confirmed up to this point,” Sha Parizad said as he stopped before a wall that marked the end of the hallway. A centipede-like construct glowing with the colors of Celestial Radiance and wearing a carapace of solid Wintersteel was draped over his shoulders like a living scarf. He opened his void key, and out from it, a mole-like creature made from spherical gray rocks, with shovels for hands, popped out and began digging through the wall at high speeds. A Ruler technique embedded into this… living construct widened the hole far faster than its shovels could, creating a tunnel that was wide enough to even accommodate Jingye’s height. 

The mole even went as far as to dig steps that they could descend, one every second or so.

“I will need it once more,” Parizad continued, grinning in a way that he probably wanted to be disarming, but was in reality just unsettling, “Below where we are now should be a spot that is particularly difficult to crack through,” Parizad’s crimson braid growing from his bangs dangled in front of his goggled face as he grinned with anticipation, “The spot that houses the best of Ghostwater’s foundational treasures. Including your sect’s treasures, I believe.”

So he had known.

Multiple relics worthy of Archlords and Sages and Heralds or better remained missing from the Tidewalker Sect–half a dozen or more, which could be anywhere in Ghostwater, or were otherwise lost with Northstrider’s fall. But Jingye had his eyes on two in particular that he suspected to be here: the Trident of the Sea King and the Book of the Blood Sea Ancestor.

The former was the personal arms of Jingye’s own ancestor, Gamonga the Heavy himself. With it, he could bend the oceans to his will. It was only ever useful to Gamonga, however; the relic never acknowledged anyone else that laid hands on it; not the treacherous King Wenye the Kinslayer, nor even Northstrider the Hungry Deep.

As for the Book, it  was a relic that predated even Gamonga, a remnant of the lost Megalodon empire that once ruled the Trackless Seas, a book with its own will that contained every manner of profane ritual and blood art, and served as a great font of blood aura merely by existing. It was the reason why the pocketworld was so rife with nutritious prey.

Other ancestral Tidewalker artifacts, like the Heart of the Mother River, which was probably the Spirit Well’s foundation treasure, according to his Inheritance, or the Balshaeden Veil, which the local vital aura alone told him was probably here, were still quite desirable but lower on Jingye’s priorities.

Jingye did not know much about Parizad’s plans, and could not rightly say just how much Parizad knew, which made this a rather unwise alliance.

But, the same could obviously be said for Parizad as well. 

Parizad did not know that Jingye had, as a young calf, unearthed the mysteries of his ancestor. His preternatural talent with the Maelstrom Hide technique had allowed Jingye to dive deeper than anyone his age possibly could. And his small size had allowed him to slip through cracks in some scripted, inviolable stone on the seabed where a voice had beckoned him. A ruin that his oldest living ancestors had whispered of, but only in the most secret, quietest of confidences. Grandfather to grandson, grandmother to granddaughter. A place of refuge, a sanctuary of meditation Gamonga had built for himself and his own blood alone, in the years before his death. A place that was said to be… waiting, for a young, worthy prodigy, but only one from Gamonga’s own blood.

Parizad did not know what Jingye had found beneath those stones.

They continued down the construct-made stairwell for what felt like almost an hour, until finally, the construct failed to continue digging further.

The construct retreated, and Parizad did as well, going up a few steps. “After you,” the human said.

Jingye snorted.

He cycled his madra according to the Death Pressure Strike as well as the Ocean-Parting Breach, pouring every bit of power that he could into the combination of Enforcer and Striker techniques.

He had always been a master of defense, but that didn’t mean that his offensive power suffered. It just meant that his defensive power was truly a notch above anything else his generation had to offer.

He released both techniques into the ground. The Ocean-Parting Breach enveloped him in an aura of water and force, rushing him towards the point on the ground where the construct last stopped digging, fist cocked back and filled with the Death Pressure Strike.

The punch sent in a bomb of madra that seeped into the material of the ground before then exploding. 

With both techniques combined, the earth shook. Cracks began to form at the point of contact. Then the cracks continued spreading, until finally, several feet worth of solid stone disintegrated, showering the darkness below in dust.

The mole construct rushed past Jingye’s feat and started constructing a rotating stairwell that would take them down into the depths.

This time, the construct was truly expedient, and by the time they were halfway down, the stairwell had already finished being made. Jingye could sense this via his hearing—the low-light conditions meant nothing before his constitution.

Parizad, in contrast, had summoned floating light-sources. He then dialed up the luminosity dramatically, casting a light upon the entire interior.

It was a dome-shaped room filled to the brim with scripts and script control arrays, and on the ground was a shallow layer of water, barely a few inches deep.

And the room was heavy with aura: water aura, blood aura, shadow aura. The water was beyond, absolutely beyond laden with vital aura. He could have compared this water to that of the three wells that the records of Ghostwater spoke of, but he suspected that in this case the water was not an elixir, but rather, a medium, or perhaps a carrier, meant to distribute aura to the pocket ocean itself. It was continually flowing outwards and upwards, and being replenished by new flows coming from above.

Even beyond that unimaginably dense presence of power in the air and in the water, the room carried a sense of emotional heaviness to it as well, as if it was the treasury of a God.

The circle of three podiums that exhibited priceless treasures each—at the very center of the room where all the scripts converged—proved that impression to be the unvarnished truth.

“The foundation treasures of Ghostwater. At last. And in the middle… the dimensional matrix!”

In the middle of the triangle of treasures was a single thick podium that contained a large gray-blue cube made of sections of smaller cubes. The smaller cubes rippled along the surface of the greater cube like oceanic waves, but occasionally, the cubes would jut out chaotically, deforming the cube and turning it into something rather ugly to behold.

Then it would straighten back out and continue rippling in a wave-like pattern.

Was it… a model of the pocket world itself, scaled down and miniaturized? Perhaps the outer cubes were the textural boundary of the world itself, and that instability of the greater cube was a representation of Ghostwater’s own impending collapse? It was as fascinating as it was disturbing. This did not look like Northstrider’s work. Who could have built such a thing?

Parizad continued nattering about the grandness of this achievement, and Jingye was only dimly aware of it. He walked with a purpose towards the circle of treasures, occasionally heeding a warning prod from the oath he swore to Parizad. There would be no oathbreaking anyway, even though he knew that Parizad would hate this turn of events, as all sacred artists would.

When entering a pact with someone, you typically never wanted them to attain benefits that were head and shoulders beyond yours. An even split—or the closest thing to it—was the most desirable outcome.

But whatever Parizad had come here for, none of it could measure up to Jingye’s own attainments.

Parizad could have his baubles and trinkets, but the true treasures were his.

He walked up to the Trident of the Sea King and clasped his hand around the thick gray-blue shaft made from seabed stone. On the prongs dangled a bright green leaf of seaweed. It would have looked like desecration to the untrained eye, to keep such a priceless treasure covered in such filth, but the green leaf held a function as well.

The moment he touched the shaft, it detached from the prongs and flew to encompass his wrist.

A reaction, never before seen since Gamonga’s own death.

Parizad had no knowledge of what Jingye had found in the seabed all those years ago as a tiny calf.

No knowledge that Jingye had attained the voice and living will of Gamonga himself; an Inheritance. A full Inheritance at that, crammed with the knowledge of everything that had helped coronate him as a Monarch.

The Inheritance in the back of Jingye’s mind whispered a litany of incantations that held an intention that the trident could recognize. By tricking the artifact into thinking that its maker had returned, Jingye could do something that almost any sacred artist would have claimed was an impossible feat.

Claim a Monarch’s treasure for oneself. Tricking the tool into acknowledging the maker and the inheritor as one and the same.

The will of the trident blasted his mind, and Gamonga—no Jingye, almost let go.

But Gamonga bade him to hold on. Jingye resisted the intense currents of pure power that battered his mind, pushing it to the edge of its breaking point. What would happen once that happened? Would Jingye’s ego disappear forever? Would Gamonga’s nascent will as an Inheritance step up and wear his body? 

Was this all just a ploy for the old monster to once again regain a semblance of life?

No.

Jingye would not allow it.

He was tired.

Tired of letting old men dictate his life. Tired of living in constant fear that his jealous king would note his boundless talent and meteoric rise, and eventually see him as a threat to his rule, and have him assassinated like the king had done to his Sage and Herald ancestors back in antiquity.

He would not bow to King Wenye’s threat any longer.

And he would certainly not lose himself to the shadow that was his ancestor’s will.

For he was Prince Jingye, and he would be free.

With a roar, he wrenched the trident out from the stand holding it, fighting back the influence of his Inheritance.

“Mine,” he said to the trident. “Do you agree?”

The trident’s will bowed. It agreed.

Jingye could feel his Inheritance’s rage and indignation slowly settle into resignation. The old orca was jealous, as the old always tended to be, regardless of advancement; but Jingye would forgive this trespass. There was still so much he had yet to learn from him.

Jingye turned his head to take in Parizad, staring at the scene with a carefully neutral expression, betraying not an inch of distress.

Jingye scoffed. “Be glad that you allied with someone that knows when to stop eating.”

Someone more human, such as Northstrider, would have used this power to monopolize everything in the facility—apart from what he had sworn would go to Parizad—but Jingye believed himself to be an orca of far greater decency.

“Thank you,” Jingye added, because he truly did feel grateful, and it cost nothing to extend this thread of grace to his temporary ally. And it would not hurt to continue friendly relations for as long as it would benefit him. Parizad may be supremely untrustworthy, but he had won that much grace, at the very least. He turned his gaze to the Book of the Blood Sea Ancestor next.

“If you do not mind so terribly,” Parizad said, and Jingye turned back to the human, who had once again regained his confidence upon seeing Jingye’s reasonable demeanor, “Once you are done collecting your… prizes… why not retrieve something of mine as well? You would be well-remunerated.”

Anything this one considered ‘good remuneration’ could be considered an absolute trove of treasure anywhere else in the world. If they did not have an already established relationship of cooperation, Jingye would still jump at the opportunity.

“I will do what I can,” Jingye said, before once again refocusing on the book, the inheritance of the ancient times, the First Age of Sharks. It was an age that far outstripped this current Second Age in terms of power. Wenye was barely even a pale shadow compared to those old monsters of legend.

The Book of the Blood Sea Ancestor possessed its own will, his Inheritance had told him. But it also told him that the Trident of the Sea King was capable of suppressing that will, and binding it to Jingye’s own. 

With only the trident, Jingye would have needed to find a way to continuously grow in power, gaining ever more mastery over the trident’s capabilities, long and far away from the watchful eye of his Herald, until finally he became so powerful that not even a Herald could outright kill him.

That would have taken a long, long time. A century, perhaps. The Trident of the Sea King was capable of many things, but none of them had the potential to directly increase his strength. He would have had to chase opportunities and hunt for resources, like any other sacred artist, albeit with more advantages than most.

But the book on the other hand… Gamonga’s Inheritance whispered that it could devour his enemies, turning their blood and life essence into stable, compatible nourishment for his own physical growth. It was better than the waters of the Life Well. It could give him a body refined beyond any other sacred artist’s. Madra and even soulfire were cheap resources by comparison, easily obtained by his own efforts. With the Book of the Blood Sea Ancestor bolstering him as well…

Jingye predicted that he could return in ten, maybe twenty years, and would most assuredly be a Herald or a Sage by then.

Sage, Gamonga’s shadow corrected.

Ocean Sage.

Strength Sage.

Blood Sage.

Take your pick, child.

Jingye’s beady eyes widened in anticipation. 

With ultimate power, freedom would come.

And then, his oppressed people would finally know a new age.

000

“Ugh… It seems there is a price to be paid for reaching too far beyond myself, even if the weapon bows before blood. I see.”

Jingye’s control over the water in our bodies retreated as soon as it came.

“Yes, my limits are still too close at hand,” Jingye muttered more, but even his damn mutters carried such force aura that they were impossible not to hear, even over the din of battle. His voice sounded slightly pained, as if he had overextended himself and suffered a backlash.

That was an encouraging sign. But not encouraging enough. His Enforcer technique hadn’t even been disrupted. Meaning that this backlash had been truly minor, if his madra cycling hadn’t even been disrupted.

“We have to run, Sky!” Yerin screamed.

I laughed like a madman. The entire world laid out before me was a portrait of madness. Jingye, floating above the Spirit Well in his invincible three-part Maelstrom Hide, channeling what seemed like an entire lake’s worth of Spirit Well water in a hundred different tentacles and tendrils all around him. We weren’t fighting a sacred artist. He was a one-man army, a force of nature.

“You mean swim? Swim away from this?!” I howled some more, dodging tentacles of water, launching one Solar Flare after another towards the base of the countless appendages. I’d noticed that cooking them at the base slowed the entire tentacle down, slowed them down enough that Lindon and Orthos’ Blackflame could make more progress on destroying the Spirit Well water. 

Maybe, if I boiled the water enough, I’d annoy Jingye enough that he switched up his game plan. 

God damn it, I needed an opening to cycle my Laser. I was dodging or blocking some tentacle or bullet or another of water every other second. 

Should we retreat from the Spirit Well chamber?

No–then Jingye would follow us. Out in the dream library habitat, he would be within arm’s reach of the entire pocket world’s sea, separated only by the habitat’s thin overhead barrier. He could turn the entire ocean against us. This was the only place we could allow ourselves to fight him, where his resources were theoretically finite.

“We need a plan, Sky!”

“Just hold on!” I shouted, after dodging a threefold barrage of water cannons that shot like bullets. “Ziel and Palutin will be back for us! And there’s no way he can control that trident for long, he’s only a Truegold! Just hold on!”

Yerin didn’t bother responding. She only screamed and jumped back into the fight.

Then Mercy’s spirit flared like an Underlady’s. She was screaming, pushing her Fourth Page as far as she could go.

It actually managed to penetrate two of Jingye’s Maelstrom Hides, only to reveal a third directly surrounding his body, one that looked even darker and denser than the others.

Mercy stared in despair for a moment, before her eyes rolled up in her head. She collapsed bonelessly.

And then, without warning, Jingye’s central bubble of water burst.

NO–!

If it wasn’t for Starfire Surge’s mental acceleration component, I never would have been able to react to the devastation that occurred in just the next half-second.

The third layer of Jingye’s Maelstrom Hide didn’t just burst. It exploded with a detonation on par with a cluster bomb. I pushed Starfire Surge as far as it would go, physically and mentally. The world slowed to a crawl as I sprinted, and I managed to catch the unconscious, collapsing Mercy just as the explosion hit the both of us, blasting us into the chamber’s far wall–even with my last-second projection of the Nine-Light Mirror’s round shield formation.

My bones deformed to absorb the shock of the impact, springing back into shape as I slid down to the ground, and on my feet, still standing. I never fucking thought I’d ever say this, but thank God for my Ethereal Iron body. 

Orthos and Mercy didn’t get back up.

Mercy was just unconscious. Orthos was embedded into the tiles, midway up the wall like some hockey puck, all his limbs retracted. He felt not just unconscious, but badly wounded.

Yerin’s Steelborn Iron Body had protected her, but even she looked doozy.

Lindon’s Soul Cloak had protected him from the worst effects, landing on the wall feet first, absorbing the impact with his body before hopping down on the ground to his feet in an impressive display of agility that I never would have expected from him. Ghostwater had changed all of us, and he hadn’t been an exception. Little Blue was riding his neck again, pouring madra into him, but her light was flickering. She felt even weaker, fainter than she had been after the battle against the Nineclouds.

If I hadn’t gotten to Mercy in time, she probably would have died just now. She had been utterly defenseless.

I didn’t know if Akura Malice even could intervene here in the worst-case scenario.

God damnit. It was now or never. I poured a vial of well water down Mercy’s throat and began cycling my Laser.

“Lindon! Yerin! Buy me time!”

I tossed Lindon my shield, and began to cycle for my Laser technique, even as Jingye’s Maelstrom shields–all three of them–reformed in less than a second.

It was obvious now. This improved Maelstrom Hide was a self-perpetuating technique, drawing on itself and the surrounding water and water aura to continually self replenish. To defeat it at all, it had to be defeated all at once.

Including the third layer, which even Mercy’s Underlady-equivalent Striker arrow had failed to penetrate. And which could, apparently, be detonated like a bomb anytime Jingye damn well pleased.

“Still willing to fight, I see. Good.”

Prince Jingye’s triple-layered Maelstrom Hide had already reformed, and one tentacle of water after another began to reform around him.

This overpowered motherfucker. How much of this was the Monarch trident, and how much was just… him? He still hadn’t budged a single step from when the battle had started. This was all a game to him, and we were the fodder.

I would show him how wrong he was.

I could cut no corners, not this time. I cycled, and I emphasized Yerin’s lessons. The Sword Sage’s lessons. I formed the beginnings of the technique inside my body, looping the madra round and round until it reached my head, where it looped behind my eyes, the circuits growing tighter and tighter as I got closer to activation.

I shook my head. No, not through my eyes. That was the foundation for a good idea, but right now, I needed to pour far more power into the technique than my body could handle if I were to treat it as a physical vessel.

I cycled the madra down from my head and through my spear instead.

Thanks to the new level of control that a Truegold core and madra gave me, I could intensify the technique more than ever before. Even less width than a human hair, fire and light aspects ignited to temperatures that wouldn’t just melt steel, but evaporate it.

I had never even come close to reaching this level of ignition before. I could feel it. I kept cycling my madra, tens of times per second, feeding the technique every bit of attention I had to give, even as the world around me became nothing but a dome of pandemonium, as Lindon and Yerin protected me from an unending assault of tentacles.

I stretched my madra control further than it had ever gone. The fire and light aspects reached the limit of what I could achieve at Truegold. I contained it all in bands of force, pressurizing and intensifying the ignited aspects to the point they might have nearly achieved fission on their own. And then, most importantly of all, I sheathed it all in a tapered scabbard of sword madra, exactly as Yerin had taught me.

Ruby took a bad hit and dissipated entirely, returning to Yerin’s spirit.

Yerin followed not long after. She sent a final Endless Sword through half a dozen tentacles and crashing into Jingye’s three-part Maelstrom Hide, and burst only one bubble before a tentacle swept her aside, crashing into the wall’s far chamber like a baseball hit by a home run strike.

The Maelstrom Hide bubble reformed a second later.

Only Lindon was left standing.

A tentacle came for him.

He blocked it. Somehow, the madman blocked it. Then he kept blocking. The Nine-Light Mirror fit him like a glove, even as he glowed blue-white with the Soul Cloak.

Now!

With a forward step and a two-handed thrust, I released the Striker technique, and–

The world before me changed.

The laser lit the world white, so blinding that even with my Iron Body’s enhancements I could barely see anything but sunspots. Through the tip of my spear, contained by band after band of glowing white force limiters and channelers, a beam of pure, unbridled heat hotter than the sun’s surface exploded forth, shooting for the sacred orca in a merciless blast of blinding white.

“Grah!”

Every single water tentacle burst, all at once.

The water and water aura all around me instantly evaporated, searing my skin and robes.

The waters of the Spirit Well turned into a fine, glowing rain covering the entirety of the chamber, except for in a straight line directly between me and the well itself–it was too hot there. 

All the tiles between me and the well were now blackened, seared in a line of char and ash–the tiles cooked and blackened by mere proximity to the Laser. 

I could see nothing where Jingye had been but a massive upwelling of steam and mist, no doubt from his flash-boiled water shields.

Nothing could have survived that.

Idly, as Lindon and I slowly clambered back to our feet, panting–I’d been blown backwards, head-over-heels by the recoil of my own Striker technique–a distant part of me considered that the collateral damage was a bad sign. That meant there were still massive inefficiencies with that damn striker technique, final name still pending. Probably the damn textural boundary, as usual. Needed to work on the force-aspect recoil, too.

I wondered idly what would have happened if that Striker technique had come out of my eyes.

Probably nothing good.

“Is it over?” I muttered. “Please tell me it’s–”

“You.”

The mist and steam covering the far side of the well chamber cleared.

Prince Jingye was on his knees, sunken into the bottom of the empty reservoir that used to be the Spirit Well, clutching at his side.

I couldn’t believe it. I stared, gaping, as the sacred orca fixed me with a deadly glare, blood dribbling from the lips of his orca’s snout.

Jingye was still alive. Not unscathed, true–it seemed like my Laser had incinerated a fist-sized hole straight through his side, ruining his fancy suit and probably coring out his lung. I could see a melted hole going straight through the tiles behind him. The entire right side of his body was blackened with char and peeling skin.

That was the absolute best Laser I was capable of creating. So why the fuck was he still alive?

“How?” I whispered.

Lindon, more intelligently, and despite his exhaustion, didn’t hesitate and sent a bar of dragon’s breath at the orca prince.

Jingye blocked it–not with his Maelstrom Hide, but with his bare hand–with his bare hand! The skin of Jingye’s hand slowly burned away, revealing the flesh below. Jingye grunted as the assault by Blackflame ended, but this seemed to be all Lindon could do to him with a basic technique.

Just what kind of a physique did this monster have? An Overlord’s?

Lindon only growled. He brought together both hands and poured madra into them, but just as he was about to send more dragon’s breath, I shouted at him.

“Lindon! Forget him, get the others back up on their feet!”

Lindon didn’t hesitate. Without waiting a beat, he abandoned his half-formed attack and tore open Ekeri’s void key and took out a jug of well water–one of the forty-forty-twenty mixes I’d whipped up and distributed for emergencies. He activated his Burning Cloak and sped off towards Yerin’s collapsed form.

I did the same damn thing, grabbing a jug out of my own void key. I chugged at it like a baby sucking at his mother’s tit.

“Human,” Jingye muttered, slowly rising back to his feet.

This motherfucker had eaten my best Laser and was still standing. What the hell.

“How the fuck are you still alive,” I laughed incredulously, despair slackening my grip on my spear. “How, man? What are you even made of?”

I’d put everything I had into that laser. My channels were screaming. God damn it. But I kept drinking from my jug of emergency juice. The Spirit Well rejuvenated and cleansed my channels as if it were Little Blue’s own touch, the Life Well water gave me back energy in my beleaguered and battered body, healing it up in the process, and the Dream Well water cleared my mind once again, making it feel like I hadn’t even fought yet.

“Only an ancient Underlord has reached me through my Maelstrom Hide these past five years,” Jingye said, no longer muttering, no longer distracted. His entire focus, his entire attention was fixated on me and me alone, glaring death at me, even as blood poured from his lips. “He was one of Wenye’s abyssal overseers, and has been an Underlord for over a century. Who are you? What is that technique?” 

Might as well stall for time. “Ever hear of Arakmedes? Star Comet Immortal Venerable, maybe?” I questioned, still chugging at my jug of well water. I felt my body’s strained muscles and torn fibers reknit, my will and focus recrystallize, my madra reserves begin to replenish.

“No,” Jingye growled. 

“Seems like your ancestor has!” I cackled, throwing my jug to the side. “‘All knowledge is connected?’ You seriously think Gamonga came up with that saying? Like, actually, man? He was a barbarian like all the rest! You insult Northstrider, but your ancestor was just like him! Stealing the Paths knowledge and treasures from his betters, rising to the top by climbing a mountain of corpses!”

Jingye’s eyes flashed red. His murderous intent clouded my spirit like a haze, but he was only a Truegold. I had endured Jai Daishou. I could do more than endure this. I could laugh at it. And I did.

In the meantime, I began to cycle again. Not to form a Laser, per se; I cycled in a different pattern that would make the Laser easier to use; many, many more times. It might come at a certain tradeoff in terms of maximum power, but it was necessary. I couldn’t afford to sit still and channel for thirty seconds per Laser.

I began to prepare for a fight longer than any I had known. 

“I’ll carve your liver out for that, human. Then your spine, and lastly, your tongue.”

“Have you even heard of the Second World Sect?” I was still laughing, howling like a madman even as I cycled. “Have you really never wondered how some orca from Iceflower, the ass end of creation, found the knowledge to connect the world’s aspects? Do you have any idea how high those principles are?”

Jingye hesitated, his eyes widening slightly.

“Them, I have…”

Somewhere off to the side, Lindon was grunting, twenty feet off the ground, legs against the wall and pulling Orthos’s embedded form out of the chamber’s bricked wall. Mercy was getting back to her feet, and Yerin, grim-faced, was summoning Ruby again. Little Blue had found a pothole, one of Orthos’ floor divots filled with Spirit Well water, and jumped right in.

The sacred orca shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

Jingye threw the trident into the opening of a void key, and shoved his enormous arm through it. Out from it, he pulled a red book of all things–a horrifying tome that offended my eyes and made my spiritual senses scream of blood and death. It didn’t look like it was made of paper, but out of pieces of corpses, stitched together into a facsimile of a tome large enough to be the father of all books. An entire meter in height, it had a cover of crimson sharkskin, a literal spine for a spine, and Jingye opened and ruffled through pages that looked like nothing less than shaved flesh. “That… incineration ray. The only true threat before me. You. You will be the first to die.”

I laughed, “You took us too lightly, promising that none of us would die. Going back on your word just because of some existential dread? You’re not worthy of a Monarch’s inheritance.”

Jingye growled loudly enough that it interrupted my breathing with the vibrations that shot through my chest.

Blood essence poured from the crimson tome–another minimum Sage-level artifact if I could trust what my baffled senses were telling me–and into Jingye’s body.

God damn it. I closed my eyes for a moment, despairing as I registered what my senses were telling me. The instant this tome had come out, all the blood aura within range of my Truegold senses had shifted, almost as strongly as the water aura did for the trident. Another foundation treasure. We were wasting our time on well juice while the competition was digging up the artifacts of Sages and Heralds and Monarchs?

How was I supposed to know that any of these things existed? Prince Jingye of the Tidewalker Sect and this ‘Sha Parizad’ had never made it in time in the first run-through of events. 

All this because I had chosen not to incinerate that damned portal, because I knew how much trouble it would put us through if we forced all the factions to use Gatestones—on purpose at that. Now, I sorely regretted it.

How was he even controlling this new treasure? Was this another inheritance from this precious ancestral Monarch of his?

Slowly, Jingye got back up to his feet, even as he blocked barehanded another of Lindon’s bars of dragon’s breath–a gout of fire and destruction as thick as Lindon’s entire torso, which Jingye’s one hand could still completely block; his hand was just that big. This Blackflame attack wore Jingye’s hand down to the bone–but blood essence continued pouring into him from the tome. His wounds closed, and his flesh regenerated, and at the end, all the damage I could see was his ruined, burned suit.

Yerin and Ruby charged at him, but they were sent reeling back by a pulse of force and blood aura that exploded like a bomb. When the dust cleared, Jingye was standing in the center of a crater of his own creation, shimmering with a red glow of intertwined blood aura and madra, sheathing his body like a second skin. 

When Jingye spoke, his voice echoed like a drum filled with force aura. It rose with every sentence, and reverberated off the walls. His voice grew louder, vaster, escalating force aura rattling my bones with every word.

“Humans. Behold the second great treasure of my people, stolen by Northstrider. Behold the Book of the Blood Sea Ancestor.”