Chapter 159: The Motion Thief

Chapter 159: Motion Thief

Giving Murphy no more time to think, the Ascended launched the tentacle toward him enhanced by the corrupted authority of motion.

Murphy quickly jumped to avoid it, then shifted his revolver into his glaive before slashing down them.

Rushing forward, he reached for the being to slash its head down instantly, but suddenly his Glaive slowed down, becoming slower as the motion had been slowing down.

"I won’t be able to use it ever again if it steals the motion." Murphy muttered before looking through the spirit threads to find the connection before slowing down his Glaive to decrease the speed of stealing and twisted his wrist. Afterward, he slashed down the spirit thread that directly connected them.

Turning his Glaive back into his revolver, he adjusted his position before slamming the Ascended directly into the ground before pulling multiple triggers, shooting it to weaken it.

The bullets left the barrel at impossible speed, but as they reached toward him, the air around the Ascender warped. The two bullets hung in the air, spinning lazily as their momentum bled away as if the very concept of ’forward’ had forgotten how to work.

Murphy’s eyes narrowed. ’Motion theft.’

The bullets clattered to the deck, completely useless.

He braced himself, knowing well that its speed had mixed with the bullet’s speed.

The Ascender’s tentacles writhed with renewed hunger. It opened its mouth, and the sound that came out was a wet, gurgling laugh. The man had lost full control as the flesh began to completely peel away, leaving behind the dark veins that spread through its face. "You... cannot... touch me..."

Murphy holstered his revolver and reached into the air, his fingers closing around nothing, and pulled. The Glaive materialized in his grip. "Let’s test that then."

He appeared directly behind it, although the motion eyes had already known where he would appear.

The Glaive whistled through the air as it was aimed directly at the Ascender’s throat.

Murphy felt the sudden conceptual resistance as the blade was still moving, but every inch of momentum was being syphoned away. The Ascender’s Authority was feeding on the movements.

’Tch.’ Murphy gritted his teeth.

The Ascender’s tentacles lashed out, slamming into Murphy’s chest before he could pull back. The impact sent him skidding across the deck, his boots leaving twin trails of foam and seawater. He slammed into the mast, the wood groaning from the impact.

The Ascender laughed and began to peel off its face, biting its remaining hand as blood trickled down its hand. "Your weapon... is mine. Your motion... is mine. Your life... is mine."

Murphy’s ribs screamed. Blood dripped from a gash above his eye. His fedora had been knocked askew, and he could feel the cold sea wind biting at his exposed skin.

’The motion theft is a spiritual effect of any object... it’s pointless if I don’t kill it sooner, or maybe let it die on its own.’

Silver threads materialized in his vision — the invisible connections that bound all things, visible only to the Apprentice’s Eyes. The deck, the mast, the Ascender, the sea beyond. Everything was connected.

Murphy glanced at a pot nearby. ’Can it only see one movement at once?’

He quickly grabbed two pots, threw one directly toward its face, then disappeared, and came behind it, throwing another piece before coming beside it to feign attack.

The tentacles rushed toward the first pot, breaking it instantly before rushing toward Murphy, who avoided it effortlessly as the second pot hit the back of its head.

’Two... it can focus on two things.’ A smile curled up on his lips as he quickly took two more pots.

Without wasting another moment, he threw one from the side, then another from the front to shift its focus into them before he pulled his hand back and threw his Glaive spinning in the air.

Finally, he lunged from its right side. It destroyed the first post with ease before moving toward Murphy as the second pot came, hitting it on head to shift its focus.

Slash!

Just then the Glaive chopped its spirit threads as its body quickly bubbled up, and the corruption hidden beneath the flesh leaked out into the air.

The body instantly went paralyzed as he stopped directly above it, catching the Glaive before stabbing it in the neck, and with a clean strike, he beheaded it.

Finally, as its body went limp, he reached out his hand toward its chest, retrieving an artifact shaped like a long, glass-like spike that appears perfectly still. However, looking at it closely revealed that it was vibrating at a frequency that matched the absolute movement of the universe.

"Another Embodiment." He grinned lightly as he got another artifact to boost his capacity.

He turned toward the place where Silas went and moved back inside the ship through the door.

Inside, Silas had already been there, standing before the captain of the ship.

The pirate captain didn’t seem to be a brave man at all. He was a fat, sweating man with a greasy beard and eyes that darted everywhere.

After getting beaten by Silas, the man sat quietly near a wall as Murphy entered the silent room, watching the scene unfold.

Looking at the pirate, Murphy gave him a wide malicious grin that shook the captain’s soul when he understood what that meant. Murphy gave Silas a gesture, and Silas nodded at him, returning the same dark smile.

When Murphy and Silas dragged the captain from the tavern and threw him onto the deck of his ship, he began to babble immediately.

"Please! Please don’t kill me! I’ll tell you everything!"

Murphy knelt beside him, his revolver resting against the ground as he kept his cold smile. "The Bloodborne Sea. You’ve been there. Tell me what you know."

The captain’s eyes widened. "The Sea? You want to go to the Sea? You’re insane! That place is death!"

"Tell me."

The captain swallowed once and closed his eyes. "I’ve only been to the edge. Once. Five years ago. We were hunting a whale — a big one, worth a fortune. But the whale led us into the crimson fog. And then..." He shuddered. "We saw things. Things that shouldn’t exist."

"What kind of things?" Silas asked.

"We met a man there in the eternal crimson shadows, standing alone in the world of terror; he wore spectacles with a long pocket watch." The captain whispered as suddenly a terror crossed over his face when he remembered. "We barely invited him in our crew of the black skull, merely as a guest..."

Murphy’s eyes narrowed; for now he could understand that there was someone above them. "And?"

"But just as he arrived... the man disappeared." The captain continued, "The one who sleeps beneath the waves. The one who dreams the Sea into existence, hearing that all of my members lost control one by one, not a single one was spared... as for Him."

The man paused and looked at both of them, his expression tensed as the name echoed in his mind. "He told us that His name was... Foras."