Chapter 161: Shadow Eaters

Chapter 161: The Shadow Eaters

The heavy wooden door of the control cabin creaked open, letting in a gust of salt-laden wind that carried the tang of approaching a storm. Above them, the sky had rapidly shifted from a dull twilight grey to an ominous violet, bruised further by swirling veins of crimson clouds.

?Silas gripped the brass steering wheel, his knuckles whitening as the ship shuddered beneath their feet. The water current here felt sluggish as if the ocean itself hesitated to welcome them.

?"The tide is rising." Silas muttered, his gaze fixed on the horizon where the distinct wall of a blood-red fog began to swallow the stars. "The spiritual presence is rising."

?Murphy stood near the bow, his long coat snapping in the rising wind. He adjusted the brim of his fedora, his dark brown eyes scanning the shifting surface of the water through the tinted lens of his Apprentice’s Eyes.

?Behind them, Dante huddled near a wooden crate, clutching a spare mop as if it were a divine weapon of protection. His eyes darted nervously between the encroaching fog and the two extraordinary individuals guiding the vessel.

?"I have a very bad feeling about your masterclass idea to go there." Dante whispered, his voice trembling slightly. "My left eye has been twitching since noon. That always means either bankruptcy or sudden, violent death."

?Murphy turned toward him and stared at Dante for multiple seconds, keeping his cold gaze.

Dante shivered and quickly averted his gaze before shutting his mouth with both of his hands. ’Oh my lord... that stare is telling me I’ll be killed."

Murphy finally spoke, as his voice carried that same unnervingly calm, polite cadence that always put people on edge with paranoia. "Statistically speaking, sudden death is usually quite quick. You won’t feel much."

?Dante swallowed hard, looking like he regretted every life choice that had led him to this exact deck. ’Son of a b—’ He thought as he looked outside through the window where the large hurricane carried the ship forward.

?Murphy ignored him, stepping closer to the railing. The water below them had darkened from a deep navy to an ink-like black, flecked with bioluminescent spots that drifted upward like falling ash in reverse.

The sheer density of the spirituality here was staggering; even a low-Ordinal like Silas could feel microscopic needles pricking at his skin, warning him that his body was beginning to absorb foreign corruption.

?’The Bloodborne Sea.’ Murphy pondered, his fingers lightly tapping the cylinder of his revolver. ’The captain mentioned a man named Foras... and the entity that dreams this expanse into existence. If the historical remnants of ancient deities linger here, then those shadow eaters must be the first stage, if the expansion of the Bloodborne Sea is like the Misfortune Forest, then moving further from the second stage would lead to a deeper corruption and terrifying entities.’

?Suddenly, the ship lurched violently to the port side.

A vast wave, tinged with a faint pink hue, crashed against the hull. From within the foaming crests, grotesque shapes, silhouettes of ancient, barnacle-encrusted rigging and long, undulating tentacles, flashed in and out of existence. Through his Apprentice’s Eyes, Murphy caught a glimpse of their structure; the angles of their limbs defied logic, bending in ways that made his own eyes ache with a sudden, throbbing pressure.

?"Hold steady!" Silas shouted. His temples thrained under the psychic strain, sweat beading on his forehead. "The laws of motion here... they’re warping! The waves would hit us harder than their natural force, hold tight!"

?"Mr. Silas, keep us on course." Murphy ordered calmly, his boots planting firmly against the trembling deck as the edge of the crimson fog finally enveloped the bow. "We are about to enter the first stage."

As the ship slipped past the threshold of the red mist, the sound of the outside world vanished entirely. The roaring wind died instantly, replaced by a suffocating, dead silence.

The air grew thick and rancid, heavily saturated with the stench of ancient, stagnant mire and rotting deep-sea fauna.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

A distant, colossal heartbeat echoed from the abyssal depths beneath the waves as it vibrated through the wooden deck, reaching directly into their bones. With every beat, a collective but chaotic murmur vibrated through the spirituality of the sea.

Just then, a maddening prayer or an ancient name chanted by a million drowned voices echoed the subconscious thoughts of the slumbering ancient being below.

Murphy’s fingers froze on his revolver. He realized then that the Bloodborne Sea was not a geographic location. They had just sailed directly into a deity’s dream.

The moment he thought that, the chaotic murmurs in his ears suddenly sharpened. The millions of drowned voices stopped their disjointed chanting, aligning into a singular pitch that seemed to directly force their brains to feel the immense pressure.

"...Ph’nglui... mglw’nafh..."

Murphy’s vision blurred. The tinted lenses of his Apprentice’s Eyes fractured into rough edges. Through the splitting glass, he saw the ink-black water beneath the ship begin to glow with a deep, nauseating sea-green light that defied the crimson fog above.

The text of the world was rewriting itself. The boundary between illusion and reality was dissolving.

"Don’t listen!" Murphy barked, his voice losing its usual polite cadence, replaced by an urgent, sharp command. "Block your ears! Focus your thoughts on your own anchors!"

But it was already too late for the low-Ordinal and the ordinary human.

At the helm, Silas let out a choked gasp as his hearing ability of his Authority heard the whispers even more clearly. His hands that were glued to the brass steering wheel began to secrete a thick, transparent slime.

The skin on the back of his neck rippled as if tiny, dormant gills were desperately trying to tear their way through his flesh to breathe the corrupted spirituality of the dream. His eyes grew wide and glassy, reflecting an unholy devotion to the abyss.

"The home..." Silas whispered, his voice bubbling as if his throat were filling with seawater. "We are going... home..."

Behind them, Dante had already collapsed against the wooden crate. The mop had fallen from his hands. He was clawing frantically at his own throat, his chest heaving as he suffered from a phantom sensation of drowning on dry land. A faint, silvery scale glinted under his left eye — the very eye that had been twitching since noon.

A mental invasion. A corruption of the biological form via conceptual projection, Murphy analyzed, desperately utilizing his Ascended knowledge to distance his mind from the creeping madness.

This is the passive influence of a Mythical Creature form. If we stay in the shallows of this dream for more than five minutes, Silas and Dante will completely lose control and mutate into dependents of the deep.

How do I stop it?

He knew that in a deity’s domain, standard physical defenses were useless. You could not shoot it.

Drawing upon his internal spirituality, Murphy began to whisper the divine honorifics of his Authority. His body suddenly turned translucent. He stepped forward, his figure blurring as he bypassed the physical constraints of the trembling deck, instantly appearing right behind Silas and grabbing Dante from the wall.

"Mr. Silas, quick, whisper the honorifics."

He raised his hand and struck the back of Silas’s neck with a precise, spirit-infused chop, forcing a jolt of his own stabilizing spirituality into his chaotic mind.

Silas groaned, his eyes snapping back to sanity as the phantom gills on his neck retracted, leaving behind bleeding track marks. He slumped against the wheel, panting heavily. "M-Mr. Murphy... the whispers are reaching closer."

Before Murphy could process Silas’s warning, the suffocating silence of the red mist shattered.

From the ink-black water, the "Shadow Eaters" finally manifested.

They rose from the shadows cast by the ship itself upon the glowing green water and detached themselves. They stretched upward, morphing into grotesque, bipedal silhouettes with elongated, webbed claws and a mass of writhing, rubbery tentacles where their faces should have been. Their bodies lacked true three-dimensional depth, looking like living patches of darkness encrusted with phantom barnacles.

They glided across the surface of the sea, entirely ignoring the laws of friction, and swarmed toward the hull.

"Dante, Silas, follow my words."

He shouted as he looked at the drowning Dante, who still seemed to drown into the invisible sea as he gasped and spoke in a choked voice. "Mr... L-law. Huff. I-I ca—n’t breathe."

"Speak the words!" He quickly recalled his honorifics and spoke in a hoarse tone. "You are the Lord Light that Walks Beyond the Sun. You are the Keeper of Godless Heaven. You are the Last God of a Dying World. You are the Lost Destiny of Time. I Call out to Your Great Honor to Embrace the Darkness."

Dante spoke while clenching his throat, his voice coming hard as he pulled it off and spoke the name.

Instantly, a rustle of wind rattled the surrounding air, breaking the illusion of drowning and leaving Dante panting from the words.

Silas, who heard it also quickly followed Murphy’s words to stop the cosmic whispers to anchor himself to the divinity as the invisible protective mist enveloped him.

The first stage of the Bloodborne Sea had begun to reject the intruders. Which Murphy soon realized as he spat and looked ahead at the advancing shadow eaters that resembled a sea monster he had read in a novel.

Named.

"Cthuluh."