Chapter 162: Chaos Sea

Chapter 162: The Chaos Sea

The moment the word left Murphy’s lips, the crimson fog violently recoiled.

In a world governed by cosmic laws, names hold absolute power. To utter the true name of an orthodox deity brings protection; to utter the name of a hidden, slumbering Outer God inside its own dream was an act of sheer madness.

The deep, nauseating sea-green light beneath the ship flared with blinding intensity. The collective murmur of the million drowned voices rose further.

"Ph’nglui mglw’nafh R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn"

Murphy gasped, his heart seizing as a sudden weight clamped onto his chest. He felt an invisible gaze pivot from the depths of the ocean to lock directly onto his soul.

Blood leaked from beneath his fractured Apprentice’s Eyes, staining the rims of his tinted lenses.

Foolish... Murphy reprimanded himself, his internal thoughts fracturing under the sudden spike of psychic pressure.

"Mr. Murphy!" Silas screamed.

The warning came a second too late as the Shadow Eaters, spurred by the invocation of their master’s name, surged over the ship’s railing. Because they were born from the ship’s own shadows, they didn’t need to climb the hull. All they had to do was slide across the wooden deck like ink, their flat, two-dimensional bodies defying all natural physics as they rose into grotesque horrors right in front of them.

The air turned freezing cold, mixed with the stench of rotting seaweed and ancient, stagnant mire that became so thick it practically was tangible.

One of the creatures glided directly toward the collapsed Dante. Its rubbery face tentacles whipped through the air, leaving trail marks of corrosive green slime on the deck.

"Stay back!" Dante shrieked, blindly swinging the spare mop.

The wood passed straight through the creature’s shadowy torso; of course... without any spiritual support, the shadows couldn’t be harmed. The Shadow Eater raised an elongated, webbed claw, intending to sever Dante’s throat and reclaim his flesh for the sea.

Murphy’s gaze turned entirely cold, suppressing the agonizing headache caused by his slip of the tongue. Utilizing his Ascended knowledge, Murphy raised his revolver. He aimed at the glowing, sea-green water reflecting right beneath the creature’s shifting form.

Bang!

The shot rang out as it carried Mo Fei’s spirituality into the hit. The moment the bullet struck the water, a spatial ripple erupted.

The space occupied by the Shadow Eater instantly swapped with a section of empty air five meters out over the open sea. The creature vanished from the deck, plunging into the pink-hued waves with a furious, bubbling hiss as it escaped the bullet to reach back into the ocean.

"Silas! Move the ship toward a safe location!" Murphy commanded, his body turning translucent once more as he prepared to blink across the deck to intercept the remaining three shadows. "We cannot fight them sequentially. They are manifestations of the dream; as long as we are here, they will keep generating from our own shadows!"

Silas, still wrapped in the faint protective mist of the Lord Light that Walks Beyond the Sun, gritted his teeth and threw his weight against the brass steering wheel, but the wheel spun freely, offering no resistance.

That was the horror, they had truly entered the first stage of the Bloodborne Sea... the ship didn’t turn.

"It’s not working!" Silas yelled as a slight panic bled into his voice when a Shadow Eater’s claw sliced through the air just inches from his face but only stopped from the protective barrier. "The rudder isn’t responding to physical direction anymore!"

Murphy dodged a lunging shadow, his coat snapping as he moved behind a wooden bulkhead to position himself behind another monster. His mind raced, cataloging everything he knew about the deep-sea corruption and the dreaming god.

’A deity’s dream that reacts to thoughts... is the deity sleeping here, a God of... Dreamer Authority?’ Murphy realized, his eyes narrowing through the cracked glass.

"Don’t use your hands, Silas!" Murphy shouted. "Use your spirituality! Imagine the ship is a heavy anchor plunging downward if you want to stabilize, or a weightless feather if you want to ride the warped currents! We need to analyze how dreams affect this place."

As he spoke, Murphy reached into his inner pocket and pulled out a small charm that he had gotten from the corrupted priest. He needed to buy Silas time to find a safe place, even if it meant exhausting his spiritual reserves in the first stage of the Bloodborne Sea.

He gripped the charm, feeling the microscopic needles of corruption pricking his palm, and began to channel his remaining spirituality into it.

The Shadow Eaters sensed the sudden spike in energy. Abandoning Dante, the remaining creatures turned their faceless, tentacled heads in unison toward Murphy, their bodies rippling as they prepared to swarm him all at once.

’Perfect.’ Murphy quickly turned around the way before rushing toward an empty space to drive them away from the cabin. "Dante, shut the door behind."

Dante, who was visibly shaking as the dense crimson mist ran inside the cabin, but pushing his fear aside, he stood up and shut the door behind him with a loud thud.

Silas, however, attempted to project his spirituality into an imagination to understand the situation of this place as what Murphy had told him. Using his mind practically, he tried to shift the direction of the ship. Although only the steering wheel circled, the ship remained steady, moving forward deep into the Bloodborne Sea.

He closed his eyes shut, trying to imagine the ship moving in the direction he wanted, yet once again, nothing worked truly.

Dante only watched him with the most horrified expression that simply spoke more than words, giving off an expression that said, "We are doomed."

That time, Silas pushed the steering wheel completely over 340°, yet the outcome didn’t seem to change.

Yet, at that moment, he finally realized something terrifying, the ship couldn’t move, even though he felt the ship crash against something that may have been affecting its movement.

Soon, his expression shifted as he quickly moved toward the second doorway that opened into the ship’s open area, where he finally found his answer.

Outside the ship... a gargantuan wall of glistening, deep-purple flesh had breached the pink-hued waves.

Although the ship hadn’t stopped moving, it had been violently lifted clear out of the water by enormous, thick tentacles — each easily the width of a cathedral’s pillar had erupted from the ocean, coiling around the wooden hull with creaking pressure.

The suction cups, lined with ringed rows of human-like teeth, scraped against the ship’s timbers, drawing a foul sludge that hissed upon contact with the wood.

The ship had been pushed by the giant, slippery tentacles of a colossal, kraken-like horror that was a manifestation of the dreaming god’s ancient, deep-sea malice.

Silas’s breath hitched as the protective mist of the Lord Light around him flickered violently under the creature’s suffocating aura. The sheer physical scale of the entity crushed the steering wheel right out of his grasp, the brass mechanism spinning wildly before snapping under the sheer tension of the tilted deck.

"Ph’nglui... mglw’nafh..."

The million drowned voices exploded into a deafening shriek that vibrated through the very wood of the ship and rattled the bones in Silas’s jaw.

Out on the deck, Murphy felt the trap snap shut.

The moment he had drawn the three Shadow Eaters away from the cabin, the charm in his hand erupted. The invisible microscopic needles dug deep into his flesh, fusing with his veins and giving him a sharp, burning pain.

As the colossal weight of the kraken’s slippery tentacles tried to squeeze the ship, Silas could only watch the wood splinter.

Dante’s face had turned entirely pale as he realized that if it continued, then they’d drown in the sea.