Chapter 40: | Delusion
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[You're skills have fused]
[You have gained:]
•† Bloomcore Leviathan [ ★ Ascension III – Active]
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† Bloomcore Leviathan [★ Ascension III]
Unleash your evolved form—a towering colossus of bloom-crystal and tentacled muscle. Your limbs house living cores—lightning, fire, crystal—each fueling a different surge. Fins slice air and sea; compound eyes lock onto prey from all sides. Thorned armor grows back faster than it breaks. Blooming from your flesh, spore-born creatures form mid-battle. Instinct guides every move. You don't just fight—you reshape the battlefield.
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So this is fusion, then.
I stared at the swirling data in the hologram, the evolution log shimmering before me like an ancient prophecy etched in light.
Choosing fusion had enhanced my skill, not just by adding a mere star, but by redefining it.
Combining seven separate abilities into a singular monstrosity of power.
A singularity.
A god-star burning with condensed destruction.
Yes… it had worked.
It was worth it.
Every single one of those sacrifices.
But even as I basked in the resonance of newfound power, something gnawed at the back of my thoughts.
A creeping unease that no surge of might could silence.
My form… had changed.
And not subtly.
I had become a behemoth, a towering, grotesque colossus, nearly seventy meters tall.
My tendrils now sheathed in heavy plated exoskeleton.
My gills exhaling dense clouds of hallucinogenic toxin that turned the currents into a nightmare haze.
I had become a god of the deep.
But one that could now be struck far too easily.
Too big.
That was the price.
I had turned into a walking leviathan, a glorious, gleaming target.
A punching bag dressed in armor.
And that was the problem.
No matter how potent my abilities, how refined my poison, how brutal my attacks, mass came at a cost.
My size now worked against me.
Finesse was slipping away like grains of sand in the tide.
I exhaled, the currents rippling with tension.
Then I struck.
My tentacles smashed into the mural before me.
Cracks splintered across its surface like lightning through stone.
With a grunt, I wove my tendrils together, tight, precise, deliberate, until they formed a massive hand, grotesque and divine.
BOOM.
CRUSH.
The mural shattered in an instant, reduced to nothing but powdered ruin and drifting rubble.
I stood still.
Contemplative.
Am I becoming too strong… too fast?
That was the question that haunted me.
Not weakness, but the consequences of strength.
My growth had been meteoric.
Catastrophic.
My power leapt from tier to tier like a wildfire.
But now, even the act of controlling it strained me.
My foundations hadn't caught up.
My instincts were raw.
Every flick of my limb could level the terrain, but at what cost?
Perhaps… perhaps a humanoid form would grant me more control, I thought.
But no.
This was better.
This, this monstrous frame of scale and fang and toxin, was me.
A portal bloomed in the abyss beneath me.
Faint at first, then roaring with twisted light.
The rubble of the shattered mural fell into it like offerings to some unknowable god.
I sighed.
Then descended.
Head first, I entered the portal.
My body spiraled once more, space warped, gravity inverted, my insides twisted, equilibrium lost.
My limbs flailed for balance.
My perception shattered like mirrors caught in a cyclone.
Then.
Impact.
I crashed into the new zone with a tremor that sent ripples across the sea floor.
As my vision stabilized, I saw them.
Monsters.
All of them Lord-class, predators of the highest order.
And one… higher.
A Thallasian, celestial in presence, Seraphic in design, blurred through the water like a divine executioner descending from the heavens.
Beside it, a draconic seahorse charged murderously forward, its tail bristling with lethal menace.
Then a bloated grouper, hideous and swollen, spat vile sludge onto my exoskeleton, acidic enough to eat through stone.
I saw a portion of my armor sizzle, weaken.
Then it rammed me, body heavy with vile force.
Tentacles wrapped around me.
A kraken, no, perhaps an octopus, twisted in rage, ensnaring me in its monstrous embrace.
I was bound.
Surrounded.
Overwhelmed?
No.
I smiled.
My gills flared wide.
Toxic spores gushed from them in thick, fog-like plumes, clouding the battlefield in a noxious bloom of corruption and hallucination.
Let them struggle.
Let them taste madness.
Let them drown in me.
Now then, I whispered, my voice a growl in the currents, let's see how powerful you truly are.
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The battle began in blood and blinding light.
The Seraphic Thallasian struck first, its radiant fins slicing clean through my tentacles.
White lines flared across the water, then.
Boom.
They exploded.
My exoskeleton cracked, sheared open like paper against steel.
The Thallasian's fin was too sharp, its movements too fast.
Then.
Crack!
A mace slammed into my skull.
Pain ruptured through my head, bones fractured, my vision shattered.
I crashed into the seabed, pulverizing the coral and silt as I fell.
Tendrils wrapped around me, dragging me downward.
The octopus had me.
Then came the grouper, vomiting a vile, acidic slime onto my face.
It burned through my armor, hissing, melting, blinding.
And then, again.
White lines.
Everywhere.
They spiderwebbed across my form, detonating one after the other.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
My flesh carved open by light.
I reeled as the seahorse reappeared, its mace-tail slamming into my skull with inhuman precision.
Crack.
My skull fractured again.
Something punctured my brain.
I was dying.
My consciousness slipped away.
As darkness pooled in the edges of my mind.
Then, another jolt.
Pain surged through me like electricity.
The Thallasian blurred into a frenzy, a hurricane of afterimages, red streaks slashing through the water like wrath incarnate.
A brilliant white light flared as the very currents split open.
My throat.
cut.
Water flooded my esophagus.
Then.
My body ruptured.
Countless lacerations, were etched into me by the Thallasian's divine fury, then exploded outward, as though I had swallowed a fireball.
And yet…
I did not die.
My vitality surged.
My .uscle regrew.
My flesh reknit.
My bones snapped back into place.
I healed, faster than they could destroy me.
Then.
Screams.
My enemies flinched, then shrieked in agony as tendrils erupted from inside their stomachs.
The octopus, still restraining me, was the first to die, ripped apart, torn like paper in a storm.
Its insides flooded the sea in a grotesque fountain of blood and ink.
My body reddened.
Adrenaline flooded every nerve.
My gills flared, releasing a toxic blight, and then it happened.
Bloomrage Apex.
A detonation of spores ignited around me, erupting like a fungal nova.
And then I was gone.
My form blurred.
And reappeared.
Right beside the seahorse.
Blur-Lance Execution Drive.
My tendrils split into razors, faster than thought.
A thousand strikes.
A storm of annihilation.
And then.
Blood.
Flesh.
Guts.
The seahorse exploded into chunks.
It's intestines spiraled through the currents.
Its head floated lifelessly, severed by velocity alone.
I couldn't help it, I laughed.
Laughed at their struggle.
Laughed at their futility.
But then the Thallasian turned crimson.
Its celestial form bulged, mutated by desperation and wrath.
Then it vanished.
And reappeared, inside my guard, too close, too fast.
A single white line etched itself across my neck.
How?!
Pain erupted.
My vision fractured, red running through my eyes as my body twisted.
mutilated.
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Pain lanced through the Thalasian's body.
It staggered, disoriented, its fins twitching, gills flaring wide with confusion.
How?
The opponent it had mutilated only moments ago, was standing before it, untouched.
Unharmed.
Uninjured.
Its divine eyes widened in disbelief.
It looked down.
There, blooming open across its scaled torso, was a gaping hole, etched clean through its core.
It tried to scream.
Tried to activate its berserk form.
But it was too late.
A single line of light appeared across its throat.
And then, burst.
Blood.
Viscera.
Shattered bone.
Exploded.
Its severed head tumbled downward, spinning through the crimson water.
And then it was gone, devoured, swallowed whole by my stinger-mouth with a low, echoing crunch.
I chuckled, my voice vibrating through the sea like a dirge.
Truly... that idiot thought it could match me?
It had never stood a chance.
None of them had.
What they experienced, the battle they thought they won, was nothing but a dream, a hallucination fed into their minds by the spores blooming from my gills.
Spores I harvested from Vinley.
While not as potent as his, they were more than enough to plunge weaker minds into vivid delusion.
And like a school of clueless fools... they embraced it.
They welcomed the illusion.
They believed I was the one bleeding.
They believed they were gods.
But they were already dead.
Their bodies just hadn't caught up yet.
I laughed again, low, cold, victorious.
And then, as if summoned by my joy, a hologram shimmered into existence before me.
The boons of my glorious victory.
I smiled at their parting gifts.
Thank you for the offerings.
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[You have successfully devoured]
• [Abyssal Drake of the Coral Coil]
• [Abyssal Maw grouper]
• [Lurklimb Profanerl]
• [Wrathfin seraph]
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[New Skills Acquired:]
• Berserk Vein Bloom
• Blood Veil Emission
• Bonecrush Jaws
• Fin-Frame Exosurge
• Flexible Bone Knots
• Fluted Tail Spine
• Glare of Depths
• Gluttonous Metabolism
• Latch Chain Ballet
• Neural Tentacle Ganglia
• Pressure-Fused Scales
• Reinforced Gill Cavities
• Rite of Drowning Mercy
• Seraph's Last Bloom
• Seraphic Coil Core
• Sonar Wings
• Spinal Bloom Array
• Wrathcore Instinct
• Wrathful Seraphim
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[Your grotesque physique would like to devour]
• Berserk Vein Bloom
• Blood Veil Emission
• Bonecrush Jaws
• Fin-Frame Exosurge
• Flexible Bone Knots
• Fluted Tail Spine
• Glare of Depths
• Gluttonous Metabolism
• Latch Chain Ballet
• Neural Tentacle Ganglia
• Pressure-Fused Scales
• Reinforced Gill Cavities
• Rite of Drowning Mercy
• Seraph's Last Bloom
• Seraphic Coil Core
• Sonar Wings
• Spinal Bloom Array
• Wrathcore Instinct
• Wrathful Seraphim
[Would you allow it]
[Yes] / [No]
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