Chapter 46: | Insufferable
---
My frame carved a screaming arc through the clouds as I fell from the heavens like a godless spear.
Thousands of meters above the ocean, air howled past my exoskeleton.
Below, the sea churned with monsters.
And above it all, the mermaids waited, expressionless, cold, unshaken, as they raised their tridents in unison.
My compound eyes flared, analyzing everything at once.
The sea writhed beneath me.
Dozens of Stage 1 beasts circled below, their gazes fixed skyward.
Awaiting the Descent.
Awaiting the birth of slaughter.
My maw snapped open.
A deep, resonant bellow tore from my throat.
The atmosphere warped with the force of it.
I fell faster.
Hundreds of meters per second now, my weight turning the sky into a pressure chamber.
The mermaids dived, vanishing beneath the surface.
Then, an instant later, they burst back into the air.
Arcing upward like spears, tridents poised mid-flight, their timing perfect.
A last-ditch defense.
Trying to buy time.
For their queen.
But it was useless.
From the sea below, my creations surged upward.
Tentacles lashed out, intercepting the mermaids mid-air.
Bones cracked.
Bodies folded.
Screams gurgled into silence as they were dragged downward and slammed into the waves like living anchors.
The water turned red.
Chaos bloomed.
Tentacles tore.
Claws shredded.
The ocean roared with the sounds of monsters dying.
And then.
She appeared.
The Queen.
She hovered above the water like a curse made flesh, one finger raised toward the heavens.
A shimmering sphere of compressed energy materialized at her fingertip, pulsing.
It launched.
In a breath, it tore through the air and slammed into me.
Boom.
My exoskeleton ruptured.
Fragments of chitin exploded in every direction.
My vision turned to white fire, then black.
Pain.
A void of pain.
A massive chunk of my torso was gone, simply gone.
My claws instinctively coiled, shielding my core.
But they were too slow.
The attack punched through them like paper.
Had I not twisted in time… that would've taken my head clean off.
Even now, my mind reeled.
I've been hit before.
Pierced.
Burned.
Shattered.
But this?
This wasn't a skill.
It was annihilation wrapped in elegance.
Reinforced magic circles... layered amplification... that wasn't just broken, it was sacrilege.
Then.
Impact.
I struck the ocean like a meteorite.
Water detonated around me in a great ring, collapsing waves outward like the shockwave of a god's wrath.
Above me, she was chanting again.
New magic circles bloomed around her like hovering halos.
I stared up at the sky.
So blue.
So still.
So far away.
A beautiful place to die.
But I wasn't dying today.
Not yet.
The water rippled.
Sharks.
Dozens.
Maybe more.
Their mouths opened wide, rows of jagged teeth glinting as they closed in.
Then.
Blood in my eyes.
Not mine.
The sharks never reached me.
They were skewered mid-charge, my tentacles lashed out, precise and deadly.
Their corpses floated past, and I fed.
Fed on their flesh.
Fed on their mass.
Fed on survival.
My wounds knotted, cell by cell.
My body pulsed with regeneration.
Blur-Lance Execution Drive.
My form blurred into motion.
Tentacles twisted, then reshaped, forming a brutal claw of bone and sinew.
I launched upward, breaking the surface like a nightmare reborn.
Mid-air.
My claw raised.
Swiped.
And then.
Pink light flashed.
Her eyes turned pink.
Suddenly… hesitation.
How… how could I kill her?
A vision of beauty.
Of elegance wrapped in death.
My claw faltered.
The trajectory broke.
I crashed back into the water, dazed, confused.
Why?
Why couldn't I.
Pain.
Pain jolted through my frame like lightning.
Dozens of razor-thin water lances tore into me, each one compressed with horrifying force.
They didn't just pierce, they drank.
Leeched.
My blood was sucked straight from the wounds.
The spikes turned red.
Then shattered.
The stolen blood floated, flowing back to her.
She drank it.
My blood.
The Queen stood above, her lips red, her aura flaring with borrowed power.
Unnatural.
Mermaids don't do this.
They charm.
They sing.
They lull sailors to their deaths.
But this?
This one drank blood.
Shot water spears.
Manipulated magic circles like an artist with ink and death.
This queen was an apex predator.
And she was just getting started.
A second volley struck me, this time the spikes exploded inside my body.
My shell tore open in a dozen new places.
I scanned the battlefield.
Only corpses.
Drained, emptied, no biomass left to consume.
She'd seen through my regeneration tactic.
Cut me off from my food source.
Her voice echoed across the blood-rippled water.
"Just stay still, you abomination of a Whark, and let me drink your blood."
…?
What did she say?
Did she just order me?
Command me?
Like I was hers?
I lay motionless.
My blood, my biomass, leaking into the sea.
My heartbeat slowing.
Waiting.
Waiting for it.
Imperial Bloomcore Reign, charging.
But she dared.
She dared to claim victory.
To declare it.
To act like this was over.
You arrogant, beautiful, insufferable bitch.
You dare.
My claw tightened.
Then.
Crack.
My eexoskeleton covering my tentacles exploded
Blood sprayed.
Rage ignited.
Boiling.
Boiling.
My breath hitched.
My eyes blurred.
The world shattered into red.
With a scream, I vanished.
Blur-Lance Execution Drive.
Was pushed to its limits.
I reappeared in front of her mid-slash, then again, then again.
Blood sprayed in bursts, each attack sharper, faster.
But still, useless.
Hexagonal barriers of magic water materialized with every strike, blocking everything.
Everything.
She stood unfazed.
And she laughed.
"Did you eat enough? As how can you break my barriers with such a weak attacks?"
She smiled.
"I admire your confidence."
The smile widened, cruel and reverent.
"And for that… I'll reward you."
Magic circles bloomed around her, larger, more complex than anything I'd seen.
"Allow me to show you… my strongest spell."
Water surged upward.
No, not water.
A trident.
A colossal trident of condensed ocean, rising from the deep like a god's weapon. It eclipsed the light.
My body, was torn, half-blind, shuddered.
One of my compound eyes was gone, ruptured.
Still, I saw her.
The Queen.
Watching me.
Amused.
"You've come far for a Stage 0 monster."
She whispered.
"You even have the potential of an Emperor."
A pause.
A slow, almost kind smile.
"But alas… you were born a Whark."
She looked down at me.
Pitying.
"So let me at least tell you the name of your killer."
She extended her arms to the sky.
"I am Ashin Sae Acoustine, founder of Atlantis, The first matriarch of the Acoustine Line. And you..."
She smiled like a goddess.
"Can die now."
The trident fell.
Silence.
My mind fractured.
My hearing vanished.
My vision cracked.
And yet, I heard her name.
Clear as the sky.
Ashin Sae Acoustine.
I would remember it.
Mark my words.
Today...
Is your last da...
Kugh!
The trident pierced me, through my chest, down my spine.
My body was hurled into the abyss, dragged to the ocean floor.
A thunderclap echoed in my bones.
Then stillness.
My hearbeat was gone.
My vision succumbed to darkness.
My breath was no more.
This time…
I was dead.
---
My gaze fell upon my guards.
They were dead, massacred before they could even lift a finger.
Their limbs floated aimlessly in the bloodied water, twisted and torn, heads lolling in silence, eyes wide with disbelief.
A slaughter.
A failure.
That whark had been far too strong.
Far stronger than its kind had any right to be.
And its subordinates… were just as brutal.
He was at Stage 0, and yet he nearly shattered my Fragmented Shield, an Ascension III spell that have evolved six times.
It should've been impossible for that whark to do what he did.
I almost smiled.
A creature like that, given enough time, could have become something… formidable.
A future emperor, one worthy of terror.
But sadly it met me before that chance could bloom.
Such is fate.
Cruel, Unforgiving, And fair.
How fitting, that a dead woman like me now destroys the destiny of an entire race.
How intriguing, that my ruin must become theirs.
My eyes fixed on the remaining abominations.
They fought well, brutal in form, elegant in motion.
Blood spattered from their blows.
Their coordination was uncanny, moving as one, like soldiers bound by instinct.
But this would be their last dance.
A single breath escaped from me, sharp and cold.
"This is the end."
Mana surged.
The sea pulsed.
My mouth moved with practiced grace, and from the depths of thought, the first symbols of Divine Mind took shape.
The spell was slow.
Intricate.
Outdated, even.
A relic of a dying art.
I traced the glowing runes flying through the ocean's veil, each mark drawing power from the currents.
My fingers wove invisible lines of force, delicate and precise, until the great circle formed and hovered above me, a blooming flower of sacred geometry, etched in light.
That was the price of this magic.
Unlike the crude incantations most mages flung like arrows, Circle Mages required patience.
Ritual.
Control.
We were rare for a reason.
I exhaled, then whispered the invocation.
"Condensed Hydro Rain."
It answered me instantly.
A loyal beast, eager to feed.
The ocean trembled.
Droplets lifted, rising in defiance of gravity, spinning and twisting until they stretched into a barbed spikes.
Hundreds, no, thousands, of them now enhanced by Divine Mind.
Floating behind me like a halo of death.
It wasn't as destructive as the enhanced version of my Compressed Hydro Sphere, my Ascension III single target skill.
But this… this was what I needed and loved.
An Ascension IV spell born for slaughter.
My signature.
My favorite.
It would not just pierce.
It would drink.
As the sharpened rain fell, it would siphon blood from every wound, returning it to me, sweet and rich with stolen strength.
Mana.
Vitality.
Power.
Were all mine to claim.
A perfect symbiosis, thanks to the blessing of my lineage.
Vampiric Mermaid Matriarch.
A serene smile played across my lips.
Almost angelic.
Almost kind.
"Now die, please,"
I murmured.