Chapter 47: | Inadequate
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At my command, the spikes vanished.
For a heartbeat, the sea held its breath.
Then.
They reappeared.
A flash.
A blur.
Thousands of shimmering lances sliced through the water and struck like a divine punishment, appearing midair, mere inches away from the abominations.
Then the rain began.
Not water.
Not mercy.
A deluge of sharpened execution.
The storm impaled them all.
Blood burst in fountains.
Flesh tore.
Screams gurgled through ruptured throats as bodies convulsed and collapsed mid-motion.
Limbs thrashed, only to be shredded by a second wave.
The ocean ran red, stained with gore and the final tremors of dying monsters.
Silence followed.
Not peace, only stillness.
The battlefield had become a grave.
And yet.
Beneath the bloodied surface, one form remained.
A singular corpse stabbed and impaled to the seabed, impaled by a massive trident.
Its exoskeleton had cracked like porcelain.
Then it shattered.
BOOM.
A sharp explosion of ruptured shell echoed below.
Fragments scattered into the dark, and the body slammed into the seabed with a dull, echoing thud.
But it did not die.
Something moved.
Veins, enormous, grotesque, began to snake across its body.
Not normal veins.
These were monstrous, pulsing like the roots of a cursed tree.
Black and bulging, they spread down its limbs, across its chest, up its neck.
A net of corruption.
Then came the sound.
GONG.
A deep, bone-rattling beat.
One.
Two.
Louder each time.
Not from outside.
From within.
Its heart.
It had awakened.
Its eyelids flew open, and terror poured out.
Not rage.
Not hunger.
But pure horror.
Eyes wide, unfocused, flooded with pain.
As if the creature inside still lived, still felt, but could no longer move.
No longer scream.
Then the horns began to grow.
Black.
Twisted.
Demonic.
They tore from its skull like blades, curling and branching skyward in grotesque spirals.
A throne of bone and blasphemy, forced onto a mind not meant to wear it.
It screamed.
But no sound came.
Because it no longer had a voice.
Only the hollow echo of something broken.
Something becoming.
Am I dead?
My body drifted through the void, formless, weightless.
Darkness clung to me like old skin.
I glanced down.
A hand?
How strange… I hadn't seen that shape in so long, not since reincarnation.
Yet the moment I recognized this dreadful place, something ancient and cold slid down my spine.
I remembered it.
This void.
This place where I drifted for what felt like thousands of years, maybe an epoch. Screaming.
Weeping.
Breaking.
It wasn't the silence that tore me apart.
It was the knowing.
The knowing that I was alone, abandoned, damned, and it was all my fault that happened.
I didn't want to recall it, but the memory returned like a curse, etched into my every nerve.
Suddenly, something yanked me.
A force, unseen, brutal, pulled my form forward.
I shouted in defiance, struggling in vain.
"Stop it! Where are you dragging me this time!?"
The pull grew stronger, snapping my resistance like twine.
And then, pain.
Raw, violent pain.
My body jolted awake.
My compound eyes shot open, vision blurred by agony and confusion.
I was underwater, staring up through the surface, and there I saw them.
My creations.
My loyal, beautiful creations.
Being slaughtered.
Spikes tore through their flesh.
Their shells cracked.
Their forms were reduced to twitching, dying fragments.
Impaled.
Bombarded.
Erased.
Rage surged, but before I could act, pain slammed into me again.
My exoskeleton exploded outward with a thunderous burst, slamming me into the seabed.
I tried to cough, but no air came.
I couldn't even move.
Not a single damn muscle responded.
Then it began.
Veins bulged across my flesh, black and pulsing.
Something unnatural pumped through me, hot and alien.
My head, my skull, splintered under invisible pressure.
It felt like I was being unmade.
I tried to scream.
I couldn't.
I tried to thrash.
I couldn't.
All I could do was drown in agony.
Then, crack.
My skull split open.
A set of horns erupted from the wound, obsidian-black, jagged, monstrous.
My eyes darkened into pits of pure void.
My tentacles twisted, shifted, reshaping themselves into clawed, demonic limbs.
What is this?
What am I becoming?
Without warning, my body moved.
Not by my will.
My limbs vanished into the water, blurring forward at a speed I'd never reached, not even with Blur-Lance Execution Drive nor with bloomrage apex stacked again and again.
And I wasn't in control.
It was weird and I hated this feeling.
My form reappeared before the Overseer, the mermaid who had torn through my forces, who had pierced me without mercy.
She didn't even have time to react.
My claw flashed in and out of existence.
A moment later, time caught up.
Lines appeared, carved into her body, clean and deep.
Her eyes widened in disbelief.
She thought I was dead.
I saw it on her face.
She couldn't understand, how the very Whark she had decimated was still alive.
Neither could I.
Her mouth opened, stunned.
Her gaze dropped to the hexagonal shield around her, it was gone.
Shattered.
Obliterated.
Blood welled in the cuts along her torso, soaking her fins, leaking into the sea like ink.
But the wounds weren't lethal, just shallow enough to sting, to humiliate.
Her stunned face twisted, stiffening.
Then, rage.
Barrier after barrier surged around her, stacking up fivefold.
Magic circles bloomed like luminous eyes.
The ocean shifted, coiling around her wrath.
"Take this!"
She bellowed.
"My Ascension VI, Wrathful Maelstrom! You damned Whark!"
The sea convulsed.
A storm formed, a vortex of leviathan-shaped currents roaring into existence.
A few sentences screamed toward me, faster than I could think.
Damn it, I'm going to die.
That was all I could think.
The Leviathans vanished.
Then reappeared, right in front of me.
But before they could strike, my body vanished again.
I didn't move it.
I didn't order it.
My claw vanished from existence
Then...
My claws reappeared, cleaving through water, through storm, through spell, through flesh.
Time fractured.
Lines carved themselves across the shield.
Across the Queen.
Across the ocean itself.
A heartbeat passed.
Then everything detonated.
Blood exploded in trails.
My tentacles ruptured.
Bone snapped.
My back split open like a cracked shell, nerves screeching in agony.
I screamed, but again, I couldn't.
The Queen stared at me, no, through me, her eyes blank with disbelief as her body began to fall apart.
"How...?"
She whispered.
Blood gushed from her lips.
Her gaze dropped to the shattered remains of her Leviathans, then to the remnants of her five-layer shield, then to her own body, ribbons of flesh and fin dangling in water like kelp.
She hadn't just been overpowered.
She'd been unmade.
With a final gasp, her pieces fell into the depths.
Only then did I feel it.
Control returned, slow and aching.
I collapsed, twitching, gasping without lungs.
Pain rolled through me like waves of molten iron.
My compound eyes flicked around in a daze, barely recognizing the void I now ruled.
Everything was dead.
My creations, my children were slain.
Not a trace of life remained.
Not a single monster.
Not a single ally.
Only wreckage.
Corpses.
And me.
Me... and this thing that I had become.
Did I do this?
No.
Did my body do this?
Yes it did.
A tremor ran through me.
My thoughts raced, but my limbs moved slowly, like I was still at the abyss.
I gazed at my grotesque reflection in the currents.
The horns.
The bleeding skin.
The pulsing veins.
What am I?
Then I turned toward her shredded corpse.
Something moved, instinctual.
My maw opened.
My body lunged.
I devoured her.
Piece by piece, her flesh vanished into my maw, her vitality flooding my bloodstream like black fire.
A hologram flickered to life above the remains, a cascade of stolen skills, appeared.
And yet I felt no triumph.
Only silence.
Only hunger.
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[You have successfully devoured]
• [Ashin Sae Acoustine 5★]
[Error your bloodline is too weak to devour Ashin Sae Acoustine skills]
[Due to your bloodline inadequate ability you have gained nothing]
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My expression froze.
Then shattered.
Shock flared, then collapsed into fury.
White-hot.
Absolute.
WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!
The system's message still hovered, indifferent.
NOTHING?!
I got nothing at all?!
I fought her!
Bled.
Struggled.
Burned through everything I had.
And now, this?
This insult?
My bloodline deemed inadequate?
Too weak to absorb even a fragment of her?
My teeth clenched, trembling.
My vision blurred red.
YOU'VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!?
The world warped around me,
not from mana.
Not from heat.
But from me.
My rage was a storm.
Stop playing games.
My voice broke into a howl.
STOP PLAYING GAMES WITH ME!
I don't know who you are, or what you are,
the twisted god, system, or demon behind this Record…
But hear me now.
I will find you.
And when I do.
I will rip you out of the Dimensional Record
and grind your existence into ash.
Mark my words…
My voice fractured.
raw, vengeful, shaking with heat.
I, Alister Von Fai, will decimate every line you ever touched.
The ground pulsed beneath me.
My breath came out in ragged bursts, each exhale trailing spores, drifting like sparks from a forest fire.
My back arched as the fury clawed out of me, tangible now, seeping from my body,
leaking into the world.
The spores ignited.
Shifted.
Twitched.
They coalesced.
Into a form.
Into me.
Similar to me, but with a humanoid body.
Horns crowned their heads.
Veins pulsed across their arms like ropes of fire.
theit frame bulged with fury barely contained.
They snarled once.
Then lunged at the carcasses floating across the sea.