[Vol. 7] Chapter 42: A Shadow Called Destruction
She saw it with her own eyes, countless members of her race were crushed into dust beneath the monstrous tentacles that blotted out the sky. They didn’t even have time to scream.
The strongest warriors, the royal palace mages, and even the legendary royal guardians. All who stood up to resist were utterly powerless.
Against that force, one so terrifying that even calling it a catastrophe would be an understatement, all efforts were meaningless.
No attack could even scratch those massive tentacles. Not a single strike made them tremble, nor did they draw the attention of the being behind them. It was as if the entity was simply going through the motions, harvesting the sea’s inhabitants like a farmer reaping an overgrown field of seaweed. To it, these tiny lives were too insignificant to even notice.
That day, the Eastern Sea Pearl was completely destroyed. No one survived.
Yet when Nitila awoke, she found herself lying in her bed within the royal palace, completely unharmed. Morning sunlight streamed gently through the windows as if nothing had ever happened.
She remembered nothing of the disaster.
She felt no sense of unease, no sense that anything was wrong. Just like the rest of her people, who had miraculously reappeared within a fully restored Eastern Sea Pearl, she carried on as if nothing had changed.
Because those memories, the memories of that destruction, belonged to those who had already died.
But the nightmare did not end there.
The terrifying entity did not spare the beings who lived within this enclosed world, this Emerald Sea.
Every year, the [Great Whirlpool] would slow down during the coldest two months of winter. During that time, the sea’s violent currents would subside, and the region would become momentarily accessible. But for the remaining ten months, the Emerald Sea remained completely sealed off from the outside world.
Foreign merchants, knowing that staying too long would mean being trapped for an entire year, always left before those two months ended. Because of this, they unknowingly escaped a fate worse than death. They never learned the truth…
That the moment the [Great Whirlpool] resumed its full force and sealed the sea once more, the nightmare would begin again.
From the depths of the ocean, those enormous tentacles would rise once more, wiping out every living thing within the Emerald Sea.
And by the next day, everything would be restored, as if nothing had ever happened.
Year after year, this cycle continued. Nothing and no one was spared. And those merchants who returned annually, speaking with the same local people they had met before… never realized the horrifying truth.
The truth that the ones they met were no longer the same people as before.
Nitila was barely past twenty years old.
And the memories she had just recovered, the memories of her own deaths, numbered in the dozens.
Sometimes, she was crushed in her sleep, completely unaware as she lay in the royal palace. Other times, after she had grown older and traveled to other island tribes as an envoy, she witnessed firsthand the same monstrous tentacles reducing entire islands to nothingness.
She had seen it happen in all sorts of ways. Yet no matter where she was, no matter how many powerful beings were present, nothing ever changed. That absolute destruction and eerie reset remained unshaken.
But only now did the princess begin to understand, her experiences were just a small fragment of an endless cycle. The Emerald Sea had been caught in this loop for over a thousand years, ever since the era of the gods ended.
If this world’s time were not still moving forward, then even if this process repeated tens of thousands of times, the beings trapped in this [miniature world] would never realize the truth…
That they were nothing more than ghosts who had already died countless times before.
“Hah… hah… hah…”
The overwhelming impact of remembering her own repeated deaths left the princess pale and gasping for breath, like someone just pulled from the depths of the ocean. Her once clear, vibrant eyes lost their focus, darkening as if something was seeping into her very soul.
Something was invading her, consuming her body, her mind, her very existence. And the weaker her resistance, the faster it spread.
"Now… do you understand?"
King Willipol watched her every reaction, his expression once again calm and indifferent. He quietly flipped through the [Book of Truth], as if waiting for something, his tone carrying a hint of pity as he continued.
"You poor child… You've been searching for the reason behind my disappearance, hating the ghosts, believing them to be the true culprits behind the suffering of this sea. But you must understand, things are not so simple, not just black and white."
The former king of the Merfolk, his body twisted into an unnatural shape, lifted his head slightly, as if recalling the past.
"More than five years ago, the Pirate King, Rashid Bachiri, came to the royal palace alone and spoke with me in secret for a long time. That meeting… was the spark that set everything into motion."
"Rashid was a strange man. He did not carry the ancient bloodline of our Mingjiao tribe, yet he had still received the blessing of the god. To be honest, when he took out the [Book of Truth], I was truly shocked."
"Until that moment, I had always believed the [Book of Truth] was the only god’s artifact and that the dark secrets of this [miniature world] were known only to the Mingjiao tribe's rulers, passed down through generations. But clearly, Rashid Bachiri’s existence shattered that belief."
"Even now, I still don’t know where he came from. The [Book of Truth] cannot reveal the secrets of another who also holds a [Book of Truth], but it no longer matters."
"When Rashid came to the royal palace, he tried to persuade me to join forces with him. He said that the terrifying being lurking beneath the deep sea had, after a thousand years of ruthless plundering, finally gathered enough power and was about to enter its final phase."
"Once [They] awakens again, [They] will regain the horrifying strength of [Their] prime, perhaps even greater than before. And when that time comes, the Emerald Sea, this very [miniature world] that [They] created, will come to its ultimate end."
"That creature is a true Evil God, the sworn enemy of the deity my people once served."
"When I first heard this, my shock was beyond words. Not just because Rashid had so easily spoken of secrets known only to the rulers of the Mingjiao tribe, but also because his prophecy… was something that even my [Book of Truth] had never shown before."
"But he had his ways, methods to prove that everything he said was undeniably true. A mere outsider… possessing greater truth than we, the Mingjiao, who have served the gods for generations? How shameful!"
At this point, a deep shadow passed through King Willipol’s abyss-like eyes, and even the fine tentacles that made up his face seemed to wriggle more violently.
"This must be the result of our Mingjiao tribe’s failure over the past thousand years. We have lived in cowardice under the Evil God's rule, year after year feeding [Them] with our offerings… No wonder the true deity that once protected us, the [God of the Azure Sea and Truth], has turned away in disappointment."
"We must fix everything, make up for the sins of the past, don’t you think?"
"And to do that, we must find a power that can oppose [Them], before the false god that stole the Sea God's Name is fully reborn."
"Rashid told me that the Great Evil God in the deep sea had entered its final stage of slumber and transformation. In five years, or at most ten, [They] will fully awaken."
"But during this time, [They] will lose all control over the [miniature world], [Their] ability to monitor and manipulate what happens inside will be completely gone. Rashid hoped that I would gather a force strong enough to evacuate the tens of millions of souls trapped in the Emerald Sea before the [miniature world] collapses into complete destruction."
"Hah! He wanted to run, flee like a beaten dog, tail between his legs! Cowardly! Foolish! He never truly understood the purpose of the [Truth] our God granted him!"