Chapter 23: The Demon Of the Black Sea

Chapter 23: Chapter 23: The Demon Of the Black Sea

A sea plagued by darkness. A sun hidden behind thundering clouds.

?Below, a ship with thousands of passengers on board drifted like a fragile wooden leaf upon an endless abyss.

?All eyes locked onto the horrifying scene ahead of them.

?Behind the tall raging waves, there was a colossal head.

?It was about the size of the ship itself, and it had two distinct black horns that stood out like twin hills piercing the heavens.

?Thick torrents of seawater cascaded down its jagged, midnight-scaled visage like miniature waterfalls, stained crimson by the crushed remnants of lesser sea beasts caught in its wake.

Slowly, six slit-like eyes, each burning with the dreadful malice of a dying star, opened in unison.

When the colossus exhaled through its flared nostrils, a suffocating miasma rolled across the ocean, freezing the crests of the black waves into jagged spikes while turning the air on the deck bitterly cold.

?For three agonizing heartbeats, dead silence gripped the Behemoth-class vessel. Even the howling wind seemed to choke in its throat.

?Then, the collective sanity of five thousand passengers shattered all at once.

?"T-The Demon of the Black Sea! Gods have mercy on us! It’s the Demon of the Black Sea!"

?Panic erupted across the deck like wildfire.

?Aristocrats who had boasted of their noble bloodlines mere minutes ago dropped to their knees, weeping openly and clawing at the polished wood as their legs gave out beneath them. Wealthy merchants trampled over their own silk-wrapped luggage in a blind, stampeding rush toward the lower cabins, acting as though thin walls of oak and reinforced iron could hide them from an ancient god of destruction.

?"Turn the ship around! Full reverse, you fools! I’ll pay you ten thousand gold coins, just get us out of here!" a portly duke screamed at the helm, sounding hysterical.

?"It’s no use! The abyssal aura has locked the surrounding currents! The Mana engines are also failing!" a mercenary captain roared back.

?Beside Aegon, the pride of the Noiré branch crumbled in an instant.

"

?Marcus let out a choked whimper as his knees buckled completely, sending him crashing onto the damp deck. Zane stood frozen like a statue of salt, his teeth chattering so violently that he bit into his own lip, drawing a thin line of blood down his chin.

Even Clara, who had maintained her composure longer than the boys, grabbed hold of Aegon’s coat sleeve with trembling, ice-cold fingers, her wide eyes reflecting the six crimson orbs of the abyssal titan.

?"We’re going to die..." Marcus sobbed, burying his face in his hands. "Not even an A-Rank Grimoire can fight a myth..."

?Directly in front of them, Cardigan’s aura of blue lightning flickered erratically. His jaw was clenched so tightly that the muscles along his neck bulged like iron cables.

Cold sweat poured down his pale temples, mixing with the salty sea spray.

Against an ordinary pack of sea monsters, a veteran sorcerer of House Noiré could carve out a bloody path of survival.

However, against a primordial calamity of this scale, his enchanted broadsword felt no different from a child’s wooden toy.

?Amid this madness and despair, Aegon’s mind was racing with a completely different kind of shock.

?"Wait a minute,Why the hell is the Demon of the Black Sea awake right now?!"

?He knew this monster. He had written its lore into existence himself.

?In the original plotline of the novel, the Demon of the Black Sea was an ancient, Calamity-class fiend slumbering at the bottom of the Abyssal Trench between the outer kingdoms and the Beliath Empire. It wasn’t supposed to awaken until the third volume of the story, three whole years from now, when the protagonist Veera crossed the ocean after unsealing the second page of the Forbidden Grimoire!

?Right now, Aegon was trapped in a ten-year-old body with a Nascent soul sitting at a mere 1 out of 12 capacity and a single F-Rank Berserker spell. Even if he burned every last drop of his remaining soul into ATUM, he lacked the spiritual fuel to materialize a weapon capable of scratching scales that had endured ten thousand years of crushing ocean pressure.

?We shall meet again when the seas turn red, Young Master.

?Aegon’s breath hitched as the old priest’s parting words echoed sharply through his mind. His dark eyes whipped around the chaotic deck, scanning the stampeding crowd for the old man with the staff, or the bruised woman with her two daughters who possessed "Heavenly Destiny."

?Neither of them was anywhere in sight.

?Before Aegon could take a single step to search for them, the Demon of the Black Sea parted its cavernous jaws.

?Inside its maw, a swirling sphere of compressed, pitch-black mana began to condense, warping the very light around its fangs. Then, the beast let out a roar deeper than heaven-splitting thunder.

?BOOOOOOOOM!

?The sheer acoustic shockwave struck the ship like a falling mountain.

Every glass window along the vessel’s grand superstructure shattered into glittering dust at once. Hundreds of weaker passengers collapsed unconscious onto the deck with blood trickling from their ears, while a massive spiderwebbed cracked across the ship’s golden protective barrier with a sickening crunch.

The demonic red beam struck toward the ship like a meteorite.

?BUZZZZ!

?It was then that a magnificent sight appeared.

?Across the dark sky, a figure clad in golden robes manifested.

?"Accursed Demon! You shall not harm my subjects. I, Erlong Vohn, thr Emperor of the mighty Beliath Empire, am going to eradicate you to protect my people"

?Saying that, the golden figure raised his hand, summoning a golden Grimoire in the air.

?[ Seraphim, the Empyrean of Archangels, come forth! ] he commnaded.

?Hummmm!

?Instantly, a six-winged, colossal humanoid figure manifested from the spell.

?This six-winged angel didn’t speak. He simply went off to fulfill his purpose.

?Holding a divine light spear, it descended straight toward the six-eyed demon.

?The six-eyed demon looked toward the sky and became enraged.

?THIS TIME, IT STRUCK WITH ITS OBSIDIAN CLAWS.

?BUZZZZ!