He jumped from the deck, propelling himself upward, he used the crow's nest as a springboard and swung around it, his momentum carrying him in a wide arc that rocked the ship slightly, Lucid was airborne for a moment, flying through the air as his momentum started to slow, there were perhaps hundreds of small cannonballs right in front of him that threatened to tear his body apart if he did not move.
Lucid braced himself, slapping his hands together, he knew what he had to do, domain control was the most effective option, he could not just weave endless chains, it needed to be a technique, something effective, something that could be manifested in an instant, but the drawback was immense, the most powerful technique he could use other than the divine unchained heart, he feared he would literally die on the spot.
But he had to, just like how he had to protect Karmen's family inside that rift with the chain lattice, he had to protect that ship, he needed to shape his own world, or else the rift would claim him.
He whispered under his breath, "domain control."
The moment he uttered those words, he could see threads of golden string attaching themselves around the ship's decks, coming out of the sea in straight lines which probably belonged to some sea creatures. Then came the pain, his eyes immediately bled, his mouth started to bleed, his nose too, but it was the norm, he breathed in, light poured from him carrying the usual color vibrance as the chains coalesced into a geometrical form, an instant lattice in the air.
Lucid in that moment was suspended in the air, he felt so much that he almost fainted but he pushed through it, 'pain is an illusion,' he kept repeating, the cannonballs hit the lattice in front of him, they dispersed into similar glow as they made contact, suddenly Lucid took the middle of the lattice where chains intersected and pulled it back, many cannonballs went inside the lattice as he twisted and folded it into a single glowing wrapping of chain with a deadly ball inside.
Arthur watched it all from a distance, his eyes wide, some of the crew members looked in astonishment, they were completely bewildered by what they were witnessing forgetting their task at hand, Lucid within a smooth motion noticed in the air and launched it back with such terrifying speed toward the fleet, in the moment he let go he made sure to slightly activate the passive of the pierced spine trait, divine wrath passive that allowed him to store slight amounts of resolve and wrath whenever he sustained any damage, which came from the self-inflicted damage he caused himself, the illness worked hand in hand with the passive.
He laid suspended in the air watching the glowing chain lattice folded over the cannonballs crash into the fleet, sinking two ships as they blew up.
A voice resounded in the air
[ The Divine Maiden Alice has slain a B - Rank illuminated human. ]
[ Fate Essence Absorbed +100 000. ]
[ Your path shines brighter. ]
The voice kept repeating itself again.
[ The Divine Maiden Alice has slain a B - Rank illuminated human. ]
[ Fate Essence Absorbed +100 000. ]
Lucid could hear the voice over and over again, B rank? But the properties of the rift was C. Well it meant that he had hit his target nonetheless. However if their adversaries were somewhere along B to C then that pirate ship didn't stand a chance especially with thirty fleets.
'They must have done something to piss off Shenzhou.'
But it didn't matter since he sunk two then there were twenty eight more to go.
He heard the voice about thirty times before it stopped announcing. He had gained a lot of fate essence. if one hundred thousand was a single human then thirty times that was 3 million fate essence for two ships. That was more than however much he had bidded and sacrificed inside the domain of Mercyros.
Lucid suddenly thought something dark and sinister if he sunk all of them.
He would gain eighty four million fate essence.
That would be enough to ascend through the echelons of the enlightened ranks.
That would be enough to buy all the relics, artifacts and Vestiges he had ever needed.
But a million fate essence, three times that, was enough for her.
That would be enough to stir Alice awake provided the fact that his thoughts were proven to be true. That she was indeed slumbering.
He wore a slight smile before the water took him and he plunged, the sea reddened as soon as he entered the water surface, Arthur's yells were muffled.
He sank, growing weaker by the minute, his consciousness was receding, he took the vial and drank it earlier, why was he getting so sick, it was unfair, why could he not use the powers granted to him, it was unfair.
'They are mine,' he yelled inside his head.
He detested being powerless, being weak was the worst sin one could commit, having no power was the very idea he detested and he knew it better than anyone, if he had more power, if just a little more, he would have never found himself in this chaotic place, this world forsaken by its own creator.
If he had a little power he could have prevented that fated disaster, if he had a little power he could have saved those citizens, images of bitter memories presented themselves in his mind of a past long forgotten, if he had just a little more power he could have avoided Aika and turned the whole calamity around.
But the irony was that now he had woken up in a new world being granted all the powers he had ever needed, and now it was being taken away from him, Alice belonged to him, her powers belonged to him, he was the one using her, he thought with a sinister grin as he sank.
He had gained three million fate essence. If that wasn't enough then… there was no hope. She would never come back.
His powers would never come back.
'Where is she anyways,' he thought, 'where is she!!!' he gritted his teeth.
Then as if to answer a call.
His eyes widened as a hand reached toward him through the dark silent ocean, followed by pale incandescent skin of green glow, green hair floated like seaweed, a soft blindfolded delicate face met his with delicate lips, the elegant contours of her body were sculpted like an elegant statue, he could not help but take his eyes off her, she always wore nothing. He blushed, his previous resentment suddenly faded away, carried by the deep sea, he could not speak, he was running out of breath, he slightly thrashed around.
He was going to drown.
But could he? That was something for the chain of heart to judge, whether he died or not, at least he could fight with everything he had one last time, at least he saw her, saw her? No, why did she have to be the last face he ever saw, if anything he wanted to die without seeing her, her being the last face he ever saw was probably one of the worst ways to go out in his accord.
The sheer opposition of resentment and longing clouded his mind like a thick fog similarly to his face that wore a cloudy uncertain conflicted look even below the sea of his thoughts.
As he thought bitterly delicate hands grasped his shoulder as this being drifted closer to him, breaking his mirage of thoughts.
These hands pulled him and he realized with a grim certainty that it was her, the woman he had desperately waited for, the woman that appeared in his dreams and then vanished, the woman that appeared at the top of the hill and disappeared, the woman he confessed inside their shared space, the soulscape.
It was Alice.
As he realized that, water immediately filled his nostrils and his mouth, Lucid despite all his amazing powers was still just human, the water rushed inside his nostrils as he breathed in and a handful of water made its way down his lungs, his eyes burned red as a painful ache thrummed through his ribs, the Chain of Heart reversed wounds and the body's physical state but it could not reverse breathing water.
He could feel his vision darkening, yet as soon as he felt darkness grab the edge of his consciousness he woke up again and again, the cut oxygen flow from the lungs to the brain causing the brain to sustain damage was being healed, so he found himself in this endless state of not being able to breathe and healing at the same time.
What was worse was that the silhouette of Alice drifted close as he suffocated, she drifted close with a gaping wound in her lower abdomen, chains covering her chest and waist loose that was revealing but yet not too revealing, a single blindfold covering her eyes, despite it she was so beautiful, he felt euphoric in that moment.
Perhaps it was his body's last desperate attempt at releasing chemicals to deal with the pain as he was drowning or perhaps it was merely her presence, her hands wrapped around his waist where his skin showed just under his orange life jacket and she hovered over his face.