The black flames engulfed the entire room, pulsing with a terrible heat. Through the dark inferno, both Skadi and Irene could hear a faint, distorted screeching from the creature as it writhed helpless within the blazing trap.
Standing near the broken doorway, both Irene and Skadi felt a cold chill run down their spines. Something about those dark red flames stirred a primal rejection deep within their minds—a dark, suffocating pressure that made their skin crawl.
What was the fuel driving those ominous flames? Even a battle-hardened warrior like Skadi felt her very soul shiver. She knew instinctively that if those flames were to touch her, the consequences would be catastrophic.
The inferno raged inside the sealed room for half an hour before the black fire gradually faded, leaving behind nothing but scorched stone and smoking debris.
"Is that thing finally dead?" Irene asked softly.
They stepped back into the charred room, needing to confirm the creature's total destruction with their own eyes before they could let their guard down.
"Looking at this state... it shouldn't be alive," Jeanne said, stepping up to the blackened, charcoal-like mass. She studied the burnt remains for a long moment, sensing no lingering vitality.
"It's dead," Skadi added bluntly.
Drawing her colossal greatsword, she swung it down, splitting the charred husk clean in two. She didn't stop there. With methodical precision, she crushed the hardened fragments into small pieces, then ground those pieces down into fine powder, scanning every grain to ensure no viable flesh remained.
"Is all that really necessary?" Jeanne and Irene watched her, their expressions twitching slightly. Wasn't this a bit excessive?
"I have to be sure," Skadi explained, not pausing her movements. "Your Arts are unlike anything I've seen before, which means the creature likely hasn't encountered them either. I must guarantee it didn't transmit any data back to the hive before it burned."
Skadi motioned for Jeanne to throw another burst of fire over the powdered remains just to be entirely safe. Only when the ash was reduced to nothing did she finally lower her weapon.
The most terrifying trait of the Seaborn was their horrifying rate of adaptation. If this creature had managed to relay information about Jeanne's unique dark flames back to We-Many, the collective would eventually evolve a resistance to it, turning a potent weapon into a nightmare.
Both Jeanne and Irene understood Skadi's extreme caution. No one understood the sheer terror of the Seaborn better than an Abyssal Hunter.
Looking at the pile of smoldering ash, Jeanne wondered if a microscopic trace of living tissue might truly have survived the initial blast. Given the unnatural biology of these beasts, Skadi's paranoia was likely justified.
"What do you think its original purpose was?" Jeanne asked, gazing at the heap of grey dust. "A Seaborn like this doesn't make sense. It certainly wasn't meant for combat—was it just a decoy?"
Jeanne found the creature's existence baffling. Knowing the nature of the ocean's spawn, she refused to believe such an entity existed without a specific design.
"Perhaps it was created to collect genetic structures from land dwellers to accelerate their evolution," Skadi said after a moment's thought.
"It lacked direct offensive capabilities, yet the old cultist seemed to gain something the moment he connected to it. The entity possessed a hypnotic influence, using hallucinatory promises to lure humans close, study their biological makeup, and log their cellular structure... If that's true, something terrible is underway."
The realization sent a sudden chill through all three of them.
If the Seaborn were actively gathering data on terrestrial life to design bodies suited for the surface, the implications were terrifying. Once they evolved forms capable of freely roaming the land, a wave of despair would sweep across the terra, leaving the nations with virtually no means to fight back.
What scared them even more was the unknown: How many of these bio-collectors were hidden across the coast, and how far along was this grand evolutionary scheme?
"But this still contradicts their nature," Skadi murmured, speaking more to herself than the others. "The Seaborn shouldn't be abandoning the ocean. If surface adaptation was their goal all along, why wait until now? They consumed countless Aegir over the centuries—they had all the genetic material they needed long ago."
Irene nodded in agreement. During the Great Silence years ago, the tide had consumed countless coastal dwellers. There was no logical need for them to go through such a convoluted process now.
"And if they possess the power to summon another Profound Silence and drown the continents, why bother evolving land-walking bodies?" Irene added, her brow furrowing. "They could simply submerge the land again... Unless..."
"Unless they can't trigger a flood on that scale anymore," Jeanne chimed in, finishing the thought. "Or they fear losing control over the ocean itself—that the marine environment they once relied on might one day be turned against them as a weapon."
Jeanne wasn't entirely sure if her theory was correct, nor did she fully grasp the ultimate goal of We-Many. But one thing was clear: the creature had specifically identified her.
Enemy of We-Many.
That was what the monster had called her. It was entirely possible that the sudden spike in sea beast activity along the coast was driven by her arrival—or rather, by something resting within her body.
"It could be a combination of both," Skadi said, glancing toward Jeanne.
She remembered her own past—how she had slain their sea god. Had that act severed their ability to summon the Profound Silence, forcing them to adapt to the land instead?
If so, she was deeply involved in this crisis. To find the ultimate truth, she would need to return to Aegir and search the sunken cities herself.
Yet both Kal'tsit and Jeanne had explicitly warned her to stay away from the ocean, let alone return to her fallen homeland. Fortunately, Skadi was not driven by reckless curiosity; she knew when to hold back.
"I will report all of this to the Inquisition," Irene said with a heavy sigh, looking down at the ash. "We need to hunt down any other abnormal Seaborn lurking along the coast. It looks like our workload just tripled... the High Inquisitor is going to lose his mind."
She adjusted the grip on her hand-cannon, her tone shifting. "Since the main threat here is dealt with, I'm going back up to the surface. I want to check on... the remaining villagers."
Her voice trembled slightly. She knew the locals despised her kind, a harsh reality she had grown accustomed to during her years as an Inquisitor.
Yet knowing that those very people had likely been dragged into this dark pit and fed to a monster left a knot of grim frustration in her chest.
"Go ahead," Jeanne said gently. "The major threat here is gone. Nothing left in this manor should pose a danger to you."
With Irene heading back to the surface, Jeanne picked up Fafnir and ventured deeper into the subterranean passages alongside Skadi, intending to locate the flooded waterway that connected to the ocean.
As they pressed forward, the air grew increasingly damp and heavy, carrying the distinct, salt-heavy scent of the deep sea.
The shift in environment hit Skadi far harder. In the quiet gloom, she could hear the faint, rhythmic crash of waves against distant ocean reefs—a sound that shouldn't have been audible this deep underground.
The ocean's pull on her mind was terrifyingly strong. Gritting her teeth, Skadi suppressed the dark, instinctual urge calling her back into the depths, forcing her feet to move forward behind Jeanne.
She felt a growing dread regarding her own body. She needed to speak with Kal'tsit as soon as they returned to Rhodes Island; she could no longer ignore these unsettling changes.
After navigating a long, narrow stone tunnel, the passage suddenly opened up into a massive underground cavern. Without Jeanne leading the way, no one would have guessed such a vast space existed beneath the manor.
As they stepped onto the ledge, the cavern lit up with an eerie blue luminescence.
Their hearts sank. The pale blue light reflecting off the damp stone walls wasn't coming from glowing flora or bioluminescent minerals—it was emanating from hundreds of sea beasts crawling across the cavern floor.