I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1474: The Horrors Of The Sea

The unnatural fog swallowed the vanguard flagship in less than ten seconds.

It was not sea mist. It was a white wall, heavy and freezing, and it smelled of stagnant deep-water trenches, crushed salt, and rotten kelp. It rolled over the grey waves faster than any wind could have pushed it, and one by one the other ships of the Sixth Legion vanished from view.

The wind died at once. The heavy canvas sails sagged against their yards. For a moment, the only sound left in the world was the creak of the flagship’s reinforced timber hull as it pitched blindly in the black water.

Rian stood near the aft castle railing with his hands tucked deep in his coat pockets, watching the white wall press against the sides of the ship until the bowsprit disappeared into it.

’That doesn’t look like weather.’

Then the song began.

It did not come from the air. It came up through the pitch-sealed floorboards of the deck, a melody of many layered tones that hummed in the soles of the feet and settled deep in the marrow. It sounded like a choir of a thousand voices weeping in perfect harmony, rising from somewhere far beneath the hull.

It took hold at once.

Along the starboard rail, a heavily armored Sixth Legion corporal stopped mid-stride. His eyes turned glassy, and his pupils spread until they swallowed the dark irises entirely. He let go of his steel halberd, and it clattered against the frozen wood.

Without a word, the corporal climbed over the iron railing and stepped off into the black water.

A moment later, two sailors near the mainmast followed him. Then a seasoned vanguard sergeant in a heavy blue Winterward coat. They walked with blank, peaceful faces and threw themselves over the edge of the ship as if returning to a warm bed. There were no screams when they hit the water. There was only a quiet splash, and then nothing.

Captain Ysolde Vaertia drew her sword.

”Hold the lines!” Ysolde bellowed, and her Ascendant aura flared out and slammed down across the deck, pressing on every shoulder as she tried to pin her soldiers where they stood. ”Battle-mages! Port and starboard, saturate the water! Break whatever is casting that resonance!”

A dozen imperial battle-mages rushed the railings with thermal essence and concussive force glowing between their fingers. They hurled a barrage of explosive spells into the churning grey water.

The water simply swallowed the magic.

The spells guttered the instant they struck the fog, and what reached the sea sank without bursting, smothered by the cold aura of whatever waited below. The few explosions that did come were muffled into dull thuds, and the weeping melody rose straight through them without a break.

The song grew louder. More sailors drifted toward the edges of the ship, reaching for the sea with open hands.

Near the mainmast, Tema collapsed to her knees.

She clamped both hands over her ears. The blood had left her face, and she shook so hard that her knees knocked against the deck boards. Her talent was screaming at her, translating the resonance that rose from the deep.

”It’s not birds!” Tema screamed, and her voice cracked over the melody. ”The song—it’s not sea birds! It’s people! They’re drowned people!”

Ysolde’s lines began to give. Even an Ascendant’s authority could not hold back the compulsion of a Leviathan-class threat once the song climbed to its full pitch. The disciplined regulars of the Sixth Legion broke ranks and marched toward the railings in droves, stepping over the weapons their comrades had dropped.

Rian let out a slow breath.

Behind his ordinary dark eyes, he let Shingan slip open a fraction of a millimeter. The Third Eye traced the structure of the black water. Flow Perception caught the Leviathans rising from below, vast shapes darker than the sea around them. Causality Fracture showed him the flagship tearing itself apart within three minutes.

He needed to kill them without breaking his cover. He needed a distraction.

Rian stepped away from the railing and raised his right hand.

”Get back!” Rian shouted, pitching his voice the way a cornered mercenary would.

He unleashed Lightning Rod. Arcs of yellow lightning burst from his palm and chained wildly across the upper deck, then struck the water in great bursts of noise and light that did nothing at all. The crackle ripped through the cold air and dragged every glazed eye still open on deck toward him.

Below the waterline, unseen in the dark, his shadow detached.

Supreme Shadow spread through the icy depths like a drop of ink in a glass of water and wrapped around the vast forms of the Drowned Choir. He layered Windless over the darkness, and the water lost its drag, and the strikes lost their sound.

In the black water beneath the flagship, the slaughter began without a sound.

Shadow-forged blades sheared through Leviathan flesh and crushed the throats that carried the song. Scale parted. Bone split. The shadow worked through the great beasts one after another in the dark, and it left no trace of fire or Paragon-level essence for the Empire to read.

Above the waves, Rian kept hurling roaring lightning at the empty grey water, gritting his teeth while sweat ran down his temples, as if he were fighting for his life.

Then the song died.

It did not fade. It stopped dead, as if a thick iron door had slammed shut on the ocean floor, and the compulsion went out of the air with it. The surviving horrors beneath the waves sank away into the depths, leaving only a churn of sea-foam on the surface.

The sailors left on deck collapsed, gasping for breath, and stared at the empty stretches of railing where their comrades had just walked to their deaths.

Rian let the lightning fade from his hands. He leaned back against the railing, panting slightly for effect.

’Six Leviathans. And I can’t even summon the Echoes here.’

[Your clone has slain Leviathan - The Drowned Choir]

[You have gained +9 talent fragments]

[Your clone has slain Hazardous Leviathan - The Drowned Choir]

[You have gained +9 talent fragments]

[Your clone has slain Hazardous Leviathan - The Drowned Choir]

[You have gained +9 talent fragments]

[Your clone has slain Hazardous Leviathan - The Drowned Choir]

[You have gained +9 talent fragments]

[Your clone has slain Hazardous Leviathan - The Drowned Choir]

[You have gained +9 talent fragments]

[Your clone has slain Hazardous Leviathan - The Drowned Choir]

[You have gained +9 talent fragments]

A few paces away, Captain Ysolde had not moved.

Her eyes were on Rian. They went to his fingertips, where the sharp smell of ozone still clung, then out to the dark, silent water, then back. She knew exactly what a Savant-tier lightning user could do. She knew that surface strikes, however loud, could not silence a deep-water Leviathan that had just shrugged off a dozen imperial battle-mages.

But Ysolde Vaertia was a veteran of the Eastern war. She was far too pragmatic to ask a question she did not want the answer to.

”Secure the lines,” Ysolde ordered in a voice as dry as parchment, and turned away from the black-haired mercenary. ”Count the missing.”

Before the quartermasters could begin the tally, the fog tore open.

Grey sky bled through the mist, and dead ahead lay the jagged silhouette of land. At the mouth of a snow-choked northern fjord, a single thin plume of smoke curled up into the bruised sky.