Chapter 1305: The Howl

The crashing waves were drawing near, separated from the real world only by a melody and a sudden, terrifying thought.

The crude cultists had no understanding of the power wielded by the Deep Sea Sovereign. Yet, the sentinels—through their long years of observation and service—had amassed a comprehensive database on the sea monster race. As the salty sea breeze filled the air and the sound of waves echoed faintly in their minds, Filna and Relna, the “sisters,” realized exactly where this power was being transmitted from—the deep blue rift.

That sea monster scout from moments ago was likely some kind of “vanguard.” Her death had created a coordinate on this side of the rift, a beacon guiding the Deep Sea Sovereign’s power!

“Blow up the rift! Now!”

Filna and Relna shouted in unison. Under their control, the edges of the deep blue rift began to flicker violently, showing signs of collapsing inward. Bolken, standing nearby, didn’t fully understand what was happening, but from the strange phenomena around them and the twins’ urgent reactions, he guessed something terrible was about to unfold. This time, he didn’t hesitate—he immediately helped the twins destroy the rift.

It pained him deeply. He and his followers had invested so much time and effort into this valley. This deep blue rift was the largest and most stable “gate” they had ever created—far beyond the temporary rifts that lasted only hours. It was also one of the main control nodes. Destroying it meant they’d have to pay a heavy price to establish another control point later. But even so, he didn’t waver.

Withered, twisted vines crept from the platform to the rift’s edge. Together with the rune circles conjured by the twins, they exerted force to further destabilize the rift’s structure. A powerful suction pulled the “gate” along with nearby soil and rocks inward. A grating, teeth-chilling creak echoed from all directions, shaking the entire valley. Throughout it all, the eerie, ethereal singing never ceased—the tide was coming.

Mist rose like sea fog, blurring Filna and Relna’s vision. The valley shimmered with glimmers of water, faint glimpses of a sea surface flickering in the air. Bolken suddenly felt suffocated. Though he knew the air around him was still just air, he felt as if he were submerged in seawater, struggling to breathe. Salt seemed to crystallize on his bark, and waves crashed relentlessly against his crown. As a legendary warrior, he knew this “attack” wasn’t lethal, but this unfamiliar form of assault left him at a loss… For the first time in centuries, a flicker of panic stirred within him.

Then, a thunderous roar shattered the air—the sound of waves smashing against cliffs. The treants in the valley, searching for dry ground, instinctively turned toward the noise. They saw a phantom tidal wave shatter nearby rock formations, towering sprays of water cascading from the sky. Amid the chaos, a massive, indistinct female upper body emerged from the water—a spectral figure formed from mist, spray, salt, and sound waves. Slowly, she leaned forward, gazing down at the valley’s production zones, control centers, ore mines, and the nearby mutant army camp. Her voice, trembling with rhythm, rose from the waves: “…What do you think you’re doing?”

As she spoke, a colossal arm took shape within the tidal wave, reaching toward Filna and Relna as they hurried to close the rift. Alongside the descending arm came Petia’s voice, tinged with anger: “Don’t… close it…”

“This isn’t your deep sea!” Filna raised her hand, completing the final step to seal the rift. As the blue portal rapidly collapsed and disintegrated, she quickly traced several complex runes in the air, issuing commands to the rune stones already activating within the deep blue network. Then she looked up at the dissipating tidal wave and the female form beginning to unravel. “Hope you like this little welcome gift, intruder king.”

“BOOM!!!”

A massive explosion tore through the valley’s sky. The tidal wave and the sea monster queen’s figure shattered into fragments. Torrents of seawater poured down from above, but before reaching the ground, ninety percent of it vanished like a dream, dissipating into the air. The remaining ten percent fell as a heavy downpour, drenching the twisted treants and mutant legions below.

Then came a series of tremors, large and small, as if transmitted from another dimension into the real world. The air quivered, the earth shook, and the magical field surged wildly. The recently sealed deep blue rift flickered with shards of blue light. An invisible storm seemed to rage within the network. Bolken, still shaken, thought he heard distant roars and frantic cries, but as he tried to focus, the sounds vanished—completely severed. The powers and wills projected from the distant deep sea had utterly withdrawn.

“Did you kill her? Or just banish her?” Bolken asked the elven twins. “What was that last thing you activated? Another function of the rune stones?”

“That level of attack can’t kill the sea monster queen—she had an entire abyssal choir behind her absorbing damage,” Filna glanced at Bolken. “But this failure will leave a lasting impression. As for that final strike… Archprelate, that was just one of the rune stones’ basic self-defense functions. A system this vast and complex should have some defenses against external invasion, right?”

“Enough with pointless questions. We need to act quickly,” Relna said. “That last strike revealed one of our trump cards. Next time, our enemy won’t be so reckless. Archprelate, gather your legions. This wasteland can no longer provide us with enough ‘deployment points’… Though time is tight, we still hold the advantage.”

Bolken looked deeply at the elven sisters. His crown swayed slightly as he slowly said, “Very well.”

At that moment, a chorus of howls erupted inside and outside the valley. Heavy footsteps thundered in waves. At this “rally point,” across the valley, the surrounding wasteland, distant plains, hills, rivers, and the grand ruins left by the ancient Gondor Empire, millions of wandering mutants abruptly ceased their centuries-long, aimless roaming. These chaotic creatures seemed suddenly infused with reason, rapidly assembling into disciplined legions, marching toward the towering, majestic energy barrier looming on the horizon.

Behind each legion, countless twisted treants uprooted their roots, moving as mobile command nodes alongside the armies.

Filna and Relna narrowed their eyes. Through the vast root network spreading beneath the wasteland, they could “see” the movements of these countless legions, just as Bolken did. They watched this immense force surge forward like a dark tide, seemingly unstoppable as it advanced toward the grand wall. Yet, at the same time… the energy barrier, built jointly by elves and humans, stood firm—like a stubborn, tragic mortal soul—blocking the legions’ path.

They opened their eyes, gazing at the faint silhouettes of sentinel towers on the distant horizon. In another layer of their vision, the energy fields radiating from those towers were clearly visible… Wide-area energy field projection technology. This ancient technique, brought here from the Kaldo continent by the primordial elves in ages past and patched up countless times over millennia, held no secrets from the sentinels.

The ancient wall appeared grand and solid, but in truth, it was fragile.

…

Across the boundless sea, towering waves surged. The immense energy erupting from the deep blue currents swept through the waters in an instant. The force was so overwhelming that it carved out an “elemental vacuum” deep beneath the eternal ocean—billions of tons of seawater vanished into thin air, leaving only the unstable deep blue currents raging within the terrifying underwater cavity. This dreadful scene lasted for over ten seconds before the massive elemental forces began to refill the void, triggering a new series of colossal waves.

Such violent tidal surges were too much even for the water elementals dwelling in the boundless sea.

At last, Gruguno, lord of the water elemental realm, was roused by the terrifying disturbances. The elemental sovereign, embodying the ocean itself, appeared amid the waves. He saw the local elemental lords and sea monsters struggling to calm the waters. Only through their combined efforts—sea monsters, elemental lords, and Gruguno himself—did the ocean’s turmoil gradually subside.

“I need to know what’s happening here!” Gruguno’s massive form stood tall in the boundless sea. The relentless downpour from the sky-like inverted ocean washed over his furious, confused face. “Great Devourer, when you set up your outpost here, you never mentioned anything like this!”

“If we hadn’t established the outpost, you might never have known the danger this world faces until the entire elemental realm perished with it—this was no ordinary tidal wave, grr.”

The sea monster queen Petia’s voice came through the rain. A whirlpool formed in the boundless sea as the deep-sea sovereign rose from the vortex and appeared before Gruguno. The lord caught sight of Petia’s current state and immediately fell silent—half her body had vanished, leaving only flowing water that continuously dissolved and reformed near where her form once was. Faint blue glimmers drifted from her head, spreading through the stormy sea like shattered, scattered wings. These “dispersed fragments” expanded hundreds of meters in the air, altering the paths of waves and rain wherever they went.

Gruguno didn’t fully understand the physiological patterns of these strange “foreign water elementals” known as sea hags, but even with limited knowledge, he could tell at a glance that the deep-sea sovereign before him was in bad shape. Not even the sea hag’s formidable regenerative powers could restore her body—frankly, after fighting this queen for hundreds of thousands of years, he had never managed to wound her this badly.

“What happened to you?” The elemental lord stared at Petia in disbelief, so stunned that he overlooked her earlier rudeness in calling him “Gululu.” “You look like you’re about to be beaten to death…”

“You’re terrible at holding back laughter, Gululu. Your voice even trembles when you try,” Petia said calmly, lifting her gaze to the massive whirlpool that served as the elemental lord’s eyes. Her severely injured half-body was healing at a painfully slow pace, the corrosion caused by deep blue magic being forcibly expelled bit by bit. “But I don’t mind. If you knew what a group of fanatical cultists, led by an ancient mind, are doing in the ruins of Gondor, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be laughing for long.”

“The ruins of Gondor? Cultists? Ah, those human pests…” Gruguno sneered. “I know you’ve been dealing with the races on the surface lately, but aren’t you putting too much stock in those fleeting civilizations of the material plane? For millions of years, countless races have done countless things in the physical world, but the foundation of the elements remains unshakable…”

“Look at my current state and say that again—the foundation of the elements remains unshakable?” Water flowed slowly from Petia’s side, spreading out like a battered, wounded wing. “They’ve created something incredibly powerful, buried deep within the deep blue conduits. It’s not even finished yet, but the force it’s already exerting is enough to blast a massive elemental vacuum in your boundless sea, cutting through half a planet and the barrier of the elemental realm. They’ve destroyed the coordinates and pathways to the continent of Loren. I just tried to contact my sisters stationed there, but all elemental channels leading to Loren have been blocked by chaotic energy. And that’s probably just one aftershock of the massive explosion from earlier…”

“…So you’re not just here to talk,” Gruguno’s tone finally turned serious, realizing this formidable alien lord wasn’t joking. “What do you want us to do? Let me be clear—we’re not like you. No matter what happens in the material world, we can’t intervene on a large scale. We elementals are part of this planet’s ‘balance.’ The consequences of imbalance are evident in places like the ‘Rift Pollution Zones’ of Talrond and the corrupted elementals there. Honestly, if your ship hadn’t pierced the dome and caused realm infiltration, we wouldn’t have ended up fighting a disastrous ‘Elemental War’ with you…”

“Don’t worry, I know you have little say in what happens in the material world,” Petia said slowly, her gaze drifting toward the depths of the boundless sea, toward the surging currents whose very nature had changed. “What you should be worried about are these ‘riptides’ flowing right at your doorstep.”

“And what about the material world?” Gruguno couldn’t help but ask. “Are you just going to leave it be?”

“I’ll find a way to send an expedition force from the material world, whether there’s time or not. And… I trust my allies.”

(End of chapter)