Chapter 385 — A Troubled Night

One after another, dark brown tentacles writhed and twisted above the pool. Any lurid nightmare would be hard-pressed to reproduce such an eerie and horrifying sight. Clement, already gravely wounded, was utterly helpless before these tentacles; in almost an instant, his limbs and torso were bound tight by more than a dozen tentacles of varying sizes. Feeling those slimy, icy, soft limbs tighten around him bit by bit, even this cultist of the End of All Things—a man long accustomed to dealing with every manner of horrific dark magic—felt a terror that chilled him to the marrow!

And as these tentacles floated up from the water, a female upper body rose with them—Tyr's form squeezed its way out from among the tentacles. The siren looked nothing like her usual self now: her cheeks and much of her upper body were covered in a layer of fine, close-set scales, and membranous growths bearing bewitching patterns connected her to the surrounding tentacles. She looked exactly as the most superstitious sailors of the eastern continent described after they had drunk themselves into a stupor: a bewitchingly beautiful maiden in the shape of a sea monster—a visage of such violent contrast that it could drag a man into the sweetest and most lethal of dreams.

Tyr rose from the water, her eyes now transformed into pale golden vertical pupils that reflected the scene before her. She looked at the fully armed Steel Rangers, dumbstruck, then at the strange old man coiled in her grasp, and blinked: "I take a nap, and somehow an extra person shows up?"

Suo Jilin was as startled as the Steel Rangers. Tyr's current form was a world apart from the languid sea caterpillar monster of ordinary days, but he quickly regained his composure and was about to answer the siren's question—yet just as he was about to speak, his gaze swept across those tentacles churning ceaselessly on the water's surface.

Some of those tentacles were covered in twisted, bizarre patterns beyond human comprehension.

In that instant, Suo Jilin's mind went hazy. Those patterns seemed to carry a powerful magic within them, and to hold hidden truths that no mortal should ever know. He felt his entire reason tottering in that moment; a flood of nameless, inaudible, low murmurs roared in his mind, buzzing and rumbling and churning his thoughts, while countless outlandish, absurd visions surfaced before his eyes.

Suo Jilin finally realized something was wrong. Some days earlier, he had gone with Gao Cenqi to the containment center to see that sample of divine flesh and, from a safe distance, experienced what it was like to face a god directly. His present sensation was so very close to that... He was gazing straight at mysteries pertaining to the divine!

The high-ranking ranger struggled to control his thoughts, but soon found it futile. He had already seen those patterns, and in his mind they had forged connections to certain knowledge of the gods—knowledge that could not be erased. He felt his thoughts being influenced bit by bit, steeped through, and after what felt like a century of time, he gradually recovered his capacity to think, and then discovered to his shock—

He had not become an idiot, nor lost his free will, nor been driven mad by any divine whispering. In fact, he felt his mental state was better than ever, his heart filled with a positive, upward-looking optimism: he had never been so happy in his life!

Never mind negative emotions—he felt he was at the very pinnacle of mental health, not merely happy as hell, but even itching to dance a wild dance of ecstasy.

By the way, what exactly did "dance a wild dance of ecstasy" mean?

Suo Jilin finally realized that this mood, too, was wrong. He hurriedly shook his head to fling off those inexplicably welling feelings of joy. Still, his mental state remained absurdly good—no matter how you looked at it, at least there was no harm in it. Keeping control of himself and trying not to look at those patterns, he said to Tyr: "Miss Tyr, restrain that man! He's an enemy!"

"Huh? Ah... oh oh, got it!" Tyr still seemed not fully awake; after a brief blank moment she caught on, and hastily drew several more tentacles from the water to wrap around Clement, who was nearly strangled unconscious. "Then I'll wrap him up good and tight..."

"Don't squeeze too hard—don't strangle him to death..."

Though the process had gone rather differently from what she had first imagined, the final result was at least decent. After confirming the old man could no longer resist, Amber finally emerged from her shadow-stealth. She too had inadvertently glimpsed Tyr's peculiar tentacles just now, and at this moment she looked exceptionally energized—in fact, the Steel Rangers around her were much the same; that positive, optimistic healing effect had even made everyone forget the faint fear they had felt upon seeing Tyr's sea-monster form. She strode quickly to the pool's edge, and first looked up at Tyr: "Your look... is amazing... You sirens can transform like this too?"

"I modeled it on a giant squid," Tyr said proudly, wiggling her other tentacles. "Well? Scary, isn't it?"

"...It's certainly scary enough—if you'd stop wiggling around like that. The way you're wiggling right now is downright comical."

"Tch..." Tyr pursed her lips, then looked down curiously at Clement, bound tight in her grip, and patted his face with a tentacle. "So where did this guy even come from? I only took a nap—what on earth happened? How did it come to using things called howitzers?"

Looking at the enemy before her, Amber's mind flashed through those astonishing scenes she had witnessed—the assassinated king, the prince clearly complicit, and the Shadow Signet on the king's hand. Her expression turned unprecedentedly grave: "Something terrible has happened. If I'm not mistaken, this man is someone I brought over from the eastern border. He killed the king right in front of me!"

"Oh, I thought napping while exploring ruins was some great crime, to warrant you blasting me with howitzers," Tyr said, visibly relieved—then, belatedly, caught on. "Ah—so what you're describing sounds pretty serious? Shouldn't we hurry and notify your lord?"

"Of course we should!" Amber said, and quickly turned her head to Suo Jilin. "Ranger, help me keep watch here—I'll go back and report at once!"

In Longwind Fortress, within a lavishly appointed lounge, Prince Edmund took out his mechanical watch and glanced at the time.

It seemed that "Master Clement" would not be coming back.

He had long heard that those who rashly intrude into the Shadow Realm face extreme danger. Through the ages, many shadow masters had found the gates into the Shadow Realm, but more than half of them had ultimately met violent deaths. In that world—a twisted mirror of reality—mad and warped creatures would tear apart any intruder, and in the shadow environment those creatures grew powerful beyond all imagining...

"The End of All Things, is it... People brainwashed by cults really do have addled minds." Edmund snapped the watch case shut, then at last lowered his gaze to his father, now utterly lifeless. A faint trace of sorrow finally surfaced on his face.

"Father, this truly is a regrettable end... But for the renewed glory of the Moen family, and for the revival of this kingdom, I can only ask you to go on ahead," Edmund bent down before Francis II's corpse and said softly. "You once said that the first thing a king must understand is the art of compromise. Over the past century, every king of Ansu has relied on compromise to keep his throne secure...

"But times have changed, Father. Compromise is over."

The young prince straightened up and unhurriedly walked out of the room. Stepping into the corridor, he saw Duke Silas Loren waiting quietly for him.

"What a troubled night this is." The Duke of the Eastern March said in a low voice, his face expressionless.