Chapter 659 — It's All Over

Dense clouds hung low and the rain came down in torrents, shrouding the whole White Sands region in a darkness that stretched beyond sight. Beneath the swirling cloud masses the curtain of rain seemed an ocean suspended upside down from the heavens to the earth, so dense that one wondered whether one might suffocate in it—and within that apocalyptic darkness and raging storm, countless grotesque limbs were breeding, countless indescribable things were coalescing out of the rain in jubilation, and all who witnessed it—the soldiers, officers and war engineers upon the Iron Throne—would never in their lives forget the shock this sight dealt to the mind.

The entire crew of the Iron Throne passed their SAN check; the whole train was now steeped in a positive, high-spirited, buoyantly optimistic atmosphere.

"Shut down the mental protection system." Commander Ma Qi felt his mind clearer than ever before, and having judged that the onboard mental protection system was now of no further use, he gave the order.

That structure which defied description was still in motion, hanging down from the vortex atop the clouds as though some colossal deep-sea creature were licking the earth with countless tentacles. But the vast structure was not the only thing emerging from the cloud mass—when lightning burst forth and the light reached its brightest, Ma Qi could see many small humanoid figures darting among those tentacles. They seemed to carry all manner of tools, bustling about amid that chaotic feast of gluttony, and by the strength of an extraordinary being's vision Ma Qi made out that some of these individuals were shaped much like Miss Tiel of the domain.

But the shapes of certain other individuals were not so easily described... beyond their humanoid bodies they had pieced together all sorts of bizarre limbs, and some of them one could not even say whether they ought to count as limbs—as though... they had simply grown however they pleased...

Those were Cecil's allies—the sirens from the deep sea.

Thank heavens this powerful race was Cecil's ally.

The adjutant came over from the side, a trace of puzzlement on the young officer's face: "General, is there anything we need to do now?"

"Nothing at all," Ma Qi told the adjutant. "We just wait for the rain to stop."

"Yes, General."

The two of them raised their heads at the same time and, through the train window covered by its reinforced shield, looked out at that distant feast of gluttony.

At the heart of this dark rainstorm, in the central region of the warp field that had all but fully evolved into a domain of water elementals, the "forest" formed by tentacles had now completely walled the man-made god off from the outside world. The "Sea Sovereign," a leviathan jointly mimicked into being by three thousand two hundred tide sirens, covered this region with its unprecedentedly vast body; among the thousands of tentacles the Sea Sovereign let down, runic light flickered and dimmed, and layer upon layer of illusory force fields wove themselves into an airtight barrier, against which every desperate struggle of the Giant Stag came to nothing.

And within the region the Sea Sovereign enveloped, inside the barrier, the siren general Vanessa—bearer of the title Deep-Sea Lord—was directing the deep-sea warriors as they completed the final processing of the "food."

The torrential rain was a "mimetic ocean" conjured by the elemental warp field; in such an environment the sirens could move at will, and now they threaded through the curtain of rain as though swimming through the sea, cutting apart the Giant Stag's still instinctively struggling bulk with the long-handled charged warblades in their hands.

It was hazardous work. Although the Giant Stag was already dead, the vast vitality and magic still lingering in its body continued to sustain that flesh, and even allowed the severed portions to survive independently for a time. Against such an opponent, even the mighty deep-sea warriors—even with home-field advantage and the advantage of ambush—could not avoid some casualties.

Near the Giant Stag's shoulder and neck, one over-rash deep-sea warrior swung her warblade and cut open a piece of still-writhing flesh; a blinding arc of electricity burst without warning from the wound and struck the unfortunate siren full in the body. She had only time to let out a shriek before bursting with a splash into scattered droplets that dissolved in the air.

The sirens busy nearby saw this, and several of them cried out: "Ah, fish-sashimi fail—zero points, out!"

This was a very popular taunt in siren society, used to mock those sirens who carelessly let themselves die by accident.

Vanessa, who happened to be swimming past, swayed her serpentine tail, picked up the warblade the dead warrior had dropped, and made a feint swing at the somewhat giddy soldiers: "Mind the order!! Unless you've never died once since you were born!"

The soldiers hastily scattered to carry on with their tasks—cutting up the Giant Stag's corpse or dealing with the "troublesome products" breeding from its blood—while Vanessa casually tossed the recovered warblade to a siren at her side. That siren had transformed into a sea fiend with a great many tentacles, each of which now curled around several warblades.

"Take these weapons back, not a single one left behind. They can come claim them once they've revived."

A tide siren with a pale purple fish tail swam over from afar, holding a short staff carved with intricate patterns, while many samples of cut flesh floated in the bubbles around her: "General, the preliminary appraisal of the cut flesh is complete."

"And the results?"

"Tasty!" The purple-tailed siren nodded vigorously first, then knit her brows slightly. "But the texture isn't very good, and the energy is somewhat muddled. This thing looks very much like some kind of patchwork product, and the technique is quite immature. Also, its regeneration is limited—it should already have passed the threshold by now, and its regenerative ability is declining sharply. On that count it's nowhere near the giant squid..."

"Mm... not surprising. After all, this is a 'counterfeit' made by humans," Vanessa said offhandedly. "Poor quality is only to be expected, but at least there's plenty to go around, isn't there? Also—can this thing supply power to the reactor?"

"That should be no problem, but it needs an extra extraction process, or it may put some strain on the reactor," the purple-tailed siren said earnestly. "If the rainbow-light technology Tiel transmitted over can be put to use smoothly, our energy conversion efficiency will rise by more than thirty percent, and this batch of new fuel will be well worth it."

"Good. Then collect it all. After we return, part will go to replenishing everyone's expenditures and part to powering the reactor—the Queen will decide the exact allocation."

"Yes, General," the purple-tailed siren said with a nod, then glanced at the Giant Stag being cut apart. "It's truly incredible... the land civilization of this season could actually make such a thing. I always thought their技术水平 was very low, yet they built the rainbow-light device, and they built this thing too... I wonder whether the technology they used to build it can be made public. If it could, it might just solve the problem of the giant squid's insufficient yield."

"I'm afraid not," Vanessa said with a sigh. "I hear the technology that made this 'deity' is cruel and dark—not only would humanity's own morals find it unacceptable, the Queen doesn't want it either. We came here only to dispose of these 'technological products.' As for the technology itself... let it die out."

The purple-tailed siren blinked and muttered: "They couldn't accept it themselves and still built it anyway. Humans really are a strange race..."