Cthulhu Gonfalon

Chapter 5: Chapter 5

Translator: Nyoi_Bo_Studio Editor: Nyoi_Bo_Studio

Sui Xiong found that in this world, there was a force called “magic energy”.

The giant whale had been born with the ability to practice ice magic. But the reason why its ice magic was powerful enough to freeze so much water so quickly was because it had made great efforts to enhance its ice magic, rather than relying on its natural-born ability. To enhance its ice magic, the whale had absorbed rich magic energy from a special trench in the deep sea.

In fact, Sui Xiong was quite eager to go ashore, so he could find some people and get to know what on Earth this world was. But he also knew that his safety was most important, no matter when or where he was. If he couldn’t control his curiosity, it would probably cost him his life, even if so far it seemed he had nine lives like a cat.

This world was not safe at all. If a whale in the sea had dirty tricks up his sleeve, then who could say what dirty tricks a human being might play. Therefore, he needed to make himself much stronger so that he could live safely in this world. Even if he couldn’t be the most powerful being in this world, he should at least make sure that he could run away when he knew he couldn’t win.

He waited patiently until the ice melted, then turned the whale’s body into nutrients and absorbed them as energy. Now he could repair and improve the jellyfish’s body. He made his body bigger and more elastic by adding many tentacles and a few pairs of propellers; he also hollowed his body out, making strategic holes in his thick outer skin.

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The hollowed body and the holes created a balance between Sui Xiong and the sea by keeping the pressure both inside and outside of his body the same. This way, he wouldn’t be crushed by the water pressure in the deep sea. If needed, the holes could also function as blowholes, helping him change direction and adjust his posture. This level of control would be necessary in a big fight.

Sui Xiong recalled that before he was transported, he’d watched a famous Japanese anime that had super robots which were always involved in some serious fight. They were all equipped with “Vernier Thrusters”, something similar to the holes he had made. Allegedly, that anime was very technically proficient; some people had even made real robots (whether they were powerful or not was another thing entirely) by following the designs mentioned in the animation, which meant that these holes should actually work, right? Anyway, keeping them wouldn’t do any harm, even if he never really used them.

Additionally, his hollowed body could be used to store things. Sui Xiong had kept some valuable items from the dead whale: a sharp horn which contained powerful cold energy, a cold and frightening gemstone inside its head, an exceptionally hard skeleton, and a layer of skin that was still firm. Sui Xiong had already made good use of these resources to rebuild his body, but he hadn’t used them entirely, so he wrapped up the leftovers and stored them inside his body. Others usually carried things on their back, but Sui Xiong stored his items in his stomach, which he thought was innovative in a way.

Fully prepared for his deep dive, he quickly dove into the water and swam in the direction of the magic trench he’d seen in the whale’s memory. In the deep sea, it was dark and unsettling; he could sense it was not safe down here at the bottom of the sea. Sifting through the whale’s memory, Sui Xiong found that the whale had been in danger here more than once. It had only been here a few times even though it knew that the trench was the perfect place to greatly enhance its magic energy.

Although a whale (jing yu in Chinese) was called a fish (yu in Chinese), it could not be classified as a fish; unlike the fish, it needed to surface and breathe. While this whale shared nothing in common with whales on Earth in regards to their CE and intelligence, at least they had the need to surface in common. If the whale held its breath for long enough, it could stay underwater for a very long time. But it might still face great danger if it got into a fight with others at the bottom of the sea and was stuck down there, unable to flee.

Nonetheless, Sui Xiong had nothing to worry about in this regard. A soul didn’t need air, and neither did a jellyfish (a helpful fact since his body was a dead jellyfish). Sui Xiong couldn’t understand why this dead body hadn’t started to decay and could still move around as if it were still alive. Simply put, he could stay in the water as long as he wanted with no need to worry about suffering from a lack of oxygen.

The jellyfish couldn’t see in the dark, but since Sui Xiong had grown much more powerful, he could sense where he was through intuition. This left him much better off than the whale itself ever was. Apart from the time when he foraged above for food, Sui Xiong often swam in the deep sea, trying to find the trench from the whale’s memory.

During his journey, he met a few big deep sea monsters, but he didn’t fight any of them. His transformed body was extremely powerful, which was enough to make those monsters think twice before they made any move on him. Also, because Sui Xiong didn’t want to encroach on their territory, every time he saw them, he would take a roundabout way so as not to provoke them.

He had no idea how long he’d been swimming when he finally arrived at the trench, which was a bizarre region shrouded by a bluish white light, located at the bottom of the sea in a wide crack. Although the light wasn’t strong, it did make his soul feel icy cold. The rugged rocks at the bottom of the sea were covered in a layer of thick frost. Watching carefully, he found that this was where the bluish white light came from.

“What in God’s name is this?” Sui Xiong muttered, tentatively extending a tentacle to touch the sparkling frost. The tentacle immediately turned into an icicle, and the ice began spreading rapidly to his whole body through the tentacle. Luckily, he had guessed this would happen and was already prepared. The tentacle wasn’t much longer than the others, and it also had a few weak joints where it could be broken off by the ice to prevent it from spreading any further.

This long ice tentacle slowly fell down onto the sparkling frost, but instead of bouncing back, it quietly turned into a fine powder, settling all over the ground. Watching this, Sui Xiong was startled, and left this damn place without even noticing. No wonder the whale seldom came here despite the opportunity to enhance its magic energy. This place was too terrifying! Anyone could die here if he wasn’t careful.

After hesitating for a long time, Sui Xiong finally decided to approach the bluish white icy trench again. Although this place was indeed very dangerous, as long as he was careful and kept his distance, the danger was within his control. This was just like in the world he once knew, where everyone knew that electricity was dangerous, yet still used it.

“Okay, it will be fine as long as I keep a certain distance from it.” Sui Xiong moved forward a little, then stopped and hovered in place by pointing a few pairs of propellers in all directions. Then, he tried to absorb some of the cold energy, which was far from easy. After all, he wasn’t the giant whale which had been born with the ability to control the cold energy.

However, just as the saying goes that “good things come to those who wait”, without knowing how long he’d been trying, Sui Xiong finally succeeded in absorbing the cold energy and storing it in his body. Although this process was slow, as he became more and more adept at it, he could absorb the cold energy more and more quickly. Eventually, he found that a gemstone similar to the one in the whale’s head had formed in the jellyfish’s body.

“Can this...be the legendary ‘magic core’ or ‘magic crystal’? If this is true, could I have evolved into a war-craft?” Sui Xiong felt a bit funny about this. Not only could a jellyfish body which had been dead for awhile move around as if it were still alive, but it could also evolve into a war-craft...what a bizarre world this was!

Now that the gemstone had formed in his body, Sui Xiong clearly felt that he could absorb the cold energy much more quickly. Absorbing and storing a huge amount of cold energy in the gemstone, he started to think about how best to use it.

Searching the whale’s memory, he found that the whale had three ways to use it: first, it could turn the cold energy into an ice beam, spreading it via the water to freeze the enemy. This was how the whale had hit him with a sneak attack earlier. Second, the whale could spread the cold energy around itself to form frost armor. When it had first fought Sui Xiong, it didn’t get the chance to use this tactic—of course, even if it had managed to, this wouldn’t have made a big difference.

Last but not least, it could release all the cold energy stored in its gemstone at once, completely freezing a large area of surrounding water. This method was actually controllable, meaning that once it was out of danger, the whale could absorb the cold energy it had released before and easily unfreeze the water around it. So whether it was for the purpose of escaping or counterattacking, this last tactic was a useful one. However, the total release of cold energy also came with a big price. The whale would lose all of its cold energy in a very short time; therefore, this method was only used when the whale’s life was threatened.

As far as Sui Xiong was concerned, all three methods were good, but a bit monotonous. So, based on his life experience from his former world, and by repeatedly experimenting, he managed to create two more tactics. The first was the ability to create sharp knives with the cold energy. These knives could be used as a variety of ancient weapons, like swords, spears, two-edged swords and halberds, or even sharp claws and teeth. He practiced how to change the cold energy into these weapons often. In a word, the knife method was a very useful weapon.

Second, he could concentrate the cold energy and release it before it became solid. Once a enemy was hit by this cold beam, the enemy would begin to freeze from the inside out. Practicing this tactic didn’t consume that much energy, but it was so much more powerful than the ice beam method used by the whale. Whoever was hit by this tactic was sure to die.

Since “even a dog has a name”, Sui Xiong named the five practices—or magics—respectively: “Cryo Beam”, “Frost Armor”, “Ice Blocking”, “Ice Knife” and “Ice Bombardment”. To be honest, these names didn’t sound all that cool to him. Some of them even seemed kinda dumb. But it was fine with him if they sounded stupid, as long as they were useful.

All these tactics could only be made possible by using ice magic. With the gemstone, Sui Xiong could store the cold energy continually, but he couldn’t store nearly as much through daily accumulation alone. Compared with absorbing it from the icy trench in the deep sea, the former was much slower.

After some experiments, he discovered something interesting: in this world, the deeper he went, the more concentrated the magic energy was. In other words, the deeper he went, the quicker he could absorb and accumulate cold energy; the higher he went, the weaker the magic became. Above the sea, things would be the opposite. In this world, the magic energy close to the sea level was the weakest; no wonder the fish and shrimp in the shallows were so feeble. What a wonderful world!

After enough time had passed, Sui Xiong felt he could absorb no more of the cold energy from the icy trench. No matter how hard he tried, the gemstone could no longer store any cold energy. Instead, if he kept absorbing it, the cold energy would just leak away like water, and all this would do was harm the jellyfish’s body.

He knew that the time for improving his abilities in seclusion was over. Now it was time to go ashore and find some people.