Chapter 354 Lies Surface
As Ty's gaze locked onto the creature, his attention was momentarily diverted by a bright light shimmering from beneath it, a beacon in the darkness below. The creature reared, its gaping maw turning towards Ty, a silent prelude to devastation.
But before the beast could unleash its fury, Rusuf intervened, his silhouette a blur of motion as he nullified the attack, only to be repelled back towards the ship by the sheer force of his counterstrike.
Ty hovered in the tense silence that followed, his mind racing. "I have time to plan, to waste his time—" he strategized, but his thought was abruptly shattered. This time, the creature did not summon its customary barrage of energy. Instead, it conjured a whirlpool of spiraling water, a vortex that birthed thousands of needle-like projectiles aimed with lethal precision at Ty.
One moment Ty was planning, and the next, he was dodging a deadly deluge. A single water needle pierced his shoulder, a shock of pain that was as cold as the depths from which it came.
Another struck his foot, the impact jarring enough to disrupt the black flames propelling him, threatening to send him plummeting. Adrenaline surged as he twisted and turned, a dance of desperation and determination in the face of the onslaught. The water needles whistled past, each one a potential end, a frozen touch against the night sky. Stay updated via empire
Yet, Ty's resolve did not waver. For every hit that found its mark, dozens more missed, slicing through the air where he had been moments before.
As Ty's descent accelerated, his foot trailing blood, he couldn't help but mutter curses under his breath. Drawing closer to the churning waters below, his attention snapped to the serpent. It radiated a sinister purple glow, a sight that made his skin crawl with a familiar dread.
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"I haven't felt pressure like this since being in the Demon King's castle… what the hell," he thought, a mix of awe and fear.
Without warning, the sky was torn apart by thousands of purple lightning bolts, each one a deadly predator aiming for Ty. With sheer willpower, he reignited the fire beneath his wounded foot, sealing the gash just as he weaved through the electrical onslaught. Despite his efforts, a bolt found its mark, striking him squarely in the stomach.
The impact sent a brutal wave of electricity coursing through him, an agonizing jolt that threatened to overwhelm his senses.
Feeling suddenly weightless, the fires propelling him flickered and died. As he began his inevitable plunge towards the cold embrace of the water below, despair gripped him. "Shit, I can't feel an inch of my body right now. Don't tell me I'm going to die to a damn overgrown snake."
But then, something—or rather, someone—caught the edge of his vision. A man, floating upside down with an impossible calm, legs crossed as if seated in midair. The stranger's voice cut through the chaos, a beacon of unexpected hope. "Why are you only using your fire? You know you can do more than that, right?"
In the grip of the cold, merciless ocean, Ty's descent into the abyss was marked by struggle and a fleeting glimpse of Erebos—his expression a mix of confusion and disappointment, a silent rebuke as Ty plunged into the depths.
As the currents ensnared him, dragging him deeper into the ocean's clutches, a voice, imperious and scornful, echoed in his mind, demanding surrender. "Surrender control to me before you get us both killed, you worthless human."
Ty's thoughts were scattered, fragmented by the chill seeping into his bones and the oppressive darkness enveloping him.
Yet, amidst the despair, a distant glow beckoned from the ocean floor, a sliver of light in the overwhelming gloom. "W-wait, what is that?" he wondered, his curiosity a flicker of defiance against the encroaching darkness.
"What is what?! Give me control of the damn body now before you fully drown," the voice barked, insistent, yet Ty's attention was fixed on the revelation unfolding before him. "I see, that's where the Titanis goddess is hiding? Beneath a monster, people must assume it's her children?"
But as Ty neared the abyssal glow, his consciousness began to wane, memories flooding in like a deluge, a life's worth of moments colliding in his fading awareness. "Is my life flashing before my eyes right now?" he questioned, the encroaching darkness of the ocean melding with the darkness of closed eyelids.
Amidst the deluge of memories, one moment stood out with startling clarity: the Demon King, offering him a place among his elite, not as one of the twelve, but as an unprecedented thirteenth. The vividness of the memory was such that Ty could almost feel the burn of the mark being seared onto his bone shoulder, a sensation so real it anchored him to that distant moment.
This memory served as a lifeline, jolting Ty back to a semblance of awareness even as he continued to sink into the ocean's abyss.
He recalled the Demon King's words, a promise that the mark would lend him aid, that uttering a specific word would channel a fragment of the king's power through him.
Desperate, Ty attempted to invoke "Reiesencia," but the oppressive weight of the water stifled his voice, leaving his plea unvoiced, a silent curse against the ocean's merciless hold.
Frustration surged within him. Erebos's advice echoed in his mind, urging him to harness something beyond fire. But the fire was all he had known, all he believed he possessed, borrowed from the creature entwined with his soul.
As the edges of consciousness began to fray, surrendering to the inevitable embrace of death, the creature within him—facing its own obliteration—cried out in a last-ditch effort to survive. "The ability to steal souls and use them as power is your ability! I lied and stole it from you. Pass me control right now, so I can stop us from dying!"
Ty internally slapped the creature's hand and stated 5 minutes, and then I'm back in control.
Ty's eyes shifted from blue to red in a blink of an eye as a smile creeped along his face as the burnt flesh began to heal