Shrouded Seascape

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The relentless music continued assaulting his ears. Even with his hands over his ears, it did little to curb the metamorphosis sweeping through his body. His hands now resemble those suffering from gout—deformed and swollen.

Charles staggered to his feet and scanned his surroundings. He dashed toward a cabinet by the hallway and picked up a pair of silver utensils. With a couple of swift slashes of his dark blade, the utensils were fashioned into sharp silver spikes.

With a spike in each hand, Charles took a deep breath and ruthlessly plunged them into his eardrums. The searing pain of the punctured eardrums brought Charles to his knees, but a look of relief appeared on the face behind the mask. The music was gone; the incessant metamorphosis had also ceased.

Brushing off the moss that had grown on his skin, Charles pressed forward. The immediate danger was averted, but escaping from this giant ship seemed to be much more challenging than entering it. Navigating the array of identical corridors and rooms seemed to have cast a dizzy spell over Charles.

Should I just blast the walls? But would the explosion sounds attract those two?

Just as he was deep in contemplation, he halted his footsteps as his gaze landed on the sign on a door that read: Captain's Quarters.

Without sparing a single moment of hesitation, Charles pushed the door open. If there were anywhere that would hold a map, this would be it!

Upon entering, the sight of the little girl from before welcomed him. She sat idly on the large wooden table, her legs swinging idly as she parted her monstrous mouth, seemingly singing.

The extremely perilous situation couldn't stop Charles from looking toward the wall. It was a nautical chart! And the chart marked a vast region beyond that of any ordinary chart!

In a swift motion, Charles threw the Dark Blade at the little girl while he made a mad dash for the nautical chart simultaneously.

Closing the distance, Charles was able to pick up further details from the map, and he rapidly committed the new knowledge to his memory. Just then, his Dark Blade did a U-turn and slashed across his face.

Blood flooded Charles' eyes, and his covered vision halted him from studying the chart further.

When he finally managed to remove the blade from his face and wipe off the blood, the little girl was already standing behind him with a smile on her face. She parted her lips, but Charles, now deaf, could hear nothing.

Behind the Clown Mask, the corners of Charles' lips raised into a smirk. "So that fatso is not the real king. You're the true ruler of Sottom, aren't you?"

With an ability akin to telekinesis and the power to animate and revitalize anything with her singing, Charles was certain that she was more than just a six or seven-year-old girl. And those were just two of the cards that she had revealed.

With a nonchalant lift of her hands, Charles found himself levitating in mid-air.

Crack!

Charles' left forearm was contorted into an unnatural twist. Yet the sharp pain coursing through his body couldn't avert his gaze from the nautical chart. He was still making mental notes with all that he could muster.

A tinge of fury appeared on the little girl's face, and with a slight pinch of her hands, Charles' body contorted even further to an extreme angle. It was as if every bone in his body shattered in an instant. He fell onto the ground like a broken puppet.

Just then, "King" barged in, his body covered in blood, and he was panting heavily. Staring at Charles's pitiful sprawled figure on the floor, a murderous intent glimmered in his eyes.

Thud, thud, thud.

"King" approached the fallen man.

However, just as "King" was about to bend down to scoop Charles up, the latter suddenly jumped up and dashed out of the room with the agility of a cheetah.

"Wahahaha! Didn't see this coming, did ya! Wearing this mask, I gain extreme flexibility! Try to catch me now, idiot!" Charles taunted.

The moment he got out of the room, he wasted no words. He fished out some explosives on him, lit them and tossed them over his shoulders. The resultant explosion propelled him even further. Uninterested in the aftermath of his shenanigans, Charles quickly emptied his bag of explosives and placed them at a nearby corner.

He had memorized the map. Now, he just had to escape for his mission to be complete!

Boom!

With a thunderous explosion, the world spun around him. A gaping hole was blown into "King's" dwelling. Beyond the hole, Charles could see the squalor of Sottom's residential ship cabins. Ignoring the towering height of the ship he was on, Charles took a bold leap into the open air.

Mid-air, Charles' body rapidly enlarged, and he shapeshifted into a giant bat with a wingspan of nearly five meters. Flapping his wings vigorously, he sped toward the harbor.

Standing behind the gaping hole left by the explosion and watching the bat fly away, the little girl's face darkened with rage. "Pass down the orders! Notify all pirates at home! Whoever kills him will get a reward of ten million Echo!" the girl ordered.

The disheveled "King" nodded hastily and leaped out of the damaged opening.

Soon, Charles realized that the skies were far from safe. When he reached the midpoint of his journey, he noticed that every single cannon in Sottom began swiveling, and he was their target.

Boom!

A projectile whistled through the air toward him. With a swift maneuver in the air, Charles barely dodged it. However, the cannonball exploded next to him, and the resultant shockwave forcefully shoved him off course by several meters.

Retracting his wings as he continued flight, Charles dipped lower and hugged the rooftops and ship masts in an attempt to evade the ruthless barrage of cannonballs.

Without the assault of cannonballs, other dangers started to present themselves.

The chattering of gunfire sounded, and a volley of bullets had Charles' left wing peppered with holes.

Beneath him, the pirates on the ground seemed to be madly crazed. They held every plausible form of weapon as they launched attacks on Charles in a frenzied manner. Judging from their faces, flushed red with excitement, Charles could make a rough guess: "King" had surely placed a massive bounty on his head.

Apart from the regular gunfire, other unimaginable attacks also sought to bring Charles down. There were fireballs and lightning strikes. Some pirates even managed to soar into the air using some method unknown to Charles.

Under the barrage of assault, injuries began to accumulate on Charles despite his agility.

A RUM bullet left a gaping hole in Charles' lower body. An overwhelming sense of fatigue washed over him, and he found his consciousness fading out.

A few seconds later, his path ahead cleared. The pirates were all gone, and the dock filled with ships was right before his eyes.

But before Charles could even feel a tinge of elation, a yellow blur from the ground leaped up and slammed into him. His battered body couldn't withstand the heavy impact, and he plummeted toward the sea.

Mid-fall, Charles turned with much difficulty to see "King" clinging onto him and gnawing on his flesh with crazed bloodlust.

Splash!

Both of them plunged into the icy waters. 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝘰𝓋𝘦𝘭.𝑐𝘰𝓂

In the darkness of the sea, Charles struggled violently to shake "King" off. Just as he was about to succeed, dozens of centipede-like creatures sprang from "King's" body. Using their hooked feet, they latched onto Charles and secured him and "King" together. Their mingled blood slowly stained the sea red.

Amid his relentless gnawing, "King's" rotten teeth rapidly crumbled away to be replaced with sharp, ink-black fangs. He resembled a voracious ogre as he tore away at Charles' flesh, chunk after chunk, in an attempt to devour the latter alive.