Chapter 163: The Cosmic Whispers

Chapter 163: The Cosmic Whispers

The groaning of the ship’s timbers turned into the dying screams of people. Lifted high above the pink-hued waves by the cathedral-sized tentacles, the ship tilted at a terrifying forty-five-degree angle, preparing to sink down.

Inside the cabin, Dante lost his footing entirely. He slid across the floorboards and crashed against the heavy control console. The impact knocked the wind from his lungs, but he barely felt the physical pain, keeping his eyes completely glued to the window.

Outside, a row of ringed, human-like teeth inside a massive suction cup scraped against the glass, leaving a trail of bubbling slime that began to eat through the pane.

We’re dead. We’re so dead!This isn’t bankruptcy; it’s the goddamn end of the world. Oh my god, I’m going to die!

Dante’s mind shrieked, his thoughts fracturing into panic. The silvery scale beneath his left eye throbbed coldly, a silent indicator that the protective boundary was buckling under the sheer density of the creature’s malice.

Silas clung desperately to the snapped remnants of the steering column. His low-Ordinal spirituality was being drained entirely with every attempt to try to maintain his consciousness.

Every time the colossal kraken squeezed, a psychic nausea washed over him, threatening to drag him back into the delusion of "returning home."

"The conceptual... presence is too heavy! I can’t think it away!"

Out on the tilted deck, Murphy ignored the chaos below.

The charm from the corrupted priest had melted as the corruption surrounding him slowly went inside the Embodiment.

A sacrifice-type charm. Murphy analyzed, his internal voice eerily detached despite the force of the ship.

The three Shadow Eaters lunged at him simultaneously, their two-dimensional silhouettes stretching into razor-sharp claws. They were mere inches from tearing through his long coat when Murphy finally unleashed the charm’s stored energy.

He forced his own translucent, phasing spirituality to violently merge with the chaotic corruption running through his veins. Without wasting another moment, the space rippled, pushing them backward and rotting their skin as the corruption of the Flesh Authority caught them.

As because their bodies lacked true three-dimensional depth, the warping of the local space twisted them. Their silhouettes snapped, fractured, and were violently pulled into the miniature void, disappearing into the chaotic layers of the dream’s sub-space.

The distortion expanded outward, riding the very lines of spirituality that connected the Shadow Eaters to the colossal kraken coiling around the hull.

The massive tentacle crushing the deck suddenly shuddered.

A section of the sinister tentacle simply ceased to occupy as the monster’s limb rotted up, leaving a wet, slippery fluid behind melting flesh.

The kraken let out a psychic roar that shattered every remaining glass window on the ship. It forced Silas to his knees; his ears began to hold from the raw whispers of the deity sleeping beneath the sea.

The giant tentacles loosened their grip slightly as the ship dropped a few feet back toward the water with a violent thud.

Murphy stumbled backward, his right arm catching the nearest pole. The Embodiment appeared again in his hand, leaving his skin pale, bruised, and covered in small barnacle-like bumps that he had to suppress from reaching his brain.

His spiritual reserves were dangerously close to absolute zero. ’Tch, my spirituality is still fractured; I need to complete the ritual.’

"Silas!" Murphy called from the hall, his voice hoarse while remaining steady as he used the last of his strength to blink back into the shattered windows. "Hurry, change the direction to a safe place!"

Silas glanced back where the voice had come from, his face turning pale and drenched in sweat. Hearing Murphy’s voice acted as a secondary anchor, pulling him back from the brink of madness. He stared at the snapped steering wheel, then closed his eyes.

He used every bit of his strength to change the direction of the ship, as the broken steering wheel turned, finally changing the ship’s movement and moving it toward the edge of the Bloodborne Sea.

The wood creaked under an invisible, crushing weight as the colossal, sinister tentacles tried to grab the ship back, but they were weakened by the Embodiment, leaving only the weakened tentacles curled around the vessel.

Murphy pulled the door open and looked around. "Mr. Silas, give me the artifact you got and the formula of awakening that bell of catalyst. The entity is distracted, and we need to manage to escape to a safe island."

With a deafening splash that sent waves flying fifty feet into the air, the ship tore through the kraken’s weakened grip and slammed violently back into the ink-black water.

The sudden downward momentum carried them straight through the surface, plunging the entire vessel beneath the waves. But instead of drowning, the crimson mist inside the cabin seemed to compress, forming a pocket of suffocating air.

Silas quickly pulled out the Bell of Catalyst and threw it toward Murphy and then pulled the book out before giving it to Murphy, who quickly grabbed it and moved outside.

Murphy entered the open place where the waves were hitting the wood, almost breaking the wood.

He grabbed one of the nearest poles and moved through the heavy air, reaching the very end of the ship. Finally, he looked down, only to find the large squid following them with an unimaginable speed, feeling no pressure from the waves.

Taking a few steps back, he crisped open the bell before looking inside the formula page.

Murphy’s eyes scanned the text at breakneck speed as the colossal shadow of the kraken surged upward from the deep, its massive beak snapping open beneath the ship.

[Ritual Requirement]: Hold the iron clapper against your bare flesh.

[Trigger Phrase]: "Let the vastness fall silent; let the watcher turn deaf."

[Active Maintenance Limitation]: Maximum 3 minutes. Exceeding this causes the user’s mind to permanently shatter into the subspace of the cosmic void.

The tentacle scraped the hull from below, threatening to shatter the remaining wood.

Murphy forcefully pressed the corroded iron clapper of the bell directly against the bruised skin of his right palm. A freezing pain shot up his arm, violently snapping his fractured spirituality into alignment with the artifact’s dormant consciousness.

He looked down into the boiling, ink-black water where the kraken’s massive, multi-ringed teeth were about to breach the surface.

Opening his mouth, Murphy forced his hoarse voice to resonate with the chaotic corruption still running through his veins. He chanted in the low, rhythmic cadence of an anchor:

"Let the vastness fall silent... let the watcher turn deaf!"

Clang.

Murphy struck the bell. A crushing, absolute vacuum of silence instantly expanded from the stern of the ship. The roaring of the wind, the crashing of the fifty-foot waves, and the deafening psychic shrieks of the deity sleeping beneath the sea were instantly swallowed whole.

Inside the cabin, Dante’s throbbing silver scale beneath his eye went dormant as the suffocating pressure of the cosmic whispers vanished from his consciousness.

Silas, still gripping the broken steering wheel, gasped as the crushing psychic nausea receded.

But on the deck, Murphy paid the price as the cosmic whispers had simply changed direction. Guided by the bell, the maddening, multi-layered voices of the cosmos ran directly into Murphy’s head.

Bleeding from his left ear, his vision blurred into chaotic black as he fought to keep his hand clamped tightly around the artifact.

With the kraken temporarily disoriented, the ship violently tore through the final layer of the monster’s grip, surging forward toward the edge of the Bloodborne Sea.

Using his hearing, Silas found the perfect silent place, resting nearby.

He quickly shifted the direction again, pushing the ship toward the island, although he knew that they were currently in a place entirely guided by the corruption, but that was the only way to survive right now, as the ship had already been damaged, and moving forward without fixing it would lead to suicide.

Thus, he took the risk and reached toward the island that seemed safe for now.