Chapter 183: Untitled

Pulling the Demi-god saber from his side, Ethen kept his face completely cold as his body went to work fixing the damage.

The deep tear along his ribs began closing up almost immediately.

Broken flesh knitted together with quiet efficiency.

The heavy crimson flow stopped leaking onto his leather armor.

The blinding throbbing lingered for another second, but even that faded away as the passive rule of *Undying* forcibly glued his battered body back into fighting shape.

Ethen glanced down at the dark blood smeared across his hip before slowly lifting his dark eyes back toward the shadow beast.

"Let’s do this again," he muttered.

His tone was quiet and dead flat.

There was zero hesitation in his voice.

Only cold, focused stubbornness.

His fingers clamped tightly around the wool-wrapped grip of the saber, his knuckles turning pale white under the pressure.

A split second later, Ethen kicked off the rotting wood.

He closed the distance fast, dropping his center of gravity into the balanced, low-slung stance of the Judgment Style.

The martial style wasn’t about swinging wildly with raw strength.

Every step was calculated to close distance safely.

Every subtle shift of his blade was aimed to place the edge right where the target was most vulnerable.

The shadow creature sneered as it watched him advance.

It clearly thought the mortal youth was an idiot who hadn’t learned his lesson from the first hit.

After all, what could an ordinary Tier 5 summoner possibly do against an authentic Demi-god without his beasts running interference?

The raw gap between their realms was supposed to be completely uncrossable.

The creature lunged forward to crush him, its razor-sharp shadow claw sweeping down toward Ethen’s collarbone.

Right as it was about to land, it stopped dead in mid-air.

The descending claw slammed directly onto a wall of bare, unyielding muscle.

Adam had stepped into the pocket without making a sound.

His body stood like an iron pillar directly between Ethen and the strike, absorbing the terrifying impact into his bare chest without budging an inch.

The shadow creature’s sneer froze.

Before the beast could pull its limb back, Ethen slid out from behind Adam’s shoulder.

His wool-wrapped saber flashed in the dim light.

Slash!

The curved steel tore clean through the shadow creature’s upper arm.

The instant the blade broke the skin, the cruel effect of *Flesh Eater* flared to life.

Rotting decay spread through the fresh wound in the blink of an eye.

The black flesh around the cut began breaking down at an insane speed, melting and burning through the creature’s meat like concentrated acid.

The shadow creature stumbled hard to the side.

For the first time since they had entered the crater, genuine agony twisted its shifting face.

Adam was going to be the shield today.

And Ethen was going to be the sword.

It was a simple, brutal combination, but it completely erased the fatal weakness between their tiers.

Ethen couldn’t take direct hits from an authentic Demi-god.

Adam, with his bizarre *Perfect Body*, could take them all day long.

And as long as Adam kept stepping in front of the killing blows, Ethen only needed a single split second to land his cuts.

The wounded beast staggered backward across the planks.

Ethen stayed right on its heels.

A second strike carved through the air.

This time, the heavy saber sliced straight across the center of the creature’s chest, biting deep into its dark torso.

The creature threw its weight backward to dodge the worst of the momentum, but the sharp edge still caught it clean.

More bubbling rot spread outward from the fresh cut.

"Hmp?!"

The beast hissed, staring down at the jagged wounds burning with decay.

"A Demi-god weapon?"

Despite the nasty rot eating away at its flesh, the shadow creature suddenly broke into a wet, rasping laugh.

"I’ll strip it off your cold corpse soon enough!!"

With a violent burst of speed, the beast turned and bolted out of the hold.

Ethen didn’t change his expression.

He wasn’t about to let the thing slip away.

Adam sprinted right beside him, and the pair chased the dark shape deeper into the belly of the dead vessel.

The chase tore through one hollow cabin after another.

The ancient hull shrieked under their weight as their rapid movements battered the rotting structure.

Thin wooden walls shattered into kindling.

Old floorboards cracked and gave way beneath their boots.

Thick clouds of gray dust choked the narrow corridors.

Yet the wounded creature kept darting further into the dark.

Ethen picked up on the pattern after a few minutes of pursuit.

Its movement was way too clean and deliberate.

It wasn’t scrambling around like a panicked animal trying to save its life.

It was heading toward a very specific point.

Down into the deepest, darkest keel of the ship.

The further down they pushed, the colder and blacker the air became.

The creature kept throwing nasty taunts over its shoulder, talking as if it didn’t care at all about being hunted.

That was the exact detail that bothered Ethen.

The thing had zero fear.

Even with a Demi-god blade carving chunks of rotting flesh out of its body, it was acting like everything was running on schedule.

From the calculated way it moved and provoked them, Ethen and Adam reached the exact same silent conclusion.

It was leading them straight into a setup.

A prepared trap.

Ethen’s eyes narrowed into slits.

He stopped his boots right outside a low archway.

Adam halted beside him instantly.

Ethen raised a hand, flashing a quick combat signal.

*Don’t push forward. Hold position.*

Adam gave a short nod, understanding the call.

The two held their breath outside the doorway leading down into the lowest hold.

A long, tense moment dragged by.

The ancient ship around them went dead silent, save for the groan of the hull.

Then, a dry, rusty creak echoed from the dark chamber below.

An old iron hatch had shifted in the gloom.

Then—

*Thud!*

Something heavy hit the wooden deck inside the room.

Ethen’s eyes snapped toward the floor just beyond the threshold.

He didn’t take a single step inside.

Instead, he leaned slightly, examining the dropped body from the safety of the corridor.

Looking closely at the corpse, Ethen couldn’t spot a single mark of physical violence on it.

There were no cuts, no bite marks, and no broken bones.

No blood had been spilled on the dark boards.

There were zero signs of a physical fight or struggle.

Yet the corpse was completely horrifying to look at.

The person had literally been scared to death.

Its wide eyes were locked in a look of sheer, paralyzing horror that twisted the whole face into an ugly mask.

Whatever it had seen down there in the dark had fried its mind and killed it on the spot.

"Check it again," Ethen whispered under his breath.

Adam caught the command instantly.

With a brief mental tug, he called forth another Black DoberBone from his tamed pack.

The lean, dark hound moved forward cautiously, padding silently toward the chamber’s edge.

This time, Adam bridged his senses, sharing the beast’s visual feed directly into Ethen’s mind.

Neither of them was stupid enough to walk into an unmapped kill zone blind.

The hound crept past the wooden frame.

Its sharp predatory vision flashed across Ethen’s mind.

Then, Ethen’s brows slowly furrowed.

"What are we looking at?"

Adam was quiet for a second, clearly trying to make sense of the feed himself.

"Nothing dangerous," Adam muttered, his voice laced with pure confusion. "The shadow beast is just sitting on a wooden chair."

Ethen stared into empty space, his eyes narrowing.

A throne?

Deep inside the rotting guts of this sunken ship?

The whole picture made no tactical sense.

The creature had just been trading bloody strikes with them minutes ago.

It was carrying nasty, festering wounds from a Demi-god blade.

Yet now it was lounging on a crude throne in the center of the room.

Waiting patiently.

Watching the door.

Acting as if it had never been in danger of dying at all.

Sure, the beast was a Demi-god.

But instantly dropping a Tier 5 combatant without leaving a single scrape or mark wasn’t something a normal Demi-god could pull off.

Especially since Ethen had just fought the thing up close.

He had personally felt the beast’s raw physical output.

If the creature had some weird, instant-death curse that bypassed armor, why hadn’t it used it when Adam slammed into its jaw?

Something was totally wrong with this picture.

Completely broken.

"What is that on you?" Adam asked, his tone suddenly dropping into an urgent whisper.

His eyes snapped toward Ethen’s shoulder.

Ethen looked down at his arm.

A tiny, bright green vine was slowly growing out of the fabric of his combat tunic.

It definitely hadn’t been there when they entered the ship.

The strange little plant sprouted silently, curling around his shoulder armor like an innocent piece of wild ivy.

Ethen leaned in to inspect it.

Adam’s expression suddenly turned dead pale.

There were tiny, glowing runes written across the little green leaf.

They spelled out four clear words:

*"Run!! It’s a God."*

The very millisecond Adam finished reading the warning, his entire attitude snapped.

He didn’t pause to ask questions or verify the text.

His heavy hand clamped down like a vice on Ethen’s shoulder plate.

Then, he jumped with everything he had.

The crazy physical power packed inside Adam’s legs detonated against the floorboards.

The rotting deck exploded under their feet, launching both of them straight upward through the damaged ceiling planks.

At that exact heartbeat—

A soft, lazy laugh drifted up from the deep space beneath the ship.

It was quiet.

Almost gentle, like an old man chuckling to himself.

Yet every single danger instinct in Ethen’s soul started screaming bloody murder.

The sound echoed through the hollow timbers.

Then, the floor below ripped wide open.

Tentacles.

Hundreds of massive, jet-black tentacles burst out of the lowest hold, tearing through the deck like dry paper as they shot upward in wild pursuit.

They moved with unnatural, terrifying speed.

The slimy appendages smashed through the wooden bulkheads, grabbing desperately for Ethen and Adam as they flew through the air.

Ethen’s jaw clenched tight, all his focus locking onto the incoming threats.

His saber blurred into a spinning shield of steel.

Slash!

A thick black tentacle was lopped clean in two, spraying foul fluid.

Another whip-like limb lunged straight for his throat from the side.

Slash!

The sharp edge severed it instantly, leaving the stump to convulse on the floor.

Slash!

Ethen swung the Demi-god blade again and again, cutting a path through the reaching tentacles while Adam kicked off the walls to carry them higher.

They scrambled toward the upper decks.

The black swarm surged right behind them, hungry and relentless.

Every time an appendage reached out to wrap around Adam’s ankle, Ethen carved it to pieces with a flash of cold steel.

The entire ancient ship violently shook, rocking inside the crater as if an earthquake had hit the keel.

Finally, Adam burst through the final hatch, landing heavily on the open weather deck.

Right as the black tentacles poured out into the pale daylight of the Nether Realm, something bizarre happened.

They froze in place.

Their wild, whipping movements suddenly lost all momentum.

The greasy black appendages started turning gray, their fleshy surfaces drying out like salted slugs.

The thick skin shriveled up into brittle husks.

Within seconds, the entire writhing mass withered away into harmless black dust that blew across the deck.

Ethen stared at the empty hatch, his chest heaving.

"Huuu..."

He let out a long, shaky breath, wiping a smear of dark sweat from his forehead.

For several quiet seconds, he stood frozen on the deck, letting his brain catch up to the sheer madness of what had just happened.

His pulse was hammering against his ribs like a war drum.

That had been way too close, Way, way too close to dying.

He looked back toward the dark, splintered hole leading down into the lower hold. The frantic warning etched into that tiny leaf was burned into his mind.

*Run.*

*God.*

Fighting a rogue Demi-god was already a desperate, high-stakes gamble for a Tier 5 summoner. Whatever was slumbering down beneath that ancient ship was operating on an entirely different level of reality.

An existence powerful enough to use an authentic Demi-god as cheap bait on a hook.

An entity that could kill a high-tier scout without leaving a single scratch on the skin.

Something ancient that had spent days quietly luring him down into its web.

Ethen’s expression hardened into grim stone as the cold mountain wind washed over him.

A God.

He hadn’t been exploring an old ruin; he had been led straight into the feeding grounds of a slumbering deity.