Chapter 260: Ink Baptism

Kalon stayed in the water house a little longer and watched Coralia finish the last of her chores.

A tentacle hung the cleaned cloth. Another sealed the disposal sac and pushed it out through a side opening into the open sea. Her enormous green-blue breasts shifted with every small movement.

She still did not cover herself. She still did not treat his presence as anything urgent. When she passed him to adjust a light vein in the wall, one of her hair-tentacles brushed his shoulder by accident and she apologised the same way someone might apologise for bumping a chair.

He took this opportunity to check her seduction score, in hopes that it might have raised idly, like it did with some other women.

It had not moved.

Not even a fraction.

Kalon kept his face steady while that settled in. Every other major target so far had given him something early. Curiosity, fear, gratitude, lust, submission.

Coralia had given him a polite greeting and a return to housework. The still waters of Thalassia had made her calm in a way that made ordinary progress useless.

She would not just throw herself at him.

He floated near the curved wall and thought it through properly.

Compliments would bounce off her, so there was no point in that.

Strength displays meant little in a world that had already solved its wars.

Any lustful talk would confuse a woman who did not even have a word for naked.

Then he came up with an idea.

What she respected was the title she held and the reason she held it. She had become Tide-Lord by being first to merge water and ink. That was the language she understood.

She recognised someone that could do that as "Blessed".

If he awakened both ink and water, then merged skills the way she had, she would have to recognise him.

She would recognise him as someone walking the same path that gave her authority. That recognition might not be lust at first, but it would be attention. Attention was the opening he did not currently have.

That was the way in.

He did not know yet how to force those awakenings on demand. Arcane Sight told him the affinities could exist in him. Turning them on was another problem.

Standing here guessing in front of her would not solve it. Staying longer without a plan would only waste time.

"I need to leave for now," Kalon said.

Coralia looked over from the shelf, dark eyes calm.

"Alright."

That was all she said. Just acceptance, the same way she had accepted his arrival.

Kalon initiated the return before the peace of the place could make him waste more time.

...

Earth came back in a rush of dry air and hard floor.

Kalon sat on the edge of his bed in the high-rise and stared at the opposite wall for a long time. His phone still had League messages stacked up about the second card, ticket demands, and sponsor stuff.

He ignored them.

Daisy and Sifa were handled for the moment. Thalassia was the problem in front of him.

Ink and water.

He had water skills already from earlier progress, enough that the affinity was not a foreign idea in his body. Ink was the missing piece.

On Thalassia it was a living affinity tied to the sea’s darker currents and the Tide-Lord’s merged authority. On Earth it was just product. Fluid. Pigment. Something you ordered in bulk for printers and industrial work.

Maybe that was enough to start.

If Formidable Body and Infinite Elemental Adaptation responded to immersion and intent the way they had responded to mud, ice, light, and blood in the past, then flooding himself in the raw material might push the dormant ink affinity toward the surface.

It was crude. It might fail. But it was still better than sitting in a peaceful water house waiting for Coralia’s seduction score to notice him on its own.

Kalon pulled up a same-day industrial supplier on his phone, ordered multiple gallons of black ink for immediate delivery, and paid without reading the price.

The listing called it high-density pigment fluid for commercial presses.

Close enough.

He added extra containers to be sure the tub would fill properly, confirmed the address, and set the phone down.

He spent the wait cleaning the bathroom.

He blocked the overflow, checked the seal on the tub, and cleared everything off the side shelf so nothing would stain that he cared about.

The delivery man arrived with a stack of heavy sealed containers on a trolley. He looked at the order sheet, looked at Kalon, and then looked past him into the apartment as if searching for a print shop that was not there.

"You uh... need help bringing these in?" the man asked. "They’re quite heavy."

"No, I’ll be fine thanks."

Kalon took the containers one by one and set them inside by the bathroom door. The delivery man hovered a second longer, clearly fighting the urge to ask what a single person wanted with that much ink on short notice.

His eyes flicked to Kalon’s hands, then back to the trolley, then to the closed kitchen like the answer might be hiding there.

Then his eyes widened.

Didn’t he recognise this man?

Kalon signed the confirmation and shut the door before the questions could form.

He carried every gallon into the bathroom and opened them over the tub.

Black pigment poured out in thick streams. It hit the bath and spread in heavy clouds, swallowing the white surface in minutes. The smell was sharp and chemical, nothing like Thalassia’s clean sea, but the colour was right.

Dense and absolute.

Kalon emptied container after container until the bath was a solid black volume with no water visible underneath. The surface settled slowly into a dull still mirror.

He stripped.

Stood over the tub for a moment while the last air bubbles finished rising through the pigment.

Then he stepped in and submerged himself completely, the way someone else might enter a baptism, and let the black fluid close over his head.