Chapter 59: The Leviathan Priest

Chapter 59: Chapter 59: The Leviathan Priest

The dead city had one main source of wealth, and all the mana currents flowed toward the same vault.

Sybill stretched her hex-thread between her fingers and used it to track the magical signatures. The thread pulled toward the cathedral like a creditor who knew the debtor was home.

Roan’s chart confirmed it. Every marker worth looting led to that same building. With each terrace they descended, the vault key in Joel’s pocket grew warmer.

The First Ascendants had stored their treasures where their god could watch over them.

And apparently, their god had never left.

"The signatures grow stronger near the altar," Sybill said. "Everything in this city flows toward that church. It’s where everything ends up."

"We’re following the money, and the money is in that church," Joel said. "Roan, get air-ward stones for both of you. One hour of air each. Double your depth glyphs, and keep an anchor line connecting us at all times. Sybill, keep the shroud fresh and bring your thread. It’s the best tool this expedition has."

He looked at them both.

"From here on, you two are the visitors. I’m the local."

The dive began in silence.

Joel swam down in long, steady strokes. The black water parted around his gills as if staff were clearing a path for him.

Roan and Sybill followed the cathedral’s outer wall, connected to him by the anchor line. Each carried a small bubble of air held in place by runes. The bubbles wobbled around them like soap bubbles with passengers inside.

Their pressure glyphs measured the crushing depth, turning it into numbers neither of them wanted to say aloud.

They entered through the great doors, which stood open beneath a coral-covered arch. The nave swallowed the last of the jellyfish light behind them.

The church glowed on its own. Algae had spread across the stained-glass windows, turning each painted martyr into a ghost lit by green light. Rows of drowned pews stretched down the black marble aisle toward an altar that seemed to absorb light instead of reflecting it.

Joel had listened to the breathing for two days. Now he had finally reached its source.

The water inside the nave rose and fell in a slow rhythm that had nothing to do with the tides. Above the altar, a great bell hung motionless, waiting for its cue.

Every pew was occupied.

Skeletons in tattered robes sat in perfect rows, their hymnals open before them. They had attended this church for three thousand years.

Not one had ever missed a service.

"Full house," Roan said, his voice trembling inside his air pocket. "I want it on record that I hate churches now. All of them."

The water above the altar parted like a curtain being drawn aside.

The Leviathan Priest rose through it.

Its upper body looked like that of a drowned saint, wrapped in kelp and burial cloth. Its face was beautiful in the way sunken ships were beautiful, and its eyes glowed like lanterns filled with drowned light.

Below its waist, it had no legs. Instead, dozens of thick tentacles spread around it, each as thick as a stone column. They drifted like ceremonial robes as the creature floated above the altar.

One hand held a crozier made of black coral. The creature moved slowly, showing no sign of hurry.

It tapped the altar with the crozier.

KRK.

The sound vibrated through their teeth. Across the cathedral, the algae covering the stained-glass windows dimmed like candles at a funeral.

The entire church seemed to lean closer.

The service was about to begin

[Ding!]

[ Stratum Boss identified: The Leviathan Priest ]

[ Level: 45. Classification: undead squid-humanoid, floating. ]

[ Magic schools: soul-grade hydrostatics, necromancy. ]

[ Note: Now then, let us discuss the tenant. He has kept this parish for three thousand years, attendance is mandatory, and no guest has ever checked out. ]

[Ding!]

[ Null-Band broadcast: Flesh-Guide, F-rank, Level 1 ]

[ Tenant response: filed under appetizer. ]

The Null-Band chirped its false reading at the creature, but the creature wasn’t fooled. A Level 45 ruler knew how to read everything that entered his church. He wasn’t going to trust the false identity a pickpocket showed at the door.

Joel walked down the aisle with the calm expression of an appraiser. He had left Nyx and Vulcan folded inside his core. It was the same reason a man wouldn’t bring cash to a fraud trial. The Fate-Bound Legion was made up of the dead, and this creature was their chief auditor.

The Priest judged him before he reached the third pew.

The bell swung once.

DOOM.

Joel heard nothing. The sound struck inside his chest instead, hitting something within him that had never been touched before.

The water around him remained completely still.

That was the terrifying part.

His Aegis Frame had spent three years absorbing and storing incoming force. But this force never reached him. It didn’t strike his body. It simply imposed its will, pressing down on his soul like a thumb on a scale.

Joel felt a sharp pain behind his eyes.

[Ding!]

[ Aegis Frame: absorption declined ]

[ Reason: source carries no kinetic load. Force without motion cannot be banked. ]

[ Integrity: 88%. Soul bruise filed. ]

Joel answered in the only language he knew. He fired a Meteor Piercer down the aisle.

THWOOM!

The attack tore a tunnel through the Priest’s drifting mantle. But the dead flesh quickly healed, knitting itself back together with a wet sound.

SSRIP.

The Priest treated the attack like a minor clerical error.

Joel tried a different approach. He released four stored charges from his forearms and drove them into the creature with a Kinetic Bastion strike.

DOOM!

Coral broke off the Priest’s shoulders, but its wounded flesh healed before the water could settle.

Joel stopped attacking. There was no point wasting his power on something that healed every wound so quickly.

One of the Priest’s tentacles swept across the nave and struck him before the bubbles had finished rising.

KRRAK!

Joel crossed his arms and took the hit. This time, the force was real. His Aegis Frame absorbed it and stored the energy.

That was the problem in a nutshell. He could absorb the tentacles’ physical attacks, but he couldn’t absorb the Priest’s judgments.

The tentacle hurled him through two rows of pews.

SPLSH! KRK!

Not a single skeleton turned its head.

Even for a congregation, that was rude.

The Priest rang the bell again.

DOOM. DOOM.

The hymnals began to move. The dead rose from their pews, row by row, their movements slow and steady. Their hands reached forward, and their jaws opened wider as they filled the nave.

Roan’s anchor line lit up, forming a lattice of light across the aisle. It cut through the first rank, dropping the skeletons to their knees in broken halves.

KRK!

Behind them, Sybill’s Salt-Rot spread through the next rows, turning the water gray. The dead struggled through the thickened water, moving as if trapped in syrup, and seemed to forget why they had risen in the first place.

[Ding!]

[ Restless Congregation: Level 21, x8: eliminated ]

[ Experience: Roan +156, Sybill +180, Joel +58 ]

[ Survival Accumulation: +6%. Current: 6%. ]

[ Note: The house honors all revenue, including the collection plate. ]

Then the Priest did something worse than attacking Joel. It stopped watching him and turned its drowned-lantern eyes toward the two living hearts in the pews.

The water around Roan and Sybill began to glow. Three spheres formed with a soft sound, and the pressure inside them rose with each verdict. The water grew heavier without anything actually moving.

Roan’s lattice flared and held.

Then it began to ring.

TINK. TINK.

Thin cracks spread through the light, like ice about to break.

One of his air-ward stones crumpled inward with a wet sound. In half a second, his hour of air was gone.

Roan activated his second stone. His hands had stopped shaking. The fear had passed through him and come out the other side as routine.

Sybill had already begun casting her strongest hex without being told. She had stopped waiting for permission and started trusting her own judgment.

[Ding!]

[ Hydrostatic Damnation: 3 spheres active ]

[ Ward integrity: 41% and falling ]

[ Companion air reserves: critical ]

[ Note: The tenant has read your squad as collateral. ]

Joel fired a Meteor Piercer through the nearest sphere.

THWOOM!

The blast flash-boiled the water, turning it into a column of steam. It bought them four seconds.

Then the sphere re-formed before the bubbles had finished rising. The verdict simply ignored what physics had done.

"Joel," Roan said, his voice quiet as the ward’s light flickered for the last time. He sounded like a patient asking a doctor a question he already knew the answer to. "You can’t bank this one, can you?"

"No," Joel said. Admitting it hurt more than the verdict itself. "Everything I own is built on matter and motion. This thing deals in souls."

He had only one option left. When a house faced a market it didn’t understand, it protected what it could. Joel moved in front of his squad, shielding them with his body.

The Priest rang the third verdict straight through his sternum.

DOOM.

Joel’s soul creaked like a ship hit by a bad wave. His knees nearly buckled, but he held his ground.

Collateral didn’t get to flinch.

[Ding!]

[ Integrity: 74%. Soul contusion filed. ]

[ Survival Accumulation: +8%. Current: 14%. ]

[ Note: Lethal odds confirmed. The house is finally interested in this table. ]

The vault key in Joel’s pocket had gone from warm to cold, as cold as the altar it pointed to. Beneath the black stone, something older than the parish was listening.

The Priest raised its crozier. The three spheres tightened under another verdict. Roan’s lattice gave a final, ringing note and held at nine percent.

Sybill pressed her palm against the cracking light and looked at Joel. She didn’t need to speak. The question was clear on her face.

Joel laughed once. It was the flat, dangerous sound he made when a ledger stopped adding up. Then he straightened against the crushing pressure, like a man rising to make a toast.

"Tenant," he said in his politest voice, "I’ve come about the lease."

A priest collected souls. A casino audited them. Only one of those businesses could survive a bad millennium.

For three thousand years, the water had been the landlord here.

Now the new owner had walked through the doors.