Novel Full Chapter 142: Trapped On Both Ends
Chapter 142: Trapped On Both Ends
“Wait…!” Torq muttered, puzzled as the submarine slowed down to a crawl and generated turbulent currents around itself to mask itself from the sea’s depths.
A large piece of water appeared before him, designed like a slab, which was created by Eureur Pet to depict everything that she could sense through her Prana detection means. While Torq relied on the Narlakk Pet to detect the surroundings, Eureur Pet was doing her own detection too, so that both could cover their respective weaknesses and have a more comprehensive picture of their surroundings.
Since the Narlakk Pet could use Mystic Mist art, it also displayed its findings on the water slab maintained by Eureur Pet. The Dralh Sea’s water was extremely dense thanks to its mineral deposits.
These deposits played a pivotal role in creating a comprehensive layout of the surroundings. White and blue coloured deposits were used to depict the terrain. Any coral outgrowth was shown using orange deposits.
Pranic Beasts were shown using green while the Stitched Humans were shown in yellow. It was easy to differentiate the Stitched Humans from the Pranic Beasts.
For the Pranic Beasts were prey to a Narlakk while a Stitched Human pretty much influenced the Narlakk’s pollen in its range. And if any pollen were to enter its body, they were assimilated into the influence over time and consumed by the Stitched Human.
The reason for Torq’s puzzlement was the rapid changing in the colour displacements on the slab of water.
Originally, green dots were gathered at the region, following which their numbers dwindled while yellow dots increased in number in a proportional manner. But now, there was a sudden spike in the number of green dots, so much so the slab of water basically appeared like a hunk of green.
“There’s only one possibility,” Torq quickly recalled the book he had read and focused on the incidents that had occurred at the Dralh Sea. His face paled as he figured out how the Cooter Clan Raid Force and the Mystic Humans at the Dralh Sea got wiped out in the first timeline. “Phells…!”
Expert Iron Grade Pranic Beast–Phell!
With a Prana capacity of 1000 and a lifespan ranging between a few years to a few decades, the Phell was by definition, a suicidal Pranic Beast with zero individuality. It was by far the most dangerous, invasive Pranic Beasts to exist on Sumatra.
Primary Nature–Needle Mine!
The Phells reached a length of two metres on average, with some reaching as long as 4 metres. Their unique trait was the needle growing out of their heads, which served as their weapon.
The Phell had flippers across its body aiding its swimming speed, allowing it to reach speeds upwards of 90 kilometres per hour underwater. But that wasn’t all. It had a unique gill structure capable of absorbing water and accumulating it in their body, in a compressed state.
These gills were present under every flipper. And when the Phell leaps out of the water, all these gills release a faint burst of water in the form of vapour, propelling its body forward like an arrow.
And when the Phell’s comes in contact with the target, it gets triggered. Immediately in response, the Phell’s Spirit Container sustains immense strain and ignites every ounce of Prana within it, generating psychokinesis that envelopes the body and produces an explosion.
The explosion ranges between a few metres and could reach as high as a dozen metres. The explosion occurs in two forms here. The radial explosion is weak, and is a resultant of the Phell’s body assuming an incomplete death.
When Needle Mine gets activated, every cell of the Phell undergoes transformation to hold all its genetic information to become a spore. The goal of the explosion is to vitalise the spore.
Therefore, the radial explosion expels flesh parts that failed to become spores. This is done to prevent these parts from taking up valuable vitalising spots.
The majority of the explosive strength is concentrated upon the needle and is injected as a penetrative force, upon the target. All the spores will instantly puncture through the target’s body and then explode it into uniform bits. Every bit will have the target’s body part uniformly coated with all the spores that could latch onto its surface area.
This is the vitalised spore stage. The explosion will send them flying as far away as possible, because in a matter of minutes, the spores would be fertilised and would hatch. Upon hatching, they would look no different to tadpoles.
These tadpoles consumed the dissolved nutrition in the water, which is sourced from the flesh of the living beings that exploded as a result of the Needle Mine. The explosion results in the dissolved substance of flesh in the water, in a way it could last for weeks at a stretch.
By then, the Phells would have grown significantly, for their maturity time was eight months, at which point they become capable of activating their Primary Nature.
The Phells were an extremely invasive race, capable of taking down entire ecosystems in a matter of months. Simply adding a single Phell in an ecosystem added a ticking counter to the ecosystem’s life expectancy, for in a matter of years, the Phell population would collapse every other living being.
In the core of the Dralh Sea, was a waterfall that moved up from the ground and reached high into the sky. It was a geyser spewing out a volume of water so high, it was called a waterfall, for the sheer force ejected water upwards of heights of a kilometre.
It had a structure of gravity within it, which acted across this length. And only when it waned did water spill out of this structure and funnel into the Dralh Sea. That was why it was called a waterfall instead of a geyser.
Abyss Fall, was the name given to it, for infinitely ejecting out of this waterfall were the Phells. The Cooter Clan invested heavily into the Dralh Sea to control the Abyss Fall and created the place known as Abyss Ring.
They heavily fortified the Abyss Ring to ensure not even a single Phell could escape out and actually did an exceptional job in keeping them out for as long as they did. They didn’t do it simply out of duty, however.
A Phell was thirty to forty percent more nutritionally dense as compared to every other Iron Grade Pranic Beast, giving them value almost as much as a Silver Grade Pranic Beast’s flesh.
It basically created an endless supply of food and medicinal resources for the Cooter Clan, which they used to extensively develop themselves and systematically, over the millennia, increase the number of Deities.
Even now, excluding Wally and Runthral, the two Empyrean Snapper that had yet to assume their Deity forms, the Cooter Clan still had 216 Empyrean Snappers in total. Even after their slaughter at the Dralh Sea, they still had such a frightening number of Deities.
It was why the Cooter Clan wasn’t targeted much, despite a Cooter Clansman being significantly weaker as compared to other Clans and forces of the same level. Because angering them would mobilise all 216 Empyrean Snappers.
Even the Brimgan Empire could be brought down to its knees in such a situation. And the main reason the Cooter Clan could afford to reach such a level was thanks to the Phells.
’They’ve invaded the Dralh Sea?’ Torq grew ashen, for the threat of the Phells was significantly higher than the Stitched Humans.
Because he could witness it in real-time. Every living being generated some influence, however mostly internal. The effect of their Natures carried their influence, which is how it could pour its influence into the world.
The influence generated by the Stitched Human sought to turn every living being into more of its kind. The influence it generated was like a disease. However, it wasn’t an infinite resource. When a Stitched Human infected a Pranic Beast and turned the latter into a Stitched Human, the secondary wave of infection was generated by this Pranic Beast that had become a Stitched Human.
Only thanks to making more of their kind did the Stitched Humans seem so dangerous. However, before this influence could even take effect, the Phells exploded alongside their targets–the Stitched Humans.
The quantity of influence within a Stitched Human was dispersed by the Phell influence carried in the spores and was overwhelmed by sheer quantity. In a matter of minutes, all the Stitched Humans in an area vanished, replaced by millions of Phell spores.
In eight months, every single spore would have matured into a Phell. And this was guaranteed to happen, for such levels of explosions were happening every few seconds, releasing more and more vitalised spores into the Dralh Sea’s waters.
Phells were capable of sensing every single presence. And at the earliest sensation of a foreign presence, they exploded.
“Urgh!” Torq scowled upon seeing the slab of water before him tremble nonstop, as all the pollen released by the Narlakk Pet was destroyed by the rampant explosions occurring across the water.
The submarine hurried deeper into the water, the faces of Torq and Eureur Pet growing paler upon seeing more and more green dots appear overhead, “Man, what is happening?”
’Every marine region connected to the Dralh Sea will become a death zone after this.’ Torq thought while moving the submarine towards the closest shore, “We’ll run to the land first.”
“Alright,” Eureur Pet nodded, “We don’t have a choice in the matter.”
An hour passed in such a fashion, and the submarine was forced to stop, this time for another reason. Eureur Pet created a periscope out of water and gently peaked it over the Dralh Sea’s surface to peer at a shore. And then, she cursed. “They’re everywhere!”
On the shores, forming rows upon rows to possibly extend across the Dralh Sea’s border, were Stitched Humans. “They’ve locked this place!”
Spreading in the water behind them were the Phells while standing before them on the shores were the Stitched Humans.
“We’re trapped!” Eureur Pet eyed Torq helplessly.