836 Black Water

As the lights went out and the reactors of the colossal vessel grew quiet, Sunny froze. His Shadow Sense extended outward as he sensed other people doing the same.

Condition Black meant that the fleet was on the cusp of dire danger. After the alert was issued, every member of the First Army aboard the forty ships had to cease all activity. They weren't supposed to make any noises or movements. They were not even allowed to agitate their essence in any way.

The problem was…

The strange navy officer was still mere meters away from Sunny. He, too, stood motionlessly in the darkness. His head was lowered, so Sunny could not see the man's face.

He could only hear his breathing.

It sounded… wet.

"Don't do it. Don't…"

Suddenly, the man's shoulders twitched.

Frozen a few steps away, Sunny gritted his teeth.

'Curse it all.'

The officer swayed slightly, and then took a step forward. The water covering the floor parted, allowing him to move without making any sound. The air grew colder.

A resentful expression appeared on Sunny's face.

Don't move. Don't make noise. Don't circulate essence. Don't summon Memories.

What was he supposed to do? Break the regulations of Condition Black and risk putting the fleet under threat, or remain still and allow the officer… or whatever it was pretending to be one… approach him?

Sunny could not summon any weapons or use his stronger Aspect Abilities. Simply backing away was against the rules.

'D—damnation…'

The man, meanwhile, took another step. Now, only a couple of meters separated them.

Sunny tensed.

'To hell with this…'

The moment the bastard tried to make a sudden movement, he would learn not to mess with a Master. High alert or not, Sunny was not going to let the creepy thing touch him.

The singing voices suddenly grew louder. He even thought that he started to understand the meaning of some of the words of their beautiful song.

The man took another step toward Sunny… and suddenly disappeared.

For a few moments, he was surrounded by nothing but darkness.

'Where…'

And then, the water quietly splashed right behind him.

'What?!'

His shadows did not see anything!

Before Sunny could turn around, something flew through the passageway and collided with an invisible object behind him, producing a blinding flash of light. He was thrown off his feet and landed on the wet floor in a roll.

Almost at the same time, the rising voices abruptly disappeared, and the battleship trembled as its reactors came back online. The lamps in the corridor ignited, drowning it in light.

Jumping back to his feet as the Cruel Sight was manifesting itself into reality in his hand, Sunny looked ahead and saw a familiar figure pressing something dark and slithering into the metal bulkhead.

Master Naeve had lost his midnight blue coat somewhere and was now wearing only his black wetsuit. There was a strange bone knife in his hand. Impaled on that knife was a…

Before Sunny could make sense of what the creature looked like, it suddenly lost its shape and turned into a formless mass of black water, which then fell to the floor and formed a puddle.

Naeve's indigo eyes shone with dark light as he turned his head.

"Master Sunless! Are you alright?"

Sunny cautiously nodded.

"What... what the hell was that thing?"

The scion of the great clan Night opened his mouth, but before he could answer, the battleship around them shuddered, and a muffled thunder sounded somewhere in the distance.

The main railgun was firing.

Naeve shook his head.

"No time right now. Check on your cohort!"

With that, the handsome man seemed to disappear.

A moment later, the lamps illuminating the passageway blinked and changed their color to ominous red.

'Condition Red… all-out battle!'

Sunny flinched, and then hurriedly used his communicator to send his soldiers an order to gather near the Rhino.

Before he joined them, however, he hesitated for a moment, and then stepped through the shadows, appearing in a secluded spot of the upper deck.

It took him a moment to comprehend what was going on.

The night was suddenly obliterated by hundreds of bright flashes as hundreds of cannons roared, discharging an endless rain of steel and tungsten rounds into the ocean. A large section of it had changed color at some point, becoming absolutely black.

Although the force of the wind had not increased, the black waves seemed taller and more violent than those rolling far away. They reached toward the ships like fingers of an unknown monster.

In an especially blinding flash, the main cannon of the flagship of the naval convoy fired, causing countless tons of the black water to be displaced and rise high into the sky like a colossal pillar. A second later, the thunderous roar of its discharge reached Sunny and made him grimace.

The scope of the heavy bombardment was truly mind-boggling.

However, it did not seem to do much except for slowing down the churning black water a little.

As Sunny watched, he noticed human figures diving into the waves from the tall decks of the ships. They were the cohorts of Awakened that the House of Night had stationed on the forty ships.

Although the flagship was situated at a considerable distance from where Sunny stood, he still noticed a lonely figure jumping into the ocean from its towering bow. For some reason, that diver in particular demanded attention.

A moment before the figure hit the waves, it shimmered slightly.

Then, something massive and ferocious dove under the water. A giant black fin cut the waves before disappearing into the depths.

The Saint guardian of the convoy had joined the battle.

Sunny stood among the thunderous roars of the firing cannons and stared at the rolling black waves, awed and dismayed.

Slowly, a grim expression appeared on his face.

'There is no place for me in a battle like this. None at all.'

What could an ant like him do when it seemed like the heaven itself went to war against the ocean?

His eyes gleamed in the darkness.

'...Not yet, at least.'

With that thought, he swallowed the bitter feeling of powerlessness and disappeared into the shadows, leaving to join his soldiers.

Tonight, all they could do was stick together and hope to live until the morning.