bookbashuk Chapter 815 - 445: Silent Manipulation (Part 3)
Chapter 815 - 445: Silent Manipulation (Part 3)
Dust clung to the black felt hat, along with starry spots of dried-up brain matter.
He took out a handkerchief, patiently wiping away the stains bit by bit, his movements gentle and meticulous, as if he were tending to a rare treasure.
Then he held the hat with both hands and placed it back atop his head.
The wide brim hung down, casting a shadow that conveniently covered the exposed pink brain outside.
Balk adjusted his collar, raised his head, and looked at the four newly born in front of him.
The smile on his face had completely shed the earlier deliberately mimicked human emotions of falsehood.
In its place was a pure satisfaction akin to that of a creator.
"Look." His voice echoed in the empty council hall, tinged with a resonance as moist as seawater:
"Without those brains filled with distractions, fear, and foolish desires... how perfect, how delightful you have become."
The four headless figures did not respond, but those clusters of pink soft tissue all lightly trembled simultaneously, secreting a layer of excited mucus.
It was as if they were nodding, also as if they were cheering.
Balk turned around, his scarlet cape sweeping across the blood-stained floor behind him.
"Let’s go, assemble the fleet." His steps were unhurried, "We are to set sail, to give this dying world..."
He paused for a moment, the corners of his mouth splitting to his ears: "...a grand feast."
The green flames of the oil lamps flickered without wind, projecting five elongated shadows on the walls, clawing and sprawling.
......
Late night.
The sea was like a pool of thick, dead ink, even the starlight swallowed up by the heavy gray fog.
Miller stood at the door of the captain’s cabin, where a lone wind lamp swayed, wiping his scimitar for the tenth time.
The blade reflected his sinister half-face, yet did not show a hint of blood color.
Rosa had been inside for a full eight hours.
The distant castle had completely melted into the night, like a giant beast crouching at the mouth of the Abyss, without a trace of light coming through.
Only the scent had changed.
As the night wind turned cold, the sweet, cloying scent in the air grew ever stronger.
It was like a damp, cold serpent’s tongue, intruding into the lungs through the nose, bringing a hypnotic drowsiness.
The deck was deathly silent.
By the dim mast lamp, Miller saw all the sailors on night duty collapsed on the ground.
Their postures twisted bizarrely, like a pile of randomly discarded rotten flesh.
Some let out foolish laughter in their dreams, others drooled bright and shiny saliva at the corners of their mouths, glinting eerily in the dark.
"A bunch of useless wretches."
Miller cursed under his breath, yet his heart pounded violently against his ribs.
A chill as if he were being stalked by a predator made the hair on his body stand on end.
Just at that moment.
"Plop."
A wet, viscous sound, clear in the deathly silent night like thunder.
It wasn’t the sound of boots on the wood. It was the noise of some wet, squishy lump of flesh slapping onto the deck.
Miller spun around, his pupils constricting.
In the darkness at the edge of the ship, a slick hand silently extended.
Gray-green skin shone with an oily sheen under the lamp, semi-transparent webs between the fingers, and hooked claws deeply carved into the wooden railing.
Then, countless pairs of green eyes lit up in the darkness.
They made no roar, like a legion of spectres emerging from ink-black waters.
The second, the third, the tenth... Densely packed, slick shadows silently climbed up the ship’s side.
Before Miller could draw his scimitar, the nearest deep-sea creature had already pounced on the sleeping bosun.
Its movement was as swift as a bolt of black lightning.
The monster straddled the bosun, forcibly prying open his jaw, the force so strong that it shattered his teeth.
"Crunch." The bosun awoke from the agony but couldn’t utter a sound.
The creature’s face split open, and a mucus-covered, faintly glowing pink tubular proboscis darted from the depths of its throat, plunging hard into the bosun’s mouth, piercing straight down his esophagus.
"Mm—!!!"
The bosun convulsed violently in the dark, legs kicking wildly, the heels scraping the deck in frenzied friction to express his pain.
With the dim light, Miller clearly saw a pink fleshy sac being forcibly squeezed into the living man’s stomach along that transparent tube.
The convulsions abruptly stopped.
The bosun’s eyeballs rolled back, then turned ash gray.
In the next second, he sprang up like a puppet on strings, grabbing the rope beside him, emitting a non-human growl, joining the rank of monsters.
"Enemy attack!!!" Miller finally roared, the sound sharp and off-key in the dead of night.
Without hesitation, he raised his musket and fired at the nearest shadow.
"Boom—!" The muzzle’s flame instantly tore through the darkness.
The momentary flash illuminated a suffocating scene on deck...
Densely packed deep-sea creatures had already swarmed the deck, perched on every sleeping pirate, conducting their nauseating feeding ritual.
"Ahhhhh!!" The gunshot-woken pirate let out a despairing scream.
But as he tried to get up, a deep-sea creature pinned his chest, its claws instantly ripping open his throat.
Hot blood splattered, staining the monster’s scales red.
The slaughter began, the midnight deck turned into a meat grinder.
The awakened pirates barely had time to find their weapons, fumbling blindly in the dark like headless flies, only to be dragged into shadow to be dismembered, or pinned down and forcibly infested.