14
Chapter 14
Swimming about 470km north from the Bering Strait brings you to the Chukchi Sea. From here, it truly is the Arctic Ocean, so apart from four months a year, the surface is full of glaciers, making sailing impossible.
Of course, glaciers or not, it's a story that has little to do with Oceanus moving underwater.
Like the Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea is also very different from the original seas of Earth. Originally, seas with a depth of less than 50m accounted for about 56% of the area, but in this World, the entire Chukchi Sea has a depth of more than 10km.
It's ridiculous when you consider that the Mariana Trench, the deepest on Earth, has a depth of 11km.
And 5km down to the seabed. An abyss with no end in sight.
----......
There, swimming leisurely -though it was practically stationary due to its overwhelming size- in front of six mutated Sperm Whales, the six members of Oceanus appeared.
"Gasp... gasp...!"
Bertea, dead last.
"Did you pour everything into swimming without leaving any strength to fight? I'm so sick of this."
"Phew... I don't want to hear, gasp, the words of a loser, okay? Haa...."
"Catch your breath before you speak. There was only a few seconds difference between you and Bertea anyway, right?"
Russell smirked at Elvira, who looked like she was going to die of exhaustion.
"Let's catch them quick and go home~ I'm getting a little tired."
Parang stretched. She was clearly annoyed.
"I was planning to finish this quickly anyway. I'm going first!"
Russell charged forward as if he couldn't hold back any longer. When Parang looked to the side, Diego was also silently heading towards his share of the whales.
"Whoever finishes first can just clock out and go home."
Elvira had already caught her breath and shot off towards the whales.
This time, Parang looked back at Xiao.
"Ah, Parang."
"What."
"Are you going to swim all the way to Hong Kong?"
"Yeah. Obviously."
"What do you mean obviously... anyway, if you're going to swim, take care of those things on your way."
"Ah, that?"
She was talking about the three special Objets on the way from Pohang to Hong Kong.
Parang had suddenly taken on more work. Well, considering who she was dealing with, it wouldn't be a request for free labor. Maybe I should turn on the stream on the way.
Swoosh-
While Parang was lost in thought, Xiao also charged toward the whales.
Bertea was nowhere to be seen, having disappeared at some point.
I should finish this quickly and go home to sleep. Parang also swam towards the biggest whale.
#
Russell Bright.
"Mwahahaha!! How long has it been since I saw a Sperm Whale!! Nice to see you, punk!!"
He was feeling good right now. Because he was facing a Sperm Whale, his favorite prey, after a long time.
As soon as he received Elvira's call, he ran over thinking, 'Perhaps a Sperm Whale?'
It was a shame that it was the smallest one at 300m, but rules are rules.
Despite his call, the 300m Sperm Whale remained silent.
The height of the Empire State Building is 381m.
It was like a Human fighting against a building.
It felt like there was a giant wall right in front of him.
Besides, the strength of the mutated Sperm Whale did not come from its size.
But whether it did or not, Russell didn't care.
"Let's play hard today! You bastard of a whale!"
His eyes turned yellow, and soon created a wavering glow.
Before he knew it, his Teeth had changed into the sharp triangular teeth of a Shark, and a real Shark's Tail grew from his tailbone, and a triangular dorsal Fin grew on his back.
He charged at the whale and took a huge bite out of its body.
Crunch!
The piece of whale meat in his mouth squirmed, trying to merge back with its original body-
Gulp-
Russell ignored it and chewed and swallowed the meat. He felt a squirming sensation in his stomach for a moment, but it soon disappeared.
A tooth mark of about 5cm on a 300m-long whale.
The whale was just swimming leisurely as if nothing had happened.
However,
Crunch!
As if someone invisible had bitten the very spot Russell just bit, a U-shaped bite mark appeared again.
Crunch!
And again. More and more. One became two, two became four, four became eight, eight became sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one hundred and twenty-eight.
----!!!!
The whale seemed to notice the anomaly and tried to reattach its torn-off pieces, but to no avail.
So to speak, Russell was the whale's natural enemy.
Just like that, the bite marks multiplied to 1024, 2048. Countless Sharks clung to the whale and ravaged it. Fin, Tail, brain, eyes, lungs, ribs, intestines, Heart.
A swarm of starving, invisible Sharks bit into the front and back, left and right, inside and out simultaneously, without any discernible pattern.
Before long, half of the whale's torso was gruesomely devoured, leaving not even bones behind.
The whale was now barely holding on, its entire body riddled with Holes, scattering blood everywhere like a zombie.
And then, one final bite.
Cruuunch!!!
Just like that, the whale disappeared.
Russell patted his belly in satisfaction and returned to his home in Hawaii.
#
"......"
Diego Lopez Martin. He glared at the whale in front of him.
Grid-shaped iron bars covered the face of his Diving Suit.
The whale visible through the gaps was truly monstrous in size.
A living creature measuring 300 meters.
This was no longer a size permitted for a living being.
Rather than a creature, it was a battleship. It looked like a battleship sailing underwater.
But Diego decided to just accept it.
A size not permitted for living beings. It was a little funny that he was having such thoughts.
"......"
Diego shrank his body for a moment, then stretched it out.
Swoosh-
Then, Diego's body and Diving Suit began to grow. From his original 1.8 meters to 5 meters, 10 meters, 50 meters, 100 meters....
".........!!!!!"
He roared from beneath the massive chunk of iron. It was impossible to hear what he was saying, but it was clear that he was roaring.
"...."
His Gigantification was complete. Final height, 500 meters.
Now, to Diego, the 300-meter whale was like a 120-centimeter fish.
He spread his arms and grabbed both ends of the whale.
-----!!!!!!!
And then, crunch.
He snapped the Sperm Whale in half. The front and back of the severed Sperm Whale struggled desperately to reattach to each other.
If there had been a wall or a Floor nearby, he would have buried them in halves, but unfortunately, from what he had explored, there was nothing of the sort around.
With no other choice, Diego carried the halved whale and moved until he could see the Floor, dug up the ground to bury one half, then traveled another 100km to bury the remaining half before returning to his home in Mexico.
#
"Ugh...."
Elvira Petrov narrowed her eyes and stared at the 450-meter whale in front of her.
She couldn't capture the entire whale in her sight. It was the same logic as not being able to see the full view of a mountain while standing at the trail's entrance.
A damned fish that was obnoxiously huge, and if a piece of flesh fell off, they would automatically gather together to reattach.
Strictly speaking, it wasn't a fish, but Elvira absolutely despised the damned Sperm Whale.
Still, she had to do what she had to do.
As she stood in the water and reached out her hand, countless Naval Mines materialized around the whale.
They were Naval Mines packed with an absurd amount of explosives and enhanced with a Skill. They could obliterate an average battleship in a single blow.
There were dozens of such Naval Mines.
Naval Mines shaped like sea urchins, all of them absurdly large with a radius of at least 7 meters, packed densely around the Sperm Whale.
And then one went boom. It blew away half of the whale's right Fin.
Due to the impact, the adjacent Naval Mine went boom. This time, its abdomen burst, sending shredded chunks of flesh flying.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
In no time, the Sperm Whale was torn to shreds by the explosions across its entire body, making it impossible to even identify its original form.
Only the pink chunks of meat and red blood spread widely in the water indicated that a living creature had been here.
Then, the meat pieces wriggled and gathered.
They were merging back together to form the whale.
This was the reason Elvira terribly hated the Sperm Whale.
It would be easy if she got help from other Oceanus members, but she absolutely didn't want to do that.
So she just detonated a Small Nuclear Mine in the center of the meat pile.
There was no one around to reprimand her about how dangerous radiation was.
Water pollution? The marine ecosystem? It had been a long time since those things became cheap jokes.
It wasn't exactly like Elvira was walking in a desert, but anyway.
The radiation spread through the water, destroying the chunks of meat at the Cell level.
Eventually, the pieces of meat squirmed and tangled into a pink mass of flesh rather than a whale, sinking into the deep sea.
It would probably become food for another Monster Fish before long.
Elvira clocked out and returned to her home in Siberia.
#
Bertea Fabron. She didn't have much on her mind.
Because if it was a Sperm Whale, she had a foolproof way to deal with it. She just wanted to finish quickly and go home.
She moved at a terrifying speed toward the bottom of the Sperm Whale's front, specifically its lower jaw, and placed her hand there.
Sizzle-
Then, with the sound of roasting meat, the water began to boil where Bertea's hand touched.
It was literally boiling.
----!!!!!!
The Sperm Whale thrashed around as if in Pain, but it couldn't shake her off.
----!!!!!!
It realized she was on its lower jaw and tried to suck in water, but it was already too late.
The whale's skull is located between its eyes, at the bottom of its Head. In Human terms, it's like having the brain inside the lower jaw.
And five minutes later, the light disappeared from the Sperm Whale's eyes, and it sank while remaining completely still.
It was because all the major organs in its Head had melted or burned up due to the ultra-high heat.
At this point, regeneration is useless. Because it wasn't a loss of tissue.
Bertea let out a long yawn and went back to her home in France. She was the fastest.
#
"Ah, seriously!! Why a whale of all things!!"
Xiao looked at the whale and vented her anger for no reason. Not that the whale would die on its own, but still.
The whale was the worst possible match for her.
The regenerative ability that others found tricky wasn't actually the problem.
It was just that its overwhelming size was the issue.
Xiao wasn't suited for hunting super-massive fish. A battle of attrition might be a different story.
Still, she had to try something.
"Haaaaaaah!!!"
As she let out a battle cry, a pale blue-green light burst from her eyes.
Then, a rumbling sound could be heard from the Floor below.
A moment later, the source of the sound echoing from below was revealed.
The ground.
A piece of land about the size of a football field rose up to where Xiao was.
In an unnatural shape, as if someone had grabbed it by hand and pulled it up.
And then, crunch, crunch-
The ground opened with the sound of stones being crushed. An ominous pale blue-green light was flowing out from inside.
"Hahahahahaha-!"
Clatter, clatter.
Bones crawled out of the opened ground. They didn't have Human shapes. It was just a roughly straight torso with four long bones attached to act as limbs.
Xiao didn't know much about the Human body or bone structure. She didn't want to, either.
And the bones that crawled out of the opened ground each swam over and clung to the Sperm Whale. Their numbers exceeded hundreds and reached the thousands.
And then slice, crunch, stab.
Slicing, crushing, and stabbing the Sperm Whale, they each grabbed a handful of flesh and went back into the opened ground.
As one bone entered, another came out and tore away a piece of the Sperm Whale's flesh.
The Sperm Whale roared and thrashed around, but of course, it didn't stop them.
After a long time, the Sperm Whale lost all of its organs and flesh, leaving only bones.
"Go in."
Then, the Sperm Whale's bones swam and entered the opened ground.
Rumble-
Soon after the ground closed, the risen land returned to the endless abyss.
Xiao got off work and headed to her home in Hong Kong. She was the latest.
#
----!!
Parang looked at the Sperm Whale.
She just quietly looked at it.
And reached out her hand.
"Kraken."
Then, Parang's blue hair suddenly turned into Tentacles, just like an Octopus's. Her ears became webbed, and vertical pupils appeared in her eyes.
Parang was reluctant to use this ability.
Because it kept reminding her of that time.
"Parang, Parang!!!"
Back then, what if she had been just a little bit stronger?
Parang shook her Head vigorously to shake off the thoughts. She should finish this quickly and go sleep.
Huge blue Tentacles had suddenly appeared beside her. It was unknown where they had started from to get here.
The Tentacles had a bizarre appearance even at a glance.
Some were split in two, others in three or four, some were split again after already splitting, and some grew attached to the side.
A window popped up in front of the other five Oceanus members, excluding Parang.
[Skill, 'Waterproof Sanity' is currently active.]
This was the reason Parang absolutely never summoned the Kraken on stream.
Parang expressionlessly reached out her hand.
Then, the Tentacles simultaneously rushed at the 600m-long Sperm Whale and entangled it.
---!!!---!!!-!!!!!
The Sperm Whale thrashed around as if in Pain.
Regardless, the Tentacles covering the Sperm Whale only multiplied.
And not long after, the Tentacles completely covered the Sperm Whale.
---......
Then, the Sperm Whale's cries stopped.
The Sperm Whale was no longer a Sperm Whale.
Now turned into a Tentacle, it disappeared along with the other Tentacles.
They were Tentacles that seemed to have noticeably more split or attached parts than when they first popped out.
Kraken. A Monster Fish that turns lives that touch its Tentacles into 'itself'.
Parang's Skill, 'Daughter of the Kraken', was a Skill that borrowed the status and Tentacles of that very Kraken.
She didn't know if the things absorbed by the Tentacles increased the Kraken's power.
Parang had never seen or met the Kraken in the first place. She didn't know where it was, or if it even existed.
Parang didn't know what kind of being it was, or why it lent its power to her.
Whether it was really because she was its daughter like the Skill name suggested, or if there was some other purpose.
But she had no intention of not using the power just because she didn't know. If she didn't kill the Sperm Whales right in front of her, they would multiply. Even if she left just one behind.
And they would wander the sea as immortal disasters.
She had no intention of hesitating to wipe out their kind.
So what if it was an unidentified Monster Fish? She had to ask for its help.
And that Monster Fish was actually of considerable help.
All creatures with Cells in the sea were beneath Parang.
The whale disappeared. As if it hadn't been there from the start.
Parang returned to her home located in South Korea.
"Wait!! You sons of bitches!! Alice!!!! Aaaaaah!!!!!!"
Parang had a dream that night.
When she woke up, she felt absolutely terrible.