The Primeval Sea's Fear
When I first awakened Water Resonance in the Primeval Sea, I could read the emotions of water itself. Later, when I tried to use that power, I came to understand its limits. After grasping the relationship between my mental strength and resonance, and noticing the influence my draconic body exerted on water, I began to comprehend the sea far more deeply.
The very first emotion I read in this ocean was fear.
The feelings of individual water and the feelings of the sea as a whole were similar yet fundamentally different. Like the difference between an individual and a society. Each droplet might feel joy and happiness, but taken as a whole, their collective emotion was steeped in fear and loneliness.
And what had made the sea feel that fear was none other than the pod of whales.
For an unfathomably long time, those creatures had rampaged without restraint. The sea had lost the life it once cradled. It had tried to kill them by triggering disasters, but the blood that poured from their corpses only brought the sea more agony. Unable to end them easily, the sea had no choice but to watch as they slowly died on their own.
That was when I appeared.
But the sea did not help me. No—it could not. The waters near me had lent their aid, yet the sea as a whole had not obeyed my will.
I thought it had chosen that path because it feared suffering the same fate as the marine life that had died in torment before it.
But I was wrong. The sea had already realized the truth. That was why, when only a third of the pod remained, it made its decision.
Complete resonance. Entrusting me with everything it possessed.
That was how I could feel it—the overwhelming power of the sea that wrapped around and covered the entire world. From the beginning to the end of the Primeval Sea, from its lowest depths to its highest waves, every drop of water was now in tune with my power.
No longer did waves ripple across my Mental World. The Mental World itself had become the sea. Countless overlapping waves of water had piled atop one another until they formed a landscape on the same scale as the Primeval Sea.
Blocking my five senses and gazing into that Mental World, I felt something I could never have experienced as a human. With a mere gesture—no, with a single thought—the ocean that covered the world moved at my command.
And the same was true in reality.
I no longer needed to inject the principles of weather into the water just to make it rain. Simply think rise, and a portion of the sea would break apart, ascend into the sky, and fall again. Of course, my mental strength was not yet enough to wield that much power freely, but I could now see the possibility.
A pod of several hundred whales? That was no longer an advantage.
I had an entire sea at my command.
They were panicking. That was the emotion I sensed from the enemies I had judged.
So they can feel emotions after all.
Well, of course they could. Every moment they spent in the abyss had been filled with seething rage. I simply hadn’t expected them to feel something as weak as fear. After all, even zombies or mindless monsters could radiate hostility. But those creatures only possessed endless enmity and aggression; they never knew fear or terror.
That was why the whales’ impression struck me as strangely different.
Still, that fleeting thought lasted only a moment. It was time to end this.
I had to bring closure to this short but intense relationship.
Part. Push the waters aside so the land that has slumbered in the deep may bask in sunlight once more.
Shhhhhhhh…
The sea answered my will. A colossal whirlpool appeared in the heart of the enemy formation. Large enough to swallow the entire pod, it spun violently, dragging the deep water upward. Little by little, the abyssal floor began to reveal itself.
The creatures that had lost their footing in an instant flailed in midair before plummeting. Several of those who fell from nearly a kilometer high burst apart on impact, their shells and bodies exploding. The rest barely managed to survive by catching nearby currents on the way down.
The whale, however, was different. The instant it sensed the whirlpool forming beneath it, it unleashed a massive spray and escaped the vortex’s range. Compared to its subordinates, it suffered virtually no damage.
But that didn’t matter. The only reason I had parted the sea was to kill that whale.
Rumble…
If you expose the land beneath the sea, what happens to the water that once occupied that space? The answer is simple. The sea level rises by that much, or the water is displaced outward.
The water pushed aside by the whirlpool raised the sea’s surface. I didn’t stop there. I gathered all the displaced water in one place—centered precisely on the whale.
In the blink of an eye, hundreds of water streams shot out from the ocean and surged toward the whale. They wrapped around its body, forming an isolated domain.
Cover it completely.
That was the order I gave. And the sea carried it out faithfully. It didn’t merely coat the whale’s hide; it flowed into its mouth, completely assimilating with its body. Flesh, skin, bones, blood vessels, organs—every single part that made up the whale began to be enveloped by seawater.
Having achieved perfect resonance with the Primeval Sea, I watched the entire process in real time.
—!!!
The whale let out a scream of agony at the sudden change within its body. But that was only the beginning. Water continued to surround it. A mass of liquid far larger than the cruise-ship-sized whale engulfed it entirely. The sight was so overwhelming it looked as if a small water-made satellite had crashed into the sea.
Gazing at the gathered mass, I issued my final command.
Compress.
The Primeval Sea obeys. All water within range has synchronized with the Azure Dragon.
“……The sea is rising,” Jonan muttered.
A portion of the ocean had lifted into the air and begun to devour the massive whale. Hundreds of water streams pierced its body, flooding it from the inside out. Eyeballs, blood vessels, organs, bones, flesh—every tissue that composed the whale was being overtaken by the sea.
The sea, which had once been a treasure trove of life and the whale’s sanctuary, was now inflicting unimaginable agony upon it.
—!!!
The whale tried to flee, but there was no escape. How could it possibly break free from destruction occurring inside its own body? It was impossible unless it chose self-destruction.
Soon, water began to leak from the whale’s hide. The liquid that had completely filled its interior started forming a gigantic sphere around its body. Minutes later, the sphere that had fully encased the whale began to shrink at a terrifying rate.
“Its body is going to burst.”
The whale, now subjected to hundreds of times the normal water pressure, had its blood vessels rupture all across its body. Red mist spread through the sphere. A creature that had adapted to the crushing pressure of the deep sea—many times greater than surface pressure—was now being torn apart by that very force.
Despite the whale’s desperate resistance, the sphere of water continued to contract. In the end, the whale’s body exploded completely.
BOOM!!
The whale’s final death cry erupted like an explosion, but the sphere swallowed even that scream as it compressed the corpse into a tiny mass. The once-colossal whale had been reduced to the size of a small iron ball. The sphere then melted back into the sea.
“…………”
That was the fate of those who dared try to kill a dragon.
Watching the scene, Jonan once again realized the true power of the being who had saved him.
“……O Great Dragon!!”
Still basking in the afterglow of battle, Jonan suddenly shot to his feet as he saw the dragon falling from afar. But his cry could not reach that far, and the dragon showed no signs of movement, as if unconscious.
Rumble…
The massive body plunged into the sea, and the resulting shockwave reached all the way to the cliff. Something had happened. Jonan wanted to help, but he could not find any way to get there. Even if he somehow reached the dragon, he had no idea what he could possibly do.
How does one help a god? A mere human like Jonan had no answer.
At that moment, he sensed a presence behind him.
“……Your Highness?!”
“Ah.”
The one who emerged from the bushes was a girl with black hair tied in twin tails and a small, cat-like face. It was Rachel, the imperial princess he served. It was strange that her clothes showed no sign of having been in the rain, but that was not important right now.
“How did you get here…!”
“Umm… Oh! Over there!”
“What do you mean, over there?! Even if you try to change the subject—”
Jonan unconsciously followed the direction of Rachel’s pointing finger and witnessed a bizarre phenomenon. The sea was surging violently, centered on the dragon. It didn’t look like ordinary waves—there was no wind, and the height was far too great to have formed so suddenly. It was as if the sea itself was pushing the dragon.
And the sea answered his guess with action. The waters surged dramatically, raising the waves until they reached right beneath the cliff. The unconscious dragon’s body slid along the wave and arrived at the cliffside in an instant.
“W-we have to help!”
Rachel was the one who answered that call.
“…Huh?”
Before Jonan could even react, Rachel leaped lightly and landed on the dragon’s body. Jonan tried to follow, but the sea level dropped just as quickly, returning the dragon to its original position.
“What in the world…”
All Jonan could do was stare blankly at the scene and mutter in bewilderment.