EP.14 Oceanos (2)

 

Swimming about 470 kilometers north from the Bering Strait leads to the Chukchi Sea. This area is truly part of the Arctic Ocean, where for six months of the year, the surface is covered with ice, making navigation impossible.

 

Of course, this is irrelevant to Oceanos, who move underwater regardless of ice.

 

Like the Bering Strait, the Chukchi Sea in this world is vastly different from Earth’s oceans. On Earth, about 56% of the Chukchi Sea is less than 50 meters deep, but in this world, the entire Chukchi Sea has depths exceeding 10 kilometers.

 

Considering that the deepest part of Earth’s Mariana Trench is 11 kilometers, this is almost absurd.

 

At a depth of 5 kilometers, in the endless abyss,

 

— — — — …

 

There, six mutated sperm whales swam leisurely—though due to their overwhelming size, it was almost as if they were stationary—when the six members of Oceanos appeared before them.

 

“Huff… Huff…!”

 

Vertea, the last to arrive.

 

“Did you guys use up all your energy swimming here? I’m really tired of this.”

 

“Who cares about the words of a loser… Huff… I don’t want to hear it… Haah…”

 

“Catch your breath while you talk. You and Vertea were only a few seconds apart.”

 

Russell teased Elvira, who looked like she was about to collapse.

 

“Let’s catch them quickly and go home. I’m getting tired.”

 

Parang stretched, clearly showing her reluctance.

 

“I plan to finish this quickly too. I’m going first!”

 

Russell, unable to hold back any longer, surged forward. Parang glanced to her side and saw Diego silently heading towards his assigned whale.

 

“Whoever finishes first can go home immediately.”

 

Elvira, having caught her breath, shot towards her whale.

 

Parang then turned to Xiao.

 

“Oh, Parang.”

 

“What?”

 

“Are you going to swim all the way to Hong Kong?”

 

“Yes. Of course.”

 

“Of course, my foot… Anyway, if you’re swimming, can you take care of those things on the way?”

 

“Oh, those?”

 

She was referring to the three special objects located on the route from Pohang to Hong Kong.

 

Parang found herself suddenly burdened with extra tasks. Given the nature of the request, it wasn’t something she could refuse without compensation. Maybe she could even stream the journey.

 

– Whoosh. –

 

While Parang was lost in thought, Xiao also charged towards her whale. Vertea had already disappeared.

 

She needed to finish quickly and get home for some rest. Parang swam towards the largest whale.

 

#

 

Russell Bright.

 

“Hahaha!! It’s been so long since I’ve hunted a sperm whale!! Nice to see you, you bastard!!”

 

He was in high spirits. It had been a while since he faced his favorite prey, the sperm whale.

 

As soon as he received Elvira’s call, he had rushed over, hoping it would be a sperm whale.

 

Though it was a bit disappointing that he got the smallest one at 300 meters, rules were rules.

 

Despite his enthusiastic greeting, the 300-meter sperm whale remained silent.

 

The Empire State Building stands at 381 meters tall.

 

It was like a human fighting a building.

 

Moreover, the strength of a mutated sperm whale didn’t come from its size alone.

 

But that didn’t matter to Russell.

 

“Let’s have some fun today, you whale bastard!”

 

His eyes turned yellow, glowing with a flickering light.

 

His teeth transformed into sharp, triangular shark teeth, a shark’s tail grew from his tailbone, and a dorsal fin sprouted from 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 wriggled, trying to reattach to its original body—

 

– Gulp –

 

But Russell ignored it and chewed it up, swallowing it. He felt a brief wriggling sensation in his stomach, but it soon disappeared.

 

On the 300-meter-long whale, there was now a 5-centimeter bite mark.

 

The whale continued to swim leisurely, as if nothing had happened.

 

However,

 

– Crunch! –

 

The spot where Russell had bitten suddenly developed a U-shaped bite mark, as if an invisible force had bitten it again.

 

– Crunch! –

 

And then again. Increasingly more. One became two, two became four, four became eight, eight became sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, one hundred twenty-eight.

 

— — — — !!!!

 

The whale, sensing something was wrong, tried to reattach its severed pieces, but it was futile.

 

In essence, Russell was the whale’s natural enemy.

 

The bite marks multiplied to 1024, then 2048. Countless invisible sharks swarmed the whale, ravaging it. Fins, tail, brain, eyes, lungs, ribs, intestines, heart.

 

The ravenous, transparent sharks bit indiscriminately, from front to back, left to right, inside and out, all at once.

 

Before long, half of the whale’s body was stripped down to the bone, leaving nothing but a gruesome mess.

 

Now, the whale, riddled with holes and resembling a zombie, sprayed blood everywhere.

 

And then, the final bite.

 

– Crunch!!! –

 

Thus, the whale vanished.

 

Russell, satisfied, patted his stomach and headed back to his home in Hawaii.

 

#

 

“……”

 

Diego Lopez Martin. He stared at the whale before him.

 

The iron bars of his diving suit’s faceplate formed a grid pattern.

 

Through the gaps, the whale appeared monstrously large.

 

A creature measuring 300 meters.

 

This was a size not permitted for living beings.

 

It was more like a battleship. It felt like watching a battleship navigate underwater.

 

But Diego decided to accept it as it was.

 

A size not permitted for living beings. The thought amused him.

 

“……”

 

Diego hunched over briefly, then stretched out.

 

– Ssssss –

 

His body and diving suit began to grow. From the original 1.8 meters to 5 meters, 10 meters, 50 meters, 100 meters….

 

“………!!!!!”

 

He roared beneath the massive hunk of metal. Though his words were inaudible, it was clear he was roaring.

 

“….”

 

His gigantification completed. Final height: 500 meters.

 

Now, to Diego, the 300-meter whale was like a 120-centimeter fish.

 

He spread his arms and grabbed the whale by both ends.

 

— — — — !!!!!!

 

With a resounding crack, Diego snapped the sperm whale in half. The front and back halves of the whale struggled desperately to reattach themselves.

 

If there had been a wall or floor nearby, he would have buried each half separately. Unfortunately, after scouting the area, he found no such structures.

 

With no other choice, Diego carried the split whale to a spot where the seabed was visible. He dug a hole and buried one half, then traveled about 100 kilometers to bury the other half. Satisfied, he returned to his home in Mexico.

 

#

 

“Ugh…”

 

Elvira Petrov squinted at the 450-meter whale before her.

 

She couldn’t take in the entire whale with her eyes. It was like standing at the base of a mountain and being unable to see its peak.

 

The whale was absurdly large, and its flesh, when torn off, would automatically try to reattach itself—a trait she found incredibly annoying.

 

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t a fish, but it was certainly a bothersome creature.

 

Still, she had a job to do.

 

Standing in the water, she extended her hand, causing numerous mines to appear around the whale.

 

These were not ordinary mines; they were packed with explosives and enhanced with her skills. They could easily destroy a battleship in one blast.

 

Dozens of these mines, each with a radius of 7 meters and shaped like massive sea urchins, surrounded the whale.

 

Then, one detonated with a bang, blowing off half of the whale’s right fin.

 

The explosion triggered the nearby mines, causing the whale’s abdomen to burst, scattering shredded flesh.

 

– Bang, bang, bang, bang. –

 

Before long, the whale was torn apart by the explosions, its original form unrecognizable.

 

The pink chunks of flesh and red blood spread throughout the water, the only evidence that a living creature had been there.

 

Then, the pieces of flesh began to wriggle and gather.

 

They were reassembling to form the whale again.

 

This was why Elvira despised sperm whales.

 

She could have asked for help from other Oceanos members, but she absolutely refused to do so.

 

So, she simply detonated a small nuclear mine at the center of the meat pile.

 

No one was there to scold her with, “How dangerous is radiation!”

 

Water pollution? Marine ecosystem? Such concerns had long become trivial jokes.

 

Although Elvira wasn’t exactly walking through a desert, the radiation spread through the water, destroying the chunks of meat at the cellular level.

 

Eventually, the pieces of meat stopped wriggling and fused into a pink mass, sinking to the depths of the ocean.

 

Soon, it would likely become food for other monstrous fish.

 

Elvira then returned to her home in Siberia.

 

#

 

Vertea Fabron. She had no particular thoughts.

 

When it came to sperm whales, she had a surefire method to deal with them. She wanted to finish quickly and go home.

 

She moved at a terrifying speed to the underside of the whale’s front, placing her hand on its lower jaw.

 

– Ssssss –

 

The sound of sizzling meat accompanied the bubbling water where Vertea’s hand touched.

 

It was boiling.

 

— — — — !!!!!!

 

The whale thrashed in agony, but it couldn’t shake her off.

 

— — — — !!!!!!

 

Realizing the danger, the whale tried to suck in water, but it was too late.

 

The whale’s skull was located between its eyes, at the lower part of its head. It was as if a human had a brain inside their lower jaw.

 

Five minutes later, the light vanished from the whale’s eyes, and it sank motionless.

 

The extreme heat had melted or burned all the vital organs inside its head.

 

Regeneration was useless in this case. It wasn’t a matter of tissue loss.

 

Vertea yawned lazily and returned to her home in France. She was the fastest.

 

#

 

“Ugh, seriously!! Why does it have to be a whale!!”

 

Xiao grumbled at the whale. Not that it would die on its own, but still.

 

Whales were her worst matchup.

 

The regeneration that others found troublesome wasn’t the issue.

 

It was the overwhelming size that was the problem.

 

Xiao wasn’t suited for hunting gigantic fish. Maybe if it were a numbers game.

 

Still, she had to try.

 

“Haaaaaah!!!”

 

As she let out a battle cry, her eyes glowed with a purple light.

 

A rumbling sound came from the depths below.

 

Soon, the source of the rumbling revealed itself.

 

The ground.

 

A piece of land, roughly the size of a soccer field, rose up to where Xiao stood.

 

It looked as if someone had grabbed it and pulled it up, giving it an unnatural appearance.

 

Then, with a crunching sound, the ground split open. From within, an eerie, pale turquoise light emanated.

 

“Kekekekekeke-!”

 

– Clatter, clatter. –

 

Bones crawled out from the opened ground. They didn’t resemble human forms. They were just roughly straight torsos with four long bones attached as limbs.

 

Xiao didn’t know much about human anatomy or bone structure. Nor did she want to.

 

The bones that emerged from the ground swam towards the sperm whale. Their numbers reached into the hundreds, then thousands.

 

And then, slash, crunch, stab.

 

The bones cut, crushed, and pierced the whale, each grabbing a handful of flesh and retreating into the open ground.

 

As one bone entered, another emerged to tear more flesh from the whale.

 

The whale thrashed and roared in agony, but it didn’t stop the relentless assault.

 

After a long while, the whale lost all its organs and flesh, leaving only its skeleton.

 

“Enter.”

 

At Xiao’s command, the whale’s bones swam into the open ground.

 

– Rumble –

 

The ground closed up and sank back into the endless abyss.

 

Xiao then returned to her home in Hong Kong. She was the last to finish.

 

#

 

— — — — !!

 

Parang stared at the sperm whale.

 

She simply stood there, looking at it.

 

Then, she extended her hand.

 

“Kraken.”

 

Parang’s blue hair transformed into tentacles, resembling those of an octopus. Her ears turned into fins, and her eyes gained vertical pupils.

 

Parang disliked using this ability.

 

It always reminded her of that time.

 

“Parang, Parang!!!”

 

What if she had been stronger back then?

 

Parang shook her head to dispel her thoughts. She needed to finish quickly and get some rest.

 

By her side, enormous blue tentacles had appeared. It was unclear where they began or how they got there.

 

The tentacles had a bizarre appearance.

 

Some split into two, others into three or four, some split again after splitting, and some grew sideways.

 

A notification appeared before the other five members of Oceanos.

 

[Skill, ‘Waterproof Sanity’ is currently active.]

 

This was why Parang never summoned the Kraken during broadcasts.

 

Parang extended her hand with an expressionless face.

 

The tentacles lunged at the 600-meter-long sperm whale, wrapping around it.

 

— — — !!! — — — !!! — — !!!!

 

The whale thrashed in agony.

 

But the tentacles continued to envelop the whale.

 

Before long, the tentacles completely covered the whale.

 

— — — …

 

The whale’s cries ceased.

 

The whale was no longer a whale.

 

It had become part of the tentacles and disappeared along with them.

 

The tentacles seemed to have more splits and attachments than when they first appeared.

 

Kraken. A monstrous entity that turns any life it touches into part of itself.

 

Parang’s skill, ‘Daughter of the Kraken,’ allowed her to summon and use the Kraken’s tentacles.

 

Whether the absorbed entities strengthened the Kraken was unknown.

 

Parang had never seen or met the Kraken. She didn’t know where it was or if it even existed.

 

She didn’t know what kind of entity it was or why it lent her its power.

 

Was it because she was truly its daughter, as the skill name suggested, or was there another purpose?

 

But not knowing didn’t mean she wouldn’t use the power. If she didn’t deal with the sperm whale now, they would reproduce. Even leaving just one could result in an undying plague roaming the seas.

 

She had no hesitation in eradicating such threats.

 

So, what could she do but ask for help from this mysterious entity?

 

And the entity did provide significant help.

 

In the ocean, all life with cells was under Parang’s control.

 

The whale vanished, as if it had never been there.

 

Parang returned to her home in South Korea.

 

“Wait!! You bastards!! Alice!!!! Aaaah!!!!!!”

 

That night, Parang had a dream.

 

She woke up feeling utterly miserable.