Chapter 955: Gross Feeling
[Ew, ew, ew! Executor! Why did you dive head first into this filthy swamp water?!,] Blazejudicator complained.
As the only kaijin that could be stored on Zhen Liu in a metaphysical sense, given that they were attached to his soul, they were given a front row seat to almost all of Zhen Liu’s actions.
Including ones that disgusted them down to their core, such as diving headfirst into stagnant, putrid swamp water.
Thankfully, Zhen Liu had managed to coat his body in a layer of [Chaos] thick enough to prevent it from touching his skin. If he hadn’t, he would’ve felt an immense amount of slime and movement crawling against his skin.
It was still gross as fuck though.
‘Blazejudicator, you’re more attached to my brain than the other kaijin. So you know that the [Galleon of the Storm Queen] was…sunk? Submerged? Hidden in the depths of this swamp.’
To emphasize his point, Zhen Liu proceeded to swim a little harder.
[Of course, I know that,] Blazejudicator retorted. [I’m just wondering why you didn’t just send one of the other kaijin instead.]
[Because none of the other kaijin can swim except for me~ And maybe Screamira.]
‘Hurricroak! Thanks for catching up.’
[Ain’t no thang.]
As Zhen Liu kept swimming downwards through the murky depths of the swamp, he was eventually joined by Hurricroak in all of her bright, neon blue glory.
Her glowing skin and bright colors made her significantly more visible than most other creatures in the water, but that was okay. Especially sincr Zhen Liu was planning to use her as his main means of fighting underwater threats this time around.
Hell, he even made sure to swap out her moveset for aether arts that could be used underwater safely.
Now all they had to do was that ship and get the hell out of there without drawing too much attention to themselves.
How hard could that be?
‘Alright, Hurricroak. You take lead, I’ll follow you.’
[Okey dokey, maestro!]
…
“Ku…”
“I know sweetie, I know,” Alicia said in a soothing tone as she rubbed Mini’s head Ina calming manner while Matilda shook a small rattle by the baby hippo’s head.
Despite wanting to go along with Big Brother Zhen Liu and Frog Sister Hurricroak, Mini was stopped by her mother moments before she could dive down as well.
Logically, she understood that she was only a 2nd tier juvenile aether beast that couldn’t handle whatever horrid creatures were in the depths of this swampy water.
Emotionally, she found it a little bullshit that she couldn’t go along on this crazy adventure…again.
Granted, she wasn’t the only one with this feeling of being left out.
“So…why haven’t you guys gone diving after Xiao Liu?,” Bellona asked the other kaijin who were all now milling across Tiny’s back, watching the spot where Zhen Liu and Hurricroak had dove headfirst.
“I’d sink like a stone and I’m physically too hot,” Nepherage stated while throwing a pebble’s worth of lava to make a point.
“Too…heavy…and… I’d…freeze…,” Frosttusk answered while exhaling hard enough to cause a spot of swamp water to slightly ice over.
“I’d rust,” Razorstella stated.
“I’d also, rust,” Spring Brawler echoed.
“My abilities would cause more collateral than Hurricroak’s,” Screamira said with a quiet tone.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Huh…wait a minute, aren’t you guys borderline invincible? Why would swamp water bother you guys?”
“We’re not invincible when [Chaos] is involved,” the kaijin answered almost simultaneously.
“Uh…huh…”
If this was the first time Bellona had heard them talk like this, she would’ve been unnerved.
However, her worry was more focused on something else. Namely, the statement, “not when [Chaos] is involved.”
“Okay, I understand that [Chaos] is one of the few things in this world able to hurt to you and Xiao Liu, but how is that relevant to where he is diving to now?”
“I think this is something Logos and Pathos are more qualified to explain about, since collectively we’re not the smartest gaggle of kaijin,” Nepherage readily admitted.
“I swear one of us had an “A” ranking in terms of intelligence,” Spring Brawler commented.
“Regardless, I guess we can try to explain…,” Nepherage paused as she tried to come up with the right words for the situation, “the long and short it is that [Chaos] is…virulent? Dynamic? I don’t know the right way to describe it.”
“Infectious,” Screamira interjected. “The word you’re looking for is infectious.”
“Yeah, that!,” Nepherage agreed. “[Chaos] is infectious.”
“Okay…and that means…”
“Oh, because the treasure we’re looking for is technically made with [Chaos] and not aether, the energy it’s channeling will end up infusing [Chaos] into its immediate surroundings as opposed to staying inert like regular aether treasures.”
“Wait, what?,” Bellona asked in a clearly worried tone.
If Nepherage’s words were implying what she think she was implying, then Zhen Liu was in a lot more trouble than what any of them had anticipated.
“Well, it takes an incredibly long time for the [Chaos] in any given kaijin lord’s treasure to leak out to its surroundings, so it’s very likely nothing gets infused,” Nepherage added, once she noticed Bellona’s expression.
Unfortunately, it didn’t really help.
“Do you happen to know, how long it would take for a kaijin lord’s treasure to start diffusing [Chaos] into its surroundings?”
“Uh…about a century or so after the original kaijin lord’s death.”
“… how long ago did the Storm Queen perish?”
“About eight hundred…uh oh…”
“…”
“…”
“Hurricroak is with him, they should be fine.”
“The moment you start panicking, I’m diving headfirst into that jank ass water.”
…Meanwhile, in the depths of a surprisingly deep swamp…
‘Hurricroak, you see or sense anything yet?’
[Loads, maestro. But I’m assuming you don’t want to hear about the large number of swimming leeches that keep bumping off your shield?]
[Ew.]
‘No, but good to know that I’ll probably need a thirty minute shower after this is over.’
[Might want to bump that up to forty-five,] Blazejudicator commented. [I think one of your kicks just exploded what looked like pufferfish.]
‘Swamp pufferfish are a thing?’
[Apparently]*2.
Hurricroak and Zhen Liu had been swimming in possibly the murkiest water he had ever seen in this life or his previous one.
For what he could only describe as miles on end, he could see nothing but algae green water that was occasional broken up by the presence of some small living creature, some large predatory beast or the carcass of those previously mentioned ones.
The worst he saw though were the injured beasts that still swam in these waters.
Murky swamp water had a habit of being full of microbial life, and big fresh open wounds were, to put it lightly, their favorite spots to congregate.
More than once, Zhen Liu had saw some tough as nails beast, covered in necrotic wounds.
Which was starting to grate against his mental health at this point.
‘Alright, how much longer until we can-‘
[Maestro, I found it!]
‘Oh thank-holy shit.’
But finally, after swimming for heaven knows how long, Hurricroak and Zhen Liu had finally found the damn thing.
Sitting at the very bottom of this swamp, sat a wholly intact sailing ship.
A surprisingly small, sailing ship.
‘That…is a lot smaller than I anticipated.’
[Really? I think it’s the perfect size to be honest. Especially with the target audience in mind.]
‘True.’
In Zhen Liu’s eyes, the ship looked like a strange mix between a junk and a sloop-of-war.
Nothing like the majestic ark of a vessel that was described in legend and song. Then again, the vessel before him could be like the [Library of Nowhere] or that warehouse he had to repair awhile back.
Maybe this vessel was bigger on the inside?
Regardless, now that they had found the damn thing, it was time for them to try and extract it from its watery grave.
The question now though was…how?
The only ones present right now were Hurricroak, himself and Blazejudicator and there was no way they could lift a whole ship by themselves.
…
Wait a minute
…
‘Duh!’,
Zhen Liu smacked his forehead as he remembered that he and Hurricroak weren’t technically alone.
He just needed to get his hand on some debris or plant life.
‘I just need…that’ll work. Hurricroak?’
[On it.]
Prompted by Zhen Liu, Hurricroak proceeded to go deeper and pull from the muddy bottom of the swamp, a piece of driftwood.
Once it was in her hands, she shattered it into pieces and tossed them towards Zhen Liu.
Once the fragments were in hand, Zhen Liu proceeded to infuse them with [Chaos], turning them into zako marbles.
‘Sweet! Now I just need to…yeet!’
Pointing himself towards the sunken vessel, Zhen Liu threw the zakos marble as hard as he could.
The marbles shot through the water like bullets, and from what Zhen Liu could sense the zakos were ready to form just moments before impacting the vessel.
However, that didn’t happen.
Instead, once the marbles reached about sixty feet of the vessel they suddenly stopped…
‘What the-‘
BOOM!
‘GAH, I FELT THAT!’
…and then exploded.
Evidently, this was going to be harder than Zhen Liu had initially anticipated.
