I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1481: What Followed

The sea came up to meet them.

The black mirror of the Grey Mile did not simply ripple. It bowed upward into a vast, glassy dome of ocean directly beneath the Imperial fleet.

Then the water shattered.

The thing that broke the surface was a nightmare of pale, jagged bone spurs and thick, rime-crusted blubber. It was the Pale Keel. It burst out of the abyss, a sea Leviathan pouring out the crushing pressure of a Calamity-danger monster, and it was as long as three of the Empire’s heavy warships laid end to end.

The wave it threw off hit the flagship like a siege hammer.

The wooden hull heeled hard onto its starboard side, and the deck grating screamed against its iron bolts. Rian kept his grip on the mainmast cleat and let his knees bend. His Paragon-level balance soaked up the lurch before it reached his hips, and his boots stayed flat against the tilting wood.

The Eleventh Squad held on beside him, baring their teeth against the freezing spray.

Months ago, in the fog, the Drowned Choir had broken the vanguard’s nerve. Its singing and its unseen threat had unravelled their discipline. But this was not the fog. This was an enemy they could see, and the fleet was no longer relying on the vanguard’s infantry.

This was the Empire at its best.

The nine days of dead silence ended in a deafening roar.

From the deck of the distant command vessel, Admiral Casimir Ronde gave the order to strike back. A volley of red signal flares shot into the sky, burst against the low clouds, and lit the Grey Mile the flat colour of fresh blood.

The fleet did not scatter. The fleet locked its jaws.

Admiral Ronde set the full fleet doctrine in motion.

Every Tide-Sage in the fleet acted at once, in the practiced unison of men who had drilled this for years. Blue light burst from the prows of the warships in an interlocking lattice of Imperial essence and slammed down onto the churning surface. They did not try to push the Pale Keel back. Instead, they froze the water around their own hulls, turning the ocean into a rigid foundation of solid essence that anchored the fleet in place.

The Leviathan thrashed and brought a huge, pale fluke down toward the nearest escort ship.

The harpoon ships fired.

A dozen heavy iron ballistas discharged together in one concussive CRACK that echoed for miles. Bolts the size of pine trees crossed the gap in a blur, trailing thick forged-steel chains behind them.

They slammed into the Pale Keel’s flanks. The enchanted steel bit through the rubbery blubber and buried itself in the muscle beneath.

On the decks of the harpoon ships, the heavy winches screamed. The gears locked. The chains snapped taut with a violence that made the warships groan, and the Leviathan’s fluke stopped inches above the escort ship, held in place by the sheer dead weight of the Imperial navy.

Captain Ysolde Vaertia drew her sword.

"Boarding lines!" Ysolde roared, her Ascendant aura flaring out in a cold blue wave.

The vanguard Ascendants went in.

Heavy iron chains fired from the flagship’s rigging, arced through the red-lit sky, and bit into the Leviathan’s pale, armoured ridges. Ysolde didn’t wait for the winches. She sprinted across the tilted deck, vaulted the rail, and caught the iron links of the boarding chain.

She swung across the open water like a pendulum, a blur of dark blue wool and silver armor.

She used the bottom of the swing to gather speed, and her boots slammed into the Leviathan’s hide with the force of a siege stone. She didn’t stop moving. She ran sideways along the beast’s jagged ribs, holding herself to its flank on pure Ascendant essence, and drove her glowing silver blade deep into its exposed gills.

Dozens of Imperial officers followed her across on the heavy chains, cutting into the beast in tight, practiced rotation.

Rian watched the slaughter from the main deck.

He didn’t draw his ironwood sword. He kept his hands in his pockets, his dark eyes following the Ascendants as they swung and struck and swung away.

It was a staggering display. The Empire was taking a Calamity-danger Leviathan apart, one piece at a time. The Tide-Sages held the arena. The harpoon ships pinned the beast in place. And the Ascendants served as executioners, carving at the Pale Keel without ever standing still, swinging clear on their chains the moment the Leviathan rolled to crush them against its hide.

Where the vanguard had broken against the Choir, the navy held.

The Empire was very nearly killing the beast on its own.

The Pale Keel shrieked, and the sound shook the marrow in Rian’s bones.

The beast was dying, but a Calamity did not die quietly. Deep beneath the blubber and the jagged bone, its core began to burn with a sickly green light. It was drawing the raw essence of the deep ocean into itself, packing it tight for one final detonation. If that core blew, the pressure wave would shatter the Tide-Sages’ anchors and vaporize the harpoon ships holding its flanks.

High on the beast’s back, Ysolde felt the pressure building. She yelled the order to fall back, kicked off the pale hide, and swung her chain toward the flagship.

Rian let out a slow breath that hung white in the freezing air.

He stepped away from the mainmast, slipped down the forward hatch, and moved through the shadows of the lower deck until he reached an open gunport just above the waterline. Beneath him, the sea was boiling, frothing with the beast’s pale blood.

Rian loosened his aura suppression by the smallest degree he could manage.

He didn’t need his eyes to see the target. He kept Shingan turned inward and mapped the body of the Pale Keel through the flow of the water and the frantic thrum of its overloading core.

He found the exact center of the beast’s heart.

Rian pulled his right hand from his pocket. He didn’t call down a blinding storm of lightning. He didn’t need a spectacle. He wanted the kill, and he wanted the Echo.

He pressed the raw, crackling power of Lightning Rod down into a single needle-thin thread of yellow light.

He pointed his index finger straight down at the boiling water.

The spark jumped from his fingertip without a sound, lost beneath the beast’s shrieking and the screaming winches of the fleet. The thread sliced down through the air, pierced the black water, and drove into the soft, unarmoured underbelly of the Pale Keel.

It slipped past the blubber. It slipped past the jagged bone. And it struck the glowing core dead center.

The lightning burst open inside the Calamity’s heart.

The Pale Keel went rigid.

The sickly green light building beneath its skin guttered and went out, snuffed like a candle in a hurricane. The beast let out one last rattling breath that churned the water white, and then its great muscles went slack.

[Your clone has slain Calamity Leviathan - The Pale Keel]

[You have gained +18 talent fragments]

[Echo acquired: The Pale Keel]

The seventh sea Leviathan Echo settled quietly into his Soul Forge.

He closed his hand on the last of the yellow sparks and shoved it back into his coat pocket.

’Thanks for doing the heavy lifting.’

Above him, the Imperial fleet erupted into cheers.

The harpoon ships cranked their winches, holding the dead weight of the carcass afloat. The Tide-Sages collapsed on their decks with their essence drained to nothing and their ships intact. The Ascendants swung back onto the flagship, their armor slick with pale blood and seawater.

They thought the beast had died of a thousand cuts under the crushing weight of the fleet’s assault. They thought the Empire had broken the Leviathan.

Rian climbed the wooden stairs back to the main deck and slipped in among the cheering, exhausted vanguard infantry.

Captain Ysolde Vaertia stood by the helm.

Blood ran from a shallow cut across her cheek, and her chest was heaving as she wiped the pale gore from her silver blade. She looked out at the carcass pinned between the warships, and for a moment the hard line of her mouth eased.

Bosun Grael climbed up to the quarterdeck and spat a fresh wad of tobacco onto the boards.

"We lost three on the port harpoon ship," Grael rasped, wiping the spray from her scarred face. "The beast’s fluke clipped the rigging before the chains locked. Swept them straight into the water."

Ysolde’s mouth went hard again. She reached into her coat and pulled out her slate.

She rubbed out the old number with her thumb and chalked in a new one, then turned the slate so Rian could see it.

"Thirty-three," Ysolde said.

Rian stood a few paces away, his face giving nothing away in the red light of the dying flares. He looked at the slate, and then out at the dead prize he had just stolen from the Crown.

’Thirty-three... and a long way still to go.’