The situation couldn’t be worse.
Most of the participants aboard had offensive abilities—not a single proper defense. No barriers, no shields. Just raw, desperate fighting.
Endless invasions. Crossfire from thousands of ships. The perfect recipe for annihilation.
Havok barked orders at the top of his lungs, his voice barely cutting through the explosions and screaming steel. The crew did their best to follow, but the ship was falling apart. The damage was getting worse, and the end was closing in.
Dovak fired a cannon, watching as the glowing counter in the sky ticked ever higher. He exhaled, shaking his head.
“Pretty sure we’re about to be part of that number.”
William, reloading beside him, shot him a glare. “Not yet! We’re still in this!”
On the other side of the deck, Nigel fought to keep the enemy from boarding.
His grip on the Reaper was tight, precise. With every swing, he severed ropes and bodies alike.
The invaders weren’t particularly strong. If anything, their skill levels were lower. But there were too many. A swarm. An unrelenting tide of bodies clawing their way onto the ship.
Nigel’s blade carved through another wave of attackers, sending them tumbling into the sea. His breathing was sharp, controlled—but even he could feel it.
This wouldn’t last much longer.
Then—his instincts flared.
Across the battlefield, he locked eyes with the enemy captain.
The man stood eerily still on the deck of his ship, watching. Studying.
He wore an exotic black-and-gold coat, the fabric embroidered with strange, spiraling designs. A pointed hat sat atop his head, tilted just enough to cast a shadow over his sharp features. In one hand, he held a staff—glowing, crystalline, unnatural.
His bracelet shimmered.
And then—he was gone.
Nigel’s body reacted before his mind caught up.
A sudden pulse of danger—
The staff came down like lightning, aimed straight for his heart.
Nigel twisted, just barely dodging. The air crackled where the attack had almost struck.
His counterattack was instant. A sharp arc of the Reaper, aimed to cut the captain clean in half.
It should have worked. Instead, the blade passed through him like smoke.
Nigel’s eyes narrowed.
“You’ve got some nice magic tricks,” Nigel growled, dodging another strike from the enemy captain.
The man only smiled.
A cruel, twisted grin that made Nigel’s skin crawl.
He knew that look. The type of man who enjoyed this. A sadist.
Gritting his teeth, Nigel swung again—but just like before, the blade passed straight through.
Damn it.
The captain closed the distance in an instant.
Nigel barely had time to react before the **staff expanded—**the crystal at its core shifting, morphing into a broad, translucent shield.
Then—impact.
The force slammed into Nigel’s chest, sending him flying across the deck. He crashed hard, his breath ripped from his lungs.
No time to recover.
The captain was already on him.
A blur—then a sharp kick to his ribs.
Nigel managed to block with the Reaper just in time, but the sheer force of the hit still rattled his arms.
This fight was going nowhere.
If he kept this up, it would drag on until exhaustion got him killed.
The man’s ability was a problem. Unless he found the flaw in it, he was dead.
And then—he remembered.
His mother’s voice.
"Everything has a limit. A price to pay. No ability exists without rules or consequences."
He could still picture her standing over him, arms crossed, watching as he collapsed to the ground for the hundredth time during training. She never coddled him. Never let him complain. She drilled that lesson into him until his bones ached.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Nigel exhaled sharply.
There was always a weakness. And if there wasn’t—then you had to force one to exist.
His fingers moved instinctively. In a single thought, he dismissed the Reaper into his inventory.
The captain’s smile widened. “Giving up already?”
Nigel didn’t answer.
He drew the poisoned daggers.
The man’s expression faltered, just slightly.
“Those won’t help you, boy,” he sneered, his voice sharp and grating.
Nigel let a smirk tug at the corner of his lips.
“Let’s find out.”
If there was one thing Nigel had learned in his short—but brutal—time in the Chaos Tournament, it was this:
Hesitation gets you killed.
He wouldn’t hesitate now.
His bracelet pulsed. A message flickered into view.
The world went silent.
No more screaming. No crashing waves. No distant gunfire.
Just him—and his enemy.
Nigel moved.
Fast. Like water flowing over the deck.
The enemy captain barely had time to react before Nigel closed the distance.
Then—the attack began.
His mother’s training surged through his mind; every technique drilled into him replaying at inhuman speed.
His daggers lashed out, striking again and again.
Each attack passed straight through the captain’s intangible body, but that didn’t matter.
Because while his ability made him untouchable, it didn’t make him invincible.
Nigel smirked. "Let’s see how long you can keep that ability up."
The onslaught continued.
Faster. Sharper. A storm of steel.
The captain couldn’t fight back.
Nigel’s speed was too much— his movements unpredictable, his attacks suffocating.
And then—
A cut.
Small. Almost imperceptible.
Then another.
And another.
The enemy stumbled back—gasping, eyes wide.
Nigel locked eyes with him.
And in that instant, he knew.
The ability had worn off.
And there was no time to waste.
The captain spun on his heel, trying to escape.
Nigel was faster.
With one final step, he closed the gap. A single, sharp movement—precise, effortless.
The dagger slid clean through the his throat, and the body disintegrated instantly.
For the first time, Nigel felt it—a genuine sense of victory.
But it didn’t last.
[SERENUS DEACTIVATED]
His legs gave out beneath him. His vision blurred. His body screamed for rest.
But unlike before, he didn’t collapse.
He staggered, but he held himself upright.
Even if only slightly—he was getting stronger.
And though he didn’t realize it, a fire that had long been dim was starting to burn again.
Then, he looked around.
And the weight of reality came crashing back down.
Yes, he had defended the ship.
But this was just one ship.
One of thousands.
The battle was only getting worse.
Cannonfire rained down in all directions. Ships were on a collision course with theirs. Dovak and William loaded and fired multiple cannons at once, their faces twisted with desperation.
Havok was activating every ability he could, barking orders at the remaining fighters, doing anything to hold the ship together.
But it wasn’t enough. It was all falling apart, and the end was closing in.
But then… Nigel felt it.
A whisper, a presence.
A voice, and a name.
His fingers twitched.
Without thinking, his hand slipped into his inventory.
A small, worn slip of paper. Ink—dried and faded, barely legible.
His lips parted.
He spoke the name aloud.
“…Umibōzu.”
The moment the word left his lips, a shockwave tore through the ocean.
The battlefield froze. The sounds of war, silenced.
Only the distant crackling of rain and the groaning of splintered wood remained.
Then, the water turned black.
Not dark. Black, pitch black.
Like ink bleeding into the sea.
The waves began to shift.
Dozens of ships—entire fleets—began to drift. Pushed aside by something unseen, as if the ocean itself was clearing space.
Clearing space for it.
A low, deep resonance rumbled through the waters.
Then—
A hand emerged.
No—not a hand.
A massive, shapeless appendage, liquid black, shifting and writhing like a wound in reality itself.
Then another.
And then—it rose.
A creature with no true form.
A being of shifting darkness, undefined, as if existence itself refused to fully perceive it.
It was massive. It was impossible.
And yet—it was there.
The battlefield was no longer a battle.
It was a graveyard waiting to be filled.
Terror gripped the enemy forces.
Some froze in place, unable to comprehend what they were seeing. Others threw their weapons down and leapt overboard, desperate to escape.
It didn’t matter.
The Umibōzu moved.
Slow. Deliberate. Cruel.
One massive hand reached down—an entire warship was crushed in its grip.
Another— a ship was swallowed whole beneath its spreading shadow.
A single, slow gesture—and a wall of black water surged forward, engulfing everything in its path.
The ocean itself rose in defiance of nature.
Waves the height of mountains crashed down, dragging entire fleets into the abyss.
There was no struggle, no mercy.
The Umibōzu did not fight. It eradicated.
And within minutes—there was nothing left.
Nothing, except for one ship.
The only ship untouched. The one Nigel stood on.
And then, it turned.
Its shifting, unknowable head slowly twisted toward him.
Nigel couldn’t move.
Not out of fear—but because in that moment, nothing else existed.
The battlefield, the ocean, the storm—gone.
There was only him. And it.
It sees me.
The realization was paralyzing. It did not look at him like prey. Nor with gratitude, nor with anger.
It simply watched. Measured. Judged.
Then, slowly—
It moved closer.
Its sheer presence eclipsed the ship.
A pitch-black hand descended, moving with agonizing slowness.
Nigel wanted to move. Every instinct screamed at him to run.
But he couldn’t.
Then—
Contact.
The Umibōzu’s finger pressed against his chest.
A sudden shock. A flash.
And then…
Visions.
Flickers of something vast, unknowable.
Images that made no sense yet felt like truths too immense to understand.
And lastly—
Pain.
It ripped through his body.
A searing, all-consuming agony, spreading into every vein, every nerve, every part of him that he didn’t even know could hurt.
It was worse than being torn apart, maybe even worse than dying.
Nigel dropped to his knees.
His stomach churned violently. He vomited, a grotesque, unnatural torrent of black blood spilled onto the deck.
It reeked of something foul.
The Umibōzu slowly withdrew its hand.
And for a moment longer, it stared.
Then, it melted into the sea.
The ocean rippled. The black water faded. The storm began to clear.
The battle was over, but no one cheered.
No celebration. No victory cries.
Just silence.
All eyes were on Nigel.
He sat there, breathing hard, staring at the blood pooling at his feet.
His body felt light.
As if something had been ripped out of him. As if a weight he never realized was there had been forcibly removed.
But he didn’t know what. And that was the most terrifying part of all.
What had the Umibōzu just done to him?
