What the hell?
Danitz couldn't believe his eyes.
This didn't shock him. Instead, it gave him a strange sense of horror, like jumping into a bucket of ice water while drunk, a piercing cold seeping in from his soles to the top of his head.
What exactly happened? How did it get so bizarre? Danitz took a breath, forced himself to look away, and chased after Gehrman Sparrow's retreating figure.
He noticed this crazy adventurer was picking up speed, forcing Danitz to jog to keep up.
Walking through the streets and alleys, Danitz suddenly saw a blue-green shadow fall from a tree.
Splat! Covered in scales, writhing its slick body, it had a triangular head and a long, crimson, forked tongue flicking out. It was a fairly long venomous snake!
Shit! Snakes appearing in this season and weather? Danitz wasn't afraid of this kind of creature; he had even roasted snake meat before. What rattled him was how abnormal it was.
Dodging the coiled venomous snake, Danitz instinctively looked around. In the gutters on both sides, the broken corners of houses, the insides of rusty water pipes — pairs of cold, vertical pupils of different colors stared back at him.
Danitz shuddered, feeling like his scalp was being pricked by countless fine needles.
He didn't dare to stop, but he didn't dare to leave either. He sped up again, sticking close to Gehrman Sparrow.
Entering the Blue Wind Inn and climbing the wooden stairs, he couldn't help but look up, wanting to ask a question.
Suddenly, his chest tightened, and his breathing hitched.
At that moment, it felt like he had dived to the bottom of the sea, being crushed by a heavy current from all sides.
Crash!
Vaguely, Danitz heard the roar of surging tides. He saw illusory, layered ripples undulating around Gehrman Sparrow, as if a boundless, bottomless azure ocean was being born.
In that ocean, a massive, azure-blue figure towered like a pillar, propping everything up.
This... Danitz's right foot stopped mid-air, unable to step down.
This feeling wasn't unfamiliar. At the last Pirate's Gathering, the "King of the Five Seas" Nast was even more majestic and terrifying. Almost every pirate couldn't lift their heads; only those at the Admiral level could barely resist.
Danitz was well aware this was definitely not Gehrman Sparrow's own power.
If that guy was at the demigod level, when hunting "Steel" Maveti, he wouldn't have needed to involve the "Punisher"!
Ocean... Tides... These words flashed through Danitz's mind, then he connected them to the rebels' virtually universal faith in the "Sea God" Kalvetua.
"Could it be... could it be that when Gehrman Sparrow touched that bone sword just now, due to some unknown factor, he was struck by a curse from the 'Sea God'? That completely dehydrated corpse of the believer was one of the conditions for the curse to trigger? The carriage driver prostrated himself and kissed the ground just now because he sensed the aura of the 'Sea God'?"
"Hiss... Gehrman Sparrow might die here today... Should I run further away to avoid getting caught in the splash damage? At most... at most, I can come back later to collect his corpse..."
"Maybe there's still hope. I could use the 'Spirit Summoning Ritual' to ask the Captain. She knows so many weird and wonderful secret arts, she should be able to solve this... No, Lord. The condition for the 'Spirit Summoning Ritual' is within 500 nautical miles. They still have to sail at least a day and a half to get into that range..."
As he desperately tried to think of a solution, Danitz's panic lessened. He steadied his steps and followed Gehrman Sparrow into the luxurious suite.
Klein still didn't speak. His dark brown eyes seemed stained with a deep, almost black azure.
He went straight to the bedroom and locked the door with a click.
Danitz stood outside, one moment wanting to run, the next feeling like he could still save him.
Inside the bedroom, Klein closed his eyes, waiting for the moment.
Suddenly, he took four steps backward, each accompanied by a chant.
A cacophony of manic and piercing whispers rapidly filled his ears. His spiritual body flowed upward, directly into the gray fog.
In the ensuing silence, he heard a miserable, pain-filled howl that defied description.
Klein appeared in the ancient palace, at the head of the mottled, long table.
In the calm, unmoving gray fog below, an illusory, gigantic, azure sea serpent materialized.
It was situated within an ancient, dark ruin, coiled around a half-toppled pillar. Its ferocious head was raised, its bloody maw wide open, revealing rows of curved fangs longer than a human forearm.
On its ivory fangs, layers of blood and slime oozed.
The sea serpent flailed its tail madly, kicking up terrifying waves and generating massive ripples that shook the entire ruin, threatening to collapse it.
The image quickly shattered and dimmed. No matter how the unimaginably gigantic sea serpent struggled, it couldn't reverse its fate. It could only let out long, agonized hisses as it dissolved into specks of light, extinguished in the gray fog.
Klein sat in the high-back chair belonging to "The Fool", silently watching all of this, making no other move for a long time.
The gray fog spread silently. The scene here seemed unchanged since time immemorial.