Shrouded Seascape

Everyone's anxiety level rose up rapidly along with the Narwhale. Any mechanical debris or corpses in the way were pushed away by Charles' tentacles.

Soon, everyone heard noises from up above. The noises were faint at first, but they grew louder and louder as time ticked by.

Eventually, Charles and the others found themselves staring at the bottom of an aerial space carrier, which was so large that it almost blotted out the sky by itself.

It was the Foundation's colossal aerial vessel, and this wasn't Charles' first time seeing it. Feuerbach had once used it to approach them and reveal the Foundation's decision to enter preliminary cooperation with Charles.

There were constant explosions from up above; something was clearly preventing the Foundation from proceeding with retrieving the darkness.

The Narwhale moved at breakneck speeds and reached the intense battlefield up above through the gap between two motherships. Amidst the flames of varying sizes, Charles finally clapped his eye on the Foundation's enemy.

Their enemy was a bizarre-looking and massive triakis octahedron. It hovered steadily in the darkness as if it were a mountain. Its surface was lumpy and uneven, reminiscent of a toad, but it was covered in gray whiskers as well.

Overall, it was difficult to deduce whether it was a living entity or something else.

The triakis octahedron was surrounded by the carcass of other colossal entities, including two pink eyes, which definitely belonged to a Divinity. These carcasses looked like bones that a vulture had piled up beside its nest.

The bullets and artillery shells they fired all exploded before they could even approach the entity. Even laser weapons weren't spared, as they were immediately refracted upon being fired.

To make matters worse, the triakis octahedron merely hovered in midair without doing anything except for defending itself.

Charles was shocked. He had imagined many scenarios, but he had never imagined this, even in his wildest dreams. He stood dumbstruck, seemingly confused about what he was supposed to do at this point.

The cogs in Charles's mind turned, and he whipped out the Foundation's communicator. He pressed the button, and Feuerbach's hologram appeared instantly. Finally, the communicator was working once more.

Feuerbach's expression was solemn, and he was so busy that he couldn't even glance at Charles. Judging from the wall of texts and numbers flashing across Feuerbach's pupils, Charles deduced that he was busy calculating something.

"My goodness, Captain! What took you so long? We're going crazy here! Do you have any special relics? Try using them on that thing. It might be effective against it," Feuerbach said.

"What are you guys doing? I thought we'd be able to find the darkness here. Why is that thing here, and why are you fighting it?" Charles asked.

Feuerbach sounded exasperated as he replied, "Do you really think that I wanted to do this?! As soon as we got your message, we immediately sent people to rush over here!

"However, we discovered that the darkness of the Subterranean Sea was actually swallowed by that damned thing! We must retrieve it as soon as possible! Our efforts throughout the years will go down the drain once it has completely devoured the darkness!!"

There was a beep, and Feuerbach disappeared.

The Foundation was finally convinced that conventional weapons were ineffective against it, and their attacks came to a halt.

Soon, fighter jets took off from the colossal aerial vessel, and they all made a beeline for the bizarre-looking triakis octahedron. They seemed to be dragging "packages" that were writhing nonstop.

The fighter jets neither fired nor ejected anything to attack the entity. Instead, they crashed into the colossal triakis octahedron with those "packages" in tow.

A thunderous boom reverberated throughout the darkness, and a towering conflagration illuminated everything nearby.

Moments later, crimson veins spread all over the triakis octahedron. It seemed that the "packages" were special flesh weapons that the Foundation had developed.

Anna's face showed a hint of excitement at the sight. She grabbed Charles' hand and said, "Gao Zhiming, it looks like we'll have to slay a Divinity if we want to retrieve the darkness.

"When should we make our move? We should be able to absorb the power of that entity."

Charles stared intently at the bizarre-looking triakis octahedron above them. "No rush. If you know the enemy and know yourself, in a hundred battles, you will never be in peril. Let's observe it for now and see what kind of special ability that entity has up its sleeve.

"However, it shouldn't be a Divinity. I can't sense the aura of a Divinity from it."

"But it is a Divinity according to the Subterranean Sea's standards. Do you see those carcasses around it? I'm sure they've been fighting for control over the darkness as well, but that entity ended up defeating them all," Anna replied.

Just then, metallic scraping noises pervaded the air. The crimson veins all over the triakis octahedron withered like leaves in the proverbial blink of an eye.

Then, a Foundation mothership inexplicably appeared below another mothership. When the two motherships collided with each other, the two were torn apart, and what remained of them floated in all directions as space debris.

It seemed that the Foundation had gotten on the triakis octahedron's nerves because it finally made its move. The darkness around it condensed into a pitch-black sphere, which wrapped around it like a shield.

Then, the triakis octahedron vibrated rapidly until a bizarre tornado was made.

Anything that made contact with the winds from the tornado instantly disintegrated into nothingness.

The Foundation's mighty aerial fleet retreated in the face of such a powerful attack. They had the numbers advantage, but they couldn't just throw their lives away when they could simply retreat from the oncoming attack.

Just then, the nearby spacetime distorted, creating a pitch-black hole that seemed to lead into the abyss.

Moments later, something emerged from the pitch-black hole.

It was a grotesque, twisted worm, spanning about ten meters long. Its body was composed of two colors. Half of it was ink black, and the other half was transparent, resembling a blend of glass and obsidian. The colors twisted and intertwined with each other.

Charles immediately recognized the twisted worm. It was one of the Gods of the Haikor tribe, Paiper.

What came out next was also a familiar figure to Charles, as it was none other than Pogro, who had settled in the Colossal Hole Fortress and had been low-key until now.

Pogro resembled an old, hairless dog with dense, drooping whiskers along its long snout, and its figure was riddled with squirming lumps of flesh.

It was curled up like an old man as well, and there were clusters of something indescribable moving beneath its loose skin. They were emitting a faint green glow, and they seemed like pustules, which made Pogro appear rather bloated.

However, Charles wasn't that surprised to see these two monsters.

What surprised him was the third creature that came out of the pitch-black hole in spacetime.

It was a humanoid monster as tall as a high-rise building. It was in a half-squat. Its forelimbs were riddled with pitch-black holes of varying sizes, and its fingers were thin and long.

Its face looked like melting wax, and it had three black eyes. A few thin tentacle-like green strands of flesh were dangling beneath its head, while its hind limbs were also covered in jet-black holes of varying sizes. However, they were twisted, seemingly broken.

Memories from a few years ago resurfaced in Charles' mind as soon as he saw the humanoid monster. He had seen a statue of it before!

At the time, the shop owner told him that the monster's name was Pede, and He was their first god—the beginning of everything.

However, Charles quickly noticed a contradiction here. The shop owner at the time had told him that Pede had died a long time ago!

Before Charles could unravel the contradiction, Pede streaked across the sky, leaving behind a trail of afterimages as He made a beeline for the distant triakis octahedron. As soon as contact was made, Pede easily tore apart a huge chunk of the pitch-black sphere around the triakis octahedron!