<Day of the Expedition> Your next chapter awaits on My Virtual Library Empire
Duke Thaddeus sat in his private chamber, his desk illuminated by the flickering glow of oil lamps. The heavy scent of parchment and ink filled the air, mingling with the faint brine that seeped in from the open window. His fingers moved methodically, flipping through reports and signing off on orders, yet his mind was only half-attentive. His thoughts kept drifting, his focus slipping like sand through his fingers.
Beyond the walls of his estate, the expedition team was preparing to depart. He could hear the faint sounds of movement in the distance—the shifting of weapons, the murmur of voices, the rhythmic march of boots upon stone. The harbor would be alive with activity, the air thick with tension as sailors made their final checks and mercenaries steadied themselves for what lay ahead.
And yet, something was wrong.
He exhaled slowly, placing his quill back into its inkwell. His hand hovered over the latest report—an account detailing the most recent wave of sea monster attacks. The numbers were troubling. Too many ships lost, too many experienced crews wiped out. Even the adventurers, who normally thrived off such crises, were wary.
The attacks had escalated too suddenly. The creatures weren’t behaving as they normally did. The patterns were erratic, unnatural.
The Duke’s brows furrowed as an unease settled deep in his gut, gnawing at the edges of his thoughts. It wasn’t just the monsters. It was something more.
Something unseen.
His fingers tapped against the parchment, his mind grasping for an answer he couldn’t quite name. His instincts, honed by years of battle and politics, whispered to him—danger.
Slowly, his gaze drifted from his desk to the window. The sky beyond was vast and dark, a canvas of deep indigo stretching over the restless sea. The stars should have been clear tonight, but instead, they seemed dim, as if shrouded by something unseen.
A cold wind curled into the room, rustling the papers on his desk.
The Duke’s jaw tightened.
‘What is this feeling?’
It wasn’t paranoia—he had lived long enough to recognize true premonition. It was the same instinct that had saved him on the battlefield, the same sense that warned him of shifting tides in court politics.
Something was coming.
He pushed his chair back and stood, stepping toward the window. His sharp eyes scanned the docks below, where the ships of the expedition sat waiting, their sails tightly bound, their hulls reflecting the moon’s pale light.
From this vantage point, everything looked as it should. No sign of disturbance, no evidence of immediate danger. And yet—
His gaze lifted back to the sky.
The clouds had begun to shift, thickening in a way that felt unnatural. A deep pressure filled the air, an oppressive weight that pressed against his chest.
A storm? No, the winds were too still.
The Duke exhaled sharply, his hand gripping the window frame.
‘Am I imagining things?’
A foolish thought. He never ignored his instincts, and he wouldn’t start now. But what could he do? There was no enemy to strike down, no warning he could send without looking like a man grasping at shadows.
Still, something felt off. The sea was waiting, but for what?
And little did he know, this was one of the decisions that he would regret the most…
*****
The chamber was deathly quiet, save for the slow, deliberate tapping of Duke Thaddeus’ fingers against his desk. The flickering lamps cast long shadows across the room, their dim light barely illuminating the faces of the men before him. They stood in silence—worn, battered, and barely holding themselves together.
His eyes drifted over them, taking in the raw devastation that clung to their forms.
Captain Edran, his most trusted knight, stood at the forefront, shoulders heavy with exhaustion. His once-pristine armor was in ruins—dented, cracked, streaked with grime and dried blood. His face, normally disciplined and unshaken, was pale and hollow-eyed. His lips were pressed into a thin, almost lifeless line, but his eyes—his eyes were the worst of all.
Haunted.
Next to him, Eryndor, another of his knights, looked no better. His gauntlet trembled slightly where it rested against the hilt of his sword, and his breathing was shallow. He did not even lift his head to meet the Duke’s gaze. Behind them, the remnants of the expedition—those who had survived—stood in grim silence. Some were visibly shaking, others stared blankly at the ground as if their minds were still trapped in the horrors of what they had faced.
It was worse than he had imagined.
And the worst part of it all was that he had known.
He had felt it before they ever left.
The warning had been there, gnawing at the edges of his instincts, whispering of a disaster he could not see. That unnatural weight in the air, the shifting clouds, the eerie stillness before the storm—he should have acted. He should have sent more men, delayed the departure, done something.
Instead, he had watched from the shore as the fleet set sail, pushing aside his unease as baseless paranoia.
And then, two days later, the sky had darkened.
The sun had been swallowed by thick, roiling clouds that stretched far across the horizon. A silence unlike anything he had ever known had fallen over the land, and then—
A shadow.
A monstrous, unfathomable shadow, so vast that it could be seen from land, slithering through the deep.
The Duke had stood on the watchtower, his hands gripping the stone railing as he had stared out to sea, feeling an unfamiliar weight settle in his chest. Dread.
And now, here they stood—the ones who had made it back.
Edran finally spoke, his voice hoarse, as if it had been scraped raw. “Your Grace…” He hesitated, his throat working as though he were struggling to force the words out.
Thaddeus did not rush him.
Edran swallowed hard before continuing. “The expedition… it was a slaughter.”
No embellishment. No unnecessary words.
Just the simple, devastating truth.
Thaddeus felt something cold coil in his chest.
“We didn’t even have a chance to fight properly,” Eryndor added, his voice quieter, more brittle. “It—it wasn’t something we could prepare for.”
Thaddeus studied them, waiting for the words that would confirm what he already knew.
Edran exhaled shakily. “The sea… it turned against us.”
The Duke’s brows furrowed. “Explain.”
Edran looked up then, his bloodshot eyes filled with something between exhaustion and lingering horror. “At first, it was as expected—smaller monsters, swarms of them, coming at us in waves. It was manageable, albeit overwhelming. But then—” His breath hitched, and for a brief moment, he looked away as if the words themselves were too much to bear.
Eryndor picked up where he left off, his hands tightening into fists. “Then it appeared.”
Silence pressed against the room.
The Duke’s fingers curled into a fist atop his desk. “…What did?”
Edran met his gaze, and when he spoke, his voice was nearly a whisper.
“A Kraken.”
A chill ran through the room.
The chamber remained deathly silent, the weight of Edran’s words sinking into the very walls.
A Kraken.
Duke Thaddeus didn’t flinch. He simply nodded, his sharp gaze unwavering. He had already known. The moment he had seen that colossal shadow twisting beneath the waves, there had been no doubt in his mind.
There was only one creature in this world vast enough to blot out the sea itself.
The legendary tentacled beast of the abyss.
The Kraken.
“…Go on,” the Duke commanded, his voice even, controlled.
Edran hesitated for a moment before nodding. His hands, scarred and weathered from battle, clenched at his sides. “It came from the deep,” he said, voice hoarse. “At first, we thought it was just another storm rolling in. The waves grew erratic, the wind howled, and the waters churned as if something beneath the surface had awoken.”
His throat bobbed as he swallowed, struggling against the memory.
“And then we saw them. The tentacles.”
A few of the other knights in the room shifted uncomfortably. One of the mercenary captains, a man who had fought in countless naval skirmishes, had his jaw clenched so tightly that the veins in his neck stood out.
“They rose from the water like towers of flesh,” Eryndor added, his voice barely above a whisper. “Black as night, covered in unholy runes that shimmered in the dark. Some of them were thicker than the masts of our largest ships.”
The Duke’s fingers tightened around the edge of his desk.
‘So it really was the Kraken,’ he thought grimly.
Edran continued. “At first, it didn’t attack—not directly. It merely… moved.” He exhaled shakily, as if saying the words aloud made them all the more real. “It coiled through the sea like a living storm, its body hidden beneath the waves. But every time it shifted, the ocean responded. Ships capsized without being touched. The currents turned against us. It was as if the water itself had betrayed us.”
The Duke’s lips pressed into a thin line. “And then?”
Edran’s expression darkened, his eyes flickering with something hollow and raw. “Then it struck.”
He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers slowly, as if trying to ground himself. “I remember the first ship it took. The Iron Drake. One moment, it was sailing ahead of us, its crew holding the line against the lesser sea beasts. The next—”
He snapped his fingers.
“Gone.”