RUMBLE!
The sky trembled.
A deep, resonant growl rolled through the heavens, shaking the very air itself. The overcast sky darkened in an instant, clouds surging forth like ink bleeding into water. The golden light of the sun, already weak behind the gloom, vanished.
The sea, once eerily silent, began to roar.
Waves that had remained unsettlingly calm swelled in an instant, rolling higher, crashing harder against the hull of the ship. The deck beneath their feet groaned as the winds picked up, sharp and biting, carrying with them the electric charge of an oncoming storm.
And at the center of it all—
Duke Thaddeus.
His breath hitched, his body tensing as something shifted within him.
Something deep.
Something ancient.
Something forgotten.
A slow, throbbing pain coiled within his chest—no, his core. The mana wellspring buried deep inside him, the one he had long since tempered through decades of mastery and restraint, twisted.
A crackle of unseen force rippled through his veins.
He knew this feeling.
He had known it since his youth—since the first time he had been forced to push beyond his limits in battle, since the first time he had tasted the raw, unrelenting fury of the sea.
The storm gathered with a force beyond nature, beyond mere weather. The sky convulsed, the very air charged with raw, untamed energy. The waves surged, colliding into the ship’s hull with bone-rattling intensity, and yet, beneath it all, beneath the fury of the sea—
There was something else.
Duke Thaddeus’ breath hitched.
A pulse.
Not from the ocean. Not from the storm.
From him.
Deep within his core, something roused—something ancient, something primal. A force long held in check, tempered through decades of control. But now, it stirred, restless and undeniable.
RUMBLE!
Another peal of thunder split the sky. His mana surged. The pressure around him thickened, expanding outward like the tides before a great tempest.
No.
Not just his mana.
His cultivation method.
⚡ [Storm Sovereign’s Dominion] ⚡
A quasi-legendary cultivation method passed through generations of the Thaddeus bloodline. It was not merely a technique—it was a bond, a command over the ocean itself. The sea bent to its practitioners, the storms yielded to them. It was what had allowed the Thaddeus family to dominate the empire’s naval forces, to rule the waters as if they were an extension of their own bodies.
And now—
It was reacting.
Duke Thaddeus inhaled sharply as his vision blurred for a fraction of a second. He could feel it. The raw, unshackled power coursing through his veins, the ocean itself responding to him—no, not just to him.
To something else.
His grip on the fractured railing tightened.
The air crackled around him.
The sky shuddered.
His mana spiraled wildly, barely restrained, as if something deep beneath the sea was calling to him.
Or—
Someone.
A realization, sharp as lightning, struck him.
“…Aeliana.”
He barely breathed her name.
But the moment he did, another shift in the storm occurred.
CRACK!
A bolt of lightning split the sky, its blinding arc crashing into the sea with a force that sent waves towering over the ship. The ocean churned, twisting, the currents responding to his own surging mana.
Edran stumbled back, his eyes wide.
The knights, hardened as they were, staggered under the suffocating weight of their Duke’s power.
Even Reinhardt, resolute and immovable, felt it.
This was not just Thaddeus’ mana.
This was Storm Sovereign’s Dominion in its true form.
And it was reaching out.
Not for destruction.
Not for war.
But for blood.
For kin.
For Aeliana.
Thaddeus’ pupils constricted as the realization settled deeper. Experience more tales on My Virtual Library Empire
His cultivation method should not have responded like this. It had never acted on its own. It had never called to something beyond his own command.
Unless—
His fingers curled tighter against the railing, his breath slow, measured, struggling against the surge of power clawing to be released.
Unless someone else was using it.
Or…
Unless another Thaddeus bloodline had awakened.
And there was only one possibility.
Only one person who could have triggered this reaction.
Aeliana.
She was alive.
She was somewhere.
And the ocean itself knew it.
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
The storm did not abate. If anything—it worsened.
The sky churned like a living beast, black clouds rolling over one another in a frenzied, unnatural dance. Lightning slashed through the heavens, illuminating the deck in stark flashes of white and violet. The wind howled, shrieking like a thousand tortured souls—but it was not the wind alone.
Screams.
Not human. Not beast.
Something else.
The cries came from all across the sky, reverberating through the air in distorted echoes. It was as if the very fabric of the world was wailing. As if something unseen, something wrong, was watching them.
Duke Thaddeus’ eyes narrowed.
His body remained still, rigid as a steel blade drawn in anticipation. He had fought countless wars, faced foes of both men and monsters—but this…
This was different.
This was something else.
The wind carried no body, no shape, nothing tangible. The screams clawed at the edges of reality, whispering, calling, taunting. And beneath them, beneath the echoes and the unnatural howling, a new sound rose.
The ocean.
But it was not just the waves.
It was something rising from beneath.
SPLASH.
One.
SPLASH. SPLASH.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Hundreds.
The first monstrous shape surged from the depths, water cascading off its twisted, armored form. Then another. And another.
Then—an unending tide.
They came like a horde, bursting from the sea in violent, frenzied chaos. Countless creatures, their bodies writhing, their malformed limbs thrashing.
No, this was not like before.
This was worse.
Far, far worse.
The sheer number of them dwarfed what the expedition had faced before. If the previous battle had been a war—this was an onslaught.
But this time—
The Duke was here.
Thaddeus did not hesitate. His voice rang across the storm-laden deck, cutting through the wind, through the rising chaos, through the unnatural screams that clawed at the air.
“Mages, knights! Get into position!”
His command was absolute.
The deck came alive.
Swords were drawn, shields raised. The mages began their incantations, hands crackling with arcane power as sigils ignited in the air. Archers moved swiftly, their bows already drawn, waiting for the signal.
The sea churned, boiled with the sheer mass of creatures forcing their way to the surface. The water itself seemed to pulse, as if it was no longer the ocean—but something else.
Something corrupted.
Something unnatural.
Thaddeus clenched his jaw, his fingers itching to draw his sword. But he did not move yet.
He felt it.
This whole ordeal—this monstrous resurgence—
It was coming to an end.
One way or another.
******
The battle raged on.
The ocean churned with unrelenting fury, countless monstrous forms surging forward in an unending tide of chaos. The knights and mages fought fiercely, their weapons cleaving through scaled flesh, their spells igniting the darkened waters in brilliant bursts of power.
But the enemy’s numbers were infinite.
For every beast slain, another took its place. The sea itself vomited forth new horrors, relentless and unyielding.
And above it all—
The screams continued.
A twisted, wretched cacophony of wailing voices from the sky, their cries formless, bodiless, an unnatural presence that clawed at the very fabric of reality.
Duke Thaddeus cut through a monstrous beast himself, his blade glowing with crackling energy as he severed a tentacled creature in one smooth, practiced motion. But as he turned for the next strike—
He felt it.
A pulse.
Something deep in his chest, in his very core, twitched.
And then—
The sky split.
SHHHHK.
A single, unimaginable slash.
There was no build-up, no warning.
One moment, the storm raged.
The next—
A cut ran across the entire sky.
It did not flicker. It did not flash.
It simply was.
An abyssal, void-like line, slicing from horizon to horizon, cleaving through the heavens as though the very fabric of existence had been severed.
Duke Thaddeus froze.
A shiver ran down his spine.
The battlefield itself fell into eerie silence.
For a fraction of a moment, even the monsters stopped.
Even the sea held its breath.
The cut was impossibly vast, incomprehensible. Its presence was not just seen—but felt. As if the very sky, the world itself, had been wounded.
Thaddeus had never seen anything like it.
This was not magic.
This was not power.
This was beyond.
His fingers twitched against the hilt of his sword, his own Storm Sovereign’s Dominion reacting violently to what had just occurred.
And yet—
It lasted only for a heartbeat.
Then—
It vanished.
As though it had never been.
The sky remained dark, the storm clouds still roiling, the ocean still seething.
But it was different.
The very air felt hollow, as if something had been removed from reality itself.
And Duke Thaddeus, for the first time in decades, felt something foreign creep into his chest.
Dread.
He exhaled, slowly, deliberately. His grip on his sword tightened.
And he whispered, almost to himself—
“…What in the name of the gods was that?”