Choice

Time passed in the routine banter Elias indulged in as he relaxed after the battle.

On the distant horizon, the city lights of Hastings Port pierced through the light mist, gradually growing larger in their field of vision.

Those flickering orange halos represented the mundane warmth of mortal civilization.

The Nightgull plowed through the waves of the now-calm sea.

However, the supply ship did not steer toward the brightly lit, bustling main pier.

Crowley stood by the helm, puffing hard on his pipe, which had long since gone out.

His face looked exceptionally grim under the shadow of his pulled-down hat.

“We're not taking the regular shipping lane.”

“The Seventh Agency has definitely set up a blockade at the pier by now.”

“Crossing paths with them right now is just asking for trouble.”

“If they see that giant jellyfish locked up in our hold, tomorrow's headline in the Misfal Daily will be our obituary.”

To avoid unnecessary trouble, he had specifically chosen a secluded stretch of coast.

It was far from the port's patrol routes, cluttered with jagged rocks, and as pitch-black as a massive, man-eating black hole.

The Nightgull came to a slow halt a few hundred meters from the shore.

Elias, Bloodsong, and Ophelia were forced to take a small dinghy to reach the shore.

Before them was a dense forest bordering the coastline.

After a long and brutal night of continuous fighting, it was already midnight.

Although the bizarre fog that had enveloped the entire bay had been dispersed by the lighthouse's primal fire, the night remained deep and dark.

A waning moon hung high in the sky.

Cool moonlight filtered down through the treetops, casting a complex web of shadows across the uneven ground.

Ophelia had still not fully recovered.

Her fragile frame trembled in the wind like a falling leaf.

To her, tonight's experience was a nightmare that had completely shattered her understanding of reality.

Although she had stayed in the relatively safe captain's cabin the entire time,

she had been forced to endure that damned parrot, Polly, for a very long time.

The vulgar bird had kept cracking highly inappropriate, crude jokes filled with harbor slang right in her ear.

Frankly,

compared to the life-and-death struggle outside,

staying with a talkative, vulgar parrot was at least much better.

Because even while the Nightgull was docked at the lighthouse, the chaos had never truly stopped.

At first, driven by her professional instincts and curiosity as an investigative journalist, Ophelia had gathered her courage to peer cautiously through the captain's cabin's round porthole into the pitch-black sea.

She was astonished to discover a protective dome covering the entire supply ship.

It emitted a faint glow in the dark night.

This reminded her of the barrier that had shielded her during the sudden suicide attack at the Wayland Shipping Company office that morning.

The two were quite similar.

Yet, by the faint light of the shield, she saw massive dark silhouettes suddenly leaping out of the freezing water.

They slammed into the shield at extreme speeds, bursting into splatters of indescribable fish guts and rotten flesh upon impact.

This highly visual, bloody spectacle terrified Ophelia, forcing a sharp scream from her throat as she stumbled back several steps, her back slamming hard against the wall behind her.

Even as a journalist for the Landon Post, who believed her nerves were strong enough,

having seen floating corpses in sewers and the gruesome aftermath of gang wars,

she was still utterly horrified by such a direct display of supernatural slaughter.

However,

once her initial terror slowly subsided, a certain morbid journalist gene flared back to life in her mind.

She supported herself against the wall, stood up, and watched the fireworks of flesh and blood continuously bursting outside the porthole.

She actually began to feel a tinge of regret.

Regret that she hadn't been able to bring a camera with her under these circumstances.

If she could have captured such photographs and brought these world-shattering supernatural traces back to Landon,

then tomorrow, every major newspaper in the entire Kingdom of Velen would undoubtedly be clamoring for her to write articles for them.

This would have provided the perfect evidence to expose Wayland Shipping's shady dealings.

But then,

gunshots began to ring out across the ship in rapid succession.

This sudden, intense exchange of fire made Ophelia think for a moment that they had run into pirates.

But when she shiveringly made her way to the other side's porthole and saw the true situation outside,

at that very moment,

she wished they had been pirates.

If they were human pirates, they would at most want money—scoundrels with whom she could at least communicate using worldly logic.

But those things outside... were not human at all.

By the light of the occasional flares fired on the deck, she could see sea-folk with deformed legs and pale, bluish-white skin resembling dead fish eyes.

Clambering over each other and armed with weapons, they swarmed around the supply ship's protective barrier like an incoming tide.

Their arms clawed frantically at the shield, hoping to tear an opening in the barrier of order that blocked them.

But that wasn't all.

An even more terrifying scene was unfolding in the air above the deck.

Immediately after,

she saw them in the air directly above the heads of the battling sailors.

Unknown, nearly transparent creatures shimmering with strange, constantly shifting colors were flying and swooping wildly above the deck.

At a glance,

because there were so many of them, their faceless, translucent bodies glowing with radiant light

made it look as though multiple white ghosts were floating in the sky.

Like a swarm of bloodthirsty moths, they hovered and probed aggressively around the sailors.

The crew members were firing wildly with their firearms at these airborne specters.

Ophelia gripped the wooden frame of the porthole tightly, watching with her own eyes.

When these illusory ghosts were shot down from the sky with precision,

they did not leave behind a corpse upon hitting the deck.

Instead, like a shattered mirror, they dissolved into speckles of pure white light on the ground and vanished into thin air.

What on earth were these things?

Where did they come from?

Ophelia's mind raced with frantic questions, her sanity teetering under the relentless onslaught of supernatural occurrences.

Little did she expect

that at the exact moment she lost her focus,

suddenly,

a dream demon lunged out of the shadows without warning.

Its completely faceless visage pressed flat against the glass of the porthole.

It was a face-to-face encounter at absolute zero distance with Ophelia.

In that instant, Ophelia felt as though her very soul was about to be sucked away by the monster.

Fortunately, the defensive spells outside the captain's cabin activated in a flash.

A faint blue runic light flickered across the surface of the glass.

The dream demon let out a silent shriek and was instantly banished by the specialized spell.

But even so,

it left a deep, indelible psychological scar on Ophelia.

When she propped up her weak body and peered out toward the deck once more in trepidation,

for some reason, she could no longer see those ghosts floating in the air.

Therefore,

at this very moment, in a forest environment like this,

her fragile mind was stretched to its absolute limit.

Although she had lost her initial wariness of the "Mr. Devil" beside her after surviving tonight's ordeal together,

she remained as jumpy as a startled bird.

Even the slightest rustle around her, or the tiny sound of a falling leaf landing on gravel, would startle her immensely.

“Mr. Bloodsong... until we meet again.”

Elias turned around, rubbed his aching shoulder, and waved at Matilda, who had changed back into her male attire.

Bloodsong glanced at him through the darkness, her expression still showing signs of exhaustion.

She raised her right hand somewhat awkwardly

and waved it back and forth at Elias.

“Until we meet again,”

Bloodsong replied.

Then, she gave him a nod and slowly dissolved into the shadows of the forest.

Elias turned his head and looked at Ophelia, who was huddled inside her trench coat, her face deathly pale.

“Shall we go?”

“Let's head back and get some rest.”

Elias pulled his clothes tighter around himself and walked toward the street outside the woods.

“Tomorrow morning, we're taking a boat to the island where your brother worked.”

Ophelia fell silent.

Witnessing everything tonight had plunged her into a deeper despair regarding her missing brother's safety.

In a sea so teeming with monsters, could an ordinary person really still be alive after three years?

She nodded mechanically, following closely behind Elias.

Only when they finally made their way through the eerie coastal forest

and walked up the slope onto a paved street brightly lit by gas lamps

did Ophelia's racing heart finally begin to settle.

Her condition also improved slightly.

The streets of Hastings Port were in complete disarray due to the sea-folk invasion.

Elias walked ahead, when he suddenly heard a trembling murmur from behind him.

“Mr. Wayne.”

Ophelia came to a halt.

Elias turned around to look at her, slightly puzzled.

“Do you think...”

Ophelia clutched the corner of her coat and asked softly,

“should I go?”