Solo Streaming: My only viewer is Yandere Goddess

Chapter 56: Drowned Pawn

The fog in Yokohama only grew heavier, turning from a ghostly white to a bruised, metallic grey. It clung to the rusted hull of the Eternal Maru like a wet tongue. Ren Hanshin stood on the main deck, his left hand gripping the railing. The cold steel felt like ice against his palm, but the sensation was grounded. It reminded him he was still here.

He looked down at the harbor. The tide was coming in, but it wasn’t the rhythmic surge of the ocean. It was a slow, oily crawl. The water was the color of a dead man’s eyes, thick with salt and the slow rot that had begun to eat away at the world’s edges.

"Ren-niisan, the core is getting louder," Haru whispered.

She stood beside him, her small frame wrapped in an oversized scavenger’s coat. The sapphire marble in her chest was thumping with a rhythmic, low light. Every time it flared, the grey mist around them seemed to shrink back, as if the ocean’s heart was terrified of the sapphire’s purity.

"How far?" Ren asked, his voice a dry rasp.

"Five hundred meters. Beneath the Great Pier," Haru said, pointing a trembling finger toward the silhouettes of the grounded ships. "The Pawn... it’s not sleeping anymore. It’s waiting for the engine to spark. It wants the heat."

Kaito and his Salt-Hunters emerged from the bridge, their gear clanking. They looked like creatures from a nightmare, gas masks with shining filters, harpoons tipped with jagged rebar, and coats stained with the brine of a thousand dives.

"We’re ready, Zenith," Kaito said, his voice muffled by his respirator. "The divers have the cables set. If you can keep that thing’s attention for ten minutes, we can jump-start the Kashima Maru’s boilers. Once that ship is floating, we can use its cranes to pull the rest of the fleet out of the mud."

Ren looked at Kaito. "Ten minutes is a lifetime in the water."

"Then you’d better start living fast," Kaito replied, handing Ren a modified air mask. "Don’t breathe the mist directly. It’ll turn your lungs into coral."

Ren took the mask but didn’t put it on yet. He looked at his blackened right arm. He felt a faint, rhythmic spasming in his thumb. It wasn’t healing, but it was waking up. He tucked the limb back into his coat and gripped his wooden staff.

"Tanaka, stay with Haru on the bridge," Ren commanded. "If the water starts to rise past the second deck, you take the emergency life-raft and head for the mountains. Don’t wait for me."

"Ren-sama, I can’t just—"

"That’s an order, Tanaka," Ren said, his obsidian eyes flashing with a spark of his old authority. "I’m a porter. I move the weight. You guard the light."

Ren turned and climbed down the rope ladder into a small, motorized skiff. The engine sputtered, coughing out a plume of blue smoke that was immediately swallowed by the grey fog.

****

The trip to the Great Pier was a descent into the underworld. The skiff moved through the Iron Fleet, ships that looked like the ribcages of giant beasts. Some were tilted at impossible angles, their hulls torn open by the pressure of the rot. Ren could see thousands of drowned people clinging to the rusted metal, their bodies fused to the steel by grey polyps. They weren’t moving, but they were humming. The sound was a low, vibrating chord that made the water ripple in various patterns.

"They’re a choir," Kenji whispered, his hands white on the tiller. "They’re singing the world to sleep."

"Not today," Ren said.

They reached the Kashima Maru, a massive cargo ship grounded on a sandbar. Beneath its hull, the water was churning. It was the movement of something massive beneath the surface.

Ren stepped off the skiff and onto a floating pier. The wood was slippery with grey slime. He took a deep breath of the filtered air, adjusted his mask, and drew the hilt of the Kusanagi-Vessel.

[Divine Mana: 0.8 / 150]

[Synchronization: 49.0% (LOCKED)]

He was at his weakest, but as he looked at the dark water, he felt the Shinen-ryu principles flowing through his blood. He didn’t need the Weaver’s threads. He needed the Earth’s weight.

"Wake up," Ren whispered.

He slammed the hilt of the Kusanagi into the floating pier.

BOOM!!

He used his strength to send a shockwave through the water. It was a blunt, human provocation. The water exploded.

A massive, armored head emerged from the grey brine. It looked like a cross between a snapping turtle and a deep-sea crab, its shell encrusted with the rusted plates of sunken ships. It had a dozen eyes, each one a milky white orb that shone with a necrotic light.

This was the Pawn of the Trench. It let out a sound like a ship’s hull being crushed. A pulse of grey energy rippled out, hitting Ren like a hammer. The wooden pier shattered, sending Ren flying backward. He hit the deck of a nearby barge, rolling through the salt-dust, his lungs burned and his blackened arm felt like it was being dipped in acid.

The Pawn was a siege engine. It climbed onto the barge, its barnacle-covered claws cracking the steel deck.

"Ren!" Haru’s voice echoed through the resonance of the hilt. "It’s not just a beast! It’s an anchor! It’s tied to the seabed by a chain of souls! You have to cut the connection!"

Ren looked at the beast’s shadow. In the grey mist, he saw it, a thick, translucent umbilical cord made of swirling grey brine, connecting the Pawn to the dark abyss beneath the pier.

Ren pushed himself up, his wooden staff acting as a crutch. He could hear the Salt-Hunters on the Kashima Maru frantically hammering at the engine pipes. He could smell the first puff of coal smoke.

"Ten minutes," Ren muttered.

The Pawn lunged. A massive claw, the size of a car, came down in a vertical strike.

Ren didn’t dodge. He just commanded. "Shinen-ryu Style: Izanagi’s Final Breath."

He didn’t have the mana to create a true vacuum, so he used the flow of his own body. He exhaled every bit of air from his lungs, shrinking his presence to nothing. The claw whistled past his head, missing him by a fraction of an inch.

Ren swung his wooden staff.

THWACK!!

He hit a joint in the monster’s armor. Not with magic, but with Earth’s energy. The Pawn groaned, its massive weight shifting as the joint buckled.

But the beast was relentless. It opened its mouth, and a torrent of boiling, grey brine erupted, a "Necrotic Breath" that turned everything it touched into salt.

Ren lunged to the side, rolling under a rusted winch. The metal behind him turned to grey powder in seconds.

[Divine Mana: 0.5 / 150]

"One strike," Ren whispered to himself. "Make it human."

He focused on the hilt of the Kusanagi. He closed his eyes, ignoring the monster’s roar and the smell of the rot. He thought of Jubei. He thought of the porter he used to be. He thought of the way the earth felt under his feet when he carried a heavy load.

"The mud is deep," Ren said.

The Pawn of the Trench charged, its shell glimmering with a sickly violet light. It was going to flatten the barge and everyone on it. Ren stood in the center of the deck, the hilt of the Kusanagi held low in a Shinen-ryu void guard.

As the beast was upon him, Ren didn’t swing. He stepped into the beast’s shadow.

"Shinen-ryu Style: Kokū-Zandō!" He just used his remaining mana to create a single point of silence at the tip of the vacuum blade. He cut the grey umbilical cord.

SLASH!!

The strike was silent. The grey thread snapped. The connection to the God of Death was severed. The Pawn of the Trench didn’t die. It began to vanish. Without the necrotic energy to hold its massive, unnatural form together, it turned back into what it was; a collection of rusted scrap metal and dead saltwater.

The beast collapsed into a pile of junk, the necrotic light in its eyes fading into the grey fog. Ren stood in the wreckage, his chest heaving. His blackened arm was smoking, the charred skin peeling back to reveal raw, red flesh.

WHIIIIIIIR!

The boilers of the Kashima Maru roared to life. A massive plume of black smoke punched through the grey mist. The ship groaned, its iron heart beating once more.

"He did it!" Kenji yelled from the skiff. "The ship is floating!"

Ren fell to his knees. The adrenaline was fading, replaced by a cold, crushing exhaustion. He looked at his hand. The index finger of his right hand twitched again.

[Divine Mana: 0.0]

[Condition: Unconscious]

****

Ren woke up to the sound of metal grinding against metal. He was lying on a cot in Kashima Maru’s infirmary. The room was reverberating with the power of the ship’s engines. Through the porthole, he could see the Great Pier falling away. The ship was moving.

Haru was sitting by his bed, her sapphire core glowing with a soft, peaceful light. Tanaka was there too, looking out the window.

"We’re moving, Ren-niisan," Haru said, her voice filled with a quiet joy. "Kaito is using the cranes to pull the tankers out of the mud. We’re building a fleet."

Ren tried to sit up, but his body felt like it was made of broken glass. He looked at his right hand. The black char was gone. His skin was a bright, raw pink, and he could feel the cold air against his palm.

"How long was I out?"

"Six hours," Tanaka said. "We’re already past the harbor mouth. The water is still grey, but the humming is getting quieter. You saved them, Ren. Again."

Ren didn’t feel like a savior. He felt like a man who had just barely survived a landslide. He looked at the wooden staff leaning against the wall. It was cracked, its surface scarred by the Pawn’s salt-breath.

"It’s not over," Ren whispered. "The God of Death... he didn’t send his army. He just sent a gatekeeper."

Kaito walked into the room, his mask hanging around his neck. He looked at Ren with a new, sober respect.

"The ’Iron Fleet’ is ours, Zenith," Kaito said. "Five ships. Two thousand people. We’ve got enough fuel for a month. Where are we heading?"

Ren looked at the map on the wall. He looked at the deep, dark trenches of the Pacific where the rot was born.

"We aren’t running," Ren said, his obsidian eyes turning hard. "We’re heading for the Trench of Souls. If the God of Death wants a continent of the dead, we’re going to give him a fleet of the living to contend with."

Ren Hanshin stood up, his body swaying but his gaze steady. He had zero mana. He had one raw, healing arm. He was human-locked, but as the Kashima Maru punched through the first real wave of the open sea, Ren felt a spark in his chest. It wasn’t the Weaver’s silk. It was the intent of the Earth.

The drowned pawn was buried. The Executioner was back on his feet, and the ocean was about to find out that even in the deepest trench, the mud always finds a way to stand its ground.