novelraw Chapter 66: Glass Current
Chapter 66: Glass Current
Ren and the Iron fleet began their journey toward Constellation Realm—Necropolis, but to get into a Constellation Realm, they should cross an Astral Realm which is guarding it. The Necropolis is guarded by the God of River realm.
To enter the Astral Realm, the iron fleet should reach the horizon of earth at the Pacific ocean. At the horizon, a sudden shift of change at a specific temporal point with ancient chants leads to the obsidian waters of Astral Realm. The journey to the Astral Realm is long lasting, and two days passed like a calm warm gust in the summer season.
****
Near Astral Realm..
The boundary of the Astral Realm was not marked by a gate or a wall, but by the sudden, terrifying death of sound. One moment, the Kashima Maru was battling the churning, salt-heavy waves of the Pacific, and suddenly in the next moment, the ocean became a mirror. The navy blue water vanished, replaced by a substance that looked like polished obsidian. It was perfectly flat, stretching infinitely in every direction, reflecting the stars above with a clarity so sharp it made the eyes ache. There were no ripples, no whitecaps, and no spray. The ship slid across a pane of dark glass.
Ren Hanshin stood at the prow, his silhouette a jagged line of shadow against the starlight. He did not look like the man who had crawled through the mud of Okutama. His posture was preternaturally straight, his spine a rigid structure around which the world seemed to turn. The crimson cracks of the Weaver’s Mark had smoothed over, leaving behind faint, shining lines of amber and rose that pulsed with the rhythm of a glowworm.
[Synchronization: 55.0%]
[Condition: Divine Equilibrium (The Weaver’s Contract)]
[Astral Realm Detected — Realm of River God]
Ren felt the crimson silk. For the first time, he wasn’t just seeing the threads; he was part of the loom. Every rivet of the ship, every heartbeat of the two thousand survivors behind him, and every drop of the obsidian water was a line of energy he could pluck if he wanted.
"Niisan, the water... it isn’t moving," Haru’s voice drifted from the deck below.
She stood several feet away, her hands gripped tightly over the railing. She didn’t come closer. The air around Ren had become cold. The moisture in the air was freezing into tiny, red silk frost-crystals that drifted around his head like a crown of thorns.
"It is moving, Haru," Ren said, his voice was a harmonic resonance, a double-toned echo that made the steel of the ship reverberate in sympathy. "But it is moving in a direction you cannot see. We are in the realm of the River God. This obsidian water is magnificent masterpiece of River God, this is a glass, but ships can sail through it."
’Thanks to Weaver’s knowledge I got when I crossed the 50% synchronization, I know information about the realms.’
Ren thought, with a pleasant smile on his face.
"I don’t see any God," Tanaka muttered, stepping up with his heavy coat pulled tight. "I just see a lot of creepy water and a lot of silence. If this is a realm, where’s that so-called River God?"
Ren turned his head slowly. The movement was too fluid, too precise. His obsidian eyes caught the starlight, reflecting a thousand different versions of Tanaka.
"The River God is a coward," Ren said. "He felt the Weaver’s mark on the Astral Gate. He has fled to the inner sanctums of the Heavens. But a God’s fear does not mean the path is empty. When a deity abandons their post, they leave their hunger behind."
CRACK!!
Suddenly, the glass of the ocean cracked. It wasn’t the sound of water splashing. It was the sound of a mirror shattering. Massive, jagged shards of obsidian water erupted around the fleet. One of the secondary cargo ships was sliced clean in half by a rising blade of solidified brine. There were no screams, the silence swallowed the noise of the dying before it could reach the air.
From the dark depths, the Trench-Hydra emerged. It was a monstrosity of the Astral Realm, a creature made of liquid pressure and thousands of snapping, serpentine heads. Each head was topped with a crown of crystalline teeth that hummed with a necrotic, violet light. The Kashima Maru groaned as a massive, liquid head slammed into the hull. The ship tilted at a forty-degree angle, the sound of screeching metal finally breaking the silence.
"Ren-sama! Help us!" a sailor screamed as a liquid tentacle wrapped around his waist, dragging him toward the obsidian surface.
Ren didn’t move fast. He raised his right hand.
[The God of Fate is laughing in his mind, her voice a triumphant symphony of silk and starlight.]
[God of Fate]: Look at them. My King. The ants are panicking over a mere animal. Show this overgrown parasite why the heavens weave the fabric of reality. Erase it!!
Ren didn’t draw the scythe. He made a small, delicate pinching motion with his fingers, as if picking a loose thread off a coat.
SH-RIP.
Twenty of the Hydra’s heads were severed in a single second. They didn’t fall into the water. They unraveled. The liquid mass of the beast was turned into thousands of tiny, red silk threads that dissolved into the air. But the Hydra was an Astral creature, tethered to the infinite mass of the realm. New heads began to sprout from the wounds instantly, drawing mass from the dark glass beneath the ship. It roared, a sound that felt like glass grinding against bone.
"I am going down," Ren said.
"Ren! No! The pressure in the Astral water will crush your heart!" Tanaka yelled, reaching out to stop him.
Tanaka’s hand hit the invisible aura around Ren. The hunter’s glove instantly burst into red flames, the cold so intense it burned. Tanaka scrambled back, his face pale with shock.
Ren stepped off the prow of the ship. He walked down through the air as if descending a grand staircase of invisible starlight. The moment his boots touched the obsidian surface, the glass folded inward. It parted like silk to welcome its new master. Ren sank into the dark.
****
Under the surface of the obsidian water, the world was a kaleidoscope of silver and violet. There was no air, but Ren didn’t need to breathe. Weaver’s contract had replaced his lungs with a mana-veins that drew energy from the constellation flow.
He saw the Hydra’s true form. It was a living knot in the River God’s current. At its center, lodged deep in the seabed of the realm, there was its heart, a throbbing, violet crystal the size of a house.
[Divine Mana: 140 / 150]
[Synchronization: 55.2%]
Ren felt a surge of cold, alien irritation. It was the God of Fate. She was bored with this obstacle. She wanted the Necropolis. She wanted the God of Death’s head.
’I am the one who carries the weight,’ Ren thought, his human ego struggling to maintain its shape in the flood of divine power.
He raised the hilt of the Kusanagi-Vessel. The Earth-relic hissed in the Astral water. It hated the place. It was a tool of the earth, and here, there were only the reflections of God’s vanity.
"Shinen-ryu Style: Kokū-Zandō," Ren whispered.
He concentrated the Weaver’s silk through the vacuum-path of the technique. A massive, jagged line of crimson light cut through the dark water. It severed the beast’s connection to the realm. The Hydra’s heads began to turn inside out. Its liquid body was being pulled into the crimson rift Ren had created. The beast let out a scream that vibrated in Ren’s marrow, but he felt nothing. No pity. No triumph. Just the cold satisfaction of a task being completed.
He reached the violet heart. He didn’t destroy it with a strike. He reached out and touched the crystal with his bare, shimmering hand.
[Devouring an Astral Core]
[Synchronization growing...]
[Synchronization: 55.2% -> 55.7%]
The violet heart shattered, its energy flowing into Ren’s skin. The red cracks on his arms flared with an obscuring intensity. He felt his memories of the Kashima Maru, the smell of the mess hall, the sound of Haru’s laughter growing distant, as if they were stories told to him by a stranger.
He stayed under the water for a long time. It was quiet here. No one looked at him with the eyes of a terrified animal. There was only the beautiful logic of the loom.
****
When Ren finally ascended back to the deck of the ship, the water had returned to its flat, obsidian state. One of their ships was gone, its mere survivors, who were saved by Ren’s crimson thread in an instant the ship began sliced, being pulled onto the other ships by the Salt-Hunters.
Ren walked past the crew. He headed straight for his cabin, his footsteps leaving shimmering, red silk frost on the steel deck.
"Ren-niisan..." Haru stood in his path, placing her hand on the sapphire core, its light a frantic, blinking blue. "You... you saved us. But you didn’t even look at the man the Hydra took. He was the one who gave you his extra blanket in Okutama."
Ren stopped. He looked at Haru. He saw the tears in her eyes, the way her lip trembled. He tried to remember the blanket. He tried to feel the gratitude he knew he should have, but all he felt was nothing.
"He was a thread that reached its end, Haru," Ren said. His voice was melodic, perfect, and utterly hollow. "The pattern continues. That is all that matters."
Haru flinched as if he had struck her. She watched him walk past, his tattered coat flowing behind him like a royal robe.
****
That night, the fleet anchored in the center of the silent realm. The obsidian water reflected the stars so perfectly that it felt as if the ship were floating in the middle of deep space. Ren sat in his cabin, staring at a bowl of simple stew Tanaka had brought him. The smell was offensive. To his senses, the human food smelled of decay and raw earth. His body required the mana of the heavens.
He pushed the bowl aside. He felt a thirst for the starlight. He felt a pair of arms wrap around his neck from behind. The air in the cabin grew heavy with the scent of lavender and the smoke of expensive cigars.
"You are becoming so beautiful, my King," a voice whispered in his ear.
Ren didn’t turn. He knew she was there. The Weaver had manifested as a shimmering, semi-transparent woman made of starlight and red silk. She pressed her cold face against his neck, her fingers tracing the shining lines of the mark.
"The mud is falling away," Weaver cooed. "Soon, you won’t even have to pretend to be one of them. We will reach the Necropolis, and you will take the God of Death’s crown. And then... the world will finally be the way we want it."
Ren closed his eyes. He felt her starlight hair brushing against his cheek. It felt better than the sun. It felt better than the blankets of Okutama.
"I... I have to protect Haru," Ren rasped. The words felt like they were being dragged through gravel.
"And you are," Weaver said, her voice a soothing lullaby. "Every God you kill, every thread you weave, keeps her safe. You are the wall, Ren. But a wall does not need to feel. A wall only needs to stand."
Outside the cabin, Haru stood in the shadows of the hallway. She was holding a fresh pot of tea, a small gesture to try and find her brother again. She reached for the doorknob, but she stopped. She could hear Ren talking. But there was only one person in that room.
"I will bring you the crown," Ren’s voice drifted through the wood. It sounded like a sword being sharpened. "I will kill the God of Death."
Haru turned away, the tea pot shaking in her hands. She walked to the deck and looked out at the obsidian water. She saw her own reflection.
Ren Hanshin stood at the window of his cabin, the red cracks on his skin shining like a dying sun. He was at 55.7%, and he was no longer thirsty for water. He was thirsty for the souls of Gods.
//
Readers,
At some place the word ’Weaver’ is used, don’t get confused it’s an alternative for God of Fate!
//