Chapter 344

Chapter 344: .

“Sink it.”

Agatha kept her eyes locked on the ship that was moving steadily closer across the sea. Her voice was as cold and hard as ice.

The junior officer beside her looked stunned, as if he could not believe what he had heard: “Ma’am, what did you say?”

“Sink it.” Agatha did not answer the young officer. She only turned her head toward Colonel Lister and repeated: “That is the ‘raider’, a massive source of corruption. I do not know what it really is, but it is definitely not the Sea Swallow.”

As she spoke, she paused. Her fingers tightened on the Gatekeeper’s cane until her knuckles turned a little white: “I will take responsibility for this decision.”

Lister said nothing. The muscles in his face were tight, and for a long time he stood in the cold wind like a statue frozen in place. Only when the whistle sounded again in the distance, clearer and louder than before, carrying a disturbing note of urgency, did he suddenly break the silence: “Lady, are you sure your source is reliable?”

“…I trust my own judgment, Colonel,” Agatha drew a slow breath, her voice rough and a little husky. “And I will take responsibility for it.”

“You cannot take responsibility. You are the Gatekeeper, but you are not the direct overseer of the Harbor system,” Lister said calmly. Then he turned around and looked out toward the distant sea.

“Sink that ship. I will take responsibility for this decision.”

Far out on the sea, the ship that had suddenly appeared, the “Sea Swallow”, was still racing ahead at full speed. Its tall prow cut through the waves. Its flags snapped and cracked in the wind. The funnel at midships spewed out great billows of white vapor. Within those clouds, it seemed as if countless hidden howls rose and fell in a constant, snarling uproar.

At the Sea Swallow’s stern, the broken wake heaved and crossed over itself. Deep within the layers of foaming spray, black, sticky matter spread with the waves like blood pouring from a giant beast’s body, drifting in fine strands that rose and sank with the swell.

“Woooo-”

The whistle sounded again. More great sheets of white vapor burst from the top of the Ironclad Warship. High-pressure Tathagata steam from the Deep Sea seemed to scream as it tore through the sky.

Shapes moved along the Sea Swallow’s rail. Figures walked back and forth, busy and hurried. They wore the uniforms of the Frostholm navy and did the tasks that seamen on a warship were supposed to do. They stepped over the jagged cracks that split the deck. They stepped over the sticky, writhing substance underfoot and the swollen nodules that crossed the planks like thick, tangled veins.

Melted-looking black sludge kept dripping off the bodies of those seamen. Some of the seamen suddenly fell where they stood and sank into the nearby structures of the ship, becoming one with steel and planks. At the same time, new seamen kept separating themselves from the deck or the ship’s side. They wriggled, crawled, and staggered away, to scrub the deck, to handle the flags, to turn on the lights…

They were going home. The Sea Swallow was going home.

But far away, in the direction of the Harbor, the heavy platforms of the Coastal Guns had already started to move. One after another, the armored doors set into the cliffs, sea walls, and the Harbor’s reinforced concrete outer walls opened up. Dark cannon barrels pushed out. Massive gun mounts slowly turned under the drive of gears and linkages.

Deep underground, the Shaft Lift creaked as it ran, sending shells up from the buried magazines to the giant guns above. At the same time, rapid bells and whistles rang out in and around the Harbor, urging all ships still outside the Harbor to clear the area at once and pushing every facility within the Harbor into a state of battle readiness.

The Sea Swallow seemed to feel something. Even before the air-raid sirens on Frostholm’s main island began to sound, it had already started to speed up.

Steam gushed. The whistle screamed without pause. The whole ship seemed to be howling from the inside out. Seamen on the deck broke into a run. In the white vapor above the funnel, streaks of black and dark red appeared before anyone knew it.

The ship was accelerating. It was already a fast steamship, but now its speed rose to the limit. It raced across the wide, endless sea like a giant beast wrapped in rolling thunder. The roar of waves split by its bow grew, little by little, into a wild scream that shook the whole ocean.

At that moment, the Coastal Guns on Frostholm’s main island opened fire.

Like thunder bursting apart overhead, the huge coastal guns spat flame and noise. Their terrible power shook the air. A first full volley of standard armor-piercing shells roared out. The pointed shells screamed through the sky and lit fierce fire-lines across it, then fell onto the distant sea after a long arc of flight.

Shells plunged into the water. Columns of spray shot up everywhere. Tall and short water plumes rose all around the Sea Swallow and turned the sea far away into a drifting, spreading fog bank. A few shells grazed the Sea Swallow, but its speed did not drop at all.

The shock of the Coastal Guns’ fire even made the platform under Agatha’s feet tremble. She could feel the whole lookout tower quiver slightly under the feedback of that salvo. At the same time, she heard someone giving a report beside her.

“The hit rate in the first volley is low. That ship is too fast. It is faster than any speed on record!”

“Open free fire. Switch to armor-piercing incendiary shells. Keep firing until the target sinks,” Lister said with no expression. “The stationed fleet is to stand by. If we still cannot stop that ship at the coastal warning line, the fleet will attack. Even if they have to ram it in the end, they must stop that ship outside Frostholm!”

“Yes, Commander!”

Lister’s face was dark as still water. While the roar of the guns kept rolling, he stared hard at the rising water plumes and smoke on the distant sea, and at the “Sea Swallow” that was still speeding toward Frostholm. There was no hesitation left in his eyes.

From what he could see now, he could already be certain that this ship was not the Sea Swallow he knew.

Faced with the bombardment from Frostholm’s main island, that ship had not slowed down. It had not sent the proper signal flags or signal lights. Instead, it kept speeding up, pushing past the limits of its own design… That was not a warship of Frostholm. That was a Monster.

A Monster disguised as a thing of the mortal world.

All the Coastal Guns began to howl. In the roar of continuous fire, armor-piercing incendiary shells drew countless bright lines across the sky and fell like crossing rain into the waters around the Sea Swallow. Huge columns of water shot up one after another. In the forest of water plumes, the ship that kept shrieking and roaring rushed straight ahead like a wild beast driven mad.

As the distance shrank and the barrage was corrected again and again, shells finally began to land directly on the Sea Swallow.

Massive blasts tore its armor open. They smashed its masts and peeled whole sheets of deck plating from the hull. Black, mud-like sludge gushed from under its fake shell like blood. It poured down on the sea in a dark rain.

“God of Death above! What is that thing?!”

Through their telescopes, the people on the lookout tower could now just make out the twisted, strange shapes under the Sea Swallow’s shattered deck. Someone could not hold back a low cry.

Lister only watched with a grave face. The muscles at his jaw were still tight.

The ship did not slow down.

Even after the Coastal Guns had ripped apart its stern deck, blown off its funnel and bridge, and blasted the compartments that should have held its ammunition and steam core, it still did not slow down.

The Coastal Guns kept howling. Salvo after salvo of deadly shells crashed down. A huge number of guns focused their “attention” on a single enemy ship that never tried to dodge. In a very short time, they poured an uncountable number of shells onto the Sea Swallow. For any normal ship, this would already have been fatal.

Even if it did not sink, it should at least have stopped.

But it was still running at full speed.

Soon, the other people on the tower also noticed what was happening on the sea, and tension began to spread.

“Keep firing, until it vanishes from the surface of the sea,” Lister said through clenched teeth. Then he suddenly turned to Agatha at his side. “Lady, please inform the Cathedral as soon as possible. If we cannot stop it on the Harbor side, we may need to…”

“Do not be so quick to give up yet, Colonel,” Agatha shook her head before he could finish. “The attack is working. It is fading.”

As she spoke, she looked out over the distant sea. In the eyes of the young Gatekeeper, a pale light flickered gently.

What her eyes reflected was not the Mortal Realm, but the Spirit Realm.

Agatha saw the twisted black silhouette breaking apart. On the chaotic sea, crooked lines of light and shadow were peeling away from that shape at great speed.

The barrage from the Coastal Guns had not directly “killed” the replica, but it was driving it toward some critical point. It was about to collapse on its own.

Agatha blinked. The brief image of the Spirit Realm faded from her sight, and the clear world of the Mortal Realm returned to her eyes.

The Coastal Guns kept firing. Soon, more gunfire sounded from not far away.

That was the fleet inside the Harbor. It had finally finished its preparations and joined the interception.

The roar of the battleships’ main guns became the final straw that broke the “Sea Swallow”. When even more armor-piercing incendiary shells rained down on the ship that was already beyond recognition, it finally began to fall apart.

First its deck and outer hull tore away in huge sheets, exposing the twisted, dark structures inside. Then the whole ship writhed and ripped from bow to stern, as if it was trying to tear itself into pieces. The thing that had once looked like the Sea Swallow now flung out endless black muck as it snapped apart.

Its whistle finally fell silent. The strange, sharp wails slowly died away.

It began to slow down. As it spread vast patches of dark filth across the sea, it also melted and caved in on itself.

This terrible, eerie attacker that had tried to charge into the civilized world finally came to a stop only a few nautical miles from Frostholm’s main island.