But first, he needed to finish his preparations. Even though their goal was to never enter the water while riding the Blood Current, things could always go wrong and they needed a fallback. Since he was the only one who could breathe underwater, they'd be relying on him.
So in addition to piloting the ship, he was stretching his senses to the limit. He tried to use everything: the gut impressions he'd trained in Goralia, a cultivator's innate sense of qi, the deep hunger at the bottom of his soul. His awareness spread in all directions, seeking out any suitable targets. Normally he felt nothing but fish and the occasional underwater monster, so when he felt something actually powerful he perked up.
"Do you feel that?" He spoke before thinking about who was on deck and had to look around - as was common lately, Zae Zin Nim was inside and Omilaena was doing something on the opposite side.
"What?" She looked up with mild curiosity.
"There's a monster off our... uh, off that side." Kai gestured toward the source. "I think it might be worthwhile to eat, but it's out of our way."
Omilaena sprang up beside him in a moment, pinpointing what he was talking about. Soon after she placed her hand on the wheel and smiled. "We can afford a detour. We're pushing ourselves so hard so that we have some leeway, after all."
"The cultivators won't think we're struggling and close in?"
"I'll start wavering, like we might break either east or west. That's probably a good idea anyway, to keep them off balance before we hit the Current."
"Then I guess I'll see if I can fight a monster from the Blood Current."
"Oh, this isn't." Omilaena chuckled. "This one feels like it's just an open sea monster. If it was from the Blood Current, believe me, you'd know."
Kai wasn't sure what to make of one more warning, but that didn't really matter now that his plan was approved. Omilaena took them on a westward path toward the monster, and though she said they had time, he didn't want to waste any of it. The fight needed to be swift and effective, just enough to give him a sense for the monster before he consumed it.
Tying the cable around his waist was the easy part. Figuring out which monstrous essence he would use was much harder. Aside from his central abilities, Kai decided to take Sahagin's Lungs and the new capacity he was calling Necroeel's Speed. That meant no empty slots, but he needed to test his underwater speed anyway.
This monster wasn't being particularly aggressive and it wasn't likely to harm anyone, this far out in the ocean. Kai would never feel sorry for a monster, but he did reflect that he was hunting it for no reason except his own power. That didn't stop him from jumping over the edge.
Once underwater, he looked forward, where their ship was rapidly catching up to the beast. Now that he got a better look at it, he saw that it looked like a shark with four massive fins and a blade on its snout. That blade was no natural feature, instead it was a snarled blade designed to catch and tear flesh.
Any guilt he might have felt disappeared when the monster whirled and tried to decapitate him with that blade.
Kai raised his forearm in time to block and felt the impact jar through his body. Only a few points of the blade broke skin, but even underwater it managed to impart significant force. He lashed out in response, and since he lacked Tyrant's Claw he just clubbed the monster in the side.
His best punch to the gills made the monster flinch, but the water slowed his movements too much for it to be a finishing blow. Unlike so many of the agile underwater creatures, the bladed shark seemed to use brute force, so it arced around and swung a blow at his ribs.
That strategy was a mistake.
Even though he was sluggish underwater, Kai was able to trap the blade under his arm against his ribs. Once he had that grip, he delivered a blow straight into the shark's head. He'd hoped to snap off the blade, but it was too tough for that. While it struggled he landed a second and third blow, then it finally tore its way free, thrashing in pain.
He would have finished it off then... except in its thrashing, the shark sliced through his cable.
The instant it broke, the currents caused by being dragged behind the ship vanished and the hull seemed to leap forward. He'd grown so used to seeing the underside of it stationary ahead of him, it was almost shocking to be reminded just how fast it moved. And how quickly it was leaving him behind. Kai was in the middle of a deadly ocean with the only ride in miles vanishing ahead of him.
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There was no time to think about whether they'd abandon him - he needed to catch up. The shark was moving to attack him again and Kai didn't waste any more time, swallowing its upper half in one bite. Immediately he felt the new essence within him.
<
Monster: Bladeshark
Threat: V (Epsilon)
>
The Bladeshark had a solid amount of power, perfectly suited for movement underwater. Could he merge it with Necroeel's Speed for a mixture of both? Speed and strength were both just force, after all, and both meant optimizing movements underwater. But he wanted to merge them with Sahagin's Lungs, and he couldn't work with that without losing his ability to breathe underwater.
Kai had no hope of catching up to the ship, but he could easily swim his way back to the surface. The ship was already growing small on the horizon, so he needed to hurry or-
Zae Zin Nim descended for him, piloting the diamond star. Their ship was more efficient for long term travel, so sometimes he almost forgot about the Krysali vessel. She arced low until the star stopped just above him and reached over the side, offering a hand.
"You didn't think we'd leave you behind, did you?" she asked.
"I knew you wouldn't," he said as he took her hand. Of course he knew that logically, but there was another part of him...
"Well, there's no need to hurry your advancement. You're forging your own path and you shouldn't rush. Take your time to develop a new aquatic ability."
"You're right. Thanks, Zae Zin Nim."
She nodded and turned back to the controls as if there was nothing more to say. They lifted higher into the sky and then sped after the ship to catch up. No doubt the cultivators pursuing them could feel that, so he had to wonder what they would think. Hopefully it would make them seem even more uncertain before they made their decisive move.
Meanwhile, she was right about the approach he needed to take. Kai began contemplating the monstrous essence he was carrying and continued even after they caught up to Omilaena, then over the next full day. It was a bit like solving a puzzle by touch alone. If he examined the monsters in his soul, he could get a feel for their exact shape - there was nothing subjective about it, each essence had different characteristics that he needed to manage carefully.
One of his first decisions was accepting that trying to include Direurchin's Spikes would be a mistake. It came from an aquatic monster, but it was defensive and involved changing his body, not its movement. If he crammed it together with the rest, the result would be wasted power.
There was nothing stopping him from merging the abilities together, the problem was that there was nothing stopping him from making mistakes. Eventually he decided that his best bet was to create an ability around adapting to the water. Sahagin's Lungs was the best candidate for that, so he started there and fed the other two abilities to it.
Immediately he realized that Necroeel's Speed was imbalanced, too light compared to the stronger Bladeshark. So Kai fed it one of the weakest monsters that had retained essence, something called a Bonefish. Once they were more balanced, he fused the two together with Sahagin's Lungs.
After so long thinking, the actual implementation was easy and he soon saw the result in his soul:
<
Sahagin's Soul - III (gamma)
>
His new capacity, which he called Sahagin's Soul, had started at the third rank. Clearly it wasn't going to be an extraordinary ability like Behemoth's Heart. But had he accomplished his goal? The monstrous ability felt right, not malformed, but the only way to truly know was testing.
Kai tied the cable around his waist again and jumped over the side. At first he was being tugged underwater, pulled as always, and he could only thrash. But as he adjusted to the new ability, he began to swim.
Even though his body undulated slightly, like a fish, he was swimming with more force than the motion could possibly generate. It was pure monstrous power accelerating him forward. For the first time Kai had experienced, the tension around his waist lessened. He could swim as fast as the ship, and if he really pushed himself, he could even exceed it.
Grinning, Kai took a few swings underwater. The water no longer suffocated his movements, it seemed to part in front of him. He quickly realized that he couldn't move exactly like in the air, because he still needed to work with the flowing currents, but he'd be far more lethal underwater now. If only there was a handy monster there to test his power on.
Lacking any targets, Kai instead swung his hand in a Tyrant's Claw to the depths. He'd just been hoping to unleash it a little quicker, but to his surprise the spiritual claw swept through the water faster as well. Sahagin's Soul adapted him to the water better then he'd anticipated.
Throwing himself into the swimming with reckless abandon, Kai got ahead of the ship, looped around, and then headed for the surface at top speed. Suddenly he was hurtling overhead in a spray of water, arcing over the ship. It must have looked impressive, and Kai would have been more impressed if he hadn't been trying to land on the deck.
On his second try he aimed his arc better and landed on the ship. He was grinning despite himself, just because the easy movements underwater were such a joy after struggling this far.
"Good work," Zae Zin Nim said with a brief nod. Omilaena was not far away at the wheel and gave a nod of her own
"That will help, but don't get overconfident."
"The monsters will get that much stronger?" Kai asked. He stepped to the front to look out at the waves, which were even redder than before. There was something out there, almost like a small island...
"I think we've almost reached the Blood Current." Omilaena squinted ahead, then shook her head. "We'll be in the dangerous region soon. We need to be ready."
As they moved on, Kai got a clearer look at the object ahead, which loomed larger every second. He saw one long fin, covered in spiny hooks, and would have jumped if his monstrous instincts hadn't been sure there was no life left. Once they got close, he finally understood that the main bulk was the body of the creature with large pieces torn out of it. It looked like a massive whale, covered in spines and hooks that hadn't been enough for it to survive.
Floating in the ocean, adding its blood to the tides, the dead beast marked the beginning of the Blood Current.