Chapter 130: Silver Sea
SWOOOSH!
The herd of beasts disappeared behind him as he accelerated again, pushing his speed upward until the frozen landscape below reduced to a blur of white and grey.
The cold pressed harder against him as he flew deeper into Glakor's territory — he could feel it now even through the passive energy field of his body.
His cells compensated automatically, generating warmth. But the cold kept pushing back.
He found it impressive, in a detached way.
The King had been dead for days.
And the land still fought on its behalf.
Glakor's corpse came into view from forty kilometers out.
It was the only thing that broke the horizon — a shape rising out of the white landscape, so thoroughly coated in ice that it had become part of the terrain itself.
If he hadn't known what he was looking for, he might have mistaken it for a mountain range at this distance.
A series of irregular peaks, too smooth in some places and too jagged in others, rising from the frozen ground in a configuration that made no geological sense.
As he got closer, the shape resolved.
The creature resembled an ancient fish scaled to impossible proportions, its form partially entombed within layers of frost. Ice had grown over its flesh and through the gaps between its scales, locking the corpse into the landscape itself.
In places where the ice was thinner, portions of its scales remained visible—pale and faintly luminescent. Each scale was so large that a human could have stretched out across it without reaching the edges.
Four massive legs protruded from the body at different angles, half-buried beneath snow and ice. Their joints were thick and powerful, built to support a weight that defied reason.
The head rested in the distance, partially submerged beneath a ridge of frozen earth formed when the creature collapsed. Its mouth remained slightly open, revealing rows of teeth larger than ships.
He landed on the upper surface and began moving inward.
Inside, the cold was so intense that he had to keep electricity moving around his body or risk freezing to death.
Francis moved deeper.
The interior was vast — the loops of Glakor's body had created enclosed spaces large enough to contain entire buildings, and the ice that filled them had formed in intricate patterns, following the natural crystalline structure. In some places it was clear enough to see through, offering glimpses of the body segments beneath. In others it was white and opaque, packed too densely for light to penetrate.
He followed the energy, the same way he had with the others.
It led him downward, through two more entry gaps and a passage that required him to compress his wings and move sideways, until he emerged into a chamber formed by the convergence of three separate coil segments pressing against each other.
The liver was here.
Francis stood in front of it for a moment.
Then he placed his hand against the ice.
It cracked.
A single fracture line ran from the point of contact outward in three directions, moving across the surface of the shell in perfect straight lines, as if the ice had been waiting for an excuse to divide rather than resisting any real force.
He pressed his palm flat against the liver's surface beneath, where the ice had fractured enough to reach it.
The white space arrived.
It was quieter than the others.
No lightning. No assembled shapes gathering from ambient energy. No dramatic entrance.
Just cold and empty.
"You are smaller than I expected," Glakor said as it materialized in front of him.
"I've heard that before," Francis replied.
"I imagine you have." A pause. "You've already taken two of them."
"Yes."
"Rynik would have been composed about it. Philosophical." The faintest shift in tone, too controlled to be called dryness but carrying its suggestion. "Verak would have been loud."
"He was."
"He always was." Another pause. "He didn't want to do this."
"He told me."
"He told everyone. Repeatedly. He went along with it anyway. That tells you more about him than his loud mouth ever did."
"Well, I could tell that despite his personality, he loved all his siblings. And he would probably be miserable living alone if he didn't go along with your plan."
"You are completely right." Glakor chuckled softly. "It seems you are not a bad person after all."
"What do you mean?" Francis asked.
"I don't sense any greed for power from you. It feels as though you simply want to achieve a goal and get this over with."
"You may be right." Francis nodded.
The Ice King did not speak anymore. It simply allowed itself to be devoured.
Francis stood in the chamber. The notifications cascaded again, but he barely registered them.
What he registered was his new ability. At first, he assumed Glakor's power was simply ice manipulation. But after inheriting it, he realized that wasn't the case at all.
Its true ability was the manipulation of motion itself. By slowing matter down to an extreme degree, it reduced thermal activity and created sub-zero temperatures. Ice was merely a byproduct of that process, not the source of the power.
Now that he thought about it, Verak's ability followed the same principle, only inverted.
In his case, matter was driven into extreme, controlled vibration, forcing atomic structures into a state where energy transfer became unstable. The effect was not direct destruction, but structural breakdown through resonance—materials failing because their internal bonds could no longer maintain coherence.
Rynik's lightning, by contrast, was not ordinary electricity. It formed when charged particles were stripped apart and accelerated along those destabilized pathways. The air itself became temporarily ionized, turning into a conductive medium shaped by the same microscopic disruptions.
What looked like different abilities were, at their core, variations of the same mechanism—control over particle motion and the way energy propagated through it.
Although the discovery was fascinating on its own, he did not dwell on it. There was no time to linger on patterns or theories.
He turned his attention to the last target.
He kept flying toward the energy signature until he reached the coast. At first, nothing seemed out of place. The shoreline was intact, the water calm from a distance. Too calm, in fact, which felt wrong given that monsters were supposed to be pouring out from both sea and sky.
Then he noticed it.
On the horizon, silver liquid had already taken over the entire bay. It moved without waves or wind, spreading in rapid expansion. The surface bubbled in places, as if it were boiling from within.
The closer he looked, the less it resembled water.
For a brief moment, he slowed midair.
His body reacted before his thoughts did. Every cell in him sent a quiet, unified warning—not fear in the emotional sense, but a biological refusal to approach any further.
Just to be safe, he rose higher into the sky and observed from above.
Only then did he see it clearly.
Monsters were fleeing the coastline in scattered waves, moving in panic, breaking formation as they tried to escape.
Behind them, the silver liquid advanced.
It extended thin tendrils across the land. Wherever it touched, the creatures lost form—melting, collapsing, being absorbed without resistance or sound.
He recalled his own black tendrils after seeing it.
But this was different.
The silver mass was more fluid, less structured—like liquid given intent. It moved faster than anything he had seen before, and its efficiency was absolute. The moment even a single drop touched a beast, the outcome was immediate.
The creature simply ceased to exist as a coherent form.
For Francis, an effect of that scale was dangerous. He found himself wondering what would happen if he were caught by it. He could probably cut away a corrupted section of his body in time—his speed was enough for that.
But that only meant survival, not winning.
"I need to get out of here."
He pushed himself higher into the sky, putting distance between himself and the silver expanse below. Without slowing, he veered past the coastline, refusing to engage further.
The Kings' powers came first.
Whatever that silver presence was, it would have to wait.
After traveling several thousand kilometers into the ocean, he dove straight down.
The pressure increased rapidly, the light fading until the sea turned into a heavy, colorless void.
Then he saw it.
Enfero's corpse.
It was the same scale as Glakor, a vast presence beneath the water, but its structure was different—less like a fish, more like a salamander built for the deep. Broad limbs extended from its body, adapted into fin-like structures for swimming. Its long frame rested half-buried in the seabed.
The mouth was partially open. He slipped inside.
Immediately, he felt the change.
The surrounding seawater was no longer simply hot—it was violently unstable. Heat surged, rising in intensity the deeper he went, until it felt less like temperature and more like pressure acting directly on his body.
As he moved toward what should have been the liver region, the temperature grew more extreme.