Night sea. Abyssal Taiho, steering south toward Gorou, paused and glanced down.
Short-haired, bow in hand, Abyssal Zuikaku leaned in. "What's wrong?"
"My shoelace snapped. It was a pretty one."
Taiho looked back, far to the north. A human had just died.
"Don't drift off. Space out after the job's done… That face—tired?"
Taiho smiled, a touch wistful. "A little. In a blink, I've been alive so many years already. Sometimes I wonder if I've brought too much pain into the world."
"You literature girls are impossible. Always dropping weird, awkward lines."
Zuikaku lost interest. The flagships were already closing to within ten nautical miles of Gorou.
By then, five million Abyssal carrier planes had formed into waves of hundred-thousand-craft strike groups, rolling in one batch after another to blanket Gorou.
Crrrack—crrrack.
A sharp, crystalline sound—like jade being cut, like ten thousand bronze bells shattering—rang across the sea.
Abyssal Ryuujou craned around, baffled. "What's that noise?"
Abyssal Shoukaku's voice tightened. "His bones."
"Whose? What bones?"
"Gorou. Gorou's spine."
Under the crush of five million carrier planes, and to the brittle click of joints, Gorou's thin, battered frame straightened—inch by inch.
He was ancient past belief, ruined by wounds, his back a hunch of ruin.
But when he stood tall, the force that rolled out of him—like the iron lion that pacifies the seas—pressed the water flat for roughly five hundred kilometers in every direction. The ocean went mirror-still, not a ripple dared rise.
What power was this?
Ryuujou felt her breath choke; her teeth chattered. "H-he… I—I…"
Across the night sea, Gorou's voice traveled far.
"A Commander can share in a shipgirl's strength. Train a shipgirl to level one hundred, and a Commander rises to about level eighty."
"With five shipgirls at level one hundred, an admiral can reach one hundred and ten."
"With ten at one hundred, an admiral can reach one hundred and twenty-four."
"I have lived two hundred and thirty-five years. I once commanded exactly twenty shipgirls—and every one reached level one hundred."
"Their shared strength carried me to level one hundred and forty-two."
"Though now only Indiana remains; though my soul is shattered in nineteen parts and I am near my end—the strength they gave me has not faded."
"They died. I live on."
Gorou spoke each word like a nail: "I may be old—but I am still—unmatched under heaven."
He drove a fist into the sky.
The ink-black ocean heaved and roared. The sea reared into the night sky, the water seeming to kindle from within, casting a jade-green glare that washed the world in blinding light.
The swarming five million Abyssal planes were swept away by a single rising surge—gone like smoke before a gale.
The green light rinsed the air until it gleamed like flawless glass—a world of pure glaze.
Gorou rolled his neck and sighed, bracing his lower back with his left hand as he turned. To the Abyssal flagships frozen and gaping, he said:
"Pulled something in the old back. Don't make this hard on an old man. Hurry up and come, let me kill you."
—
On the First Island Chain, an N-class aviation battleship, Type II, shot to her feet and stared west.
There, the sea had sagged three zhang.
Beside her, the Type I flagship also sensed the wrongness. She turned west, mouth falling open.
The western sky blazed—kiln-bright, flawless sky-blue.
Sea water shouldered up into the heavens and knit itself into a jade-green lion, mane streaming, tail whipping.
By sheer scale it stretched for hundreds of kilometers and climbed so high its head seemed to nose the edge of space.
"What is that?"
The level-101 Abyssal flagship swore.
"That isn't a real lion of water—it's the sea's spirit taking shape. Ryuujou 3546… Akagi, Kaga 541… they're done," said the level-148 flagship, shock plain in her voice. "Power like that—no mistake. It's the old lion."
"The old lion—Gorou?"
[End of Chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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