The seabeast surfaced. Its body rose from the depths like a continent waking, water cascading from its angular flanks in waterfalls that could fill valleys. The lantern on its forehead blazed—golden, blinding, a false sun in the dead of night. Its maw opened and it consumed. Not bit, not swallowed, consumed. The sea itself bent toward its mouth. Pirate ships, broken wreckage, cannons, men screaming in terror. And Dante Clementes.
He laughed as he disappeared into the depths.
The creature's maw eclipsed the moon itself as rows of colossal teeth folded inward like the gates of some abyssal kingdom. Water rushed violently into its throat alongside entire vessels while the sea collapsed inward around its body in spiraling currents.
The air was thick with the scent of old blood, rotting fish, and something else—something ancient, something that had been digesting centuries. The sound of groaning flesh echoed through the enormous cavern of the creature's stomach while green bioluminescent veins pulsed faintly across organic walls thicker than castle towers.
Dante stood ankle-deep atop a half-submerged pirate deck that had somehow remained mostly intact during the swallowing process. Around him, surviving pirates stared in horror.
One man vomited.
Another prayed.
A third simply sat down and accepted death.
Dante sniffed once and grimaced.
"Gods above."
He scratched his jaw.
"It smells awful in here."
A pirate—one of the Red Maw crew who had been swallowed with their ship—stumbled out of the wreckage nearby. He was terrified, his eyes wild, his hands shaking. He saw Dante. He raised a cannon, aimed, fired.
BOOM.
A cannonball flew directly at Dante's head.
CLANG.
The iron round shattered into fragments against his forehead.
Silence. Dante rubbed his head.
"That was rude."
The pirate screamed and scrambled backward into the darkness. The massive man stared at them for several seconds before sighing.
"Ah."
He pointed lazily.
"You must be the idiots Pihla mentioned."
Nobody answered, mostly because they were busy trying not to piss themselves. Dante looked away from them toward the front of the stomach. Even inside the beast's body the scale was incomprehensible. The creature's throat resembled a canyon of living flesh while rows of enormous teeth interlocked together ahead of him like walls forged from ivory towers.
Each tooth alone was several meters thick, completely sealed.
Impenetrable...for anyone else. Dante cracked his neck then grinned. Unfortunately for the Dominion Beast—no one was Dante.
The water behind him exploded. He shot forward like a cannonball, his body breaking the sound barrier in an instant. Entire layers of flesh exploded apart beneath the impact while the creature's sealed jaws bulged outward unnaturally. Then Dante punched forward.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Teeth shattered. Bone splintered. Dante burst through the beast's mouth like a comet emerging from a dying star. The beast roared, a sound that shook the ocean itself. Dante hovered above the sea while fragments of teeth rained around him like meteors.
The creature stared at him.
And Dante stared back.
For the first time since surfacing the beast hesitated. Its massive lantern illuminated the ocean beneath them while its Presence spread across the water like suffocating pressure.
"Alright, fish. Let's dance."
The sea beast was a Dominion Beast.
A creature that stood above Apex predators. It had evolved in the waters of the Northern Continent beyond the White Wall either by constantly absorbing the rich flow within its waters or preying on other sea beasts and evolving through consumption. Or both. As such, it was a monster that had crossed the boundary separating instinct from true intellect and unlike lesser beasts, this one understood exactly what Dante was.
The ocean churned violently beneath them. The leviathan attacked.
Its lantern flared—golden light condensed into a beam of searing heat. It swept across the ocean, boiling the water, splitting waves. Dante moved.
He appeared above the beast's head, fist raised. He struck.
BOOM.
The impact sent shockwaves across the leviathan's skull. Cracks spiderwebbed across its bony plating. The beast roared and began changing.
Its colossal angular form compressed unnaturally as flesh folded inward upon itself. Bones cracked. Tendons shrieked. Scales melted like flowing wax.
Within seconds— a humanoid figure was floating in the water. Or something resembling one.
He had pale blue skin covered in shifting coral patterns while algae-like hair floated around his body unnaturally. His lower half remained monstrous, a serpentine aquatic tail stretching deep beneath the ocean surface. Its lantern suspended over its head like a halo and it was still several feet larger than a normal human still, his eyes glowed with predatory hunger.
Dante burst out laughing.
"OHO?Now that's a trick."
The creature tilted its head then spoke.
The Dominion Beast spoke. Its voice was the sound of the deep, of crushing pressure and swallowed light.
"You are small. You are fleeting. I have consumed your kind for centuries."
"And yet you're still hungry?"
The Dominion Beast's Presence exploded outward.
The ocean sank.
Literally.
Water collapsed away from the creature as spiritual pressure crushed downward hard enough to expose portions of the seafloor beneath them. The sky darkened further as countless lesser marine creatures died instantly from exposure to its soul.
Consumption.
That was the essence of the beast. Unlike the Ibex whose essence was Density or the Diredeer which had Gravity this creature's essence was that of consumption. The authority to devour anything weaker and assimilate it into itself.
Matter.
Flow.
Souls.
Even concepts if given enough time.
Dante felt the pressure slam into him like a mountain. Then smiled.
His Trait belonged to the Soulfire Class. It had authority over Equilibrium, Balance and Harmony. And, surprising no one, Dante used them unlike any sane person would. Most Temperance users resembled healers.
Mediators.
Priests.
Dante resembled a beast wearing human skin. Hemoved at supersonic speeds, the claws of energy he had created on his hands and feet striking the beast's pseudohuman form again and again. Each blow created shockwaves that flattened the sea around them. Geysers erupted. Waves rose and fell like mountains.
The beast countered. Its lantern blazed, not with light but with hunger. The water struck by the beams around Dante began to dissolve—not evaporate, but cease. The beast was consuming the sea itself, using its authority over consumption to erase everything within reach. Dante barely managed to avoid a blast though it managed to get some of his clothes. He quickly tore off his sleveless jacket to expose his chest.
'I can't use Accelerate Heal. Would it even work on wounds of this nature? Ah well, its more fun this way.'
Dante's skin began to crystallize.
Anti-Flow surged through his body, hardening his flesh into a crystalline lattice—green, shimmering, impenetrable. Advanced Flow Reinforcement. The beast's consumption scratched against his skin but could not break it.
Dante grinned.
"Nice try."
He raised his hand and pulled.
His first Resonant activated—Perceive. His First Resonant allowed him to perceive equilibrium. He could see imbalance within souls, conflicts, even battlefields themselves.
And right now?
The Dominion Beast was gluttony incarnate, seemingly endless consumption without restraint. A predator so consumed by the need to devour that its soul leaned catastrophically toward excess.
Dante saw the imbalance instantly.
Then he moved.
The sea exploded behind him as he crossed several meters in a blink and punched the beast directly across the face.
Shockwaves ruptured the atmosphere.
The beast flew sideways through the ocean hard enough to split the sea apart while tsunamis erupted outward in every direction. Dante pursued immediately. The beast retaliated faster than expected. Its tail lashed upward and collided against Dante midair.
CRACK.
The impact launched him through multiple waves before he stabilized himself with sheer force.
"Okay," Dante admitted while rubbing his jaw.
"That actually hurt."
The Dominion Beast surfaced again. Its humanoid body distorted further as dozens of mouths opened across its arms and torso simultaneously. Then it screamed. The sound wasn't merely noise,it was Presence weaponized. The surrounding sea life instantly dissolved into bloody slurry as the spiritual pressure consumed everything nearby. Even the ocean currents shifted unnaturally toward the beast in a spiral as all was being devoured.
The Dominion Beast lunged.
Their Presences collided and the ocean exploded downward.
For several seconds neither moved.
The world itself groaned beneath the clash of souls. The Dominion Beast sought to consume him Dante sought to force balance upon it.
His second Resonant activated—Nudge, the ability to move an existence toward balance. He touched the beast's soul. Not to control. To invite. He offered the creature a moment of balance—a taste of satiety, a whisper of enough.
The beast faltered. And in that hesitation Dante slammed both fists downward onto its skull.
BOOM.
The impact created a crater in the ocean itself. Water displaced outward in concentric rings stretching for several hundred meters while the beast crashed into the seafloor. Dante descended after it laughing wildly.
"There you are!"
The creature retaliated instantly. Entire sections of ocean folded upward into colossal jaws formed from water itself. They snapped toward Dante from every direction simultaneously.
Consumption.
Even the sea had become part of its feeding mechanism.
Dante accelerated through them toward the Dominion Beast. It adapted.
Rapidly.
Its humanoid form split apart into multiple smaller versions of itself that attacked simultaneously from different angles. Dante blocked one strike only for another to rip through the crystal armor on his side and draw blood. Dante's grin widened further.
"Oh you're fun."
Dante's third Resonant activated— the ability to neutralize anything his own personal ideals and personality classified as a poison. He reached into the beast's soul and drew out its poison. The endless hunger. The ancient loneliness. The despair of a creature that had consumed everything and found nothing filling. He balanced it with its opposite—the memory of the sea before it was hungry, the quiet contentment of a beast that had once been full. The beast screamed.
Its pseudohuman form wavered, flickered, threatened to collapse. But it did not fall. It was a Dominion Beast. It had survived for years. It would not be broken by a single attack.
The beast expanded.
Its body swelled, returning to its island form, and its maw opened, extending wider than before. A sphere of consumption formed before it, swallowing light, water, sound, and Flow indiscriminately. Dante felt it immediately. It would consume everything—the sea and the very air around them.
If that touched the coastline—
Dante physically had to land on the waters surface and using his Prsesnce as a wall applied his third resonant, push the beast back. The sea beneath him evaporated and His muscles tensed beneath the pressure while Anti-Flow surged violently to neutralize the consumption. The Dominion Beast's overwhelming hunger surfaced completely. Every ounce of its obsession with consumption erupted uncontrollably. Hunger met satiation. Predation met stillness.
Then Dante laughed.
"THAT'S IT!"
But he could feel himself being pushed back.
Dante's smile finally faded.
"Alright."
He expanded his Zone.
It expand for a for several kilometers, large enough to encompass the big fish. Within it, all Flow or rather Anti-Flow was under his control. Thats when he applied his fourth Resonant, the ability to impose his preconcieved Notion of balance, equilibrium and harmony.
Dante then swung his arm sending arcs of Anti-Flow that carved deep gourges into the beasts head. Instantly the beast's hunger flattened. Despite the bleeding wond it had been dealt its rage quieted. Its desire to consume became... irrelevant. For a few seconds, the leviathan felt nothing. No hunger. No fear. No anger. No joy. Just... stillness.
Dante's Zone shrank.
The beast shrank with it—not physically, but spiritually. Its presence compressed. Its hunger subsided. Its island-sized body began to diminish, folding inward as the balance Dante imposed took hold.
He did not kill it.
He contained it.
The beast, once a continent of teeth and hunger, now rested in a ball the size of a snow globe. Dante watched trough the translucent green crystal as it swam around.
"Not bad," he said shaking it gently.
"I'll take you back to the White Wall with the rest of your kin so rest OK?" He grinned.