The ocean split.
A mountain of shifting coral, chitin, and blade-shells rose from the abyss like the dead crown of a forgotten god. Saltwater poured in waterfalls from its barnacled spire. Molten-gold eyes blinked awake—massive, full of ancient hunger.
The Spire Coral Blade Crab.
It wasn't just a sea beast. It was a landscape. A wandering fortress of reef-grown armor and volcanic muscle. The Crimson Typhoon heaved under the monster's wake!
Deckhands screamed.
"Ash, get back to the ship!" bellowed Captain Riggs from the helm.
But I didn't listen. I was already sprinting—toward the beast. Vestigium qi surged through my limbs, purple lightning veining across my skin. My hammer, Jawbreaker, pulsed with stored battle intent, humming like a barely leashed storm. The crab shrieked—a deep, metal-rending sound that cracked the air and scattered seabirds in flocks.
I launched off the Typhoon and landed on the crab's outer shell, and rolled into a sprint across its back, using curved barnacle ridges as footholds. Coral blade protrusions jutted like broken teeth from the shell's ridges, turning the creature into a labyrinth of slashing stone.
Every step was a risk. Every inhale and exhale fueled with sacred breath. But I was already in flow, this felt great after being aboard the ship for so long, and of course this was my first real battle since the forward war forge, I had rust I needed to knock loose.
"Come on, monster," I growled. "Look at me. Forget the ship. Fight me." The Spire Crab turned—massive eyes glowing brighter.
One titanic blade-limb rose, scraping the clouds, and came down in a blur of destruction.
BOOOOOM!
I barely dodged, leaping clear as a crater exploded in the shell beside me. Shards of coral skittered like shrapnel. Lightning flashed in my fists. My grin split open.
From the deck of the Typhoon, Captain Riggs snarled, eye locked on the battle, he puffed from his pipe furiously.
"He's drawing it away from the ship," Riggs said. "Damn fool's buying us a window."
"But we can't leave him!" Kippa cried. "We're not. We hold here. And we see what becomes of the lad." Out of the crew's sight, deep in the shadowed side of the crab's shell, a ripple passed through my mental and spiritual dantian. A red tendril slithered up from my spine.
Then another. Then dozens, spiraling outward from my back like slick ribbons of arterial silk. They twisted upward—weaving, knotting, converging.
A figure formed: Felicity.
Her new body shimmered like semi-molten rubies, wrapped in threads of centipede armor chitin!
She had veined muscles and a halo of blood solar mist.
Her eyes were pink fire, her grin jagged elegance.
"Play time~," she cooed, stepping barefoot across the crab's cracked razor sharp coral like it was a ballroom floor. She extended one hand—
Her palm split open into a grotesque marrow maw, spiraling with earth and decay qi.
"Putrefaction Marrow!"
The air stilled.
Then the technique triggered.
A burst of rotting animus blasted out from her hand like a viral storm!
It was corrosive decay qi with earth overtones. I gasped, "Thats! Thats a defensive debuff art!"
The crab's armor bubbled, its reef structure blackened, and its chi-shell cracked in spiderweb patterns! Its shriek this time was pained. Not angry. Not territorial. Wounded.
I spun as Felicity grinned behind me.
"Armor's down, my snack." My eyes glowed bright violet. Lightning surged up in my arm, coiling in spirals of crackling animus. I planted my feet. And focused my breath.
And drove my open palm forward.
"Crackling Purple Lightning Palm Strike!"
The world tilted.
KRA-KOOOOOOM!!!
The impact hit like a thunderclap forged in a storm god's heart. Purple lightning speared into the crab's exposed underplate, bursting through weakened tissue and flooding its nervous core with searing animus. The monster spasmed—limbs flailing. Entire coral structures shattered off its back.
One final pulse.
Then it began to list sideways, shrieking, toppling, falling…
SPLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURCH!
Silence followed.
Then came the cheers from the Crimson Typhoon, distant but echoing. Sailors whooped. Kippa screamed.
"HE DID IT! ASH DID IT!"
On the deck, Captain Riggs didn't cheer. He stared. One hand tightening on the wheel.
His voice, soft, grave:
"Boy's not just strong. He's got a gotdamn monster walking with him."
Back on the slick remains of the crab's ruined shell, I exhaled, shoulder twitching. Felicity hovered behind me she leaned close and whispered, "I like what we are becoming."
I smiled without turning.
"Good. Because I think the gods just noticed."
The waters still trembled with the aftershocks of the Spire Coral Blade Crab's fall.
Its titanic corpse bobbed half-submerged—an island of broken reef flesh, blade-shell ridges, and blackened wounds from Felicity's marrow attack and my vestigium palm strike.
A plume of steam hissed from its cooking flesh, not all together unpleasant. From the bridge of the Crimson Typhoon, Captain Riggs stood steady, one boot braced on the compass housing. His coat flapped in the post-battle wind.
"All sails reverse," he barked. "Bring her about! That bastard's corpse is worth a bloody kingdom!"
"Aye!" Kippa shouted from the lines. "We claimin' salvage?"
"No." Riggs' smile was all pirate. All instinct. "We're harvesting."
Ropes were unfurled. Hooks prepared. The Typhoon veered wide, curling back toward the floating crab body with disciplined haste. On the carcass, I stood with Felicity, breath steadying.
"Felicity, I need you to retrieve this crab's crystal."
Her eyes burned pink, her tongue ran along her lip.
"I can do that but it's going to cost you."
I nodded once.
"The defensive beast crystal, should be embedded near or around its heart nerve cluster. Go get it."
Felicity grinned, all teeth and devotion.
"As you command, Master."
She poured downward, her body unraveling into slender tendrils, her form thinning into ribbons of wet crimson light. She threaded through a gash in the creature's side and descended into its inner labyrinth. Inside the beast's body, Felicity moved like a blood-borne whisper, navigating through collapsing muscle and cauterized flesh. Her senses attuned to decay, she followed the remaining pulses of lifeforce like sonar echoes through an ocean of dying flesh. She found the heart chamber—what remained of it.
It was a vaulted, ribbed sanctuary of calcified stone, lined in moss coral veins, still twitching in postmortem reflex.
At the center: a coiled core of glowing chitin, wrapped around an obsidian cluster shot through with amber veins.
The defensive beast crystal. It pulsed with defensive chi so dense it warped the flesh around it—mutated the crab's tissues into shield-like organs.
"Mine," Felicity purred. She wrapped her phage tendrils around it, absorbing ambient resistance qi as she went. But the crystal resisted—surrounded by auto-defense runes, like a dying immune system. It lashed back with a burst of bone-hard pressure—
THRUMM!
Felicity shuddered. Her body boiled at the edges—but her new Solar Flesh Fusing technique activated.
Her tissues re-knit under fire. She bit down—literally—and tore the crystal free. As she did, the surrounding chamber collapsed. The body of the crab gave one final shudder! Felicity giggled, "Ohoho did that feel good?" Felicity surged back toward the entry wound, emerging in a torrent of blood-thread and crimson breath, the crystal cradled in a chest-silk cocoon. She landed beside me and re-formed, standing proud, chin high. "For you, Master" she whispered, holding it out like an offering.
I took the crystal. Its aura hit me like a sledgehammer of qi—defensive pressure, ancient, stubborn, immense. With this water affinity beast crystal I could establish and cultivate a defensive foundation. I glanced up at the approaching Crimson Typhoon. Sailors hung over the rails, jaws slack.
I tucked the crystal into the spirit bracelet. "I suppose they'll want to harvest this beast now, great." Felicity leaned in close, her smile barely contained. "But look at all this crab meat Ash! Waste not want not."
The great corpse of the Spire coral blade crab drifted like a mangled island, its shell steaming. Massive blade limbs jutted toward the sky, and the air was thick with ammonia, blood mist, and the scent of scorched reef-meat. Beside me, Felicity began to stir.
But not upward.
Downward.
She fell to all fours, her hair spilling forward as her shoulder blades cracked outward with blooming marrow-bone ridges. Her eyes glowed pink. A hunger overtook her features—not bestial, but ritualistic. She leaned over a breach in the crab's plated flesh. The meat was still hot and sizzling.
She bit.
And ripped.
Wet strings of coral-rich muscle coiled from her lips as she chewed, swallowed, and dug deeper with long, serrated finger-spikes that had grown in place of her nails. Her animus flared and darkened, spiraling like an inverted lotus as she consumed not just flesh, but essence. "Sea essence crustacean marrow," she moaned, face flushed, veins burning with azure and gold. "This thing's full of hardened bio-shell protein, and reef essence.
It's like eating a dragon crab that died cursing the sea."
I just watched.
Expression unreadable, though my vestigium flared subtly in protection—not from her, but for her, anchoring her surge. That was when the crew arrived. Ropes lashed down. Grappling lines were tossed. Hooks dug into natural ledges as sailors climbed aboard the crab's upper shell, hauling gear, saws, barrels, and storage rigs.
"By the ocean gods trident…" Kippa gasped, her boots slipping on blood-slick carapace. "It's big enough to feed a fleet."
Riggs was already barking orders.
"Start with the spire horns—those horns will fetch a king's ransom in any rare ingredient-market.
Watch for acidic pouches!"
But then the crew saw her.
Felicity.
Down on all fours, waist-deep in the crab's opened side, hunched like some silk-draped carrion god.
Her back arched. Muscles rippling.
Veins glowing.
She tore off another chunk of reef meat and ate it raw, strands of white twitching tissue still sizzling with defense qi.
The sailors froze.
One dropped his gutting knife.
Another made a warding sign with his hands.
"Is that… is she one of ours?" a young swab whispered.
"She came outta Ash, I saw it," said another, wide-eyed. "Like a red spider made of lightning and silk."
"Saints preserve us," muttered Bosun Garl. "That's not a woman. That's a curse with teeth."
I finally turned toward them. "She's with me," I said, voice firm. "She's cultivating. Let her be."
None argued. None dared. But every eye kept drifting back to Felicity as she fed. Her movements were too elegant for a beast, yet too unnatural for a human.
At times her limbs distorted—elongated, bent wrong, shimmered with glyph-haloes as she metabolized the beast's defenses into her own frame.
Inside, her cultivation surged. Her meridian gates opening, allowing for a greater expression of life force energy, or qi, which she used to condense into more blood animus.
Solar Flesh Fusing techniques activated again, layering new resistance into her silver membrane skin.
The Putrefaction Marrow deepened, gaining a sub-trait: Shell rot fangs – "Allows bite-based attacks to compromise defensive formations and reinforce her host's nerve impulse speed."
Her centipede Juggernaut core grew to tier 2!
Her earth based chitinous juggernaut armor enhanced and thickened over her lithe silver body. I laughed, "You're a silver-bug girl" Realizing I was finally looking at Felicity in the flesh. She laughed through a mouthful of steaming crab meat.
"Delicious~! Even the way it died left flavor."
Captain Riggs watched her for a long moment. Then he pulled his coat tighter, jaw tense. "She's not mortal. Not pirate. Not cultist. She's other kin."
I turned away from the murmurs and crouched beside Felicity, placing a firm hand on her shoulder. "That's enough for now."
Felicity shivered once. The feeding slowed. Her body began to stitch itself closed—fangs receding, limbs smoothing, hair coiling back into feminine curves.
She turned to me, her face flushed, eyes soft. "You always stop me right when I'm having fun."
I smirked, standing. "Fun later. Right now, we harvest." Felicity stood as well—clean despite the carnage and gore, she walked past the sailors without a word.
Every single one stepped out of her way.