raknovel Chapter 207: Grim Has Grown... Not Literally, Obviously (1)
Chapter 207: Grim Has Grown... Not Literally, Obviously (1)
[Three Currents Trench — Day 21]
The Trench did not announce itself.
There was no change in the water’s color, no visible sign on the horizon.
Only the moment when the boat crossed the invisible line between the normal ocean and something that was not — and the three Fragments on Alex’s chest responded at the same time.
[F1 Corruption: 95.5% → 96%]
[F4 Corruption: 64.5% → 65.5%]
[F5 Corruption: 24% → 26.5%]
Three points distributed among the three in two seconds.
Without Alex doing anything.
"I feel it," said Alex.
"I know." Seraph beside him. "Don’t activate them. Just let them be."
"They’re rising on their own."
"I know. Let them."
---
The Trench’s energy field was visible now that they were inside — not with the eyes, but on the spiritual plane.
Emily at the stern with her eyes closed and the expression of someone processing too much noise at once.
"It’s like the deepest layer of the ocean," said Emily. "But concentrated. The three currents bring spiritual signatures from three different directions and converge here." She opened her eyes. "The Trench’s spiritual plane is saturated."
"Can you work with that?" asked Seraph.
"Yes. But it’s going to cost more than in open water."
Maya in the crow’s nest with Kira — both mapping the Trench with Predator’s Sense and the maps simultaneously.
"The northern current drops the temperature three degrees within a fifty‑meter radius," said Kira. "The southern one creates a countercurrent on the right flank. If we keep the bow oriented east—"
She stopped.
"Kira," said Maya quietly.
"I see it."
---
At the center of the Trench, two hundred meters from the boat, the water moved differently.
Not the currents — something beneath the currents. A slow circular movement, like water swirling around something very large that was breathing at the bottom.
[Soul Sight — active]
Alex read the signature.
It was ancient. Older than any creature he had faced on land. The spiritual signature of something that had been at the bottom of the Trench long enough for the three currents’ energy field to have integrated into its biology.
[Creature detected — SS rank]
[Estimated HP: 890,000]
[Status: territorial — radius active]
"It saw us," said Alex.
The water beneath the boat trembled.
And the Abyss Hydra emerged.
---
Seven heads.
Not in a line — distributed in an arc, each with its own fifteen‑meter neck emerging from the water with the sound of tons of ocean being displaced at once.
Black scales with veins of dark‑blue bioluminescent energy — the Trench’s field integrated into every plate of its body.
Its eyes without pupils, white, orienting toward the boat with the slowness of something that was in no hurry because nothing within its radius had been a threat for a very long time.
The boat was a wooden splinter compared to that.
"Everyone on deck!" shouted Max.
---
[Abyss Hydra HP: 890,000]
The first head struck.
Not at the boat — at the water beside the boat. The impact wave lifted the hull two meters and dropped it.
Everyone on the team lost their balance. Maya grabbed the mast. Kira used the momentum to reach the crow’s nest. Raven at the railing with her hands on the wood, not moving.
"Formation!" said Seraph.
The team responded without needing further instruction.
---
Raven first.
[Army of Bones — marine skeletons — 24 units — activated]
The twenty‑four sea creature skeletons she had built since the Port of Sands emerged from the water simultaneously — the B‑ and C‑rank ones on the flanks, the A‑rank ones from the Storm Eel’s spinal column in the center. Not to kill the Hydra. To occupy heads.
Four heads oriented toward the skeletons.
Three remained free for the boat.
"Kira!"
---
Kira in the crow’s nest with her bow at the ready.
[Predator’s Sense — combat mode — active]
The seven heads on the reading plane — each neck‑to‑body joint mapped in real time. The scale armor was dense on the body, but at the joints there was a three‑centimeter gap where the bioluminescence was brighter. Living tissue. No protective scales.
Three centimeters at a distance of one hundred fifty meters with the boat moving.
First arrow — maritime, enchanted, trajectory compensated for the northern current.
Head three took the arrow in the left joint point.
[Abyss Hydra — head 3 — joint damage: 12,400]
[HP: 890,000 → 877,600]
Head three oriented toward Kira.
Second arrow before it finished turning.
[Damage: 14,200]
[HP: 877,600 → 863,400]
---
Maya with Akari.
"Akari. True form."
[Akari — true form activated]
The nine‑tailed fox in true form was different from how she appeared during rest moments — three meters tall, white fur with all nine tails extended, radiating the energy of a guardian spirit, her golden eyes carrying the weight of something very old looking at the Hydra without the curiosity with which she looked at everything else.
Akari was not an attack creature.
She was a barrier.
The three center tails formed an energy wall between the boat and head one — which had ignored Raven’s skeletons and remained oriented toward the hull. The head’s impact against Akari’s barrier produced a sound that was not an explosion but a crushing — the Hydra’s energy against the guardian spirit’s energy canceling each other at the contact point.
Head one recoiled.
[Akari — barrier — damage absorbed: 45,000]
"Raven, head one!" shouted Maya.
---
Raven oriented three A‑rank skeletons toward head one as it recoiled — the moment of disorientation after the impact with Akari was the only moment when the joint points were exposed from below.
The three skeletons attacked the joint point from the water.
The living tissue responded to the damage. Head one partially submerged — the instinctive reaction of pulling away what hurt toward the only place where there was no immediate threat.
[Head 1 — lower joint point — damage: 28,000]
[HP: 863,400 → 835,400]
---
Emily at the stern.
[Purifying Light — spiritual interference mode — active]
The same technique she had used against the Void Sharks — but the Hydra was not a pack with a shared frequency. It was an individual creature with seven consciousness centers connected to the same core.
Emily read the Hydra’s spiritual plane for fifteen seconds.
The core was in the submerged body. The seven heads were extensions of the core — not independent, but with enough autonomy to operate separately. Spiritual interference at the core would slow coordination between heads.
It wouldn’t stop them.
But a one‑second delay in the Hydra’s response was enough for Kira.
[Purifying Light — core interference — active]
[Abyss Hydra — coordination: -30% for 8 seconds]
"Kira, eight seconds!" shouted Emily.
Four arrows in eight seconds.
[Head 2 — damage: 15,800]
[Head 4 — damage: 16,400]
[Head 5 — damage: 14,900]
[Head 6 — damage: 17,200]
[HP: 835,400 → 770,100]
---
Alex with Seraph.
[F1 — 30% — active]
[F4 — 30% — active]
The Trench’s field pushed both Fragments upward. Corruption rose at a rate that was not like training but like something responding to the field’s energy without Alex ordering it.
[F1 Corruption: 96% → 96.4%]
[F4 Corruption: 65.5% → 66%]
"Thirty," said Seraph beside him. Not shouting it. With the specific cadence of someone giving an instruction she knew she would have to repeat.
Alex brought them back down to thirty.
Head seven — which had been attacking Raven’s skeletons on the left flank — turned toward Alex. Soul Sight was an active spiritual signature, and the Hydra could read it.
Head seven lunged toward the deck.
Alex cut with F1’s scythe.
The spectral edge met the neck eight meters up — not the joint, the neck. The scale resisted. The scythe cut but not deep.
[Head 7 — surface damage: 8,400]
[HP: 770,100 → 761,700]
Head seven did not recoil. It kept coming toward Alex.
"Thirty!" said Seraph.
[F1 Corruption: 96.4% → 96.9%]
Alex brought it down.
F4’s scythe this time — the dark violet plane cutting not the scale but the bioluminescent tissue in the neck.
[Head 7 — living tissue damage: 22,800]
[HP: 761,700 → 738,900]
---
Twenty minutes in.
[HP: 738,900]
The Hydra had lost seventy percent of coordination between heads — Emily’s interference plus the accumulated damage to the joint points beginning to disconnect the most damaged heads from the core.
Head three — the one Kira had attacked first — was operating at half speed. The left joint point had four maritime arrows still embedded in the tissue, each with its enchantment active, passive damage accumulating per second.
[Head 3 — passive enchantment damage: 1,200/sec]
Raven oriented eight skeletons toward head three.
Head three tried to submerge — the instinctive response. The marine skeletons followed it down to eight meters.
There was no retreat in Raven’s ocean.
[Head 3 — combined damage: 34,500]
[HP: 738,900 → 704,400]
---
That was when.
**"Master."**
Alex cutting head seven back.
"What."
**"Let me."**
Alex looked at him.
Grim on his shoulder — the 80cm form, the full crimson flames, the double‑bladed scythe appearing in his hands without Alex having seen him summon it in weeks.
**"Just one head."** His flames. **"Head three. It’s already separated from the core. You already damaged it. It just needs the final blow."**
Alex looked at head three — forty meters away, with Raven’s skeletons holding it, Kira’s arrows in its tissue, the joint point exposed.
Grim was right.
It was alone.
"Go," said Alex.
---
Grim leaped from the boat.
He didn’t fall — he oriented himself on the ocean’s spiritual plane with the same ease with which F4 had learned to use it as propulsion, the double‑bladed scythe active, the crimson flames in his eyes without the 80cm filter but full, real, the original Harvester in his small skeleton form moving over the water toward head three with the speed of something that had been exactly this for eons.
[Grim — active combat]
[Grim HP: 170,000]
Head three saw him coming.
It oriented toward him.
Grim didn’t dodge.
The double‑bladed scythe cut the right joint point at the moment the head oriented — the Hydra’s own movement amplifying the cut, the blade finding the exposed living tissue at the exact angle where Kira had already created the opening.
[Head 3 — right joint point — damage: 89,000]
Head three separated from the body.
It fell into the ocean with the sound of twenty tons hitting the water.
[HP: 704,400 → 615,400]
---
Grim didn’t celebrate.
He oriented toward head six — which was still operational, which Kira hadn’t been able to finish because head seven had kept her busy.
The crimson flames on head six.
**"Next."**
---
Alex watching Grim in the water.
[Grim HP: 170,000 → 158,000 — damage from Trench’s energy field]
*170,000 HP,* Alex thought. *Two weeks ago he had 28,000.*
*When did it go up?*
[System — Grim HP: 170,000 — increase due to bond with 3 active Fragments in bearer]
Three Fragments.
Grim responded to the Fragments in the bearer. One gave him 28,000 HP. Three gave him 170,000.
Alex looked at the three points of light on his chest.
*Every Fragment I gain is also Grim,* he understood.
"Seraph."
"I saw it," said Seraph. "Later." Her eyes on the Hydra. "Now finish this."