Chapter 101: The Giant Sea Monster

Seen from the air at night, the cities of the Huaguo nation shone brilliantly, even the second- and third-tier ones.

As for infrastructure, saying the changes across the country had advanced by leaps and bounds over the past decade or so would have been no exaggeration at all.

After skimming past the urban districts, all that lay below was water.

Once he had gone a little farther out to sea, Wu You descended from a higher altitude and tried flying just above the surface.

Spray trailed behind him in a white tail. When he accelerated, the water scattered even higher, yet not a single drop touched him.

After playing around for a while, he headed for the open ocean at top speed.

This time, whatever he created would almost certainly undergo a mortal-to-transcendent metamorphosis, and Wu You did not want to be too close to the coast.

He flew straight ahead in one direction until he reached the Tsushima Strait between Japan and Korea.

Why come here?

It was only because Wu You often found images rising unbidden in his mind of a tentacled monster stretching out of the sea to seize passing ships.

Without thinking, he had come to a region where ships from those two troublesome neighbors traveled back and forth in great numbers.

But even that was only a casual choice of direction in his thoughts. He had no intention of trying some scene where a ship got overturned.

Since he was already here, it was only a matter of location, after all.

He summoned Ao Guang and descended underwater together with him. Sitting on a reef on the seabed, wrapped in a water curtain bubble, Ao Guang loosely coiled around Wu You, placing both Wu You and the reef at the center.

At the threshold of creating a new lifeform, he took the drawing board from his chest and seemed a little hesitant.

In truth, Wu You very much wanted to create one of the images on it: the evil god known as Cthulhu, lord of the ancient ones.

But the problem was that something of that magnitude could already be called a god, or something very close to one.

Even if the thing he created reached silver rank, what right would it have to be called Cthulhu?

After thinking it over, he decided to create this one instead, and glanced at the picture on the first page.

He opened the system and selected tier-three alchemy.

From the material vault, he chose an extra-large giant squid, a venomous dog-mouthed sea snake, a disgustingly ugly shipworm, and a shark with a ferocious bite.

When the alchemy board with its black-water background appeared, Wu You took out a specially prepared medicinal gauze bandage, already coated with a measured amount of Life-Restoring Continuation Ointment.

He wound the bandage around his head like an Arab, then focused his consciousness on the alchemy board.

This would be a colossal sea monster.

It possessed an enormous number of tentacles, each thick and powerful. It was not a simple invertebrate; at the core of every tentacle lay a softened, spine-like skeleton.

Along the length of each tentacle, from tip to end, there were faintly visible suckers and strange little shells. They could not only pierce or cut through ship planks and other metals with ease, but also release toxins.

And at the tip of every tentacle, the mouth could open wide like a gaping maw, bristling with sharp barbs.

This inspiration came from a film called The Abyss.

At the center of its body, of course, there would be a giant head, its mouth filled with teeth even sharper than a shark's, able to tear apart and swallow any prey that interested it, and to spray forth in an instant a pitch-black substance that would stain a vast stretch of sea and sky.

Every sensory organ all over its body would be extremely sensitive to the smell of blood, to all kinds of odors, and to the rhythms of the ocean.

When it was enraged, the sea would shake; when it went out to sea, great ships would overturn.

As the image took shape, the monster gradually grew clearer and more vivid, not only fitting certain traits of myth and legend, but also incorporating some of Wu You's own ideas.

A headache could not be avoided. Fortunately, it did not become too severe, and it entered a tug-of-war with the healing and recovery speed of the Life-Restoring Continuation Ointment.

Under those conditions, the final stroke at last completed the monster on the alchemy board.

Even if it existed only on the alchemy board, Wu You was certain that anyone with thalassophobia would never want to see it.

System evaluation: body arrangement rationality, 76%; alchemy success rate increased by 7.6%.

Current success rate: 50% + 10% will resonance + 7.6%.

Proceed with alchemy?

This alchemy did not bring that unmistakable feeling of inevitable success, but the success rate was still considerable.

Enduring waves of faint, needle-like pain in his head, Wu You chose to confirm the alchemy.

The four animals in the material vault turned into streams of light and entered the alchemy board.

Wu You watched the changes on it with some anticipation.

It had been a long time since he had felt this slight unease.

From within the sea monster on the board, the growing flesh and bones emitted sounds like taut ropes drawing tight, and the three-dimensional form that had only possessed a sense of image slowly became more solid and alive.

After more than ten seconds, the writhing, rolling tentacles were already dancing furiously up and down within the alchemy board, while the mouth lined with fangs issued a silent roar.

By this point, it was basically certain the creation had succeeded, and there was no need to waste the materials. Wu You finally let his heart settle.

Prompt: Alchemy successful. Please name your creation.

He had long since decided on a name.

Choose name: Giant Demon Sea Monster, Kraken

Alchemical lifeform: Giant Demon Sea Monster, name: Kraken

Traits: immense strength, concealed breath, water-controlling sea tide

Abilities: entangling coils, severing, poisonous contamination

Base rating: Bronze advanced, critical

System description: This is a sea monster on the verge of rising above the mortal world.

Wu You merely glanced at the sea monster's attributes and immediately chose to summon it, since the attribute panel would change momentarily anyway.

On the seabed, a colossal sea monster at least a hundred meters long appeared before Wu You, waving countless tentacles.

It had not yet reached silver rank, but its body was already much larger than Ao Guang's.

More precisely, if several of its tentacles were bound together, they would be about the same size as Ao Guang.

Prompt: Critical exotic beast, Giant Demon Sea Monster Kraken, about to transcend mortality. Natural energy tempering has begun.

At the sound of that prompt, Wu You said nothing. He simply grabbed one of Ao Guang's bony spines and ordered Ao Guang to carry him as fast as possible toward deeper waters.

And the moment he left, upheaval had already begun on the seabed.

The ocean floor in that region seemed to be being violently stirred by a colossal staff pinning down the sea.

Boundless seawater converged from all directions, churning and racing around the giant demon sea monster's body.

The sea rolled everywhere, and the whirlpools beneath the water spread to within dozens of kilometers of the monster.

It was as though the seabed had begun to boil.

And compared with the disturbance below, the turmoil on the surface was even more astonishing.

The wind above the sea was not strong, yet the waves were unimaginably huge, while dull thunderous rumbles kept rising from the ocean depths.

This raging surge of the sea lasted for more than twenty minutes.

After a series of violent booming shocks, several thick, enormous, sky-splitting tentacles burst from the seabed and shot through the surface, then came crashing down hard upon the sea.

Wu You was far away beneath the sea, hidden under the water curtain.

He was certainly delighted by the system's message that Kraken had successfully transcended mortality.

But at this moment, he was also seeing through Kraken's eyes the consequences of the immense energy reaction caused by the final stage of its evolution.

This accident was not something Kraken itself had caused.

Two towering tsunamis were surging at astonishing speed toward both sides of the energy reaction's center.

No, they could no longer even be called giant waves.

They were tsunamis.