novelnext Chapter 851: The Woman Beneath the Tide
Chapter 851: The Woman Beneath the Tide
Asmodeus didn’t move at first because he was trying to understand the situation.
The tunnel dripped around them, each drop striking the black water with a hollow plip, plip, plip that echoed far deeper than it should have. Behind the woman-like abomination, countless small eyes remained open in the darkness, but none of the spawn rushed forward anymore.
They all just watched, making little squeaks as if overjoyed.
Axiom throbbed inside his hand, eager and impatient to devour the monster before him, but Asmodeus tightened his grip until the vibration dulled.
"Who are you talking to?"
The creature’s head tilted.
Several eyes along her shoulder blinked shut, while the two on her face remained fixed on him. They were strange eyes. Pale, inhuman, and yet filled with too much wisdom and emotion to belong to a newborn monster.
After marrying Lumina, his hatred for female monsters faded.
Rather, he found them quite alluring and exotic.
"You said..." Her lips trembled, struggling with the words. "You said you would come back before the tides dried up."
Asmodeus frowned.
"I have never met you."
Her fingers twitched beside his cheeks as she frowned, then when she moved closer, he didn’t avoid her this time. He hadn’t started trusting her yet. It was just because something wasn’t right, if the Leviathan wasn’t a complete monster... maybe they could "talk it out."
The stench of rot and slime that filled the tunnel started to fade, replaced by a rather sweet, pleasant aroma with hints of salt, old flowers, and rain. A memory that wasn’t his brushed the edge of his mind. A woman standing alone on a black shore.
She reached out, unable to move as her body fused with a strange stone, then someone walked away, ignoring her outstretched hand.
Asmodeus’ eyes sharpened.
’A memory?’
The creature’s fingertips finally touched his cheek.
A cold, yet comfortable feeling spread from her strange webbed fingers while her mouth curved into something resembling a smile, though the expression sat poorly on her face, because she wasn’t quite human.
"You’re warm," she whispered. "He was warm too."
"He?"
The water around her tail rippled.
"My sun."
The words came out a little broken and childish, but sounded almost tender. Then her expression twisted with sudden confusion, as if another person had forced itself through her skull.
"No... no, he threw me away. He took one look at me after I did everything he asked... I even betrayed Luna..."
’Wait...’
There was an unsettling feeling in his stomach when he thought of who the sun might refer to... an annoying little abyssal from the empire.
Asmodeus stayed silent.
Outside the tunnel, distant shouting continued near the harbour, but the monsters inside no longer cried. Even the sacs on the walls pulsated more slowly, responding to her grief like a heartbeat spreading through the canal.
"So you are not Leviathan," Asmodeus said quietly.
The woman blinked.
Then laughed.
A soft, wet, miserable sound before her figure started to adjust and became more human... at first a little too plump, but eventually she resembled a familiar eastern-style woman.
"Silly, Leviathan is dead... why do you think I was forced to become like this?"
Her hand slid from his cheek to his jaw, trembling.
"I am like this... so it cannot return."
"Eh... then what about the black fluid that’s causing everyone to suffer?"
The woman blinked several times, as if the question confused her.
Then her gaze drifted down toward the black water pooling around Asmodeus’ boots.
"That?" she whispered.
Her fingers slipped away from his jaw, trailing cold droplets across his skin before falling limp at her side. The small spawn behind her creaked, but none approached. They curled around the walls and ceiling like frightened animals hiding behind their mother.
"It leaks when I sleep for too long... but this time I think something happened to my body..."
"What do you mean?" Asmodeus snapped back before she shuddered and turned to him with an adorable expression.
"... I cannot feel the main body’s existence anymore..."
Asmodeus stared at her for a long moment.
The strange woman lowered her head, touching her own chest as if searching for something beneath the scales and slime. Despite her grotesque form, the gesture was oddly human. Fragile, even.
"You’re saying this body isn’t real?"
"It is real," she mumbled, puffing her cheeks slightly. "How rude. But it is not the main one."
"That doesn’t explain anything."
"Mmm..." She frowned seriously, as if trying to organise thoughts that had been scattered by centuries of sleep. "Think of me as... her dream. No, her voice? Her heart? Ah, words are annoying."
Asmodeus’ eyebrow twitched.
"You sound less like an ancient Abyssal and more like a troublesome woman who just woke up from a nap."
Her pale eyes widened.
Then she smiled.
"That sounds closer."
The small spawn behind her squeaked happily, as though pleased she had been understood.
Asmodeus glanced at them.
"Are those yours?"
"They came from the leaking mana." She looked embarrassed, rubbing one webbed finger against her cheek. "I did not make them on purpose."
"You accidentally filled Baltimore’s canals with monsters?"
"...A little."
"That is not a little."
Her shoulders drooped.
"I was sleeping. Something disturbed the main body, and then I woke here. When I opened my eyes, these little ones were already crying." The spawn all crowded behind her like children hiding behind their mother’s skirt.
Asmodeus sighed.
"So you’re not attacking the city."
"No." She shook her head. "I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just... woke up and felt hungry, lonely, and confused."
"You have many wives, yes?"
Asmodeus paused.
"What does that have to do with this?"
"You smell like many women." She leaned closer, sniffing lightly near his collar. "Warm women. Happy women. Angry women. One smells like a fox. One smells like the sea. One smells like tea, and there is one that hides a very scary blade... but most of all... You smelled like Luna! So I came to you!"
The woman giggled softly, the sound much more natural now. Her face had changed further, becoming less like a monster wearing a woman’s shape and more like a woman trapped inside a monster’s body. Her black hair still dripped like seaweed, but her eyes carried curiosity rather than hunger.
"My sun had many promises," she whispered. "But no wives. Maybe that is why he was so bad at keeping them."
Asmodeus watched her carefully.
"Your sun is the one who abandoned you?"
"Mhm." Her smile faded, but only slightly. "I loved him. He said I was special. He said only I could become the seal. He said he would return after everything ended."
"And he didn’t."
"No." She touched Asmodeus’ cheek again, gently this time. "But you came instead."
"I came because your little accidents are eating horses."
"Ah..."
She looked genuinely guilty.
"I am sorry about the horse."
"That’s not the main issue."
"I am sorry about the people too... let me help now... these little things should be purifying the air, but because of what happened to the main body, they’re filled with the corruptive essence of the Leviathan... Hey! Your weapon can eat that bad stuff, right?"
She pointed to Axiom.
Asmodeus glanced down at the halberd in his hand, and he could feel Axiom pulsing happily.
"...It can," he said. "But it also tends to get carried away."
The woman blinked.
"Like you?"
"Don’t compare me to my weapon."
"But it feels similar."
Axiom hummed louder, as if offended by both of them.
Asmodeus sighed and lowered the blade toward one of the small Leviathan spawn clinging to the tunnel wall. The creature squeaked and trembled, countless pale eyes blinking at him in terror.
"Hold still."
"Kii..."
"I said hold still, not look pitiful."
The woman crouched beside it, gently placing her webbed hand over its slick head. Her voice softened into a strange, melodic murmur, not quite song and not quite speech.
"It’s okay. He won’t hurt you. Probably."
The little baby made a cute noise before she held it up to Asmodeus, "Please purify this little one, he is only like this because of the curse."
Asmodeus clicked his tongue but placed Axiom’s edge near the tiny creature’s back.
The moment the blade touched the black slime coating its body, a thin stream of corrupted abyssal energy peeled away like smoke being drawn into a lantern. Axiom drank greedily, but Asmodeus kept his mana wrapped tight around the weapon, forcing it to take only the poison.
Not the life beneath.
The small spawn convulsed once.
Then its black flesh began to change.
The oily surface thinned, revealing deep blue scales beneath. Its countless eyes closed one by one, leaving only two larger, rounder eyes near its face. The four-fold mouth sealed into something less horrifying, still strange, but no longer like a nightmare given teeth.
It chirped again.
This time, the sound was softer.
It was almost as cute as the little thing, now resembling an octopus or squid.
The woman’s eyes brightened.
"See? That is what they should be."
Asmodeus stared at the little creature now rubbing its head against her palm.
"...This thing was supposed to purify air?"
"And water," she said proudly. "They eat bad mana, poison, rot, and sickness! Almost anything that can be harmful to humans and the wildlife... but Leviathan’s essence made them sick, and because my body is strange, they lost control."
"They can eat poison? What about disease and sickness?"
"Mhm!" She nodded, looking pleased that he understood. "I made them long ago because humans kept throwing garbage into the sea in my previous world... ah, previous worlds are—"
"I know, we’re both from Earth."
"OOOOH!?"
But he still paused for a moment and had to ask again.
"You created these abyssal cleaners because people polluted the ocean?"
"Yes~ I did!"
"That is somehow reasonable and insane at the same time."
She smiled.
"Thank you."
"That wasn’t praise."
"It felt like praise."
Axiom pulsed again, pulling at the corruption still lingering in the tunnel. The other small spawn squeaked nervously, but after seeing the first one survive, they began creeping closer, one by one.
Asmodeus looked at them.
Then at the endless sacs covering the canal walls.
Then back at the woman.
"This will take too long."
She tilted her head.
"Can’t you make the weapon bigger?"
"That’s not how weapons work."
Still, the idea wasn’t completely foolish.
Asmodeus planted Axiom’s blade into the canal floor.
Black water rippled outward.
He released a controlled thread of mana through the weapon, not a killing wave, not a devouring storm, but a net. Thin lines of black, gold, and white spread across the tunnel floor, climbing the walls and brushing against the sacs, the slime, the spawn, and the corrupted vapour.
Axiom trembled violently.
"Behave."
The halberd gave one sharp pulse.
"I mean it."
The woman watched him with open fascination.
The first wave of corruption began peeling away.
The tunnel filled with hissing sounds as black sludge thinned and curled into vapour. The sacs shrivelled, but instead of bursting, they softened and collapsed harmlessly. Several small spawn dropped from the walls with wet plops, twitching as their twisted bodies slowly returned to cleaner forms.
Outside the tunnel, Paul’s voice echoed faintly.
"Your Majesty! The water is clearing near the entrance!"
"Good!" Asmodeus shouted back. "Tell the priests not to burn anything yet!"
There was a pause.
"...Yet?!"
"Just do it!"
The woman giggled behind her hand.
"You have funny friends."
The woman’s smile faded slightly.
"I’m sorry."
Asmodeus glanced at her.
She looked down at the clear water, her expression gentle and embarrassed, as though she had spilt tea across someone’s expensive carpet rather than nearly infected an entire port city.
"I didn’t want to hurt them," she said quietly. "When I was human, I hated seeing people suffer."
"You remember being human?"
"Pieces." Her fingers touched her lips. "Warm rice. Red leaves. My sister is brushing my hair before school starts. A man smiling at me beneath a sunlit gate... but they are so blurry and distant. I must’ve been sleeping for a long...long time."
Her smile felt almost fleeting as she turned away.
"But Luna is still here... I’m so glad..."