Just like Behemoth, Leviathan's very existence alone was enough to change—...
No — to permanently "destroy" a part of this world.
The Overlord of the Land had left behind traces of disastrous poison, and after it was subjugated those traces had even formed the "Death Desert."
Leviathan was naturally no different.
The [Academic District] and the Poseidon Familia's worries over the existence of the [Dragon Palace] were not without reason; and beyond that, what worried people most of all was that it was changing the "ocean" itself.
Late at night.
Fine snow still drifted down silently, and amid this pitch-black, boundless sea it seemed to melt into some inner core of nothingness.
On the balcony at the very top of the cruise ship, beneath the orange glow of the Magic Stone lamps, the pool off to one side shone an azure blue, bright with a luster like a gemstone's.
Down below, soft laughter from the goddesses drifted out of the bar from time to time, along with the sound of dance music.
That was Goddess Aphrodite singing.
Say what you will — unreliable as this one usually was, her "professional level" was genuinely beyond reproach. Her singing voice was quite excellent, and accompanied by what seemed to be Goddess Artemis's [Harp], it was beautiful to some kind of extreme.
Asfi lay on a bench beside the pool, holding a wine glass, a book in her hand as well, savoring the winter night in perfect comfort.
That is, if Isagi and Cecil hadn't come looking for her.
The boy and girl carried a big plate of steaming meat buns, stuffing them into their mouths while asking the woman about a past she wasn't especially willing to recall.
That—
The past from her childhood, when she had still been a "princess."
Asfi didn't miss her parents, nor did she miss that country; the reason was simple.
"The world is conserved."
Leviathan's existence nourished the citizens who lived off it; what existed upon its back was a "heaven"-like "ecosphere."
But the price.
was that the energy Leviathan itself had to consume was so vast it was beyond counting.
Left unchecked, it would devour everything in the sea.
In short, the citizens who had once lived on the back of the Overlord of the Seas had only attained such a life by consuming enormous quantities of the sea's resources.
Therefore, Leviathan absolutely had to be subjugated.
But for Asfi's parents, this was of course unacceptable.
Because if the entire nation were severed from Leviathan, it could no longer enjoy that incomparably wonderful, easy life of the past — and even—
After relocating onto the mainland, the nation would swiftly lose all competitiveness, and in the end be annexed and vanish.
And that was exactly what happened.
Of course, Asfi didn't think they were pitiable in the slightest.
"That's how it is."
The woman shrugged and laid out all the intelligence she had about Leviathan.
"The Overlord of the Seas's power isn't just as simple as [devouring colossal amounts of energy] — it's something more... how do I put it... it's like Behemoth."
"The Overlord of the Land's poison was likewise a kind of absolute, pure... death that approached the power of the gods."
"That's more or less what I mean."
Asfi felt she hadn't expressed it very well, but Isagi and Cecil seemed to have understood already.
[Ecology];
[Cycle];
In a certain sense, could it possibly count as some kind of law?
Leviathan could devour other living things, or pure "energy," and then create a complete "ecosphere" upon its own body — could this be some kind of divine power?
If that were the case, Isagi thought, then things seemed to be getting interesting.
The two of them chatted with Asfi a while longer.
There were no smiths aboard the cruise ship, but even so, Isagi and Cecil found an empty room, organized the information they'd just obtained, wrote it down, and pondered how to make use of its properties to forge some kind of weapon.
Isagi already had a few ideas.
As his discussion with Cecil went on, time slipped quietly by without their noticing, and Isagi himself didn't even know when it happened — drowsily, together with the girl, he simply fell asleep, the two of them leaning against each other on the sofa.
"Mn."
When he woke groggily, it seemed to already be deep into the night.
The room was utterly silent.
Under the warm yellow lighting, outside the round window the pitch-black sea stretched on endlessly, and one could just barely make out a few slender white flakes of snow drifting down.
Cecil was still leaning against him; the girl's soft, pliant body was pressing almost entirely onto his shoulder, her little head pillowed against his chest in a somewhat awkward posture — and at this moment, he too was half-reclined on the long sofa, looking as though he'd been pushed over by the girl as well.
This one had drool trickling from the corner of her mouth, having already dampened a small patch of his chest.
Isagi didn't mind, though, because he was used to it.
Cecil had often slept in the forging workshop before; sometimes, when he stayed up late with her testing or researching new weapons, it would turn out like this.
They'd only meant to sit together, yet they'd sat there until they both drifted off to sleep.
The two of them right now weren't even in a strange position; Isagi wouldn't know how to describe the more outrageous ones.
Maybe it was because once Cecil fell asleep, she always liked to wriggle about.
Just like a restless little puppy.
So he thought.
Isagi's thoughts slowly drifted off; he no longer pondered the matter of the weapon from before, nor whether or not he ought to head back to his room next.
Too lazy — right now he didn't want to move his body even an inch.
So, just staying asleep like this wasn't bad either, Isagi thought, and he simply treated Cecil as a warm, soft blanket, getting ready to sleep right through.
In any case, the room was plenty warm; that dry heat was piped from the cruise ship's boiler room all the way to every room.
It was enough to make one want to strip off all their clothes — and to crave ice cream.
And it was precisely at this moment.
Drowsiness washed over him once more.
Isagi closed his eyes, just about to drift back to sleep, only to find that the Cecil on top of him had begun to stir again.
The girl had woken up — she wasn't doing something unconsciously in a dream.
"Isagi."
"Huh?"
"Did you hear some kind of sound...?"
Cecil's voice was sticky and slurred, like a dim-witted little child who couldn't speak clearly.
But.
From her eyes — which had clearly just torn free of a dream and turned incomparably bright and serious — and from the silly way she pursed her lips, Isagi realized the girl wasn't joking with him.
A sound?
There did seem to be some sort of sound.
Isagi heard singing — faint and indistinct, seemingly coming from somewhere very, very far away.
Not inside the room, nor outside it, but...
Outside the window?
The two of them looked almost simultaneously toward the small round window not far away, but there was still nothing there but a stretch of pitch-black, fathomless sea.
What was going on?!
Isagi and Cecil clearly hadn't figured anything out, nor had they realized that, at this very moment, the "Magic Stone shard" of Leviathan sitting right there on the table was giving off faint, tiny points of light...
...
____
👻🔥Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: A Martial Arts Master Will Never Be Humiliated
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 Bonus Chapter for everyone