(Book 2 Complete!) Tales of the Endless Empire [LitRPG Apocalypse]

In the end, forging a blood-curse was not the difficult part. The true torment lay in accepting it into one's veins, letting it root itself in flesh and soul. Thalion and the Sanguis Impera had been in high spirits until the moment the ritual was complete. But once the curse settled, it seemed confused, if such a thing were possible and lashed out at both host and companion alike.

Thalion would have liked to know its name, or at least some fragment of description, before binding it to himself. All he knew now was pain. Agonizing, unrelenting pain. His muscles seized and twisted beyond his control, and he collapsed to the ground, writhing for hours as his health bled away in steady increments.

Desperation forced him to sacrifice blood for healing, though it dulled the torment only for fleeting moments. Time blurred under such suffering, every second stretched like an eternity. By the time the system pulled them from the shop, he and the Impera were still sprawled on the floor, barely capable of moving.

It was a cruel introduction to life as the curse's host, but at least now he knew what awaited anyone unfortunate enough to be infected. If this was how the curse treated its bearer, then those it struck would suffer tenfold. Neither he nor the Impera had been directly assaulted by it, only brushed by its passive presence as their bodies twisted to accommodate it. Even so, it nearly broke them. Next time, he vowed, he would demand a description before spending over four hundred million credits on a single-use item. To abandon it now, after such a cost, was unthinkable. Better to endure the risk.

The first hours on New Earth passed with Thalion lying motionless in the sand, waiting for his body to knit itself back together. He could have shifted forms, but doing so would have doubled the Impera's agony. No, the curse had been his choice, and so he would bear its burden. Around him the murmur of voices rose and fell, footsteps drumming through the ground. When the sharpest edge of the torment dulled into a haze that felt more like a monstrous hangover, he finally stirred, pushing himself upright on trembling arms. The sun, blue and alien, had wandered across the sky, though he had no sense of how much time had passed. Hours? Days? It hardly mattered. He needed to move, to distract himself.

What struck him most was the sound, an endless roar like surf crashing within his skull. But when he turned, he realized it was not merely in his head. An ocean stretched before him, vast and glittering beneath the strange light. They had spawned on a beach. Despite the throbbing pain still lodged in his bones, Thalion smiled faintly. He had always loved the sea; it was why he had once become a marine biologist. Perhaps a dive into these new waters would steady him.

"Don't worry. I'm fine," he muttered to the child who had been sitting silently at his side, and to Lee, who lingered nearby.

"You didn't look fine, boss," Lee replied with a chuckle, rising to his feet. "Your stuff is with Kaldrek and Maike. They didn't want to leave it lying around. We've already had a few… incidents." With that, he gave a casual wave and left.

Thalion stretched his arms, savoring the ache of returning strength. The curse was potent indeed, potent enough to strike its host down like that. He would not test it again until he had recovered fully. Even the Impera was exhausted from the ordeal. Better to let the curse rest for now, and instead explore. A short dive, then another nap. This was hardly the arrival he had imagined on a new world.

Still, the weight of his title pressed at the edges of his mind like storm clouds building on the horizon. Mortal danger was coming, that much he knew. He had worn the mantle long enough to sense the pattern: a threat, somewhere, gathering momentum. He could not say from which direction it would come, nor whether it would fall upon him or the entire base. But it would come, of that he was certain. And running was never an option.

He trudged across the sand toward the ocean, the waves towering over three meters high before breaking hard against the shallows. The sea floor here was strange, plunging steeply only a few meters from shore, unlike Earth's gentle slopes from reef to open water. He waded forward, feeling the crystalline surface lap at his waist. To his surprise, his armor held firm against the tide, it was waterproof. A neat feature.

With a thought, Thalion shifted, his body unraveling into the serpentine tidecaller. His new form shot across the surface, weaving gracefully between the waves before plunging into the deep. His flesh still ached from the crystalline fragments digesting within him, but the water soothed him. Here, gliding through the endless blue, he felt the difference keenly. His serpentine body cut the water with effortless grace.

Beneath him stretched no reefs, no crystal forests, only a vast plain of sand and open sea. Yet the water thrummed with life, schools of fish darting like silver shadows, strange leviathans moving in the distance. Even without crystals to nourish it, this ocean was vibrant, alive.

Fifty meters beneath the surface, the sea resembled a living soup of scales and fins. Not just schools of tiny darting fish but also colossal shapes, sharks stretching ten meters long, manta rays gliding like dark phantoms, and countless others.

The sight stirred memories in Thalion of a simpler time, when he had gone spearfishing with friends on Earth, just before the Integration tore that life away. Those days had been hard, yes, but peaceful. Now he wasn't sure which he preferred: a world of quiet struggle, or this brutal new reality where every day was a battle, yet immortality gleamed on the horizon. Here he could breathe beneath the sea, soar above the clouds, and summon lightning with a thought.

Superpowers were intoxicating, but the cruelty of the System made the world itself monstrous. On Earth, betrayal was rare; here, bloodshed came for the smallest slight. Perhaps others had always lived in such a world. Perhaps Earth had been the exception.

"Well, good for them," Thalion mused, amused at his own thought. "For me, the System is an upgrade." Slowly he swam through the endless blue, eyes scanning the vast shoals below. Strange, none of them dared rise toward the surface. He felt no hunger to hunt them. Their tranquil movements, the way predators and prey swirled together in patient silence, reminded him of an underwater cathedral. Each fish radiated menace, yet they waited, holding their violence for the cover of night.

He wondered how much life from Earth had been wiped away after the fusion, and how much had been replaced by beasts of other worlds. From what he understood, most had been thrown onto New Earth, while only a handful had haunted the Tutorials, earning rare survivors great rewards. Yet even here, amidst abundant natural treasures, the advantage had fallen to the most vicious.

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Drifting deeper, Thalion marveled at the stillness. None of the predators lunged for one another, even when small tuna-like fish brushed close to the larger hunters. Not once had he seen a leviathan of the kind that circled the crystalline groves back in the Tutorial. For now, this sea felt strangely calm, even soothing. Being in his Tidecaller Serpent form only deepened that serenity.

To not be supercharged by his bloodline was liberating; he could simply glide, feel the water move around him, exist. Perhaps he ought to experiment with his other forms, test their balance of power. His human shape bore the brunt of the bloodline's strength, and though he had trained blood-control longer than any other skill, true mastery still eluded him. Mistform and Telekinetic Dash would demand the most discipline. For now, he simply enjoyed the freedom of being untethered, at peace beneath the waves.

That peace shattered in an instant. Danger pricked across his senses, not from below, but above. Too late, he tilted his gaze skyward. A massive bird plummeted toward him, its four wings spread like sails, its enormous beak shaped like that of a pelican but lined with jagged edges. Before he could evade, the beak snapped shut around his midsection. Scales tore free, bones cracked, and the impact drove him ten meters deeper into the sea. He thanked the fates it wasn't an eagle or hawk, those would have ripped him clean in two. But his situation was little better.

The creature would swallow him whole in a heartbeat, and Thalion suspected some hidden weapon, for no beast earned E-grade by merely gulping down prey. Most had monstrous strength or elemental power. Whatever this thing carried, he had no wish to discover it.

Tsunami Breaker flared to life. The sea convulsed, and the bird exploded into a bloody cloud of feathers. Thalion staggered free, but victory brought no relief. The shoals below had noticed. The once-peaceful fish no longer swam with serenity, the scent of blood had awakened them. His body faltered, limp from injury. The bird had snapped his spine; nothing responded beneath the point of impact. Panic clawed at him as he watched the red silhouettes of devil sharks streaking upward like torpedoes. He forced power into his maw, launching an aqualance that split two of them in half. But the swarm was endless, darting too quickly, their sleek bodies flashing past his strikes.

Pain blazed through him as never before. He had been close to death in past battles, but never broken, never almost bisected. A snarl tore through his fangs as he summoned his watershield, the shimmering barrier curving tight around him. It would not hold long against the larger predators, but it might buy him seconds. Enough for one final strike. Power gathered in his core, coiling tighter and tighter. If they wanted him torn apart, then he would show them what it meant to face the Tidecaller. He roared his defiance into the water, channeling everything into a single, devastating Tsunami Breaker.

The blood in the water immediately summoned life from every shadowed depth. Schools of fish scattered, only to be replaced by predators drawn by the promise of flesh. The sharks came first, sleek bodies cutting through the blue gloom with predatory grace. Yet they were not the mindless hunters of Earth, no longer circling lazily for a single strike. These beasts bore skills, cunning etched into their movements.

One shark in particular caught Thalion's eye. Its body shimmered faintly, glowing as if veins of blue light pulsed beneath its skin. In a blur it accelerated, twisting and weaving through the water with unnatural agility. Not a single line of its approach was straight. It darted unpredictably, impossible to track, the perfect counter to his aqualance. Hunger stirred deep within Thalion's core, a gnawing greed whispered by the Tidecaller Serpent. That ability would have been a perfect complement to his form. But desire would have to wait.

The water shield around him trembled as smaller predators gnawed at its edges, their jaws scraping sparks of mana from its surface. From the abyss below, darker shapes began to rise, colossal predators drawn by the spreading blood. Without his bloodline teleportation to evade, the odds pressed heavy against him. He clenched his fangs, reluctant but resolute. There was no more room for hesitation.

When the first massive shadow broke the surface of the gloom, Thalion unleashed the Tsunami Breaker. The ocean convulsed. A shockwave rippled outward in a violent ring, boiling the sea and vaporizing every creature near him. The blast shattered bones and ripped flesh from bodies even fifty meters away, their remains spinning downward in grisly silence. For a moment, the water was nothing but red mist and drifting corpses.

His gaze lingered where the glowing shark had swum only seconds before. Now, nothing remained but a bloody cloud slowly unraveling with the current. A pang of loss cut through his chest, mingled strangely with regret. Power demanded sacrifice, yet he had hoped… perhaps he could have claimed it. But there was no time to mourn. More blood in the water meant more predators would come.

Already, distant leviathans stirred in the deep, their outlines barely visible a hundred meters below. Thalion gritted his teeth and raised his maw, firing searing aqualances into the rising shapes. Bolts of pressurized death lanced into the depths, scattering the approaching beasts before they could reach him. His spine cracked audibly as healing overtook him, sensation returning in flashes of fire. The tail twitched, weak but alive. Full control was moments away.

The ocean fell quiet again, if only briefly. This swim had been a lesson. A brutal reminder never to grow complacent. The E-grade beasts here were far deadlier than those he had faced in the Tutorial, their skills sharper, their instincts honed by a harsher world. And that thought, rather than daunting him, only stoked his greed. If the sea bred monsters like these, what awaited him on land?

Enough for today. His body mended, Thalion surged upward. With a powerful thrust of his coils, he broke the surface, erupting five meters into the air. The water fell from his scales in glittering sheets, like shattered crystal in the sun. For a heartbeat he hung there, a serpent born of the tide. Then his body flickered, shifting mid-flight. Scales bled into feathers, grey, crystalline, each plume edged with a faint metallic sheen. His chest gleamed with the embedded crystal, pulsing like a second heart.

An eagle now, vast and regal, he spread his wings wide. With a single thunderous beat, he caught the air, and the ocean fell away beneath him. He climbed higher and higher, vanishing into the endless sky, leaving only ripples and red water behind.