"The Whisper in the Tides."
My consciousness floated in the dark. No pain. No sound. Just the cold, mechanical text of the System scrolling past my mind's eye.
[System Welcomes the Ruler of the Cenotaph of Pride.]
[Critical Warning: Vital Signs Zero.]
[Status: DECEASED.]
[Initiating Reboot...]
[Healing...]
[You have been reborn.]
I stared blankly at the floating blue letters.
I died?
The realization was slow, sluggish. I remembered the wood piercing my stomach. I remembered the cold. But now, I was somewhere else.
I wasn't on the ship. I was back in that cathedral of bone—the white void, the floor made of galaxies, the silence that pressed against my eardrums.
But something was different. The System wasn't flashing red warnings anymore. It wasn't trying to crush me.
It was welcoming me.
[The Primordial Monarch of the Velvet Deep for Desire.]
[Welcome, True Ruler of the Throne of Glass.]
What the hell is this?
I looked at the jagged, terrifying throne in front of me. Before, it had rejected me. Now, it stood silent, waiting.
I sat on it.
It didn't cut me. Instead, a sensation of absolute authority rushed through my veins, colder than ice, hotter than fire.
So... "The Primordial Monarch of the Velvet Deep for Desire"... that shit is a long name, I thought, rubbing my temples. I can't even pronounce it properly.
But the implication terrified me. If this entity—this Velvet Monarch—is the true ruler of this place... then what about Lucifer? Was the story of Lucifer being the Patron of Pride just a hoax? A cover-up?
I was more confused than ever.
Another window popped up, the text glitching slightly.
[Authority Unlocked: P?w?hi- (Law Manipulation)]
[Description: Allows the User to rewrite the laws of physics within their domain. (E.g., "I decree that gravity does not exist here.")]
[Restriction: Due to User's current Tier (Tier 2), this Authority is locked.]
Law manipulation? Rewriting physics?
[System Alert: Returning to Reality.]
[Have a nice journey, The Ruler of Sins, Devils, and The Abyss.]
"Wait—"
Ruler of Sins? Plural? I wasn't just the host of Pride anymore?
Before I could ask more, the white void shattered.
GASP.
My eyes snapped open. I sucked in a lungful of salty air, my body jerking upright on the wooden deck.
I patted my chest. The tuxedo was torn, soaked in drying blood, but the skin underneath was smooth. No wound. No pain.
[System Alert: Shadow Weave has repaired the vessel.]
That doesn't explain anything, System, I cursed internally, but I was too exhausted to argue.
"I see you're awake."
A calm, melodic voice resonated from the front of the ship.
I looked up. Seraphim Valerius was standing there, his silver hair glowing under the moonlight. There was no sign of Arthur. That lazy dragon was probably still sleeping through the apocalypse.
This is so fucking stupid, to be honest.
I tried to stand, but my legs felt like lead. Fatigue, heavy and suffocating, pinned me to the wall.
"I will handle it," Seraphim said, looking at me with a faint smile.
I nodded, unable to speak. My mind was a mess of questions.
What is a Cenotaph? Who is the Velvet Monarch? Why did the word 'Supermodel' trigger a glitch in my brain? And how do I get the Memory Fragments?
While I spiraled, Seraphim turned his back to me, facing the four-headed nightmare looming over the ship.
The Leviathan roared, diving down to devour the tiny silver-haired human.
Seraphim didn't dodge. He didn't summon a weapon. He didn't even use Ether.
He simply lifted his gloved hand and adjusted his hair.
"How rude," Seraphim whispered.
The air froze.
It wasn't a metaphor. The wind stopped blowing. The spray of the ocean hung suspended in mid-air like diamonds. The Leviathan's massive jaws paused inches from Seraphim's face.
In the sky above the ship, the clouds parted.
A massive, golden construct materialized. It was a Clock. A celestial dial the size of a mountain, its gears grinding with the sound of thunder.
Seraphim's eyes began to burn with a terrifying golden light. He opened his mouth, and the language of the Gods spilled out—Nepshi.
"The Clockwork that governs the Stars."
"The Hands that strangle Fate."
"I, Seraphim Valerius, command the River of Time to reverse its flow."
Tick. Tock.
The sound echoed in my bones.
Seraphim reached out and flicked the air with his finger.
"Rewind. Because I can."
He winked at me.
The giant clock in the sky began to spin backward.
It started slowly, then accelerated. The Leviathan let out a confused shriek, but the sound was sucked back into its throat.
I watched in horror and awe.
The monster didn't just die. It began to un-exist.
The blood on the deck flew back into the sailors' bodies. The shattered railings reassembled themselves.
The Leviathan began to shrink. Its four heads merged back into a younger form. Its scales softened. It grew smaller, and smaller, turning from a giant beast back into a juvenile, then into an egg, and finally... into nothingness.
It vanished into the ether, erased from this timeline entirely.
The clock in the sky faded. The wind resumed blowing. The sound of the waves returned.
Seraphim dusted off his pristine suit, looking as if he had just finished a mild stroll in the park. He turned to me and extended a hand.
"We were never here," he said, his smile perfectly practiced. "Let's clean up."
I stared at the empty ocean where a Tier 4 monster used to be. Then I looked at the man who treated time like a toy.
This, I thought, staring at his hand, is so stupidly overpowered.
Footnotes:
Nepshi: The language of the Old Gods. Unlike human language, Nepshi consumes Ether to speak. To command the "River of Time" using Nepshi requires an astronomical amount of energy, suggesting Seraphim's Ether capacity is monstrous.
P?w?hi-: The text was glitched because Lucian's current perception stat is too low to comprehend the concept. It likely refers to "Prohibition" or "Physics." High-Tier entities do not fight with fireballs; they fight by rewriting the laws of reality.
Seraphim's "Flex": Using a forbidden God-Language just to fix your hair and delete a monster because it was "rude" is peak Seraphim behavior. He wasted enough mana to blow up a city just to keep his suit clean.