Meanwhile, on the other side.
In the Rotten Coral Bar, an extremely familiar person, yet one who should not appear here, slowly walked out.
It was Derrien.
But he should not appear here.
“Are you not dead?!”
Derrien had turned into that kind of monster before Constantine, and had also been personally dealt with by him and Ling.
Yet now he was still encountered here.
This situation was obviously not normal.
Derrien did not pay attention to Constantine.
He first looked toward the clown and waved at him, which could be considered a greeting, then turned his head to look at Pasa, who was at the front.
“Honestly, I did not expect you could draw the clown into your team. In my plan, he should have been a helper to stop you from affecting this ritual.”
Pasa raised the gun in his hand, but after a moment of hesitation, still lowered it.
Because he knew that even if he poured ammunition at him now, it would have no effect.
“Derrien, I never thought you would be the mastermind of everything. What exactly are you pursuing?”
Pasa and Derrien were indeed old acquaintances.
They were not only friends, but also former comrades in arms.
If possible, he also did not want to stand on the opposite side of this shrewd old fox.
“What am I pursuing? That is a good question. Have you seen the great sea? I mean that kind, the sea where no land can be seen.”
Pasa said nothing.
Constantine could not hold back and wanted to launch an attack, but was stopped by him.
Derrien took in all their movements, but he only smiled and continued.
“I saw it. I was on a ship, a very small wooden boat. Around me was the boundless sea. The sea surface was very calm, so I began to row, vainly trying to cross this ocean and return to land. I rowed for a very, very long time, still unable to see land. I was hungry and thirsty, and even my mind almost collapsed.”
He paused, unable to resist licking his lips, as if really recalling the hunger and helplessness of that time.
“I jumped off the boat.”
The sea surface was still calm.
“I felt my body slowly sink into the water.”
The sky was still clear.
“I tried to open my eyes, to look for any creature that might be edible.”
There was no abyss.
“But I saw it.”
There was no hope.
There was no vitality.
“The land I had dreamed of… was now right beneath my feet.”
Seawater submerged everything.
The world no longer had any land to speak of.
Only he was alive.
Only that boat was his sole place of refuge.
“I prayed to the ocean, prayed to Him, begging Him to cast His gaze upon the only boat in this ocean. I succeeded… I indeed succeeded. He has always existed. He is always watching everything in the ocean.”
Derrien slowly raised his own hand.
His arm had already lost human shape, turning into an enormous crab claw.
“Humanity’s final home is forever only the ocean. Look, what difference is there between me now and you? I am stronger than you, longer-lived, and no longer afraid of the ocean. I can already merge with the ocean!”
He suddenly waved his hand and loudly shouted at Pasa.
“Humans, humans are nothing but mayflies on the sea surface! Why remain stubbornly deluded? As long as you come with me, as long as you come with me! No one will die in that disaster!”
“Enough.”
Pasa’s cold voice interrupted Derrien’s mad voice.
He sighed, and a trace of imperceptible sorrow flashed through his eyes.
“The disaster you speak of is fundamentally only your hallucination. The one truly bringing disaster now is you. Derrien, stop. Stop the ritual, and everything can still be salvaged.”
“Pasa… you will never understand me, just as we can never always stand on the same side… If you believe that stopping me is what is correct, then try! No one can stop the surging waves! Not even you!”
“Finished talking?”
Constantine looked toward Pasa, toward this man who rarely revealed obvious emotional fluctuations, and raised his weapon toward Derrien.
“So-called cults mostly believe they have found the true truth, vainly trying to use that unrealistic idea to save everything. Of course, I have no right to speak of you. Am I not the same? As long as everyone is trapped in the cycle of eternal night, then no one will pass away, and no one will die. All disasters will be unable to pierce through this night… But I now understand. All of that was ultimately false. People will ultimately move toward death, just like the moon, which will also eventually set.”
This priest, at this moment, finally understood what faith was, and also finally understood what exactly he had been pursuing.
“Eternal Night is not salvation, and the ocean is not salvation either. No one can save everything. But at least, you cannot even save yourself.”
He glanced at the clown beside him, and the clown had long been unable to hold back.
Without hesitation, he charged toward Derrien, who stood in place.
“Pasa, if he really was once your good friend, then tell him what is truly correct!”
Bang!
Constantine directly pulled the trigger in his hand.
The bullet without obstruction shot into Derrien’s chest, dyeing his clothes with a layer of blood.
“Yes… yes! Derrien! The time for reckoning has come. You should have paid for her life long ago!” Pasa suddenly rose in a surge of fury and directly tore off the ring hanging on his chest.
That was his equipment, and also his only trump card.
The Ring of Fear.
Unlike the relatively mild necklace, the Ring of Fear was a fairly dangerous anomalous item. The source of this chapter is g.com.
It could absorb human emotions and use this emotion to strengthen the wearer’s bodily functions.
If it were only that, it would not be enough to be called dangerous.
What was truly dangerous was its side effect.
The emotions consumed by the wearer would completely disappear.
Fear?
Sorrow?
Anger?
Or joy?
You had to choose one, right.
“How long has it been since I have seen you like this, Pasa? I thought you had already forgotten how to be angry.” Derrien laughed loudly, not caring at all about the wound shot into his body by the bullet.
He had long since died.
What stood here now was only an undead originating from the deep sea.
“Oh… I sense a very bad aura…” The clown suddenly frowned and instinctively stepped back.
But the next moment, behind Derrien’s body, an enormous tentacle suddenly extended out, directly rolling him into the interior of the bar.
Accompanied by the crisp sound of bones breaking, a crab claw was thus tossed out from the darkness of the bar.
Immediately after, the ceiling of the Rotten Coral Bar was suddenly torn open.
Countless tentacles surged out from within, and a figure also slowly rose into the air, surrounded by the tentacles.
It was the figure of a woman.
Her eyes were tightly closed, her skin a strange deep blue, her hands clasped before her chest, as if in prayer.
It was Chrisuna…
but now it was probably no longer her.
Without giving everyone much time to react, the wild tentacles directly shot toward the nearest clown, even bursting out with a blast in the air.
The clown’s reaction speed was very fast.
His bloated body assumed a comical posture, narrowly dodging the tentacle’s attack, but at this moment he did not even have the chance to say one more word.
A clap of thunder exploded, and a few raindrops also fell on everyone’s faces, making everyone’s heart sink.
It was going to rain.
“Can we really kill this thing?”
Constantine looked at the enormous creature before him, somewhat bitterly turned his head, and looked at Pasa, whose expression was equally grim.
“With just us?”
+++
T/N: It looks like Chrisuna is getting the Megose treatment LotM.