Chapter 347: Chapter 347: The Choice of Developing a Diocese

“Whoosh, whoosh…”

The slightly black sea water slapped against the reef, splashing and scattering foam. A centipede, as thick as a human body and full of legs, crawled over from the distant darkness, its leg-covered body resting on the damp rock and gazing at the rolling sea below.

Suddenly, a fish shadow swam to the edge of the reef. The centipede curved its body, launched itself into the sea, biting a fish as thick as an arm, only to discover that there was a fleshy whisker underneath the belly of the fish, connected to something below. As the centipede crawled back, a huge mouth full of sharp teeth quickly revealed itself.

The centipede spat out the fish quickly, but the giant mouth below had already opened and leaped out of the sea, biting the centipede, followed by a hair-raising chewing sound.

But the chewing sound didn’t last long; suddenly a spear flew from afar, plunging into the sea, accompanied by a dull groan. The water rippled violently as a giant, monstrous fish, over a dozen meters long, thrashed madly in the water.

A beam of light slowly shone over, tracing back along the beam to its source revealed a huge ocean ship.

This was an ironclad ocean ship nearly a hundred meters in length, its thick iron armor capable of withstanding the impact of even more powerful sea monsters. The huge ship had dozens of cannons, and its searchlights moved back and forth, probing into the distance.

For a ship to dare light up at sea in this world was exceedingly rare.

“Is it this island?”

On the ship’s side, a group of oddly dressed men pointed at the huge island ahead, paying no attention to the monstrous fish that had been killed by a spear moments ago and had now disappeared without a trace. The lights scanned the sea surface, faintly revealing a gigantic dark shadow slowly gliding from below the dark sea water.

The deck was filled with sailors in formation, including gunmen with modern firearms and Blood warriors with cold weapons. Judging from their formation and discipline, this did not seem like an ordinary exploration vessel.

Indeed, it was not. This was the Pearl Island Lord’s Mansion’s main warship, deployed to investigate why this mining island had suddenly lost contact.

Surrounded by his subordinates, the captain and several crew members dressed in similar styles were all Children of Nightmare. Half a year ago, three Children of Nightmare had suddenly lost contact, drawing their attention. Considering the missing individuals’ identities and special circumstances, they had not dared to investigate immediately. Instead, they had assembled a small team consisting of six Children of Nightmare from several nearby domains and had hired two more Children of Nightmare before beginning the investigation.

One of the Children of Nightmare, named Jovis, had already attained a high position on Pearl Island. Using his status, he had rented a main warship from the Lord’s mansion’s navy and hurried over.

The leading Child of Nightmare, Jovis, stood on the elevated deck of the ironclad ship, gazing into the distance. The power of the Children of Nightmare allowed them to see farther with the naked eye than with a telescope, and the omnipresent fog could not completely block their vision.

In his view, the island was quite large, with relatively flat edges and a mountainous peak that seemed to rise in the center.

In Jovis’s subtle intuition, the island exuded an extremely ominous aura. Yet he was unconcerned—for where in this world was not dangerous? It would have been more surprising had he not sensed any danger at all.

However, the mountain was rather large, occupying much of the center of the island. He heard that the mining site was located inland, and he wondered, with some confusion, whether the mines were inside the mountain.

Dwelling on these issues seemed pointless. Jovis decided to land on the island for a direct look.

After all, they had six Children of Nightmare, a large ironclad ship, and an elite force. Scouting an island should be no problem.

“First team, commence landing!”

A few burly men around two meters tall, each carrying a shield in one hand and a broadsword in the other, jumped off the docked ironclad ship. A ladder was lowered, and a small squad of Blood warriors followed by two groups of gunmen descended, with two Children of Nightmare following them last.

One was named Elton and the other Hall; they were brothers from the same Nightmare Clan.

With Blood warriors leading, followed closely by gunmen, they circled the beach upon landing, ensuring nothing was around. After signaling to the ship, the second batch of crew members began to disembark, preparing to construct a temporary dock here.

They had previously seen the ruins of the original dock on the other side of the island. The original dock was long gone, leaving only some remnants.

From the huge indentations, tens of meters wide and hundreds of meters long, that remained in the ruins of the dock, it seemed likely that it had been destroyed by some super-large creature. This was also the main reason they were afraid to land there—fearing that the creature might still be lingering nearby.

They worked quickly, excavating a temporary dock and even managing to construct a not-so-tall palisade wall. A large amount of supplies was brought down and placed inside the dock. By the time the second batch of crew disembarked, the first exploration team had already set off inland.

The island was desolate, with black land under the dense black fog, and even the vegetation was black.

The ground was somewhat soft underfoot, the soil as loose and soggy as a swamp, one careless step could sink you.

They soon arrived at a small, shallow water depression. The pond was like any ordinary pond, and with the help of their lights, they could vaguely see the dark water wasn’t deep, revealing the mud beneath. Many water plants, like lily pads, floated on the surface, each with a finger-thick stem trailing into the water. The center of the basin-sized leaves held a fruit-like bulge; some were still closed, others were mature and split open, half-revealing nut-like seeds.

As they bypassed the pond, one of the team members spotted the plump fruits on a large leaf and, as if possessed, stopped in his tracks and said,

“This thing looks delicious; should we pick some to try?”

The leaders, Elton and Hall, turned to see the team member heading toward the pond, while the other team members all watched.

Suddenly, their expressions changed. They picked up a gun, fired at the pond, and shouted,

“Everyone, pay attention, get away from the pond’s edge.”

Right at that moment, his shot hit a lily pad, which, appearing just like an ordinary leaf, suddenly snapped up. The elastic lily pad unfolded to more than ten times its size, enveloping and dragging into the water a warrior who had been about to pick it. The next second, more than a dozen tentacles, thick as fingers, burst from the water and plunged into the leaf, blood spraying wildly as something—whether blood or flesh—was sucked out by the tentacles, swelling into large sacks and swallowed.

The warrior instantly lost the ability to react and stopped moving altogether.

Within merely ten seconds, a living person collapsed before their eyes, and when the elastic lily pad opened again, nothing was left inside but clothing full of holes and some fragments of teeth and bone; everything else, including most of the bones, had been devoured.

But this was just the beginning. Tasting flesh, countless black tentacles sprang excitedly from the bottom of the pond, stretching towards the shore like a horde of demons in a frenzied dance.

“Prepare for combat!”

A burly man with a metal box on his back took out a metal canister from behind, lit the fuse, waited a few seconds, and threw it into the pond.

“Boom!”

The explosion tore open many tentacles, exposing the muddy bottom of the pond and more tentacles. Numerous gushes of black sludge-like fluid sprayed everywhere with the flailing tentacles.

Several warriors were sprayed with the sludge, their minds immediately blurred, and they gave up resisting and rushed toward the pond. Several blood warriors were about to step forward to stop their comrades when Elton suddenly shouted:

“Retreat!”

No sooner had he spoken than the Earth under their feet began to shake, crack, and rise as if some large beast were about to burrow out.

Seeing this, everyone immediately turned and ran, while not far away at sea, the guns of an Ironclad Ship creaked mechanically as they slowly turned, the inscriptions on their barrels beginning to glow.

“Boom!”

A dark red flame exploded in the darkness, exceptionally conspicuous, and the ground of the pond, having just bulged, blasted open with a boom. What emerged was a mass of black tentacles—some as thick as fingers, others as thick as arms—intertwined like a bucket of earthworms or snakes entwined during mating, a sight so visually and mentally disturbing that it made one feel nauseous and want to vomit.

“Run!”

Regardless of whether it could be fought, nobody wanted to face that abomination.

Moreover, even if they wanted to fight, it was unlikely they would win because only the tip of the iceberg was showing; beneath the ground, many more black tentacles writhed and tunneled out, indicating the presence of a colossal hidden beast.

Aboard the Ironclad Ship, Jovis stared intently at the tentacle mass slowly revealing a much larger True Body than imagined and asked:

“Could it be this one?”

A Child of Nightmare at his side shook their head:

“Unlikely, it might look big, but not enough to account for the disappearance of the three of them!”

Jovis fell silent for a moment before waving his hand again. The cannons fired dark red flames once more, hitting the center of the tentacle mass and blasting away large sections of broken tentacles.

But this angered the creature further. An even more massive body burrowed out, and the severed tentacles didn’t die on the spot; they were still lively enough to burrow back into the ground.

Amidst the upturned sand and stones, limbs formed by entwined black tentacles shot out, wildly attacking the Humans on the beach, forcing them to flee towards the interior of the island. Additionally, several particularly thick tentacles rose from the ground and slammed into the Ironclad Ship anchored at the sea’s edge.

“Interesting! Prepare the main cannon.”

He did not take this creature seriously. Having been in this world for so long, he had encountered all manners of strange and terrifying beasts. Although this one was quite large, it didn’t even rank in the top ten in his experience.

The main cannon of the Ironclad Ship was more than five times larger than the secondary guns and its firing caused the massive Ironclad to shift sideways from the force.

The enormous fireball that blasted down directly created a crater more than forty meters in diameter, with countless fragments flying in all directions.

Then a dozen secondary guns fired in rapid succession, blasting apart other parts of the creature’s body. In just one round of shelling, the main body of the monster was reduced to shreds, exposing the damaged core. Jovis, watching from afar, spotted the red Crystal brain still writhing in the midst of the torn flesh and brightened up:

“A fine piece!”

He immediately ordered his subordinates still on shore:

“Retrieve that Crystal brain, quickly.”

Two Children of Nightmare rapidly gathered the remaining troops to return and extract the brain, crossing a large crater made by one of the ship’s guns. Suddenly, the ground shook violently, causing everyone to stagger, and a few soldiers, losing their balance for an instant, slid down to the bottom of the hollow.