The Era of Gods

“But people say that anything unusual occurring at sea is never a good sign. Should I wait until I am on land to find…”

Suddenly, a piercing sound came to my ears, like the screeching friction of sharp nails scraping against the hull.

Karl immediately stood up, grabbed the curved blade by the bed, and took a small metal arm shield in his left hand, sliding it onto his forearm as he slowly walked toward the door.

Looking through the door’s glass porthole, I saw a lightless sky outside, the thick black clouds merging with the dark sea, forming an endless curtain of darkness.

In this world, darkness rules over everything; there’s no distinction between day and night. In fact, I don’t even know if it’s day or night now. The thick black clouds, which never disperse and I do not know how thick they might be, block out the sunlight; I’ve never seen the sun since I can remember.

What dominates this world is the endless darkness and the eerie and monstrous beings lurking within it.

Listening closely, the sound came from outside the ship. Gently pushing the door open, I stepped out to a bone-chilling cold wind gusting in my face. Suddenly, I spun around to see the adjacent room’s door also pushed open, with a towering man over two meters tall, muscles bulging, coming out with a gleaming curved blade in each hand.

This was the ship’s boatswain, Horner, a formal bloodline warrior.

We exchanged glances and nodded, slowly making our way to the edge of the deck. I shot Horner a look, my left arm shielded in front of me as I peered out cautiously, and the next second, my vision blurred as I reflexively leaned back. A sinewy tentacle tipped with four sharp bony spikes shot up, grazing the side of the ship.

“Behind you!”

Another muscular tentacle stealthily reached out from Horner’s other side, the tip rapidly swelling from the size of a thigh to that of a washbasin, with four sharp bony spikes spreading open to reveal a huge maw that snapped down like lightning. I smashed the tentacle with my metal arm shield, while my other hand lashed out with my curved blade in a flash of lightning-like speed. The tentacle swiftly contracted, dodging the slice, then the third and fourth tentacles emerged simultaneously from the water, swelling rapidly.

“Get down quick!”

A roar, full of vigor, came from behind. Horner and I simultaneously dropped to the deck, just feeling a flash of light above our heads as three sinewy tentacles tumbled down, hitting us and rolling on deck, scattering bright yellow fluid everywhere.

Then came a roar and a heavy splash from beyond the ship’s side, the sounds gradually fading away.

“It’s gone.”

Relief washed over Horner and me as we turned to stand up, only to hear the old captain’s roar from behind:

“Get down now!”

Our hearts tightened, ready to drop, but it was already too late. An invisible force descended upon me, lifting Horner and me into the air.

By then, other folks from the ship had come out, but dared not come close. In their eyes, faint grey flames enveloped us, as if something was biting and engulfing us, which sent shivers down everyone’s spine.

The old captain held a finely-crafted curved blade, the hilt embedded with seven gemstones from which the light had faded from one. He stared intensely at the two of us, suspended in the air. Suddenly, gripping the handle with both hands, he struck downward, and a blinding transparent blade light flashed over our heads, cutting through the void with an ear-piercing shriek as the two of us plummeted.

But we did not fall to the ground; instead, our bodies grotesquely twisted and hovered inches above the deck, with a grey mist slowly spreading from beneath our feet. Where it touched, the deck turned to ash as if it had decayed over a long period of time.

Simultaneously, Horner’s arms began to swell, his muscles ballooning as if they were out of control, with bulging sinews popping from his limbs, writhing in the air like tentacles, giving the appearance that his entire arms were covered in them. This change was spreading from his arms to the rest of his body.

“Bloodline out of control!”

Everyone watched from a distance with an alert expression, while the old captain gripped the curved blade with a hesitant look on his face.

A one-eyed man next to him whispered:

“Captain, they…”

“Shut it!”

The old captain immediately interrupted him, directing a stern gaze at the others:

“At sea, you must not watch, speak, or touch. Shut your mouths!”

Turning his attention to the two of us, still contorting and sprouting tiny fleshy filaments, his eyes grew colder and the curved blade was slowly raised.

At that moment, Karl’s agonized face suddenly trembled violently, and then his closed eyes sprung open, blinding white light spraying forth. A wave of transparent clarity radiated from his head to his body, halting the mutating flesh instantly and rapidly returning it to its original state.

The old captain, about to swing his blade, hesitated slightly, his gaze flickering before he changed the motion to a slash. A three-meter-wide crescent blade light, sweeping along the hard deck, cutting a fissure and passing over, Horner’s body violently twisted as his eyes opened to reveal bright yellow pupils, his two mutated arms crossed in front of him.

“Splash!”

The blade light swept past, slicing the mutated Horner, now towering at two and a half meters tall, in two, with thick yellow liquid spraying everywhere.

Meanwhile, Karl slowly opened his eyes, revealing black pupils with the faint image of a revolving Magic Cube reflected within them, from which thin strands of clear light emanated.

He wore a strange expression as he slowly looked down at himself, then up at the wary faces around him, and finally back at the pitch-black sky and the sea enveloped in endless night. He murmured to himself:

“I’m not dead?”

“But my strength…”

“The Divine Power of the Divine Realm has been sealed; I’m just an ordinary man now.”

“I can’t sense the external world, I can’t sense the Main World. Have I been forsaken?”

“`

After checking his own status, Lin Xiao felt a faint sense of despair. This world was unheard of, completely isolating him from any connection to the Main World. Even though he was ranked on the list of exceptional warriors and had a closer connection with the Main World than others, at this moment he could not sense even a trace of it. Instead…

What replaced it was a sense of malice filling this world everywhere. Without looking back, he could feel the malicious intent that made his scalp tingle emanating from the sea behind him.

Subconsciously, he moved away from the edge of the ship’s rail, only to see that the group of people ahead were even more vigilant. The old captain, wielding a knife, shouted loudly:

“Don’t get any closer!”

“Old Captain!”

Memories from before he awoke still lingered; Lin Xiao easily called out this familiar name.

He had originally fallen into this world and was found floating in the sea, by chance discovered by the old captain’s ship. They thought he was some kind of monster and hooked him, dragging him all the way to shore, only to be surprised to find out he wasn’t a monster, but a real person.

Thus, the homeless Lin Xiao was taken in by the old captain and now served as the second mate on The Explorer.

After scrutinizing his current condition, and using the Creation Energy within the Magic Cube to clear the negative status from his body, his abnormalities had already vanished. He was no different from a normal person. The old captain pondered for a moment and suddenly asked:

“What is the name of Mrs. Jenny’s current husband, who lives at 254 Second Main Street on Pearl Island?”

Lin Xiao was taken aback, recalling the limited memories in his mind. Pearl Island was the main port of The Explorer, and most of the crew came from there. The old captain had bought a house on Second Main Street, where they often gathered. House number 254…

He wondered aloud:

“Isn’t 254 where we live? Doesn’t Mrs. Jenny reside at 255? Besides, Mrs. Jenny doesn’t currently have a husband.”

The expressions of the others relaxed, but the old captain remained vigilant and continued questioning:

“Mrs. Jenny has a little dog; what’s its name?”

“Rovi!”

“What’s the chef’s favorite saying?”

“I’m gonna chop you into mincemeat.”

“Good, you’re all right.”

The old captain’s face softened into a smile as he waved Lin Xiao over, then gently touched the slime on his head and patted it, saying:

“Kid, go take a bath.”

At that moment, Lin Xiao had a multitude of questions and peculiar changes. He nodded and returned to his room. Soon a sailor brought in several buckets of water and poured them into a large tub. Lin Xiao gestured for the sailor to leave and jumped in.

“Open the panel!”

With a thought, a panel that only he could see opened in his mind, displaying his current personal attribute panel:

Lin Xiao.

Talent: Unknown.

Level: Level 5.

Attributes: Constitution 2.4, Strength 2.3, Agility 1.8, Perception 15, Charm 6, Intelligence 3.1.

Skills: None.

These were his current attributes. After waking up, he had directly inherited a portion of his original perception, which is why his perception was a striking 15 points while the other attributes were only in single digits.

Having an attribute panel in this world was quite surprising to him, but what shocked him even more was the second page of the panel.

It was a mission panel with three tasks, each more dangerous than the last.

The first, a regular two-star task: Kill a monster with a danger rating of two stars or above, reward 1 point rating.

The second, a Phase 1 main task: Own a fully crewed exploration warship, reward 5 point rating.

The third, a world-class task: Conquer an island, clear the island of freakish monsters, establish a city, attain a population of one hundred thousand, reward 300 point rating, one Five Star authority.

The so-called tasks aside, the key question was: how did this thing appear on him?

Lin Xiao knew very well that he had entered this world by accident. He remembered there were many Nightmare Battleships and Nightmare Lords outside this world not knowing what they were doing…

“Wait!”

Suddenly, Lin Xiao remembered the situation at The Wonders of All Things, those gathering outside the world of Nightmare Lords seemed so similar to before.

“Could it be that the elite of the Nightmare World are…”

“`