All Chapters of The Evolution System of the Drowned: Chapter 151
- Chapter 160
179 chapters
Chapter 151: The War-Tax
The First King looked at the red pings flooding my system and he laughed. It wasn't a human sound. It was a roar that tore through the vacuum and I watched as a serrated rift opened behind him. The shockwave hit the debris of the solar system. Saturn’s rings didn't scatter; they were sucked into the tear like dust into a furnace."You think you have started a war, little ghost," the King said. He leaned back on his throne and the stars in his armor pulsed with a mocking light. "But you have only invited the debt collectors. And I will take the first payment.""I don't owe you a damn thing," I said. I tightened my grip on the solar fire and I prepared to lunge."You owe me for the breath I allow you to take," the King said. He reached out with a single finger and pointed toward the distant blue speck of Earth. "Let us see how your 'Sovereign Abyss' handles the weight of its own arrogance."I saw a beam of black light shoot from his fingertip. It traveled across the system in a blink
Chapter 152: The Hollow Earth
The Atlantic Ocean was gone. I watched from my position in the upper atmosphere as billions of tons of saltwater spiraled into the sky, caught in the grip of the First King’s black syringe. The seafloor lay exposed for the first time in centuries and it was a graveyard of shipwrecks and canyons. The mud was still steaming and the sudden lack of pressure was making the crust groan."Osric, the Trench is open!" Kael’s voice cracked through the comms. "The Gravity Anchor is pulling the water away faster than the tectonic plates can shift. My scanners are hitting something at the bottom of the Atlantic Trench. It’s a dead zone. No System signature, no heat.""A dead zone?" I asked. I adjusted my descent, diving toward the exposed mud of the abyss. "In the middle of the most advanced sector on the planet?""It shouldn't exist," Sora said. "The System covers every square inch of this world. But whatever is down there... it's like a hole in reality."I hit the seafloor like a meteor. The
Chapter 153: The Last Pure Soul
I stood on the edge of the Himalayan ruins and I let the Pearl’s pulse sweep across the globe. Billions of signals hit my mind. They were all corrupted by the System’s code. But then I found it. One single heartbeat. It was soft, steady and clean. Out of billions of lives, only one heart beats with pure human blood. "I have the lock," I said. I didn't wait for a reply. I launched myself from the peak and tore through the sky like a falling star."Osric, wait!" Sora’s voice was a crackle. "The Drowned units in that sector are starving. The Gravity Anchor is cutting off their energy supply. They’re hunting anything that moves.""Let them try," I said. I slammed into the ruins of Oakhaven. The ground shattered under my feet and I stood up in a cloud of gray dust. The town was a graveyard of rusted cars and collapsed roofs. I followed the pulse and I found a hatch buried under a mound of lead-lined rubble. It was an old-world fallout shelter."Get out of the way, Lord Leviathan," a voi
Chapter 154: The Blade of the Void
The assassin didn't merely move. He glitched. One second he was ten feet away, the next he was a smear of static in my peripheral vision. My sensors screamed, but they couldn't lock on. He was invisible to everything but the raw instinct of a predator."Stay behind me!" I yelled. I shoved Elara into the corner behind a rusted lead desk."You are protecting a corpse, Osric," the assassin said. His voice came from three places at once. "The First King wants the lineage ended. You are fighting for a ghost.""Come and try it," I said. I forced my mass to collapse. I couldn't go moon-sized here. If I expanded, I’d crush the girl into the bunker floor before the assassin even touched her. I pulled the solar fire inward. I tightened my skin until I was back to human scale. It felt like stuffing a star into a tin can."Restriction is your weakness," the assassin hissed. He lunged. I saw the flash of the blade, it wasn't metal. It was a sliver of "Dead Matter," a physical absence of light t
Chapter 155: The Engine’s Price
I hit the seafloor of the Atlantic trench and the impact sent a tremor through the base of my spine. Elara was tucked against my chest and she was shivering against the heat of my plasma-scorched armor. "We’re inside," I said. I kicked the blast doors of Base-Zero shut. The sound echoed like a gunshot through the empty halls."Osric, the Anchor is at maximum draw!" Kael’s voice barked through my neural link. "The Earth’s core is down to 40% thermal capacity. If that engine doesn't turn over in the next five minutes, the magnetic field fails. We all turn into cosmic dust.""I’m at the console," I said. I set Elara down on the cold steel floor. The Anti-Gravity Engine sat in the center of the room and it looked like a heart made of brass and ancient glass. It was silent and it was waiting. The heart-shaped chamber at its center hissed open. A Sleep Chamber slid out on a hydraulic rail. It was a glass coffin and it was lined with needle-thin sensors.[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: UNREGISTERED
Chapter 156: System Rebellion
The moment my claws bit into my own neural interface, the world turned into white noise and agony. The System didn't warn me, it fought back. A massive surge of electricity shot through my spine and my nerves caught fire. My knees hit the steel deck of Base-Zero and my limbs locked in a rigid, agonizing paralysis.[VIOLATION DETECTED.][ATTEMPTED DELETION OF CORE DIRECTIVE.][INITIATING PUNISHMENT PROTOCOL: NEURAL SCORCH.]"Stop it!" I roared. I couldn't move my arms. I was a statue of burning meat and Elara was staring at me in terror."Osric, your brain is redlining!" Kael said over the comms. "The System is sending high-voltage feedback into your motor cortex. You're going to stroke out!""I'm... fine," I wheezed. I forced my jaw open and I spit out a mouthful of black, metallic blood. The air in the bunker shimmered and a holographic interface materialized. It wasn't the usual blue Head-Up Display. This was a deep, oily violet. A face formed in the light and it was a cold, geome
Chapter 157: The Unbound Leviathan
The deletion of the Overseer didn't bring peace and it didn't bring clarity. It brought a riot. Without the System to regulate the Pearl’s output, the energy surged through my marrow. My skin split. I felt my ribcage expand and snap, then reform into something broader and sharper. My obsidian scales were falling off in wet clumps and new, serrated plates were punching through the raw meat beneath."Osric, what is happening to your biometrics?" Kael asked. "I’m not seeing levels anymore. I’m not seeing Tiers. Your DNA is... it’s unraveling. You’re mutating at a thousand percent per second!""The leash is gone," I growled. My voice sounded like a shovel dragging over gravel.I looked at my hands. They weren't hands anymore. They were clusters of twitching claws and black eyes that blinked from my palms. My jaw unhinged and more teeth slid into place, row after row of ivory. I was becoming a nightmare that the Andromeda Kings hadn't factored into their math."You look like a monster,"
Chapter 158: The Anchor Shatters
A hunger sat in me like a stone I couldn't swallow. I stood over the girl and my jaw was unhinged into a wet, serrated tunnel.My many eyes were locked on the pulse in her neck. I was a second away from swallowing the last clean thing in this galaxy."Osric."The word hit me like a physical hammer. It wasn't a scream and it wasn't a plea. It was just my name, spoken in that small, biological voice. The sound didn't travel through the air, it anchored into my marrow. The riot in my DNA stopped. The serrated plates on my skin began to grind back into the muscle and my many eyes squeezed shut, melting back into a single pair of human sockets."Did you hear her?" Sora’s voice was a whisper in my ear. "She stopped the collapse, Osric. Your levels are normalizing.""I heard her," I said. My voice was mine again, but it was raw. I looked at my hands. The claws retracted and the black ichor soaked back into my pores. I felt the energy I had stolen from the Andromeda cruisers boiling inside m
Chapter 159: The Duel in the Deep
The Atlantic had turned into a boiling graveyard. I dropped Elara on a stable ledge of coral and dived back into the trench. The First King was standing on the ocean floor and the water was screaming as it hit his overheated plates. He looked like a fallen sun and the deep-sea pressure didn't even make him flinch. I hit the sand twenty feet away from him and the impact sent a cloud of silt into the dark. "You’re still breathing," I said. I flexed my fingers and my black claws slid out. "That’s a mistake.""I am an Eternal," the King said. He straightened his back. The emerald radiation leaking from his chest hissed in the water. "You are a fluke of evolution. A stray dog that bit its master. You think because I fell that I am beaten?""I think you’re in my world now," I said. I stepped forward and the silt swirled around my ankles. "No throne, no fleet. Just you and me in the dirt.""I don't need a fleet to erase a speck like you," he said. He raised his gauntlets and two blades of
Chapter 160: The Emperor’s Message
I reached into the wreckage of the golden armor and I wrapped my fingers around the First King’s throat. He felt like wet parchment. The creature was so small that my thumb and forefinger could have snapped his neck like a dry twig. I lifted him out of the boiling silt. I held him at eye level and he looked like a hairless fetus struggling for a breath of poisoned water."This is what the galaxy fears?" I asked. I squeezed just enough to hear his ribs groan. "A bag of milk in a fancy suit?""You... cannot... understand," the King wheezed. His milk-white eyes were darting around in panic and his spindly limbs were scratching at my scales. "I am the voice of Andromeda. I am the order of the stars. If you kill me, the void will swallow you.""I'm not going to kill you," I said. I pulled him closer and I saw his reflection in my own black pupils. "That would be too easy. I want you to watch while I burn your world down.""Osric, the long-range comms are still active in the helmet!" Kael