Aziel had been floating in the sea for quite some time.
And as the time passed, the pull had only increased, and it would be no exaggeration to say that he could not rest peacefully anymore.
He could no longer ignore the force dragging at him without being constantly irritated anymore.
"Gosh… imagine what would have happened if I jumped with my frail body."
He sighed, shifting his solid form into a partially liquid state slowly.
Since he had been floating, he had been constantly trying to shift his state of matter like the one he had encountered before.
After hundreds of trials, he finally got a vague gist of it, and could now partially shift his form properly.
"I doubt that fucker was shifting on his own will… its form even shifted to its disadvantage multiple times in the battle." Aziel wondered quietly.
His liquefied body floated above the water, partially submerged.
He had done this to reduce the heavy strain from the pull, figuring his liquefied state would be able to handle the stretch much better than his solid one.
However, he had noticed that once he changed his form, he could not revert to another for quite a while, even though his perception of time was already slightly messed up.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a deep, resonant sound tore violently through the silence of the sea.
It was so loud that it rattled the water around Aziel completely.
"What the hell!" Aziel blurted, a sudden rush of raw anxiety tearing through him at the unexpected sound.
He had never imagined hearing anything here besides his own voice at all.
His gaze cut across the vastness of the sea, scanning every single direction.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a massive structure — distant, yet impossible to miss.
His eyes locked on it, trying to make sense of the absurdity before him.
It was so immense that even after tilting his neck completely, he couldn't see it in full properly.
He couldn't even tell whether it was moving at great speed or simply existing, impossibly large, on the horizon.
"I should be trailing along the structure at a situation like this…"
Aziel muttered under his breath, as he spotted many figures standing over the edge of the gaps created in its front, thanks to his amplified senses.
"But… I better run the hell out of me right now."
He dragged his liquid body, changing his trajectory completely.
However, he did not move a single metre.
"Fuck," cursing under his breath, he changed his trajectory again.
Not entirely going against the pull.
He dragged his liquid body, shifting his angle instead of going directly against the pull.
His path no longer ran straight into the massive structure, but slanted — a diagonal crossing that still carried him forward under the pull, just not head-on.
He approached the structure, and it only grew larger with every passing second, monstrous, impossibly immense.
The horizon shrank as it stretched endlessly across the waves.
The water churned violently around it, and the currents tore at him, messing with his shaky trajectory.
'I can't cross it. It's not possible.'
Aziel forced every last ounce of strength into his diagonal angle.
His form suddenly changed into solid, and he forced every ounce of strength into the diagonal angle.
And…
He barely managed to slip past its edge.
The proximity was staggering — the sheer bulk of it, the way it cut through the sea, left him gasping hard.
Then the waves hit.
Blasted by the water the structure shoved aside, he was tossed sideways roughly.
"No wonder I didn't make the mistake of following it... That thing probably wouldn't have been affected by the force in the slightest."
He whispered, staring at the rippling water where the ship had passed, now fading into the horizon slowly.
"Watching something that colossal vanish in front of my eyes does not help in the slightest."
A nervous chuckle left his mouth, but it did little to lighten the heavy weight pressing on his chest.
His plan was already cracking apart.
He had hoped to turn them against themselves by pulling some subtle strings.
Thinking they were unorganized, chaotic at best—creatures barely holding together under instinct and scattered sentience.
But if they were really capable of creating something like this... what else could they have?
The thought unsettled him more than the ship itself.
What if they weren't a fractured swarm at all, but a fully organized civilization?
A society.
One bound firmly by purpose and structure.
The idea of puppeting a society felt like being handed the most lethal gun, but with no bullets at all.
"Change of plans. No more fireworks. I'll have to collect info first instead of recklessly charging into their territory."
Aziel straightened himself, aligning with the path from which the colossal ship had come, and let the pull drag him forward.
He knew damn well it wasn't the smartest choice.
Every instinct screamed that he could run into another one of those giants if this was indeed a travel route.
And if he crossed paths with two at once, he wasn't sure he'd be slipping past edges again.
But wandering aimlessly across an endless sea with no bearings wasn't much of a plan either.
At least here, there was a thread to follow—thin, dangerous, but still a fragile thread.
'If I'm lucky, I'll end up where they dock. A port, a harbor, something that breathes of civilization… and answers.'
He exhaled slowly, half in frustration, half in resignation.
The current tugged him onward, and he let it, the thought lingering that this step could very well lead him to die eventually.
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