Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord

Chapter 43: One Thousand Years

As Nora spoke, the cave fell into silence.

Pollution, lasting for a thousand years?

Hughes felt as if he were hearing a ridiculous joke.

He looked around in confusion; the cave was filled with fragments of twilight, a beautiful sight.

Outside the cave, the setting sun gradually sank into the sea, its last rays dyeing the waves red as they crashed against the reefs, sounding like a melodious song.

This song had lasted for who knew how many years, rocks shattered by the waves, edges smoothed, ground into fine sand.

How long was a thousand years?

Long enough for him to live through a lifetime of hardships, then die, decay into bones, and repeat the cycle many times over.

The ocean had been polluted for a thousand years?

Hughes looked at the sea, where the white waves reflected in his and the Sirens' eyes.

No one spoke.

Hughes felt as if he had turned into grains of sand, drifting with the tide.

In the seemingly endless years, he wandered through the sea, seeing the swimming fish, the passing ships, the shrimp and crabs at the ocean floor—

Ding!

Hughes covered his ears, snapping back to reality. He looked toward Nora with a slight ache in his teeth—she had just struck her shield hard with her flail.

"You… you really don't know!? Don't you live in the sea? Can't you feel the endless pollution?"

The Sirens exchanged glances.

"No, this isn’t right. There's almost no pollution on you. I just completed purification, I saw it with my own eyes. But this… this doesn't make sense, it doesn't add up."

Nora began mumbling to herself again, her expression confused.

Another deathly silence followed. The Sirens' eyes were filled with bewilderment.

"Wait!"

Hughes' eyes widened suddenly as a thought flashed through his mind like lightning.

Cursed ones… Bloated monsters… Homeland destroyed… Escape… Enslavement… Water pressure… Abyss… Pollution… Flesh magic…

Hughes’ hands began to tremble. He had a hypothesis, one that was utterly terrifying.

The Sirens and Nora suddenly heard Hughes speak. His voice was not loud, but it trembled slightly.

"Is there a possibility…"

"That before the pollution outbreak in the deep sea, your homeland was destroyed, forcing you to maintain flesh magic to resist the water pressure, turning you into cursed ones?"

"Then, you were enslaved by various races, trapped in shallow waters, so that from birth, you had to constantly sustain flesh magic. And flesh magic keeps your bodies intact, preventing pollution!"

The Sirens looked at Hughes in shock.

"Then, all the other sea races gradually went mad from pollution, but because of the water pressure, you had to maintain flesh magic at all times, so you were never polluted!"

"The pollution comes from the deep sea, but shallow waters are not as affected. That’s why your condition worsened when you entered the Abyssal Trench, and after a few days, you had to flee."

The more Hughes spoke, the clearer it became. Countless details flashed through his mind, forming a massive puzzle.

A puzzle spanning a thousand years of history, built upon the foundation of the Seven Oceans!

"Water pressure… It's not a curse. On the contrary, it saved you, forcing you to constantly maintain flesh magic, making you the sole survivor in the Seven Oceans, which are otherwise covered in pollution!"

"That's why those fishmen didn’t dare to chase you deeper into the Abyssal Trench, not because they feared the exploding ghost ship, but because they feared the pollution in the Abyssal Trench!"

"That's why the journey deeper into the Abyssal Trench was so smooth, after a thousand years of pollution, no creatures remained there."

"And by diving into the Abyssal Trench, facing the pollution directly, you immediately understood its terror, rather than being gradually eroded in the shallow seas, reaching the point of no return!"

Everything made sense.

Hughes stood there, his face filled with shock. He never expected the truth to be like this!?

At that moment, he seemed to catch a glimpse of the truth behind this world.

Hughes suddenly realized that if he and the Sirens had taken a single wrong step, they would have been doomed.

Yet, they had miraculously taken every step correctly, as if guided by fate.

The Sirens' gazes toward him gradually turned to reverence. Everything had been too coincidental, too precise.

Was he really not a god?

Hughes suddenly frowned.

Wait… something’s not right.

He suddenly felt that something was off, as if he had overlooked something very important. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't recall it.

"You… you truly didn’t know…?" Nora was also shaken by the revelation. She looked at the Sirens around her and felt that their expressions did not seem fake.

"You mean… you've been maintaining pollution-blocking magic for a thousand years? In the ocean? Without stopping for a single moment!?"

Taking a deep breath to calm her turbulent emotions, she still found it hard to accept the reality before her.

A thousand years of pollution had turned all other oceanic aberrations into monsters, this was something written in the holy scriptures.

The priest who taught her, the priest who taught that priest, generations upon generations of knowledge passed down, these were facts she had believed to be absolute truths, indisputable realities.

She felt as if something once unbreakable, like a fragile glass vase, had just shattered before her eyes.

Suddenly, Nora looked up at Hughes.

Had she been mistaken?

Was Hughes not actually a heretical cult leader, but merely ignorant of the thousand-year pollution, so he had called her here for treatment?

Was he just asking for help?

Wait… he had crossed the ocean too. How could he know nothing?

Know nothing… Know nothing…

Her eyes were filled with disbelief as she looked at Hughes.

"Could it be… could it be that you're just a mortal?"

A mortal? Did she mean someone without supernatural powers?

Hughes recalled that she was called the "Burier," which likely indicated some supernatural rank within the Silent Sanctum.

He silently nodded.

Clang!

Nora’s tower shield slipped from her hand and fell to the ground.

"How can this be… so you’re not…"

"Wait."

She suddenly seemed to remember something, and her expression changed dramatically.

"Damn it!!"

Her words coincided with a piercing scream.

Monica's entire body was covered in writhing black pollution, which coiled around her like tight ropes, digging deeply into her flesh.

Her once beautiful face had become grotesquely twisted.

Her limbs spasmed and bent at unnatural angles, her joints contorted into eerie positions.

Countless strands of pollution writhed as they fell from her body, resembling thousands of black worms, latching onto any Siren they touched.

Time seemed to slow down.

Hughes felt as if everything before him had turned into slow motion.

He watched as Monica suddenly lunged from the water, roaring as she slammed into Nora, sending her flying.

At that moment, only one sentence echoed in his mind—something Ash had told him before.

"Flesh magic is nothing more than a desperate attempt to resist water pressure. The moment one leaves the sea, even with flesh magic, most will still—"

"Explode and die," Hughes murmured.