“They made it! That’s amazing!”
Seeing the first mate and the two sailors successfully reach the outside of the ti loop, everyone waiting on the gangway couldn’t help but cheer.
But their smiles barely ford when, in the towering waves next to the small boat, a figure completely covered in sli—pale as if it had been gazing at corpses for centuries—suddenly leapt out. Its enormous mouth, fish-like but filled with countless sharp teeth, clamped down on the first mate’s head, who was sitting in the center of the lifeboat.
A human skull, normally extrely sturdy, seed as fragile as a broken chocolate bar under the monster’s jaw.
With a sickening crack, the first mate didn’t even have ti to scream. By the ti the figure arced through the water and splashed down on the lifeboat’s side, only half of his skull remained. The upper portion—including the eyes, brain, and all internal structures—was gone, leaving the bare jaw and gums exposed. Blood gushed like a boiling spring.
“Ahhh… Aaaahhh!”
“No! First Mate Wright! First Mate Wright!”
Both sailors in the lifeboat, along with everyone on the gangway, were wide-eyed with horror, unable to comprehend what they had just witnessed.
The creature that had attacked the first mate was clearly the sa type as the ones lurking in the water beneath the Golden Anchor. But weren’t they supposed to be trapped inside the ti loop? How did they get outside…?
No—actually, it made sense. During that seven-second window, it wasn’t just the massive cruise ship that was temporarily freed—the thousands of monsters under the ship were freed too!
Once the ti loop reset, those escaped creatures would transform back into humanoid forms and return to the ship.
Before anyone could fully react, the brief seven-second gap ended. Centered on the Golden Anchor, the massive ti loop descended once more. At the sa mont, the rope connecting the lifeboat to the outside snapped in the middle.
A wave struck, and the tiny lifeboat was carried involuntarily, drifting away from the ti loop.
For the two sailors on board, being separated from the main ship in the middle of the storm was almost fatal—especially after witnessing the first mate die so violently. The shock they felt was far greater than that of anyone else on the Mary Jane.
Yet the two sailors knew the weight of the mission resting on their shoulders. This was the opportunity that First Mate Wright had traded his life for—it was the hope of everyone on the ship.
Gritting their teeth, they decided one of them would put down the oars and, on the rocking lifeboat, turn on the radio. Carefully, they dialed the Coast Guard.
“Hello, Newport District Command, U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Division. How may we assist you?”
When the call connected, a familiar East Coast accent ca through the receiver. Both sailors’ eyes welled up.
Although it had taken only seven seconds to get out, by the ti the two sailors overca countless obstacles and finally rowed the lifeboat back into the ti loop, it was already 20:13.
The first mate’s death at the hands of the monster had plunged everyone into despair. As ti passed 20:00, joyful music and laughter rang out from both cruise ships. Amid the festive atmosphere, the captain solemnly covered the first mate’s damaged head with his coat and personally carried him back onto the ship.
The only good news was that the Coast Guard had received the Mary Jane’s distress call and was expected to arrive nearby in about three hours.
Their speedboats were small, fast, and high off the water, far safer than the lifeboats. When the Coast Guard reached the outside of the ti loop, they could enter first and wait. During tomorrow’s seven-second window when the loop failed, passengers and crew could be transferred onto the speedboats and evacuated safely.
With the rescue plan in place, the next step was to prepare all the passengers.
Tomorrow’s evacuation would be extrely tight—only seven seconds—and there could be no mistakes. One slip, and the entire speedboat crew could die.
By this point, there was no ti to worry about panic or fear. What the captain needed was absolute order and complete obedience.
The ongoing dance suddenly ca to a halt. The captain carried the bodies of the first mate and Dali onto the deck, then activated the shipwide broadcast. He laid out everything that had happened since the Mary Jane had encountered the Golden Anchor, and instructed all passengers and crew to return to their cabins to quickly pack their belongings. To reduce load, each person was allowed to carry no more than five kilograms of essential items.
If any passenger questioned the orders, the captain would direct them to view the two crew mbers’ bodies. The grotesque appearances and horrific injuries served as undeniable proof of the truth. No one could continue arguing after seeing them.
That night, everyone on the ship sprang into action. Everly had long since packed and was ready to leave at a mont’s notice.
Yet, for so reason, despite the dawn of victory being so close, she felt uneasy, her nerves on edge.
The next morning, when Everly got up and went to the deck to look around, she realized the Coast Guard—who should have arrived in the middle of the night—was nowhere in sight. Her ominous premonition had co true.
Sothing had gone wrong.
Realizing this, Everly imdiately rushed to the captain’s office to et with him.
“Do you know which area the Newport District of the Coast Guard is responsible for?” she asked bluntly as soon as they t.
The captain, also a smart man, imdiately changed color upon hearing this. “That’s the team active around Newport Harbor in the state of Arliger, and we encountered the storm near a port in North Naradka. Those two locations are over 350 nautical miles apart!”
“Yes,” Everly said. “I think that’s exactly why the Coast Guard hasn’t shown up—the ti loop is like a drifting bottle. It doesn’t stay in one place; it’s constantly moving across the sea.”
The Coast Guard had specialized equipnt capable of pinpointing the source of a radio signal, allowing them to conduct precise sea rescues. When the two sailors had sent out their distress call from outside the ti loop, the Coast Guard would have detected the signal’s location and believed they could arrive within three hours.
However, neither the Coast Guard nor the Mary Jane’s crew had anticipated that the coordinates of the ti loop were constantly shifting. With waves of such magnitude, the three-hour wait was more than enough for the ti loop to be pushed far away to an entirely new location. Even if the rescue team arrived at the original coordinates, all they would see was an empty, endless ocean.
“To get real-ti positioning, we’d need to keep a lifeboat equipped with a radio outside the ti loop at all tis, closely following it—but that’s nearly impossible! That damned storm is relentless, and the lifeboats aren’t stable enough. It would be capsized!”
“But we have to do it, or everyone will die here.”
“Yes. Because the ship hasn’t docked for resupply, the food and water on board won’t last long. Without rescue, everyone will die… Soone has to go outside the ti loop to maintain real-ti coordinates. Let think—Ms. Everly, please give so ti to figure this out.”
“All right, please make your decision as soon as possible.”
Everly let out a long sigh and left the captain’s office.
Because of an earlier announcent, the passengers and crew had been gathered on the deck since dawn, straining their eyes for any sign of the Coast Guard.
But what they received instead was another broadcast: “Please continue waiting… The coordinates of the ti loop are not fixed and are constantly moving. We need to send a lifeboat outside the ti loop to provide the rescue team with real-ti positioning. Once successful, everyone will be rescued. All passengers are asked to wait patiently…”
Even though the situation had been explained clearly over the broadcast, the passengers weren’t buying it.
“Can you people even handle this? Yesterday you said we could leave today, and now you say tomorrow. Tomorrow, you’re not going to back out again, are you…”
“If the captain hadn’t insisted on entering the ti bubble to explore that junk ship, we wouldn’t be in this ss!”
“They’re just a bunch of pigs! Good-for-nothings! Letting them run wild will get everyone killed!”
The shattered hope of rescue stirred the passengers into a frenzy. They gathered at the doors of the captain’s room and crew quarters, loudly protesting, burning with righteous anger.
In the past, the captain and crew could usually think of ways to divert attention and calm the passengers—but this ti, for so reason, the passengers’ anger was unusually intense. They seed to have completely lost faith in the crew, which, on a cruise ship adrift at sea, was extrely dangerous.
Sure enough, by nightfall, the atmosphere on board had reached a boiling point.
But no matter how fierce the quarrels were, soone still had to act.
Around 7:50 p.m., soone spotted a lifeboat being lowered into the water. A few crew mbers, carrying a tightly wrapped bundle, slunk down the gangway.
“Look over there! The crew is trying to run!”
“See? All the news about rescue coming is a lie—they want to abandon us and escape with the supplies!”
“This morning I overheard the crew talking. They said the supplies on board wouldn’t last much longer… and it’s true after all…”
Incited by those with ulterior motives, the passengers rushed onto the deck, their anger mingled with panic. A large crowd surged toward the gangway, trying to push past the crew and climb into the lifeboats below.
“Everyone, quiet! Quiet! The crew isn’t trying to escape—they’re, just like the broadcast this morning said, planning to go outside to seek support…” A crew mber held up a gaphone, attempting to calm the passengers. But before he could finish his sentence, a punch landed squarely on his face.
The passenger who attacked the crew snatched the gaphone and shouted hoarsely in rage, “Don’t believe them! They’re all lying!”
“Charge! The crew has no guns! Let’s capture them all!”
“Ahhhhh!”
…
Everly truly couldn’t understand how things had escalated to this point.
Under the leadership of the passenger who had seized the gaphone, over 180 passengers revolted, taking control of 74 crew mbers and the three people with George. Even the few crew mbers who had ntally prepared themselves for the possibility of death and had planned to go out during the “7-second window” to seek help were forcibly dragged off the lifeboats—together with their radios—before the window opened, and were firmly tied up along with the rest of the crew in the banquet hall.
Everly had initially thought this uprising was a classic case of “a fool’s whim.” However, she quickly realized she had underestimated the rioters—or rather, she had underestimated the man who had sparked the revolt.
His na was Sretan, an unremarkable-looking middle-aged man. Bald, with widely spaced eyes that protruded slightly, a flat, long mouth, he bore a strange resemblance to a giant frog.
He seed to have a skin condition; even while giving a speech on the stage in the banquet hall, his fingers constantly scratched the fine orange-peel texture of his neck, sending countless tiny white flakes falling to the floor.
Yet, paradoxically, in both appearance and deanor, Sretan was far from impressive—but his speech was incredibly persuasive. Even just hearing his low, hoarse voice, Everly found herself captivated, as if listening to a divine lody, utterly entranced.
Sretan said that the captain had deceived everyone. At that, a sudden surge of violent anger flared in Everly’s chest.
He said that leaving the ti bubble didn’t require outside help at all—one only needed to locate the witch hidden on the Golden Anchor and destroy her corpse. Instantly, Everly began to wonder where the witch’s body could be hidden and resolved that it must be utterly destroyed.
Sretan went on to claim that once the ti bubble was broken and the thousands trapped on board freed, he would use all the crew mbers as living sacrifices, leading everyone in a grand ritual, so that all could beco followers of the great “Deep Ones” leader, the father god Dagon, and obtain powerful, perfect bodies and eternal life. Everly, in turn, began to imagine the incredible might and glory she would gain once she devoted herself to the father god Dagon.
When the brief speech ended, nearly everyone in the banquet hall—except for the bound crew—was under Sretan’s spell. Their eyes glead with fanatic fervor, burning to rush to the Golden Anchor, find the witch’s corpse, liberate their fellow passengers, and risk everything for the glory of the father god Dagon.
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