As Byron chanted the incantation of the "First-Class Holy Relic: Nation-Destroying Nail," the once ordinary-looking rusted nail suddenly emitted an ominous, blood-red glow.
In the blood-red glow, true historical scenes appeared, unfolding as if replaying themselves.
Battle flags fluttered, knights charged, horses stumbled, and the throne changed hands...
"Is this... the Battle of Bosworth?"
Violet, standing behind Byron, had the clearest view.
This nail clearly carried the mory of a historical event well-known among the Bayfolk and even across a good half of the Old Continent—the Battle of Bosworth.
The event had taken place in the Kingdom of Hightens, among the Strait Islands, and was also a decisive battle for the kingdom’s fate between the king and the rebels.
At that ti, firearms and cannons had not been invented; it was still the age of cold steel, where knights ruled.
As the main force of battle, knights had to don full-body heavy armor and needed a towering steed to charge into the fray with them.
Before the battle began, the king decided to personally lead his troops to et this group of rebels. For this, he ordered his groom to seek out the most famous blacksmith to shoe his beloved warhorse.
The blacksmith naturally did not dare delay and started working imdiately upon receiving the task.
However, after nailing three horseshoes in place, the blacksmith realized he did not have enough nails.
Due to the pressing orders from his superiors, there was no ti to make new nails, so in the end, the blacksmith had to use an inferior nail to fit the last horseshoe.
Although nothing seed amiss on the surface, a hidden flaw had been deeply embedded.
Thus, when the two armies engaged in their decisive battle on the plains of Bosworth.
One mont the king was leading his troops from the front, charging into battle, waving his treasured sword to command the entire army in the assault, as radiant as a War God.
The next mont, his horse stumbled.
The king fell heavily to the ground, and the improperly nailed horseshoe flew far away.
The startled warhorse scrambled to its feet, limped off, and bolted, leaving the king alone on the battlefield.
In the ensuing chaos, the king was surrounded by the enemy’s forces and ultimately t a tragic end—captured and executed.
All because of a single small nail, he beca the infamous last king and, in a sowhat absurd fashion, heralded the downfall of a dynasty and a nation.
Nurous historians have long concluded that this famous historical event demonstrates the universal interconnectedness of things.
Even a single overlooked detail could trigger a chain of disastrous consequences.
Effect: Capable of guiding a series of isolated incidents towards the worst possible outco for the enemy, with an upper limit of: The destruction of a Kingdom!
In other words, if there is any possibility for the situation to worsen, no matter how slight, it will always evolve in the worst possible direction.
The more complex the system and the higher the degree of Chaos, the more severe the consequences; conversely, it might have no destructive power at all.
This was a relic with an extrely high ceiling but also a very low floor, its effectiveness entirely dependent on the specific usage scenario.
"I, Mad Hunt! I hereby judge you, the Bay National Group, and all traitors to the Kingdom!"
Byron did not forget to shout this towards the fleet.
With the help of the amplifying conch Violet produced, his voice pierced the rain curtain and spread far across the entire Strait Fleet, raising the renown of this Kingly Title even higher. Of course, all this hinged on the major premise that soone would survive to return to the Kingdom of Hightens.
Imdiately, history replayed itself: the corroded nail, having lost its material form, completely transford into a streak of crimson light and vanished from Byron’s fingertips.
It shot instantly into the flagship, King Edward, which housed the original form of the Touch of the Kraken.
「At that mont, on the open-air deck of the warship.」
Commander Norwich, who had retracted his Iron Bone Dragon Filant Worm exoskeletal armor, spoke, his voice strained and unnatural, "Throw it out! Hurry and toss all the silver coins on deck into the sea!"
No longer worrying about avenging his son, and not even giving a thought to what judgnt Mad Hunt had passed on him, he frantically ordered the soldiers to throw the thirty silver octopus coins scattered all over the deck into the ocean.
He had personally ordered the creation of these coins; how could he not know the consequences of collecting them all?
He had been puzzled as to why the Black Mass ritual, which was supposed to have been completed at Iron Anchor Bay to make the Touch of the Kraken the strongest anchor point for targeting its prey, had seemingly failed.
Now he finally realized why there had been the unexpected situation where the Touch of the Kraken was unable to consu the Bayfolk.
How can I continue with conspiracies and tricks if the enemy knows my core plan like the back of their hand?
A conspiracy is a conspiracy precisely because it cannot bear the light of day; once exposed, all efforts might be wasted, or it might even backfire.
In his panic, Norwich also felt a bone-deep hatred for Red Beard.
"It’s fortunate I didn’t listen to your advice to enter the Maze of Lock.
"Even the thirty silver octopus coins have fallen into enemy hands; am I supposed to believe that you, fool, actually managed to seize the position of Military Governor?
"You were probably used by those damned Bayfolk again!
"You’d better die a miserable death this ti, or else I’ll make sure to inflict the Blood Eagle on you and make the rest of your life an unbearable tornt!"
In reality, whether Red Beard died miserably or not, Norwich was at that mont only capable of uttering empty threats.
The Touch of the Kraken’s response to the ritual’s summons was much faster than the speed with which they could retrieve the silver octopus coins from the crevices in the deck.
Using the fierce wind, rain, and waves as diums, countless tentacles, originally invisible to the naked eye, were gradually materializing.
A blinding white bolt of lightning tore through the night sky.
A mile away, Byron and Violet clearly caught sight of a massive figure teeming with tentacles flashing for an instant above the Second Grade ship before vanishing.
The sailors on deck had an even clearer view, and the sight struck them with even greater force.
Many spiritually sensitive yet poorly anchored mortal soldiers couldn’t endure that fleeting mont of eye contact; they drew their flintlock guns and pulled the triggers against their own heads.
However, because the gun barrels were waterlogged, the gunpowder soaked, they failed to discharge.
This made them even more frantic; they used their pistols as hamrs, savagely bashing their own skulls until their brains spilled out, even as their comrades desperately tried to stop them.
As ti passed, more and more soldiers followed suit, and Chaos reigned on the warship.
"Damn it, the Calamity has descended!"
The Fleet Commander, ship captains, and other high-ranking officers, privy to the situation, their faces were ashen, feeling utterly powerless, able only to passively await their judgnt.
The gap between them and the Touch of the Kraken was even greater than that between ants and humans.
The so-called ritual was akin to a colony of ants, having stumbled upon so pattern, arranging themselves into crude, provocative shapes—like an ’S’ and a ’B’—right in a human’s path.
If the human happened to be in a good mood, they might find it amusing and toss them so breadcrumbs.
But if the sa offensive display were encountered when the human was in a bad mood, they might instead receive a stream of hot urine or a kettle of boiling water.
Norwich still clung to a one-in-ten-thousand chance of good luck, completely unaware that the Nation-Destroying Nail had already silently taken effect in an unseen corner.
「Down on the lower gun deck, where Byron had initially infiltrated.」
The gun ports on either side should have been nailed shut from the inside, the plugs inserted. Then, using a caulking mixture of pine tar and oakum, the gaps around the gun ports should have been filled to ensure they were strictly waterproofed. Especially on the leeward side, which was already completely subrged as the ship listed, its fourteen gun ports were bearing even greater pressure.
Now, under the influence of a mysterious force, one of the iron bars securing a gun port began to corrode at a rate far beyond normal. In just a few breaths, it snapped in two as if it had been soaking in seawater for years, falling to the deck with a CLANG.
Under the raging storm outside, the re caulking was insufficient to withstand the pressure of the sea.
BANG!
With a sharp CRACK, like a bottle cap being pried off, a gun port burst open under the impact of a wave, and icy seawater surged in.
The ship began to list even further.
On this deck, already compromised by Byron’s earlier sabotage, many of the cables securing the cannons had already snapped. As the ship listed, the thirty-two-pound cannons, each weighing over two and a half tons, imdiately began to slide on their carriages across the now sharply inclined gun deck. Especially those cannons sliding from the windward (starboard) side, having gathered more montum due to the longer slide, slamd into the port side hull with thunderous impacts, smashing gaping holes in it.
The flooding quickly beca uncontrollable.
The multitude of cannons piling up on the port side exacerbated the situation, further shifting the ship’s center of gravity. More seawater thodically poured in, and the water level at the gun positions on the subrged port side rose higher and higher.
All of this happened too suddenly for the damage control parties rushing to the scene; they found it impossible to approach the port side to carry out repairs.
"Quick, push all the cannons back to starboard! We need to rebalance the warship first!" an officer yelled. Under such commands, the sailors desperately tried to push the thirty-two-pound cannons, now piled on the port side, back towards starboard.
But how could that be easy?
At that mont, the ship listed severely to port, forming a steep slope. In the surging floodwaters, pushing nearly twenty cannons, each weighing over two and a half tons, was a feat beyond re human strength.
A Second Order Transcendent, hoping to be the hero to save the whole ship, accidentally slipped and was rcilessly crushed by a heavy gun carriage. His desperate screams of agony shattered what little morale and sanity the other sailors had left.
"It’s over, we’re done for!"
What truly horrified everyone was that cold seawater was now pouring madly into the bilge through passages, crevices, and the holes torn open during the fight between Byron and Norwich.
The Touch of the Kraken, which absolutely, under no circumstances, should have been subrged, was now thoroughly soaked in seawater!
The ancient Colored Pottery Jar, used by the overseas natives to seal it, began to dissolve as if made of re mud upon contact with the seawater, rapidly vanishing.
GLUG, GLUG, GLUG...
The liquid inside bubbled like boiling water.
The ghastly pale, intensely corrupted tentacle swelled and contracted, rapidly absorbing seawater, growing larger and more active. Then, from its severed end, it split from one into two, two into four, four into eight... In a short while, a dense mass of tentacles filled the warship’s bilge.
A new choice lay before this entity, an entity unfathomable by human reason. Whether to dive back into the sea imdiately to regain freedom, have a big al first before embracing freedom, or so other option?
「Just then, a mysterious current delivered an ancient flute to its presence.」
A dexterous tentacle with its own instinct wrapped around it; the oral discs within its suckers instinctively began to play a lody it knew intimately.
Yes, without a doubt, that was the signal for alti!
The next mont, endless ghastly white tentacles surged up through the warship’s passageways, a torrent rushing towards the upper decks.
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