Tales of the Endless Empire

Chapter 470: Skill testing

Thalion soared over the wide, endless ocean using Scarlet Maelstrom. What was clear was that with this skill he wouldn’t be able to launch any surprise attacks. The roaring current of power he currently was couldn’t be missed.The positive side was that the speed and force surpassed Mistform by a large margin.

He even tried diving slightly into the water, which didn’t slow him down as much as he had expected. In fact, he maybe lost ten percent of his total speed.

Along the way he had also been thinking about what he should do regarding the coming war. Since he hadn’t reached any real conclusion, he decided there was nothing wrong with leveling and testing his forms first.

Killing the elves had already filled ten percent of the bar to his next level, which was awesome.

The elves hadn’t been that high level either, and Thalion was confident that hunting higher-tier variants in the depths of the ocean should be very doable.

Once he could no longer see the ship behind him, he stopped Scarlet Maelstrom, let himself drop into the calm sea, and shifted into Myrelith, the Serpent Crowned by Tides.

The elves would probably search the area, and right now Thalion didn’t want anything to do with them. That was why he swam out into the open waters.

Gliding effortlessly through the ocean felt amazing.

Rays of sunlight shimmered through the water ahead of him.

As Thalion traveled farther and farther, he encountered something he hadn’t anticipated—reefs and fishers.

The fishers were basically water mages who mostly hunted beneath the ocean’s surface. They had a relatively small boat that they probably used to sleep in from time to time.

They were E-grade and not very strong either, which made them uninteresting for Thalion.

He left the fishers—who were likely former Blue Robes—alone and began diving deeper.

Before that he had been traveling about fifty meters below the surface, and so far his passive skill had worked very well, because none of the humans had noticed him.

To be fair, he hadn’t been that close. There were easily two hundred meters between them.

On the other hand, he was twenty-nine meters long and the water was crystal clear.

The fishers quickly disappeared behind him as Thalion ventured deeper into the ocean.

The darkness wasn’t oppressive to him, and he could see almost as clearly as near the surface.

He had spoken with Ratgul about beasts and how quickly they could evolve. Apparently, for beasts it all depended on their environment and the natural treasures around them.

The stronger the energy of the natural treasure they absorbed, the faster they progressed through the ranks.

According to Ratgul, it was to be expected that multiple D-grade beasts already existed in the oceans.

Those on land were often a bit slower to evolve, but it wouldn’t take long before they caught up.

This meant that if Thalion wanted to find strong beasts to fight, he needed to watch for strong mana currents.

This was also where something came into play that he had almost forgotten—which was a bit stupid, considering it had been quite an important gift from Ratgul.

His title: Hunter of All.

The title had two effects.

First, once he had marked prey, he would never lose it—no matter how far it ran or how well it hid.

Second, it made finding prey far easier.

Even small traces were enough for Thalion to determine a very precise direction, and the more clues he gathered, the more accurate the information became.

It was a bit like sonar—but without sound.

All he needed were traces of mana or other lingering signs connected to the beast.

All in all, it was a very impressive title.

With it, Thalion would have no trouble finding prey. And as a final failsafe, if it somehow didn’t work, he could simply release a bit of blood into the ocean.

It wouldn’t take long before sharks or other predators with keen senses arrived.

Fortunately, Thalion had already found traces of mana belonging to several E-grade beasts and was following them deeper and deeper into the ocean.

The closer he got, the more signals he picked up. There had to be quite a few E-grade beasts down here.

Thalion moved his tail slowly so he wouldn’t accidentally catapult himself downward. Even those slow strokes propelled him forward almost as fast as the Tidecaller Serpent could swim at near full speed.

This evolution truly had impressive power.

Soon, a very familiar sight opened before him.

Multiple crystals floated in the water, and much like during the tutorial, almost every one of them had a large predator either perched on top of it or slowly circling around it.

Perfect.

This would even allow him to compare the strength of this form to the Tidecaller Serpent.

Back then, the level difference had also been quite large when he farmed experience.

This time it should be similar.

Thalion couldn’t identify every creature at once, so only the majestic sea star in the back received the shock of its life when he used Identify on it.

A massive eye opened on its back and began searching for the intruder who had dared to use a skill on it.

Gigantic Seastar — Level 139

The level actually wasn’t that high, but from the aura it partially released it was clear that the seastar was a high-tier variant.

Now for the carnage he was about to unleash.

There was one downside to this form—if it could even be called that—because he only had three attack skills: Tsunami Breaker, Myrelith’s Bite, and Myrelith’s Tidal Lance.

Since they were all Divine skills, Thalion had no doubt they would be able to shred anything he wanted to kill.

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The real question was how often and how quickly he could cast them.

Most sea creatures were quite fast in their own element, and he had no desire to test his scales by letting something bite into his neck. Those fifteen-meter sharks with mouths that looked more like hydraulic flesh grinders would definitely hurt a lot.

There was, of course, another thing he could use very effectively as a weapon—his water control.

In Ratgul’s domain, the god had taught him many efficient ways of shaping the water around him.

He could form javelins and launch them at targets, or—what would probably be even better—push the water away and create something similar to an air pocket.

This was currently the most taxing thing Thalion could do, but other water creatures would be unable to dodge it, which could become very useful against small and nimble foes.

Another technique Thalion liked to use with his water control was something he called the Water Press.

He simply solidified water around a target, empowered it with mana, and then crushed the object in the middle.

There was, of course, a downside.

For one, it required a good amount of concentration, which was why it was only something he could do when he had enough time and resources.

With the passive skill Blessing of Myrelith, however, this had changed.

On the way down into the depths, Thalion had already experimented a little, and everything that once required intense focus and effort now came almost as second nature.

This was how far Thalion had come in theory.

Now he needed to put it to the test.

Looking at the available targets, there was a school of tiny squids hovering around one crystal. Then there were a few large sharks, a big moray eel, a massive leatherback turtle, and something that looked like a moonfish—though it could just as easily have been some alien creature or a very fat and ugly guppy.

There were, of course, more predators like himself circling the crystals at a distance, watching for any weakness so they could take the position of one of the beasts sitting atop a crystal.

Thanks to his passive skill Camouflage of the Depths, no one seemed to notice him.

Among all the possible victims, the turtle had the strongest defenses, which was why Thalion granted it the honor of being struck first.

So far he had only read the description of the skill.

Now it was time to prove how good it really was.

A massive surge of mana rushed toward Thalion—so much that every creature on and around the crystals jerked their heads toward him.

For them, it must have felt like something very, very large had just taken a breath.

Thalion reveled in the feeling of power accumulating inside his body as he charged the attack.

Opening his maw released the beam of water.

It began as a deep hum that made the water around Thalion’s head vibrate violently, as if it were boiling. Then the sound sharpened into a shrill scream as the attack shot forward through the ocean toward the wide-eyed turtle that probably couldn’t believe its terrible luck.

The turtle was definitely mid E-grade, and it had no intention of dying quietly. Its entire shell began to glow with power, since dodging was no longer an option.

Reinforcing its shell was the only defense it had.

Then Myrelith’s Tidal Lance struck.

It was hard to determine exactly how the turtle died.

The multi-ton creature was blasted off the crystal and hurled into the distance, pieces of its shell spinning away in every direction, while Thalion immediately received the kill notification.

He could have kept the Tidal Lance going for a few more seconds, but since the turtle was already dead—and he couldn’t hit another beast simply by turning his head—it seemed like a waste of mana.

All in all, Thalion was very pleased with the skill.

Even the turtle would probably have agreed that the power output was incredibly high.

Funny enough, the attack had only consumed twenty percent of Thalion’s total mana, which was nothing compared to the destruction it caused.

The funniest part was that his mana recovered within two seconds.

Thalion thought this eagerly, though he had the feeling that the enthusiasm was somewhat lacking among his soon-to-be victims.

To be fair, most of them lacked proper facial expressions.

Still, the way they swam around their crystals in panic—and how some of the ones closest to him simply abandoned their positions and fled—did not make a particularly confident impression on Thalion.

Back during the tutorial, when he had power-leveled as the Tidecaller Serpent, he had felt like a mage who constantly feared that a single bite could devour and kill him.

Now things were different.

Now Thalion was actually one of the largest predators in the entire area.

The sharks and the turtle might have had more total mass, but Thalion was far from being something that could be killed with a single bite.

Since Thalion needed a good testing subject for his bite skill, he went for the sharks, who were so full of excitement that they immediately tried to escape by swimming downward.

Thalion, of course, couldn’t let that stand.

Where would things end if marine life discovered that running away was a viable strategy?

To be fair, with his title Hunter of All, even that wouldn’t work if Thalion truly wanted to pursue them.

The poor sharks had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Thalion dove after them, accelerating quickly to catch up, and all the marine life around the crystals that was even remotely close scattered in every possible direction.

Thalion had swum with sharks before, back on good old Earth. From small reef sharks to tiger sharks, he had seen them all.

But in all that time, he had never seen a shark look over its shoulder in fear—figuratively speaking—while swimming away.

Thalion enjoyed the chase.

Every second that passed, he unleashed more and more power, getting faster and faster.

The first bite landed on the shark that was the fattest—and therefore the slowest.

Thalion knew that sharks hunting large prey usually went for a single bite and then let the victim bleed out before returning to finish the meal.

Technically, his bite skill was perfect for the same tactic.

There was just one issue.

With a loud cracking sound, Thalion bit straight through the shark, and a kill notification appeared on his status screen.

Thalion thought as he shot after the remaining sharks.

He was far faster than they were and caught up within seconds without even using his full speed.

The next shark was more nimble and managed to turn quickly enough that, after a few maneuvers, Thalion only managed to bite its back fin.

Once again, nothing stopped his jaws from closing completely.

He bit straight through the shark.

This time he hadn’t even meant to bite that hard.

Thankfully the damage wasn’t immediately fatal, and the shark survived for roughly four seconds before dying.

That was slightly frustrating, because Thalion couldn’t determine whether the death had been caused by the wound itself or by the effect of his bite skill.

Still, the evolution had been impressive so far, and Thalion was willing to give the skill the benefit of the doubt.

There was still one more shark left for testing.

This time he would just scratch it slightly to see what happened.

It turned out that scratching a shark with long, backward-curving teeth wasn’t particularly easy.

Ripping twenty kilograms of flesh out of an opponent probably wouldn’t qualify as a .

Still, it wasn’t enough to kill the shark immediately.

The creature survived for almost two minutes before death finally claimed it.

Thalion hadn’t noticed anything unusual around the wound besides blood, but normally an injury like that wouldn’t be fatal for such a large shark.

That proved that his skill was indeed working.

Two skills tested.

Which meant it was time to try the upgraded Tsunami Breaker.

Then Thalion noticed a shadow moving below him.

His eyes widened when he realized what it was.

Thalion thought with a grin as he spotted the Skarn swimming roughly a kilometer beneath him.

Just like during the trial, it didn’t take long before more Skarn appeared.

A whole swarm approached.

This was the best possible test this form could get.

The Tidecaller Serpent had never truly been able to kill those creatures effectively.

But what about now?

Those fish had also been incredibly annoying during the trial and had seriously interfered with Thalion’s progress.

He eagerly dove down toward them.

It took the Skarn a moment to notice him.

They had probably come for the sharks and hadn’t detected the massive predatory serpent thanks to Thalion’s passive skill.

That skill seemed to work far better than before.

Back when he had been the Tidecaller Serpent, he could charge a skill without the enemy noticing.

Now that wasn’t the case anymore.

It felt as if the entire ocean vibrated around Thalion as he began charging Tsunami Breaker.

Using such a skill at half power would have been a waste.

He wanted to see what it could really do.

Besides, he had every intention of smashing those ugly fish.

At first, the Skarn swam toward him.

Then their fish-like eyes widened, and they suddenly turned around.

They began accelerating away.

But it was already too late.

Tsunami Breaker rolled outward in a massive shockwave, tearing through the swarm and shredding their bodies.

Broken corpses, blood, and scattered scales slowly drifted downward toward the ocean floor.

Thalion was so pleased with the destructive wave that he performed two quick pirouettes in the water.

Still, a few Skarn had been far enough away to escape the worst of the attack and were already fleeing.

And that was something Thalion simply couldn’t allow.

In all the chaos he hadn’t even noticed that he had gained two levels, bringing all of his forms to Level 82.

Normally Thalion would say that stats didn’t matter all that much.

But he could clearly feel that he had grown stronger.

Maybe each level granted more than just stats?

Maybe there were hidden improvements as well?

That was just a theory Thalion came up with on the spot while chasing after the surviving Skarn.

Strangely enough, they weren’t swimming deeper.

Instead, they were desperately trying to escape upward—while being hunted by an extremely powerful sea serpent who had no intention of letting anyone leave alive.