Free Web NovelChapter 217: THE RED BONES (2)
[East and West Flanks — simultaneous]
Seraph and Jessica.
Not on the same flank — Seraph on the east, Jessica on the west. Separated by the boat’s width and by the kind of power each represented.
The twenty pirates who had reached the east flank saw Seraph.
Most of them recognized her.
F2 in full activation was a signature the Red Bones had documented — the Temple had records of Seraph that had reached the ocean through the Sea Fangs’ information channels. They knew what F2 did. They knew what Seraph did.
What they didn’t know was what Seraph did when she had no reason to hold back.
The east flank’s sub‑captain, level 82 with a relatively well‑developed lesser Mark, gave the order to attack.
Seraph looked at him.
F2’s scythe in her hand.
Not the contained version from training with Alex. Not the calibrated version she used when she needed not to destroy the space around her target.
The version she had developed over fifteen years of fighting alone in territories where there was no one to protect but herself.
"He’s coming," said the sub‑captain to his nineteen pirates.
"Yes," said Seraph.
And she attacked first.
---
F2’s scythe’s first arc was not aimed at a body.
It was aimed at the ocean.
F2’s edge cut the water’s spiritual plane within a five‑meter radius around Seraph — the plane that the twenty pirates’ Depth Marks used to amplify themselves, the channel between the ocean’s power and its bearers.
Twenty lesser Marks lost access to the ocean simultaneously.
Not collapsing — cut. Like cutting a hose. The water remained water. The ocean remained the ocean. But the channel between the ocean and the Marks no longer existed within that radius.
The twenty pirates felt the difference immediately.
The sub‑captain tried to reorient his Mark toward an alternative channel.
Seraph didn’t give him time.
---
The east flank fight was different from Raven’s.
Raven operated with the skeletons as an extension — her body still, her power active at the points where the skeletons were. F3 as a network.
Seraph operated differently.
Seraph was the weapon.
F2’s scythe moving with the specific cadence of someone who had perfected a style over fifteen years with no one to interrupt it, to question it, to tell her it was too much or too little. Each cut exactly where it needed to be. Each step exactly the right distance from the next target.
Not supernaturally fast.
Supernaturally efficient.
The first pirate took two seconds. The second one and a half. The third one.
[3 pirates — out of combat — total time: 4.5 seconds]
The fourth pirate tried to flank from the right while Seraph was finishing the third.
F2 read the fourth’s signature before the fourth arrived.
Seraph turned before the fourth was at the angle from which he could have attacked.
[Pirate 4 — out of combat]
The sub‑captain looked at his nineteen pirates — now fifteen, because four had fallen in the first ten seconds.
He reassessed.
He changed tactics — the fifteen remaining in a closed formation, attacking as a group instead of individually.
Seraph watched them regroup.
She didn’t wait for them to finish.
---
[West Flank — simultaneous]
Jessica.
The twenty pirates of the west flank came aboard and found a girl with a backpack and a notebook.
The west flank’s sub‑captain — level 79, with an active lesser Mark — evaluated what he saw.
A girl. No visible weapon. No combat posture. With an open notebook.
"Are you F6’s bearer?" said the sub‑captain.
"Yes." Jessica without looking up from her notebook.
"Are you going to surrender?"
Jessica considered the question honestly for a second.
"No."
"Then what are you going to do?"
Jessica looked up for the first time.
Jessica’s eyes on the sub‑captain with the expression she had when she found something genuinely interesting — not emotion, not urgency, just the specific interest of someone about to observe a phenomenon she hadn’t seen before.
"Test something."
[F6 — Entropy — The Root — activated]
---
The effect of F6 in active state was different from the other Fragments in one fundamental way:
It wasn’t visible.
F1 produced crimson flames. F4 produced violet light. F5 produced golden pressure. F3 produced skeletons.
Entropy produced nothing visible.
It just happened.
The first pirate within Jessica’s radius — three meters away, his arm raised in an attack position — felt something the moment Jessica activated F6.
Not exactly pain.
The weight of time arriving all at once.
Joints with the resistance they have when they’ve been moving too long. Muscle with the exhaustion of hours of combat that hadn’t happened. The enchantment on his lesser Mark with the degradation of months of use that also hadn’t happened.
All in two seconds.
The pirate fell to his knees.
The sub‑captain looked at his pirate on the ground.
Looked at Jessica.
Jessica making a note.
"What did you do to him?" said the sub‑captain.
"Direct Entropy application." Jessica without looking up. "F6 in active state accelerates the decay process within its radius. That pirate experienced the equivalent of six hours of intense physical exertion in two seconds." She made another note. "It’s the first time I’ve applied it at level four. Until now I’d only reached level three."
"How many levels are there?"
Jessica looked at him.
"I don’t know yet." A pause. "That’s why I’m taking notes."
The sub‑captain activated his lesser Mark to its maximum.
The ocean responded — water pressure, the ocean’s weight directed toward Jessica.
Jessica watched it come.
She oriented F6 toward the Mark’s channel.
---
Entropy applied to an active magical system was different from Entropy applied to a body.
Bodies had biological processes that could be accelerated — muscle tissue fatiguing, joints degrading, the nervous system overloading.
Magical systems had coherence.
And coherence was exactly what Entropy degraded.
The sub‑captain’s lesser Mark’s channel — built over years of life on the ocean, of progressive integration with the water’s power — began to lose coherence at the point where Jessica’s Entropy touched it.
Not all at once.
Progressively.
Like watching something rust in real time — the process that would normally take months occurring in seconds.
The sub‑captain felt his lesser Mark weaken.
He tried to compensate by channeling more ocean energy into it. fгeewebnovёl.com
Entropy degraded that energy too.
More energy. More degradation.
The sub‑captain pushing against the tide, the tide being time itself accelerated, and time being something no one won against when Entropy decided it was time.
The lesser Mark collapsed in forty seconds.
The sub‑captain fell to his knees with his channel empty and the ocean he had controlled for twenty years completely deaf to him.
Jessica recorded the time.
Forty seconds to collapse a moderate‑level lesser Mark with F6 at activation level four.
"Interesting," said Jessica.
The remaining nineteen pirates looked at their sub‑captain on the ground.
Looked at Jessica with her notebook.
The pirate closest to the railing calculated distances — the distance to the railing, the distance to the boat, the distance between him and Jessica.
"Are you going to leave or continue?" said Jessica.
No one answered.
Jessica oriented F6 toward the group.
Not at maximum. At level three — the level she already knew, the one she had tested enough times to know exactly what it produced.
The nineteen pirates felt the weight of time arriving at their bodies simultaneously.
Four fell to their knees immediately — those with the most accumulated combat years, those in whom F6 found the most latent decay to accelerate.
The other fifteen looked at each other.
Then they looked at the railing.
"Good," said Jessica.
She noted: *level three applied to group of nineteen — four immediately collapsed, fifteen voluntarily retreating — decision time: eight seconds.*
She closed her notebook.
---
[Boat Center — simultaneous]
Alex against the main captain.
The captain had boarded while his flanks attacked — not at the front, at the center, using the distraction of the four simultaneous flanks to reach the central deck where Alex was.
The Depth Mark at maximum.
The entire ocean responding — not the fifty‑meter radius from the first time. The full radius of his control, which after twenty years with the Mark was considerable. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
[Alex HP: 551,000 → 498,000]
Passive damage arriving from the ocean, without the captain having touched Alex yet.
Alex with all three Fragments at thirty percent.
"You’re using F5 to suppress my channels to the ocean," said the captain. Not as an accusation — as a tactical observation.
"Yes."
"It works partially." The captain looking at the three points of light on Alex’s chest. "But the Mark has twenty years. F5 has weeks in you." A pause. "It’s not enough yet."
"I know."
The captain attacked.
The Depth Mark concentrated in his fist — the entire ocean behind that strike, the accumulated weight of twenty years of integration arriving at Alex at the point of contact.
Alex didn’t dodge.
F4’s scythe intercepting the Mark’s channel on the ocean’s spiritual plane — the Veil dissolving the channel at the exact point between the captain’s fist and the ocean amplifying it.
The strike arrived without the amplification.
Only the captain’s physical strength.
Alex absorbed it.
[Alex HP: 498,000 → 481,400]
"You learned since last time," said the captain.
"I had two days."
"And the Fragments?"
"Them too."
The captain evaluated.
His eyes on the boat’s flanks where his one hundred forty pirates were fighting — or where they should be fighting.
The north flank: contained by Emily, Kira, and Maya.
The south flank: Raven with Army of Bones.
The east flank: Seraph.
The west flank: Jessica.
The captain processed what he saw on each flank.
*Forty pirates on four flanks,* he calculated. *Four targets. Four different situations.* A pause. *Four situations that are not going as I calculated.*
"How many years has she had F6?" the captain asked Alex without taking his eyes off the flanks.
"It’s not mine." Alex. "It’s hers."
The captain looked toward the west flank where Jessica was with her notebook.
"How many years has she had it?"
"Three."
The captain processed that.
Three years of passive Entropy. Integration without deliberate training. Without anyone teaching her exactly what it did.
And she had just collapsed his sub‑captain’s lesser Mark in forty seconds.
"Good," said the captain quietly.
Not to Alex. To himself.
"Good."
And he called for reinforcements.
