Chapter Ninety-three

Krissy didn’t seem happy to be here, but I sure loved an ork galley. I was seriously considering asking the navy people if they were going to hunt any more of these things any time soon, and if they needed help. I had no doubt Kiwa would be game; she seemed to like fighting, and orks were belligerent enough to oblige. And if the orks in question were without familiars — as was the case here on The Raagh’s Very Much Contested Might — we could handle them, and I could grow.

Krissy and Kiwa had conducted themselves well, regardless of Captain Fenirig Arla’s stupid remarks, and as they prepared to descend to the rower’s deck, I took stock of my level-up.

Even though our fight had taken no more than five minutes, in the midst of it I couldn’t keep track of kills as well as I would have wanted to. I had killed some of the crew, the girls and the combined ranger-marine archer teams had killed some more, and since I wasn’t a picky eater, I had eaten every soul I could reach with my tentacles. My best guesstimate was 28 to 30 orks, about 10 elves, and somewhere between 40 and 50 humans, most of them rowers. But in the end, it wasn’t the number of slain enemy combatants that was important, it was the total EXP I gained from them, and of that I was always keeping track of, more or less accurately.

This time I had gained a total of about 4500 EXP. It was a good haul, and considering I already had 2000 EXP in the bank, I got the required 5700 EXP for Level 35 without issues, and had about 800 left over in the bank.

Spiritual Tentacle Horror Level 34 to Level 35. Finally.

For Level 35 I wanted more and longer tentacles. Hank didn’t argue about it — at this point improving my tenties or getting larger EP and MP pools were equally useful, so either choice was a good one. I willed my body to allocate all the soul-stuff I had consumed to the growth of my lovely danger-noodles, and my body did the rest. By the time Krissy and Kiwa — followed by a number of marines — stepped off the last rung off the ladder and onto the raised walkway running along in the middle of the rowers’ deck, I had twelve tenties, each of them thicker, stronger, and about nine metres long. That was an insanely good upgrade, and I could feel it as my Essence collection rate jumped up as if a bee had stung it and settled at 19EP/minute. Now I could refill both Essence pools in about seven minutes, and that was nothing to sneeze at.

Tilry was nearly ecstatic; she had managed to eat two souls — one ork one elf — courtesy of the contents of my new Enzyme Pool, and she levelled twice. Tilry’s level was trickier to determine. According to her, the size of her Essence Pool jumped from 41EP to 48EP, her Mana Pool from 29MP to 34MP. Her body grew a little, including her four arms, but she couldn’t feel any uptick in the speed of her Essence Collection. Levels weren’t an exact science, so our guess was that she was now Level 21 or thereabouts. So, I was happy, Hank was Hank, and Tilry was satisfied, too.

There was only one fly in the ointment. A big, green fly: Raagstrom Raagh. The guy just wouldn’t shut up.

Oooi! Whatsappening? Swear imma get out and smash yer skulls! he yelled, loud and aggressive as ever, but I had a distinct feeling that some panic was seeping into his thought-voice.

It had never occurred to me that a soul could be conscious after pulling it into my Spirit Room, and I had no idea what it was like for him to be there. If I had to guess, it must have been like being locked in one of those experimental sensory deprivation rooms with no stimuli, and after a while you’d start going mad and hallucinating. In other words, my Spirit Room must have been like a quiet corner of Hell for the ork captain. Whether our voices flying about the voice-chat added or subtracted from the effect, I wasn’t sure. Served him right anyway. Probably.

It’s getting too loud in here. Krissy remarked, and I couldn’t argue with that.

‘We’re eating your crew, we’re eating your slaves, there’ll be nothing left of your boat, you gank,’ Hank goaded the ork captain. What a mean Tentacle Horror! Then again, the ork deserved it. Probably.

Ya’ll regret this, ya hear, imma kill ya dead! Raagstrom Raagh retorted, but his thought-voice was losing that thundering force it had had before.

Can we focus on the task at hand? Krissy suggested, looking ahead into the chaos that awaited us.

The rowers’ deck, as much as I had done my best to reduce its population, was still crowded, and the screams, pleas and curses of the still living slaves — close to two hundred of them — combined with the constant and vicious rattling of chains, made for a deafening concert, which only intensified as they started noticing the arrival of the two masked figures and the dozen marines behind them.

Looking at the sweaty, scared and thoroughly helpless men, sitting in rows stretching dozens of metres back, I was suddenly not so keen to eat them all, especially not in front of an audience of the ten or so marines behind us. Slaughtering the propulsion system of a ship during battle was one thing — it served a purpose other than my own growth — eating them en-masse outside of combat was another. It felt like it would be some sort of war crime, or a very Hank thing to do, if nothing else.

I recalled the events of the Graal’s Enormous Pride. I had been angry then, furious even, and I didn’t think I’d been in my right mind, but no matter how cruel it may have looked to an outside observer, or even to me, it was a combat situation, a rescue mission, so there had been all sorts of justifications for what I’d done there. But then the elves — none other than Captain Fenirig Arla and Captain Rimarle Alas and his pug — had decided to sink Orkuz Graal’s prized galley with at least a hundred slaves still alive aboard it. I did understand why they had chosen not to take prisoners, but one couldn’t help but wonder if there was a clear line between practical, cruel and criminal, or whether it mattered at all. I supposed the fact that I was thinking about this meant I was still more human than Tentacle Horror, despite everything, and just to prove that point, Hank called out to me.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

‘Bro, what are you waiting for? A standing ovation or something?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t tell me you’re thinking about not eating them, because if you do, we’re going to have a problem.’

‘Oh yeah? Whatcha gonna do about it?’ I snapped at him like the embodiment of righteous defiance. Or absolute hypocrisy.

‘What will happen to the rowers?’ Krissy suddenly turned around and asked the marine officer behind her.

‘Uh … they’ll go down with the ship, unless the captain changes policy,’ the man replied nervously while trying to not look at Krissy’s mask.

There’s you’re answer. She then said to us through the voice-chat. They’re dead either way, so do what you need to do. Levels are important to you, that’s why we came here. Am I wrong?

For a couple of moments, I was speechless, and it was Hank who reacted first.

‘Hear that, bro? Krissy knows what’s what. Just look at all these delicious …’ he began a tirade I had no doubt was going to be long and tiresome, but our host cut him short.

Shut it, Hank, and listen carefully! Krissy’s thought-voice sounded angry, and almost as if it was trembling. This is never going to be normal. The fighting’s done, and we’re only doing this because under the circumstances it’s either Kevin’s belly or the bottom of the sea for these poor bastards. You got that? Don’t you dare taking pleasure in massacring people like this!

Then why don’t you take it up with that stupid Captain Fenar, eh?’ Hank tried to argue.

Because there’s no way she can take them prisoner, no way she can let them go. They’ve been dead men ever since we spotted this damn ship. She hissed.

I felt Hank wanting to say something, then changing his mind the last second, keeping quiet. And I wanted to hug Krissy, my favourite, most understanding and supporting host, the best one a familiar could wish for.

‘Krissy,’ I said to her.

Yeah?

‘I love you.’

Of course you do. She said, her mouth finally curling up under her mask. Then she turned back to the marine contingent waiting for us to start making our way through the rowers’ deck. ‘We’re going to clear out this place. Are you sure you want to be here and watch?’

‘Clear out? What do you mean “clear out”?’ The officer asked, looking more worried than before.

Krissy turned around to look at all the rowers who were in a futile uproar.

‘My familiar is going to kill them all,’ she stated, forcing a matter-of-fact tone. The officer gulped, but he neither ordered his men to go back up nor moved himself. ‘Very well,’ Krissy said, and that was my cue to start the cruel, gruesome work of harvesting all the souls on the rowers’ deck.

***

Human souls tasted like minty toothpaste, and as such, they weren’t supposed to leave a bad taste in my mouth, so to speak. But as Krissy walked forward, and row after row of chained down slaves collapsed in their pits as I robbed them of their souls, I began to feel a revulsion to what I was doing. I had taken quite a few lives during my career as a Tentacle Horror, but as far as I could remember, this was the first time I was killing people outside of combat. I hoped mass murder wasn’t going to become my thing. I knew Krissy was right, and these people were dead either way, but whether one was willing to admit it or not, there was a difference between killing and killing. I almost jumped with joy when a barbarian elf sprung up from behind a wooden support post, dagger in one hand, whip in the other, and decided he had a chance. Well, he didn’t, but at least he had the good grace to attack us, therefore making himself a target I felt justified killing. Being a Tentacle Horror sucked sometimes.

By the look of it, being a marine who had to follow us and watch as an invisible entity slaughtered dozens of people in seconds, also sucked. I supposed watching an enemy ship sinking, even knowing it was full of people, was something a man, or an elf, could detach himself from, and process it better than witnessing a hundred spirit-kills up close and personal. By the time we reached the thick pole in the middle that was a part of the mizzenmast, the dozen marines fell back to a safe distance from the two masked spiritualists, looking as pale and white as a freshly painted wall.

Tilry was clinging to her host’s body a little too tightly. Usually, she would be hovering slightly behind and above her, but this time the familiar was hugging her as if her life depended on it. I didn’t know if Kitala Iwani was aware of this, and she didn’t look concerned by the ongoings as she walked next to Krissy.

Krissy, on the other hand, was as tense as one could be — she was hiding it well, but I could tell. And I was the only one who could see the tears forming in her eyes under the mask. I could only guess what it was like for her to make her way forward, with crying and cursing men dropping dead left and right with every step she took. I didn’t think I had ever been as grateful to anyone as I was to her. She was doing this for me, for us, for our future, accepting both the rights and the wrongs of it, for better or for worse.

***

I needed roughly 8000 EXP to reach Level 36.

The rowers’ deck had two-hundred-and-seven rowers still alive — this time I was counting. A hundred-and-eighty of them gave me the 7200 EXP I needed to reach Level 36, and the last twenty-seven unfortunate souls became another extra 800 EXP I banked, ready to be used for Level 37 sometime in the future.

Hold on. 800 EXP? Shouldn’t it have been 1000? I did my best to recalculate, and I found that that at least five human souls’ worth of EXP had gone missing. Was I leaking somewhere? Or the bank, in other words the place or organ or whatever it was in my actual body where excess soul-stuff was stored, had developed some problems? Or perhaps — and I considered it the most likely reason — was Hank somehow skimming my income without me noticing it? With my consciousness being in my avatar body currently, I had very little awareness of what was going on with my spirit-world-self beyond feeling my storage rooms, a few other things, and to a lesser extent, Hank himself. I’d have to investigate the mysterious case of the missing EXP soon — not because I desperately needed it, but because I wanted to know if Hank was involved. But first, since I was bursting with all the consumed soul-stuff, I had to do the level-up.

Spiritual Tentacle Horror Level 35 to Level 36.

For the first time, I did not feel the same excitement or the sense of accomplishment as I had with my previous level-ups. So, I just got on with it, not wasting time and soul, and chose to grow my body.

I wasn’t sure how much my actual body and tentacles were growing in the Spirit World, but my avatar’s spherical body grew to almost a whole meter in diameter, providing a better platform for my twelve tentacles. My primary Essence Pool grew from 72EP to 80EP max, my secondary, artificial Essence Pool staying at 70EP. My Mana Pool expanded from 48MP to 54MP, which was quite good.

I sighed inwardly as Krissy stopped at the end of the rowers’ deck, the entrance to some storage spaces in front of us. I stuck a tentie inside to check, but there was no-one hiding there, so I let my host take a few moments to collect herself.

The marines stopped a good ten metres behind us, not daring to come any closer. I let out a bitter chuckle into the voice chat as I thought how easily I could reach them if I stretched myself a bit. Not that I had any intention of doing anything to them. I definitely preferred the company of rangers, though; they were much more accustomed to spirit-kills than these guys, and much less concerned about what I could do.

After half a minute of standing in silence, Krissy shuddered once, then straightened herself and asked,

So, all that’s left for us to check is the hold, isn’t it?