The cold rain continued to fall from the sky into the ocean, seeming to fill it up.
Kaelen was getting tired now between rowing the boat forward and stopping ever so often to get rid of the water in the boat, which was significantly more difficult. With rowing he was able to stop and take a break, but now that the water had begun to fill into the boat... well
He had watched enough movies to know that water filling in a boat is a surefire way to sink.
He was pretty sure that the night had come, but he wasn't able to tell since the sky was still littered with gray.
Eventually, after many more hours, he found a spot to dock.
There was a pile of rocks that appeared to be breaching the water from some depth. It was wide enough to fit 10 people, and so he chose to rest for a bit.
He strained his muscles a bit more, and eventually, when he reached the land, he dragged the boat onto the rocks.
It was a good place to rest for now, as it seemed solid and sturdy enough, and given the size, if any nightmare creatures were to launch out of the water, they would land on the ground, where he could easily deal with them.
'Let's get to harvesting...'
He had dragged the corpses of the other four pale skippers, and he also had the core of the one he ripped from the corpse at the bottom of the sea.
The rain was falling nicely, and despite the slight cold, the rain was very welcomed; the black blood that spilled was washed away into the sea as he harvested the meat.
There was a significant amount more than just the amount he got from the eel; it was just that this one seemed to smell a lot worse. It definitely screamed poison, but Kaelen had long decided that if he were to die by eating food, it was better than being food.
After getting all the good and edible meat and disposing of what he assumed to be the intestines, the good stuff was placed into his new memory.
The shards, however, were all crushed and absorbed.
'I'm tired...'
Unlike his cave in the mud zone, he had no such place here in the sea; what could he do if a nightmare creature approached while he slept?
No, he needed to stay up for now, at least till the objective of this trial was completed.
Kaelen sat there for a few minutes in the rain and couldn't help but let his mind wander. What would happen after he completed this trial?
What powers would he get?
'I'll become an awakened...'
That thought was amazing, honestly; he would be a part of a group respected by most of the world and be able to slaughter evil and be good. Anyone who was sane enjoyed that idea, the idea of being a hero.
A smile crept onto his face.
'All the reason to finish this trial faster'
The Hunter's Mark was still equipped, and for now there were no enemies around him or this little island, and he would have been able to 'see' them before they arrived.
He woke up from the ground and moved to the boat.
'I have 3 planks on me right now and the bones from the pale skimmers.'
He was taking note of the weapons he had available. The 2 planks would need to be used as oars, so they could not be used. The remaining one, however, could be used.
He had broken it earlier during the hunt with the skimmers, and now one piece was the size of a sword and the other was the size of a dagger, and so he decided to make use of that. He shaved down the wood and sharpened it.
The food he had was strips and chunks of pale skimmer meat, and for now he was not really hungry. The meat he had could be dried once the rain goes down and be eaten.
Kaelen sighed again—"Time to end this trial."
He moved into the boat again and moved to the water and continued to row the boat north.
Over and over he moved through the water rhythmically, and slowly he noticed the water changing slowly. It was not a change in the water exactly; it was the change in the quality.
Splinters of stone and wood stretched as far as one could see.
There were bodies lying here and there too.
'More forsaken...'
It was not difficult to see. This was the 'North' the description of the satchel was talking about. It was not land; it seemed to have once been a massive floating platform, but now it was nothing. There were structures that he made here and there, a door, a roof.
This place must have been quite a sight once upon a time, but now it was nothing. Reduced to splinters
His eyes moved over the forsaken that lay in the water, and he moved his boat closer to one. Stabbing it with his 'pike spear,' he hauled it up and gutted it, removing the soul core and crushing it instantly.
There were many more corpses around too, and thus there were many shards.
But Kaelen felt this odd chill in the area that he could not understand the origin of. There was nothing he could see visibly, but the feeling made the hair on his hands stand.
These forsaken were all people once upon a time, so again, maybe it could have been that. He moved to the next corpse and pulled it up—a woman. The floral patterns on her white dress were all but faded in the water, and her eyes were glossy and rotted; similar was her skin.
Her flesh was thin and weak, so he shoved his hand into her chest and ripped out the shard before throwing it back into the water; he crushed this one too and continued to row.
The corpses were all around, but Kaelen continued to row forward and only picked up the ones directly in his path. Getting out of here was a priority no matter how important soul core saturation was.
He hadn't gotten that far since he had stopped about 4 times, but there was something else that suddenly drew his attention.
Plop
It was such an odd sound, like something had been pulled into the water fast and the water was returning to its place like a displacement being righted.
Kaelen felt every strand of hair on his body stand and every muscle tense.
He slowly turned around and looked back.
The woman's corpse was gone.
'What...'
The hunter's mark did not show anything wrong, but his senses did.
Kaelen's heart hammered against his ribs. He watched the spot, waiting for something to show, for the hunter's mark to show the brown dot that revealed the location of something, but it didn't.
The silence that followed was heavier than before.
His eyes shifted slowly to one of the corpses that he had thrown back into the water; that was the corpse of what was once a rather large man. He watched patiently, trying to confirm a suspicion he hoped was wrong.
Suddenly, the water beneath her began to bulge.
It wasn't a splash this time, but a rapid, terrifying displacement—a mound of water dipping and disappearing as if something massive had pulled the corpse beneath the water. The brown dot had appeared then, but it disappeared...
Downwards...
He let go of the oars slowly and looked as the dot disappeared into the depths; it seemed the hunter's mark could work with his eyes.
He could see the surface of the water, he could see a little below, and he could see far into the distance, but what he could not see through was the darkness of the water's depths.
Something appeared in the water a distance away, and moving closer, he could only see a shadow and the brown dot, but he could not see its body in detail.
It was large, and for something that large, it moved with a terrifying, serpentine grace that made the largest sharks he'd ever seen look like little goldfish.
It didn't have a shape he could define; it was a silhouette that seemed to stretch longer than the lifeboat itself. It glided beneath him, a silent mountain of muscle and intent, patrolling the debris field like a harvester moving through a field of wheat.
He held his breath, praying the creature had yet to sense him; surprise was a good element to have on one's side.
The shadow drifted further away, toward a cluster of bodies near the horizon line, and then, about fifty yards out, the surface of the water finally broke.
It didn't breach with a roar or a splash. It sliced through the swells with the surgical precision of a razor.
A dorsal fin emerged—blue-black and wetly shimmering in the sun.
It stayed above the surface for only a few seconds, as if it were realizing what was now here in its territory.
"Fuck."