Debuff Master-Chapter 1064

Chapter 1064
Siegfried tore open the package to check its content while flying toward Albion’s location. The package contained a helmet that resembled some sort of gas mask.
He flashed his Rune of Insight at the helmet to examine it.
[Deep Sea Diver Combat Helmet]
[An upgraded version of the diving gear used by the Marchioni Empire’s Special Naval Warfare Unit.]
[It allows the wearer to breathe freely underwater for 24 hours.]
[Type: Helmet]
[Rating: Legendary]
[Durability: 5,000/5,000]
[Effect: Grants the ability to breathe freely underwater.]
[Warning: After 24 hours of use, its oxygen supply has to be replenished for 1 hour.]
“Good,” Siegfried muttered with a smile.
He was quite satisfied with the Deep Sea Diver Combat Helmet sent by the Autonika Workshop. Up until now, he had no way of breathing underwater and had no choice but to be toyed with by Albion. Well, Siegfried had been the one mercilessly hunting down the sperm whale for the past few days.
However, things were different now.
With this Deep Sea Diver Combat Helmet, Siegfried could breathe freely even deep underwater for a full twenty-four hours.
‘
It’s over there.’
As the distance between him and Albion narrowed, Siegfried got ready and equipped the Deep Sea Diver Combat Helmet.
“Hey! You son of a fish!” Siegfried shouted.
“
H-Hiiiik!”
Albion flinched in shock at the sight of Siegfried still chasing him. Even though they had been playing this game of cat and mouse for roughly the same time, the human wasn't showing even the slightest sign of exhaustion.
He couldn't have imagined that the human would still chase after him, even though it had been several days since the chase began. Moreover, he also hadn't expected that he would tire faster than the human, Siegfried.
“Fuck off!”
Albion cursed and dove straight beneath the surface once again without wasting any time. He had taken enough air, so diving for another few hours was no problem.
But this time, things did not go as expected.
Splash!
Siegfried put on the Deep Sea Diver Combat Helmet and dove straight down into the waters, too. Then, using his ten wings like fins, he shot through the water like a torpedo and pursued the sperm whale with terrifying speed.
‘
H-Hiiiik!’
Albion panicked as Siegfried closed in on him. He prided himself on being extremely fast underwater, but the human was diving even faster than he was.
‘
He’s a land-dweller. He shouldn’t be able to breathe underwater. I’ll just keep diving until he runs out of air and eventually give up,’
Albion thought, believing that a land-dweller would soon run out of oxygen and be forced to surface.
Unfortunately, he was dead wrong.
Five minutes and even ten minutes later, Siegfried was still on his tail.
“
W-What?! Doesn’t he need air?!”
“This is a diving helmet, you fish punk!”
“W-What?! How?!”
“Just you wait!”
“F-Fuck off!”
Albion screamed, diving deeper into the abyss.
At this point, running seemed to be the only thing he could do, but that was not the case.
‘
You can chase all you want, but you will never catch me. You think the deep sea is some playground for land beasts like you?’
Albion thought smugly.
Water pressure in the deep sea was no joke.
The deeper one went, the stronger the water pressure would become, and it would reach a point where no human would be able to survive it. Once a person went below a depth of one thousand meters, the water pressure would become a hundredfold compared to that of the surface.
A normal human would be crushed to death long before reaching that depth, as it was an unimaginably powerful force.
However, there was one thing Albion was unaware of. It was the fact that Siegfried only needed oxygen underwater. He had physical durability beyond the limits of ordinary humans. The durability of his fleshly body was in the realm of superhumans, so he could easily withstand the pressure of the deep sea.
‘
W-What in the abyss is this crazy beast?!’
Albion was horrified once again when he saw that Siegfried had not only followed him past the one thousand meter mark but was now right on his tail at one thousand five hundred meters deep.
Everything the sperm whale thought he knew turned out to be a lie.
As a sperm whale, Albion never imagined that a day would come when he would get chased deep into the abyss like this, no less by a land-dwelling human.
***
‘
Kekeke! You can run, but you can’t hide!’
Meanwhile, Siegfried was having the time of his life chasing down Albion.
Water pressure? He could handle it no matter how strong it got. Compared to the crushing pressure created by Nigellus, the pressure at one thousand meters below sea level was nothing.
Siegfried could relentlessly chase after Albion and still be unaffected by the water pressure.
‘
Just a little more!’
Around the time they were about to reach a depth of two thousand meters—
‘
Damn, I can’t see anything...’
Siegfried suddenly realized what kind of a place the deep sea was truly like. He noticed that the ocean had turned pitch black after passing the one thousand five hundred meters mark, but it felt as if not a single ray of light reached this far down now.
Rather than calling it pitch black, it felt more like he was surrounded by nothingness rather than darkness at this depth.
However, Siegfried’s vision was so good that he could perceive things with uncanny clarity whether there was light or not. His vision turned into a night-vision infrared camera the moment he blinked, allowing him to maintain perfect vision through his now green-lit visuals.
‘
I’ve almost caught up to him.’
With only about twenty meters left between them, Siegfried gripped his +16 Vanquisher’s Grasp tightly in preparation to attack.
But then—
‘
Huh? What the hell...?’
Suddenly, everything around him turned black even with his night vision activated, as this
blackness
had nothing to do with the absence of light.
Something black and grainy had contaminated the water, like ink being spilled into it, and completely clouded his vision with dense black particles.
‘
Is it an oil leak?’
Siegfried wondered.
He recalled the oil could sometimes leak from deep within the ocean. He swung his wings, slicing through the water to push the particles aside and clear his view.
It was then.
“...!”
Siegfried recoiled in shock at the sigh before him.
The sperm whale he had been chasing, Albion, was being constricted by a mass of writhing tentacles.
‘
Eh?! A-A giant squid?!’
A colossal squid, one so massive that just its mantle[1] easily surpassed fifty meters in length, had captured Albion. It turned out that the black substance clouding Siegfried’s view was the giant squid's ink.
“
G-Ggrh! Arghh!”
Albion groaned in pain upon getting ensnared and constricted by the giant squid.
‘
...You’ve got to be kidding me.’
Siegfried was dumbfounded after seeing the sperm whale being constricted by the squid. Sperm whales were supposed to be the natural predator of giant squids, but the roles were reversed. The squid was trying to eat the whale instead.
“
Hey, are you really a whale? You should be ashamed of yourself. How can you get eaten by a squid of all things?”
“S-Shut up!”
“Oof~ How embarrassing!”
Siegfried had no intentions of helping Albion and mocked him openly.
His plan was to beat the living crap out of the sperm whale, butcher its meat, sell its hide, and squeeze out every bit of ambergris in its guts. Oh, and to retrieve Michael’s wing.
However, this strange twist of events changed his mind.
He was simply going to sit back and enjoy the show, waiting for the two gigantic sea creatures to slug it out. Once the battle between the giants was over, he would simply swoop in and kill whoever emerged victorious.
In short, he would be killing two
sea creatures
with one stone, securing himself a handsome loot in the process.
“
Good luck! You got this!”
“A-Aarghh!”
“Go, go, go! You can do this! Beat the shit out of him, squiddy!”
“Y-You crazy land beast...! Arghhh!”
“Hey, are you really gonna let yourself get eaten by a squid? Pfft! That’s freakin’ pathetic! A predator getting devoured by its prey!”
Siegfried leisurely watched the fight unfold while hurling jeers and insults at Albion.
It was then.
‘
Hm?’
Siegfried’s eyes widened upon noticing a black object embedded in the giant squid’s mantle. Shockingly, a white feathery object glimmering with a faint, violent hue was lodged in the squid.
‘
Hold on... Is that by any chance...?’
Siegfried instantly recognized what that object was.
It was Archangel Zerachiel’s wing.
Michael had torn one of Zerachiel’s wings and flung it far across the continent. Its whereabouts were unknown, but it turns out that it ended up, of all places, embedded in the mantle of a giant squid.
***
‘
Ah...’
Siegfried finally understood what was going on.
Normally, a giant squid could never defeat a sperm whale. However, it was a different story if the giant squid was mutated by the wing of Archangel Zerachiel. With the powers of an archangel inside it, it could definitely overpower a sperm whale.
Albion, too, had the wing of an archangel. In fact, the wing of the former Chief Archangel, Michael, was embedded in him, but he wasn't proactively using the power of the wing.
On the other hand, the giant squid was clearly using the power of Zerachiel's wing.
‘
What the hell?! What is it now?!’
Siegfried suddenly reeled in shock.
From far away, a huge swarm of fish, perhaps numbering in the billions, was charging straight toward him.
The reason he was so shocked was that these were no ordinary fish like mackerels or tunas. They were deep-sea fish that only lived at depths beyond one thousand five hundred meters.
But that was not all...
An eerie green glow flashed from the eyes of those deep-sea fish, making them almost look like a swarm of fireflies from a distance.
Clack! Clack! Clack!
The deep-sea fish were undead creatures, judging by their clacking teeth as they tried to rip Siegfried apart.
Like a swarm of piranhas, they rushed in and attempted to tear Siegfried into shreds.
‘
Ugh... This is a pain...’
Siegfried grumbled under his breath before unleashing Transcendent Torrential Flower Rain.
He would have loved to use Green Hell Magno instead, as it was far more efficient against large numbers of weak enemies, but he decided against it, as the radioactive energy from it couldn’t inflict even a single point of damage on undead-type monsters.
Rather than dealing damage to them, he would only end up empowering the undead fish, as they would soak in the radioactive energy he unleashed and use it to strengthen themselves.
Another option he had was using the Wave of Annihilation, but that was a grossly inefficient use of the skill. The sheer number of enemies and their spread-out formation made it difficult to kill them in one go.
‘
I’ll just grind them into pieces.’
Thus, Siegfried decided to summon a torrent of aura blades and unleash Transcendent Torrential Flower Rain upon them.
Fwoooosh!
Then, wrapping himself in his aura blades, spinning them like high-speed propellers.
Chwak! Chwak! Chwak!
He spun the blades and shredded the undead deep-sea fish charging at him into minced meat.
[Alert: You have gained Experience Points!]
[Alert: You have gained Experience Points!]
[Alert: You have gained Experience Points!]
(omitted...)
[Alert: You have gained Experience Points!]
One after another, notifications popped up in front of his eyes for every undead deep-sea fish he shredded.
[Alert: Congratulations!]
[Alert: You have leveled up!]
[Alert: You have reached Level 417!]
Siegfried gained enough experience points to level up after shredding what seemed to be more than a hundred million deep-sea fish. This was a classic case of quantity over quality. The fish provided barely any Experience Points on their own, but their sheer numbers gave Siegfried enough Experience Points to level up.
‘
Oh? This is quite an unexpected jackpot,’
Siegfried thought, more than pleased with the outcome. He would have been ripped apart into shreds by the swarm of undead deep-sea fish had he decided to swing his +16 Vanquisher’s Grasp like an idiot.
Instead of looking like a fool, he made the right call by turning himself into a human blender.
“Grrr... Aaaagh!”
Meanwhile, Albion was being dragged deeper into the abyss by the giant squid. The cunning giant squid had commanded the swarms of undead deep-sea fish to keep Siegfried occupied while trying to drag Albion down into even deeper depths to devour him.
‘
Oh no, you don’t!’
However, Siegfried had no intention of letting the giant squid get away. Letting Albion dive into the abyss was not a problem, as the sperm whale would have to surface eventually.
However, the giant squid was a whole different matter.
Once it dove down, it would never come back up to the surface.
In other words, he would never recover the wings of both Michael and Zerachiel if the giant squid managed to escape with Albion in tow.
1. The body part of a squid. ☜