The cotton was ignited and turned into a huge flame in an instant, along with the scattered spores, which turned into ashes. Then the flame quickly went out, and it was not until this time that the believers gathered in the hall finally breathed a sigh of relief.
The weird and terrifying scene just now and those spores that clearly seemed to be spreading outward and infecting people made every rational person feel the huge danger.
However, while the ordinary believers were slightly relaxed, the gloomy pressure from the high platform did not diminish at all - the saint gently tapped his own skeletal "crown", and his eyestalks were still anxiously scanning the inside and outside of the hall. He knew that the haze covering the ship was still there, and what he eliminated was only a shadow of the haze that had penetrated many days ago, and now the main body of this shadow had already completed the invasion... He was too slow.
"Don't relax too early, the uninvited guests have arrived on the ship," his voice reached everyone's heart, "From now on, the entire ship will enter the pagan invasion state... Rendim, take people to search the entire ship and find the intruders - if there are people who refuse to search or behave suspiciously, kill them without mercy.
“Gemolo, you take people to the engine room and take over the steam core and hub valves. The invaders may try to seize the core of the entire ship... You take nitroglycerin.
"Porsa, take your followers to the armory and arm all the common believers... and let those mortal sailors take up weapons as well.
"Bass Morton takes the men to man the deck guns. The enemy may also attack from the sea."
The series of orders suddenly issued by the saints made the Annihilation Cult members in the hall, who had just relaxed for less than a few seconds, instantly wake up. Everyone realized the seriousness of the situation. The priests who received the orders quickly brought their subordinates and left the hall.
Half of the people in the hall suddenly disappeared, but many priests remained in the assembly hall, guarding the platform where the saint was.
After thinking quickly for a while, the Saint once again raised his eyestalk and looked at the high-ranking priest closest to him: "Eric, take your men to execute all the sacrifices in the cage."
The high-ranking priest named Eric was stunned when he heard this: "Now?"
"I need blood to increase my strength. The invaders are extraordinary. This is not the time to calculate their maximum value," the Saint said calmly. The execution order seemed as natural to him as breathing. "We can catch new sacrifices later. Now we will execute the ones on the ship first. Drain their blood and soak it in the stone slabs at the deepest part of the cage. I want to accumulate strength for a decisive battle."
"Yes, Your Excellency the Saint."
The high-ranking priest named Eric immediately lowered his head, received the order, took several of his followers, and quickly left the assembly hall.
He hurried down the corridor leading deeper into the ship, quickly passed the flickering closed doors, walked up the connecting staircases, and headed towards the deeper, quieter cabins.
A thin, cool smoke seeped into the cabin from somewhere at some point, making the corridor look a little blurry.
"High Priest," a follower suddenly broke the silence with a little uneasiness, "There's something wrong with this smoke..."
"It's definitely not right. How can there be so much smoke on a ship under normal circumstances?" Eric frowned. There were phantoms floating in the air behind him. A dark chain extended from his spine. A dark creature like an amorphous piece of meat floated at the end of the chain. Many eyes opened from the surface of the meat, as if it was carefully observing the surrounding movements. "... It's too quiet."
It was so quiet. The entire corridor was silent. There was no sound coming from the nearby rooms. Only the faint sound of some machines in the distance could be heard - distant and ethereal, as if in another world.
Where are the people who were sent out to perform various tasks before? Isn't the whole ship being searched
A thin smoke was floating from the front, and Eric suddenly sniffed his nose - in the smoke, he smelled a familiar smell, it was gunpowder.
Some tiny voices suddenly came from a certain direction, and then someone was giving orders from deep in the smoke—
"On your marks! Line up, load, aim—"
It sounded like an army commander, giving orders to his soldiers.
Eric turned his head in astonishment and looked in the direction of the sound. With the help of the symbiotic "flesh and blood deformer" demon, he immediately discovered the source of the sound - a team of funny toy soldiers that seemed to be carved out of wood were deployed on the floor at the end of the corridor.
Those soldiers were only the size of a palm, with colorful paint on their bodies and wearing uniforms that looked like musketeers and artillerymen from a previous era. They were running around on the floor. There were also soldiers waving small flags and running in the team, or standing on high places blowing trumpets. A commander stood on a piece of building blocks dragged from somewhere, holding up his command knife and giving orders.
The musketeers were loading their matchstick-like "rifles" with ammunition.
The other Annihilation Priests also noticed the toy soldiers gathered on the floor, pretending to launch an "attack". This scene seemed too bizarre that they were unable to react immediately and even thought it looked ridiculous.
But this ridiculous feeling only lasted for less than a second. The next moment, everyone was suddenly alerted - in this endless sea full of strange things, anything that looks wrong means danger, even if they look like a group of funny toy soldiers!
Eric suddenly thought of something. He recalled the legend about these toy soldiers and immediately threw himself forward: "Get down!"
However, his warning was too late. From the end of the smoke came the commander's order: "Fire!"
“Bang, bang, bang, bang!”
Continuous gunshots rang out in the corridor, flames tore through the smoke, bullets whizzed in, and the Annihilation Cultists didn't even have time to summon their own symbiotic demons before they were shot into sieves in the hail of gunfire and fell to the ground one after another.
It is said that long ago, an overconfident city-state tried to provoke the witch at sea in order to "kill the curse that was spreading across the vast ocean."
An arrogant commander led his battle-hardened marines to surround the witch's temporary residence and launched an attack in the cover of night.
A fog descended at night, and one after another the attacking soldiers disappeared into the fog—and when the sun rose again, the witch had transformed them into one hundred and sixty-six toy soldiers.
Until today, this toy army is still imprisoned in the witch's shadow. When the witch needs them, they will be released for a short time and exert the power of an army...
Blood was draining from his body and the severe pain was gradually turning into numbness in the cold. Eric fell to the ground, his mind uncontrollably recalling the stories he had heard one day in the past. In the corner of his eye, he finally saw something strange beside the corridor, something that he should have noticed but somehow ignored.
There are many oil paintings hanging on both sides of the dimly lit corridor.
Before this, these oil paintings depicted the many incarnations of the Lord of the Deep, as well as images of demons and many scenes in the deep sea.
But now the content of oil painting has changed.
Many familiar faces in the paintings looked at the smoke-filled corridor sadly and painfully, and some of them... seemed to be blinking slowly until a minute ago.
There was no response from the people who were sent out.
The haze hovering over the ship was growing thicker and thicker, with no sign of dissipating.
On the high platform in the center of the assembly hall, the saint was thinking for a long time—anger and despair were slowly brewing in this calm.
He realized that he might have made a series of wrong decisions.
The many arrangements made before did not stop the spread of the shadow. On the contrary, he now lost his "sensing" of more and more parts of the ship.
A tense and uneasy atmosphere was spreading in the hall.
The ordinary priests who stayed here also began to notice that something was wrong.
The people who left the hall never came back, and there was no news reported. The internal telephones were all unreachable one after another. Even using the perception of the Deep Demon, they could not contact the "compatriots" in other areas. First, the cargo hold and the water hold lost contact, followed by the cabin where the crew lived, and then the nearby corridors...
The various cabins seemed to be gradually disappearing into a spreading darkness, and except for this hall, the entire ship was being swallowed by something invisible.
Something invisible is attacking here.
Then, something even more dangerous touched the ship—and a great sense of fear suddenly enveloped everyone's mind.
There seemed to be some movement in the corridor.
A cultist closest to the gate heard a slight crackling sound coming from the corridor outside. He looked around, hesitated for a moment, and then bravely leaned his head to look outside the door.
Someone nearby noticed his actions and immediately came over to grab the arm of this reckless man, trying to stop his rash behavior.
But it was too late.
The cultist who had stuck his head out suddenly stiffened, then swayed slightly twice, and then he "walked" back in a stiff puppet-like posture. After a moment of stillness, he fell backwards on his back.
His limbs shattered like fragile ceramics, and his body had turned into lifeless inorganic matter at some point. His head fell off his neck joint and rolled to the feet of other cultists.
It was a crudely made puppet head.
Cries of surprise rang out instantly, followed by the sounds of swords being unsheathed and weapons being loaded, and a large number of dark demons were summoned. The cultists in the hall were preparing to fight the enemy in a moment of fear and panic - footsteps were heard from the corridor, getting closer and closer to the door.
A silver-haired lady in a luxurious dark purple court dress walked in first. She had a flawless face like a doll, and her posture was elegant and light. She walked into the assembly hall with confidence. The Annihilation Cultists, Abyssal Demons, swords, and guns gathered around her were nothing to her. She just looked around curiously, her dark purple eyes were clear and bright, and many invisible lines seemed to be reflected in the depths of her eyes.
Then another exceptionally tall figure walked in.
This figure was imprinted in everyone's eyes like a nightmare that seeped into reality - as soon as he walked in, he began to burn the minds and nerves of more than half of the Annihilation Cultists in the hall.
Duncan raised his head and stared at the "saint" on the platform in the gradually burning and spreading green flames.
"You and your ship are useful to me."
(End of this chapter)