Chapter 113: Cruise Ship (11)

Under Sretan’s command, the passengers of the Mary Jane were split into two groups. Over 170 of them were sent to the Golden Anchor to search for the legendary “witch’s corpse,” while the remaining dozen or so were left in the banquet hall to guard the 77 bound crew members.

Destroying the witch’s body was a key task for this mission, and to ensure nothing went wrong, Sretan himself accompanied the team.

Originally, Everly and Misha were also assigned to the group searching for the witch’s corpse. However, as they were leaving the banquet hall, they slipped into a nearby corridor when no one was paying attention, staying behind on the Mary Jane.

“All right, Misha, you can take out the earplugs now.”

Once the bulk of the group had finally moved far enough away, Everly gestured to Misha.

Thanks to years of continuous meditation training, Everly had developed strong resistance to mental attacks. Realizing that Sretan’s voice had a manipulative effect, she and Misha had immediately put in earplugs, isolating themselves from his influence.

As a result, the two of them were the only people on the ship, aside from the crew, who weren’t under Sretan’s control.

Now, with the witch-searching team gone, only 13 guards remained in the hall. All thirteen were ordinary passengers, and none carried firearms—strict security checks before boarding the cruise made bringing such weapons impossible. So even if they looked tall and intimidating, in an actual fight they might not match Everly, who trained regularly.

The two girls huddled together and discussed briefly, quickly drafting an assault plan: Everly, stronger and more skilled in combat, would rush into the hall to draw the guards’ attention, while Misha would slip in and cut the ropes to free the crew members.

The crew working on the cruise ship were generally in better physical shape than ordinary people working in a concrete-and-steel city. As long as Misha was fast enough and freed enough crew members, defeating just 13 guards would be a piece of cake.

The plan might be rough, but as long as it worked, that was enough.

Using the tacit understanding they had built over years of friendship, the two girls entered the banquet hall one after the other.

Ten minutes later, the thirteen guards were the ones left with bruised and battered faces, while all 77 crew members had been freed.

“That Sretan knows about the witch, and he can even clearly say she’s already dead—that only her corpse remains—he must be working with the heretics who held the sacrificial ritual on this ship thirteen years ago!” As soon as he was freed, George, the movie-like hero among the crew, shouted loudly.

His mind was still sharp, and Everly shared his opinion: “Exactly. I think his leaving this time means he’s confident he can break the witch’s time loop. So we’d better act while the main group is still on the Golden Anchor. We need to pull up the gangway and get the Mary Jane moving—far away from the Golden Anchor. That way, when the time loop ends, we can escape immediately.”

Although this meant leaving the 170-plus passengers sent to the Golden Anchor behind, neither Everly nor the others on the Mary Jane felt they could confront Sretan and his heretic allies.

Everyone’s life was precious, and when strength is limited, prioritizing self-preservation was hardly something to be condemned.

The captain thought for a moment, then nodded. “Understood. Let’s get moving!”

The crew received their orders and scattered—some raising the anchors, others retracting the gangway. Driven by strong survival instincts, everyone moved quickly. Within minutes, the engines roared to life. The people searching on the Golden Anchor hadn’t even had time to react before the Mary Jane turned its bow and headed toward the edge of the time loop, away from the massive ship.

“They’re escaping! What should we do, chase them?”

“The high priest Sretan said to prioritize finding the witch’s corpse; everything else can wait.”

“Understood!”

Sparse murmurs rose from the Golden Anchor, but quickly faded as the distance increased. With the time loop still in place, the cruise ship couldn’t escape, so the captain steered the Mary Jane to slowly circle along the perimeter of the time loop.

After waiting for about ten minutes, a sudden cheer of joy erupted from the distant giant ship.

Everly, standing on the top deck of the Mary Jane, tiptoed to get a better view and saw that on the deck of the massive cruise ship, someone had built a towering bonfire.

Where they got the wood from was unknown, but a massive pile of logs had been stacked one on top of the other to form a mountain. Atop the pyre stood a cross-shaped wooden frame, on which a young child dressed in a red dress was bound.

She was very young—no more than six or seven years old, at that innocent, carefree age. Her slightly curled black hair was tied into two cute braids that fell over her chest. Her eyes were tightly shut, with long, thick lashes curling like two feathered fans.

As Everly continued observing, the Mary Jane moved a bit farther away. With the change in angle, she realized that a dagger had been plunged deep into the girl’s chest, piercing her heart. And what she had previously thought was a red dress was not truly red at all—it was the girl’s white dress, soaked through with blood.

If not for the dagger, anyone seeing the girl at first glance would have thought she was simply asleep.

Was this the witch Sretan had mentioned? But from what Everly knew, a child witch only awakens her powers at the age of twelve. This girl still looked so small—how could she possess such strength?

Everly pondered for a moment, then quickly realized: the one who created the time loop was not an ordinary witch, but a space-time witch. Witches with control over time and space could easily alter their age and appearance. So, the witch who appeared as a little girl might not really be a child at all—she could even be as old as her grandmother.

On the deck of the giant cruise ship, once the pyre was completed, everyone respectfully stepped aside.

Among the crowd, Sretan, now draped in a black robe, held a strangely shaped dagger and approached the corpse of the space-time witch.

Everly’s eyesight was sharp, and she noticed the dagger’s details: its hilt was golden, twisted in a way that resembled octopus tentacles, while the blade itself was jet black, curved like deep-sea kelp.

He raised the dagger high, muttering some incantations under his breath, then let out a sharp command and drove the tip straight toward the witch’s head.

The moment the black blade touched her forehead, everyone inside the time loop—including Everly—heard a piercing scream that struck directly at the soul.

It was the frail voice of a young girl, harsh and grating like a blunt knife or a rusty saw, up and down without mercy, tormenting everyone’s nerves, filling hearts with despair and hopeless pain.

The blade met some resistance at the witch’s forehead, but soon a thick, oil-like black blood flowed down her nose from the wound. The dagger pierced her head as if it were a hot knife through butter, driving in smoothly until the blade had sunk fully to the hilt.

At the same time, the surrounding time loop began to destabilize. The previously invisible membrane rippled like water disturbed by a stone, forming chaotic waves. Some raindrops, previously blocked outside, slipped through the gaps in the ripples and fell onto Everly’s face.

The boundary between this world and the other had begun to blur.

“Light it!”

At Sretan’s command, someone immediately raised a torch and threw it onto the pile of wood that had been soaked in gasoline.

“Boom!” Orange-red flames leapt upward, curling with thick smoke, engulfing the witch’s corpse at the top of the pyre.

To truly kill a witch, both body and soul must be eradicated, and fire was the most effective weapon to purify a witch.

As the flames consumed the pyre, the membrane of the time loop shrank at a speed visible to the naked eye, disappearing entirely in no time. The Golden Anchor, once favored by time itself, finally revealed its true form—aged, decayed, and crumbling.

Torrential rain and howling winds reclaimed the skies and seas. Waves churned violently, rocking the ship from side to side.

Everly gripped the railing to steady herself, lifting a hand to wipe her cheek. It was wet—somehow, a single tear had slipped from her eye.

Witches are beings cherished by nature itself. If humans are the spirit of all things, then witches are the spirit of humanity—a natural conduit born to connect humans with the universe.

Every witch is born bearing a blessing.

This tear fell for a lost space-time witch, whose very name was unknown. Though she had long since died, she had used her immense power to trap thousands of fallen monsters within the time loop, preventing them from wreaking havoc on humanity.

Now, with the time loop shattered, the monsters that had been imprisoned underwater for thirteen years finally revealed their sharp claws.

The captain reacted swiftly. The moment the time loop vanished, he turned the bow of the Mary Jane and charged straight away from the Golden Anchor.

But the relentless storm and towering waves slowed the ship dramatically. Under Sretan’s command, the thousands of freed underwater monsters clung to the Mary Jane like ravenous hyenas, obstructing the propellers and pushing against the hull with the waves, holding the ship in place and preventing it from advancing.

Everly leaned over the railing and looked down.

Beneath the surface, countless pale, swollen monsters pressed tightly together, swarming so densely that they surrounded the cruise ship completely—like maggots writhing on a corpse, or termites crawling within an anthill.

All of them had fish-like heads, bulging eyes, rows of sharp teeth, and rigid spines piercing through their backs. Their bodies were coated in a yellowish, translucent slime. Were it not for their swollen, humanoid torsos, they would have looked like nothing more than monstrous fish.

Their grotesque, horrifying appearance alone sent chills down the spine, making one’s skin crawl.

Everly couldn’t understand why those heretics had transformed these beings into such forms. Wasn’t being human enough?

Cold sweat beaded on her forehead as she desperately tried to think of a way to escape the underwater monsters and get the Mary Jane moving.

Then, from the distant, dilapidated Golden Anchor, a strangely familiar, eerie song drifted across the storm. Having studied the videos countless times, Everly was certain—it was the same grotesque chant that always rang out from the heretics’ gathering place after the Golden Anchor’s lights went out at midnight.

She lifted her head, once again gazing at the massive cruise ship.

She didn’t notice when a stage curtain, previously seen in George’s video, had been moved from the ballroom and hung on the deck. On the worn curtain, someone had repainted a bizarre eye-like pattern using fresh blood, sourced from somewhere unknown.

Directly in front of the curtain, Sretan stood, arms outstretched, singing with abandon.

As he chanted, a dazzling red light flared across the deck before him. Where the light touched, the mesmerized passengers writhed in agony, exploding like eggs in a microwave, their screams echoing as their bodies were reduced to piles of disgusting pulp, absorbed by the crimson glow until nothing remained.

The storm raged on.

The sky was heavy and dark; the torrential rain fell like a collapsed Milky Way, smashing onto the sea and dotting its surface with countless tiny spots.

Everly noticed that at a certain moment, the water beneath the Golden Anchor suddenly darkened.

The darkened area had originally been small, covering only half the hull of the giant ship.

But it quickly expanded, engulfing the entire hull. Even then, it seemed unsatisfied, spreading outward with its color growing ever darker.

In the blink of an eye, the dark mass had reached the edge of the Mary Jane.

Through the thin layer of seawater, Everly saw a massive, scaly body with a single deep yellow eye larger than a hot-air balloon.

It wasn’t the sea darkening—it was an enormous creature rapidly rising from the depths.