One Thousand Years

With Nora's words, the cave fell silent.

Pollution, lasting for... a thousand years?

Theus felt as if he were listening to a ridiculous joke.

He looked around in a daze; the cave was filled with the fine, shimmering glow of the sunset, which was quite beautiful.

Outside the cave, the setting sun gradually sank into the sea, its final rays dyeing the waves red as they crashed against the reefs like a pleasant melody.

He did not know how many years this melody had lasted, with stones being shattered by the waves, their edges worn smooth, and ground into fine sand.

How long was a thousand years?

Long enough for him to experience a lifetime of wind and frost, then die and become a corpse, rot into bones, and repeat it many times over.

The sea... had been polluted for a thousand years?

Theus looked at the sea surface, the snow-white foam reflecting in his eyes and the eyes of the Banshees.

No one spoke.

Theus felt as if he had turned into silt, drifting away with the tide. In the almost endless passage of time, he had been wandering in the sea, seeing the fish, the passing ships, the shrimp and crabs on the seabed, seeing...

Ding!

Theus covered his ears, finally snapping back to reality. He looked at Nora in the cave with a toothache-like grimace; she had just struck her shield hard with her Flail.

"You... you actually didn't know!? Don't you live in the sea? Can't you feel that endless pollution?"

The Banshees looked at each other in dismay.

"No, that's not right. You have almost no pollution on you. I just finished purifying you; I saw it with my own eyes. But this, this is wrong, this is wrong..." Nora began to mutter to herself, her expression confused.

Another deathly silence followed, and the eyes of the Banshees were filled with bewilderment.

"Wait!"

Theus suddenly widened his eyes, a thought flashing through his mind like lightning.

The Cursed... Swollen Monster... homeland... destruction... escape... enslavement... water pressure... Abyssal Trench... pollution... Flesh Magic...

Theus's hands began to tremble. He had a hypothesis, a truly terrifying one.

The Banshees and Nora suddenly heard Theus speak. His voice was not loud, and his words were trembling slightly:

"Is there... such a possibility?"

"Before the pollution in the deep sea erupted, your homeland was destroyed, and you were forced to maintain Flesh Magic to resist the water pressure, becoming The Cursed."

"Then you were enslaved by various races and trapped in the shallow sea, which meant you had to maintain Flesh Magic from the moment you were born, and Flesh Magic can maintain your physical state and keep you from being polluted!"

The Banshees looked at Theus in shock.

"Then all the other races in the sea gradually went mad from the pollution, but only you, because of the water pressure, needed to maintain Flesh Magic every single moment, so you were never polluted!"

"The pollution comes from the depths of the sea, and the pollution in the shallow sea is not great, so your condition worsened after entering the Abyssal Trench, and after staying for a few days, you had to flee."

The more Theus spoke, the smoother it became. Countless details flashed through his mind, then pieced together into a massive puzzle.

A puzzle spanning a thousand years of history, based on the Seven Oceans!

"Water pressure... was not a curse; it saved you, forcing you to maintain Flesh Magic every moment, making you the only survivors in the pollution-ridden Seven Oceans!"

"So those Fishmen didn't dare to chase you deep into the Abyssal Trench, not because they feared the exploding Ghost Ship, but because they feared the pollution in the Abyssal Trench!"

"That's why the journey deep into the Abyssal Trench was so smooth; under a thousand years of pollution, no creatures have gathered in the Abyssal Trench for a long time."

"And sneaking into the Abyssal Trench to face the pollution directly allowed you to understand the horror of the pollution immediately, rather than being gradually eroded in the shallow sea until it was too late to turn back!"

Everything made sense now...

Theus stood where he was, his face full of shock. He never expected the truth to be like this!?

In a daze, he seemed to see a corner of the truth of this world.

Theus suddenly realized that if he or the Banshees had taken a single wrong step, they would have been doomed, yet they had luckily taken every step correctly, as if by fate.

The gaze the Banshees turned toward him gradually became filled with awe. Everything was just too coincidental, too precise.

Was he really not a god...

Theus suddenly frowned.

Wait, that's not right...

He suddenly felt something was off, as if he had overlooked something very important, but for a moment, he couldn't remember what it was.

"You, you actually didn't know..." Nora was also stunned by this news. She looked at the surrounding Banshees, feeling that their expressions were not feigned.

"You have actually been maintaining the magic that isolates pollution for a thousand years? In the sea!? Without a single moment of rest!?!?"

Taking a deep breath to calm her agitated emotions, she still found it hard to accept the reality before her.

A thousand years of continuous pollution had turned all other variants in the sea into monsters; this was something written into the Holy Scripture.

The priest who taught her, the priest who taught that priest, knowledge passed down through so many generations—these were facts in her eyes, an irrefutable truth.

She only felt as if something unbreakable had just been shattered before her eyes like a fragile glass vase.

Suddenly, Nora raised her head and looked at Theus.

Could she have been wrong? Was Theus not a cult leader, and he had simply been ignorant of the millennium-long corruption, which was why he had asked her to help with the treatment?

Was he merely seeking help?

Wait, he had also crossed the ocean; how could he be ignorant?

Ignorant... ignorant...

Her eyes were filled with disbelief as she looked up at Theus. "Could it be, could it be that you are still just a mortal?"

A mortal? Did she mean someone without supernatural power? Theus thought that since she was called a Burier, it must be some kind of rank within the Silent Temple that possessed supernatural power, so he nodded silently.

Clang, the Tower Shield in Nora's hand slid to the ground.

"How... could this be... so you aren't..."

"Wait," she suddenly seemed to recall something, and her expression changed abruptly.

"Oh no!!"

Simultaneous with her words, a shrill scream rang out.

Monica's entire body was covered in constantly squirming black corruption, which dug into her flesh like thin ropes. Monica's once beautiful face had become incredibly hideous, her limbs knotted in opisthotonos, and her joints twisted at eerie angles.

Countless bits of corruption squirmed as they fell from her body, like thousands of black worms that frantically latched onto any other banshees they touched.

Time seemed to slow down, and Theus felt as if everything before him had turned into slow motion.

He watched helplessly as Monica lunged up from the water, roaring as she slammed into Nora and sent her flying.

At this moment, only one sentence echoed in his mind, the one Ash had told him before.

"Flesh Magic is merely for barely resisting water pressure; once they leave the seawater, even with Flesh Magic, most will..."

"Explode and die," Theus muttered.