The vast expanse of ocean stretched endlessly beneath the army of black wyverns, its dark waters concealing untold horrors in their depths, which Erik absolutely had no wish to et.
Two hours had passed since Erik and the army left the Law Gate, and the mainland was now just a hazy line on the horizon.
Erik was at the helm of the formation, scanning both sea and sky in search of Thaids that escaped the undead's notice.
Even with the undead scouts patrolling ahead and around them, the ocean's depths made their surveillance far from perfect. The waters were simply too deep, and a thaid could easily lurk hundreds of ters below, completely undetected.
Or worse, these monsters could simply swim into the area after the undead had already passed through, rendering their scouting efforts useless.
Erik couldn't keep the undead scouts closer to the formation. Despite the risks of missing threats beneath the waves, they needed the undead to patrol far ahead and around them. Without proper scouting, they'd be blind to any flying thaids in their path-a potentially fatal oversight given how dangerous aerial encounters could be over open water.
The formation kept a careful distance from the water below. Erik ordered them to maintain this height—not so high as to strain the clones because of the lack of oxygen, but high enough that only the most titanic creatures, like the Leviathan Serpent, could pose an imdiate threat.
Still, despite this precaution and their overwhelming numbers, Erik couldn't shake the feeling that they were rely prey waiting to be hunted.
His fears weren't unfounded paranoia but wisdom born from experience. The ocean had already shown him its terrors. Now those mories painted every shadow beneath the waves as a potential threat.
Experience had taught Erik that thaids could materialize from any direction without warning, and sea thaids had an even greater advantage from their land counterparts. They could burst from the waves like living geysers. Their bodies were usually so big that by simply moving, they could displace enough water to create whirlpools.
Flying thaids could use the clouds as a hiding place. There was no way to know they were attacking unless one was lucky enough to see them before they did, as their shadows would appear only seconds before impact.
With the Mannard continent now a distant mory, every cubic ter of space around them -from the depths below to the clouds above-could hide monsters beyond counting. The endless blue horizon offered no comfort, only the certainty that they were surrounded by threats.
The ocean's vastness amplified both the danger and Erik's sense of vulnerability. Each ripple in the waters below could be the signal of an approaching predator.
Every shadow passing beneath their formation might be the last thing they see before an attack. Unlike terrain on land, where mountains, forests, and valleys provided hiding spots and defensive positions, the open ocean was a featureless, killing ground.
There were no bottlenecks to funnel enemies, no high ground to occupy, and no cover to duck behind. The sky offered equally little protection-clouds could hide threats just as easily as the waves concealed dangers below.
The most terrifying part was that a single massive thaid, lurking beneath the surface, could be so big as to make it able to annihilate half their army in one simple movent of their jaws.
These giant sea monsters were so large they didn't even need brain crystal powers to cause destruction. Their massive size alone made them deadly.
Erik had seen them in action. His wasn't just paranoia.
Clouds gathered above them, dark and brooding, matching the color of the wyverns' scales. The undead thaids circled the main force in wide arcs, acting as the first line of defense to decrease the number of Chimaeric Demons' casualties if they got attacked.
Every few minutes, ripples would disturb the ocean's surface, too large to be caused by normal marine life.
The clones noticed these disturbances too, and their anxiety surged-a slight tightening of wing muscles, a brief break in formation before correcting the occasional nervous glance downward.
"Master," one of the nearby clones said, "It looks like the water depth has increased. We should be over the deep-sea trenches."
Erik nodded. They all knew what that ant. The deep trenches were hunting grounds for the largest and most dangerous sea thaids, so Erik's earlier fears could now happen.
The Leviathan Serpent they'd encountered in the past was just one example of what lurked in these waters.
Erik had researched the thaids living in the waters between Mur and Hin. Information was scarce since few who encountered these creatures survived to tell the tale.
Yet, despite Erik being unable to fight them, he at least needed to know what might attack them to co up with plans to at least escape the monsters.
The undead scouts helped to ease his worries, but their presence offered little comfort. Against the titans of the deep, they would be little more than an inconvenience.
Even the mighty wyvern forms the clones had taken might prove not enough against what awaited them. In truth, that wasn't so weird.
Their increased size did little to enhance their strength. The larger form rely allowed them to carry more provisions.
Below, a shadow passed beneath the waves-massive, silent, and gone in an instant. The entire formation shifted slightly higher in response, though no order had been given.
Erik tightened his grip on the wyvern's scales. The ocean between Mannard and Mur had remained unexplored for good reason.
Now they were crossing it with an army, presenting themselves as a feast to whatever monstrosities called these waters ho.
The Blackguards avoided these dangers by using suborbital travel, reaching the safety of space. Erik, however, lacked an aircraft capable of such flight.
Then an indistinct sound reached them-sothing between a whale's song and a rumble of thunder. The noise seed to co from everywhere and nowhere at once, reverberating through their bones. The wyverns' wings faltered for just a mont before resuming their
beat.
The waiting was perhaps the worst part. Erik knew sothing would happen-it was inevitable. The only questions were when it would occur and whether they would survive. [You're being paranoid again,] the biological supercomputer said. [The chances of us encountering sothing dangerous are low in such a great space. The ocean is massive, and most creatures, even thaids, prefer to conserve energy rather than attack sothing as large
as our formation.]
That was the reason Erik wanted his army to take the shapes of wyverns to begin with. Everything would have to think twice before attacking.
[True, but think about it logically. Any hunter has to think about whether an attack is worth the energy it would spend, and this is true for Thaids, too. We look like an enormous group of wyverns-that's a lot of work for any predator, and they can't be sure they'd even succeed.]
[Since you downloaded all those research papers about them, especially during the past days. I may be artificial, but I know how to read. Besides, if sothing tries to eat us, we can always throw so clones at it and run away. It's not like we're short on disposable troops.]
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