One Piece: Madness of Regret-Chapter 34: Rain, Storm and Whales. Again!(7)

I was being carried by a Leviathan.

Which Leviathan? Hell, if I know.

Did it matter? Maybe. Did it affect my decision? Fuck no.

Standing was already a fight. My body screamed with every twitch of muscle. Every shift of weight made my bones creak a little. But pain wasn't an excuse to stop. I needed information. I needed something to make my next move.

So, I bent just enough, ignoring the pain searing from my ribs. I had experienced pain far greater than this. I touched the skin of the behemoth beneath me.

Coarse. Thick. No scars.

The rough texture could be from the years, decade, centuries of wear, tear and a lifetime of drifting in the salty waters. Thick skin could mean layers of fat, dense muscle or a evolutionary defense trait for its predator. But no scars? It could mean two things. One. It had no predator. Two. The part I had touch had never seen battle.

And I wasn't going to stumble around in the pitch dark, feeling up the Leviathan just to check for a battle scar.

Not when there is something much, much bigger than whatever I am standing on.

The Apex Leviathan.

If it wanted a meal, it wouldn't matter what I did. Wouldn't matter how thick the hide was, how many layers of muscle and bone separated us from its jaws. It could swallow this whole damn thing, and me along with it, like an afterthought. And still be hungry.

It already was a blessing that when I flew because of it, I fell into the cold water instead of hitting its ever rising body at full speed. I would have been plastered to it like a gum.

This was reality. A sad reality. But a reality I am in.

And yet here I was. Still standing. Still breathing.

I had no answers. No information. Just scattered thoughts and a body barely holding together.

My hearing was shot, still ringing from the impact. My vision was useless in the absolute dark. Smell? Salt, rain, blood—that's all the ocean ever gave me. And taste? What the hell was I gonna do, start licking Leviathans for some data I would never use?

I had nothing. No data. No options. Just instincts and the gamble of a desperate man.

Forced to go all in on blind, huh?

Fine.

Two chips on the table. My Life and My Pride.

I let out a short breath. I could taste the iron, the copper in my tongue and moved.

Every step was a agony. A mess of bones and flesh screaming for rest. But waiting meant playing in the hands of the dealer. Decreasing my odds in the table.

And I was done letting fate play dealer.

So I walked.

One step after another, bleeding, broken but moving.

Because as long as I moved, I was in the game.

So, I walked.

Not toward anything, not away from anything. Just forward. Without a destination. Without a plan. Just moving because stopping meant I lost the gamble. And I wasn't ready to lose.

I had to tip the odds in my favor. Had to find something. Anything.

A few minute more maybe. Who cares? Time had no meaning here. The Leviathan had stopped moving. It was still, dead still.

Did it die too? That's why it floated to the surface and by chance carrying me.

I didn't know. Neither did I had the luxury to know.

Then the lightning, like a cruel joke, as if the universe wanted to show me where I was headed.

And yet, something was wrong.

I could see the Lighting. But I never heard the thunder even after a minute or more. I could neither hear the rain nor the stormy winds.

My ears. I was deaf once more. Busted beyond use.

And my vision? Of course something had to happen to it. Something always had to happen. Blurry, unfocused, wrapped with pain and blood. I could see the lightning. It looked wrong. It was red, almost like the sky bleeding blood to the ground.

The veins in my eyes must have burst from pressure.

Didn't matter.

I walked.

And then, I fell.

Not from exhaustion. Not from pain. Not because my legs gave way. But because the Leviathan beneath me moved.

No. It vibrated.

There was a tremor, a deep rhythmic tremor. Something pulsed beneath the skin, a slow yet steady force.

Another lightning strike. And I got a glimpse of it.

Blood. My eyes were playing tricks on me. I squinted, forcing my mind to replace the endless red with any other color. Then it hit me. It was water.

Not rain. Not the waves. But bursts of water shooting from the Leviathan itself.

And it clicked.

I knew what it was.

I had seen this before.

It was breathing.

The fucking whale kid.

I was standing on a goddamn whale.

At least one question was answered.

Though it wasn't the baby whale, I was sure of it. The whale beneath me was much much bigger than the whales I saw in the pod.

Even the time I walked, even if you calculated it as a crawl. I should have walked two hundred meter at the very least. So, the whale beneath me was a kilometer in length at the very least as far as my eyes could tell.

The anglerfish Leviathan was at least around half a kilometer long while this whale is a kilometer long. The Apex Leviathan few hundred kilometer at least.

The light from the lightning showing it to be still climbing the sky verified it even more.

I am stuck in the middle of Leviathans hunting area or some shit.

How lucky I am.

Some would die for opportunities like this. While I get it without asking.

Just bloody fantastic.

I took my time getting up. The whale beneath me had stopped vibrating. That meant one thing. Underwater action. I sighed of course.

I didn't run. Running was pointless. My body wasn't that healed to do all that. Neither losing that much energy was a good thing for a pointless endeavor. Let the whale dive and I will figure it out from there.

But, The issue was the whale was not diving. It was still. if it weren't for the breath it took. I swear I would classify it as dead. Moreover it was idiotic of it to stay still. The Apex Leviathan would never be filled with just a Leviathan. It would mean there are many more in the waters.

I just couldn't see them.

Or maybe is it nor moving because of the Apex Leviathan? Does the Apex Leviathan hunt active target? More suited to hunt moving target?

I looked at the front and the back of the whale with the help of lightning strikes in the background. No movement. No ripples.

If the Apex Leviathan hunted active targets, then staying still was a good thing to do. It was the best thing to do.

It was survival.

I needed to see the Apex Leviathan.

It was my way out or a death sentence. I needed to know which. So I waited.

And then, the Lighting struck.

Then I saw it a beast among beast, The Leviathan of Leviathans. The Apex Leviathan.

Still soaring.

Still above water.

It was slowing down, but it was still soaring up in the cloud. Even my ruined vision only saw black even with the light. A deep, pitch black. The leviathan had swallowed all light.

The Apex Leviathan had covered all of my line of vision. It was all I could see. A pitch black moving, soaring up in the sky. It was all there was.

I took a deep breath. When the Apex Leviathan stops soaring, my odds at winning the gamble from fate will be known. For now I had to wait, conserve whatever energy I had.

I checked my surroundings again.

Beneath the brief flashes of Lightning, I could see it.

Another Leviathan.

It too was floating on the surface, motionless.

But it was too close to the Apex Leviathan. Too close for comfort. I don't know if that made it lucky or extremely unlucky.

The lightning struck between intervals, sometimes alone, sometimes in group. Each time it gave me glimpses, more details, more pieces to piece together. More pieces of the Leviathan that dared to stay so close to the Apex Leviathan.

It was big.

No.

It was massive.

Not as big as the Apex Leviathan but still long enough that it stretched farther than what I could see. A behemoth in its own right, a creature capable of ruling the waters on its own.

And now? It was still. Dead still.

I walked a little back just to get more glimpses of it.

And then I saw it.

It had a hole. A gigantic hole. A hole that could fit a Leviathan. A deep, gaping hole, craved straight to its innards.

The Leviathan was dead. Killed likely by the Apex Leviathan.

Such a massive, ancient, powerful being reduced to a drifting corpse.

It seemed familiar to me. And the more I looked, the familiar it became.

This was the place where I had been standing. Before I was thrown. Before I was thrown in the waters.

This Leviathan. It carried me before.

And now it lay there. Not moving. Not breathing.

I just stood there. Staring, Felling... something.

What was it?

Pity? Anger? Grief?

I didn't know. I couldn't know.

But I knew one thing.

Life was fleeting.

Even it had lost. A Leviathan that defied the laws of nature, a being so untouchable lay there with a hole in itself. It had been hunted, torn open and left to drift as ocean debris.

It carried me.

It gave me a chance to survive.

And now, it was gone.

Just gone.

The ocean didn't care.

The Apex Leviathan didn't care.

Nothing cared.

And for the first time, in a long, long time.....

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I didn't know if I cared either.

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I had a talk with the guy and he gave me suggestions for the fight scene. His suggestions which I accepted were for Name: Amon (He is a big LOTM fan), Weapon: Saber and the Ships name would be Inevitable. He wanted a fishman, and enact the Davy Back fights. This is a fantastic suggestion but it will be for a later volume.

And what to expect from the fight scene. A 20ish pirate crew. A MC whose dominant hand is crippled because of two less finger. Impossible odds.

That said the guy is Inevitable End. So if you like the fight Chapters that are gonna come later. Just say thank you to him or praise Amon.