One Piece: Madness of Regret-Chapter 37: Rain, Storm and Whales. Again!(10)

Your cervical spine — the neck area of your spine— consists of seven stacked bones called vertebrae. Cervical spine connects to the lower half of the spine called thoracic spine. Any damage caused to the spine could result in disastrous effect, most would never want to feel in their lifetime.

For example, lower body paralysis.

And I just so luckily had to happen to get it. Just my luck.

And now here I am, once again drowning. My arms and leg once more not working.

Once more drowning because of some fucking whale. Once because a kid whale wanted to play tag with me. And now because a bloody Leviathan whale wanted to fight with the kraken itself near my vicinity.

I was fine being burned while I fished in chaos. Sure the fabric burning and merging with my skin was not a enjoyable experience. But I was fighting. Heck, I was alive despite the pain and I had whatever that was happening under control.

And a fucking bloody whale had to come and ruin it all. Once more.

The kid helped me drown. While one helped me from drowning. And lastly the biggest of them all helped me to drown once more.

I really have an affinity for whales. A affinity that's very, very bad for my health, both physical and mental.

Well whatever, my plan failed. But it was a stupid plan anyway. I didn't have much hope that it would be successful. Maybe I just wanted to have some control. And the plan had to fail once more. They don't like me having control, do they?

I don't have a plan anymore, not like the way I am, anyway. Once more paralyzed, just this time its below the neck.

But I have a guess. A guess worth a hundred good plan.

But. No. Maybe. No. I wish that guess is false.

I really want to rest, man.

That's all that I could think of while drowning.

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The Deep dark blue.

Even with shattered eyes, their vision drowned in crimson, I can still see you.

Even when the pitch-black veil smothers your beauty, I can still see you.

Blue.

Not the fleeting shimmer of the shallows.

Not the gentle kiss of a morning sky.

No, you are the blue of the deep, the blue of the endless.

The blue that stretches beyond reach, beyond reason.

The source of this c𝓸ntent is frёeweɓηovel.coɱ.

A blue so dark, so vast, it swallows the world whole—yet within it, stars drift, untouched by time.

And still, I see you.

Untouched. Unheld. Unblemished. Unclaimed.

Indifferent.

You do not simply exist—you command.

Your depths whisper secrets older than the first breath of light, truths hidden from time itself.

You promise, you beckon, with tides that pull the hearts of those who love you.

You drag them deeper, deeper still, until drowning in you is no longer a fear but a privilege.

A privilege all men seek.

For in your embrace, you offer freedom—a release from the weight of the world, an absolution from burdens too many to name.

You take nothing, demand nothing, hold no chains.

And yet—how cruel you are.

I reach, yet you slip through my grasp.

I call, yet you do not answer.

I sink, yet you remain above me, just beyond reach.

The deep dark blue—vast, endless, untouchable.

You whisper secrets I will never hear, unveil truths I will never see.

You call without voice, beckon without intent, and though I come to you, you push me away.

You draw a fragile, invisible line between us—so easy to break, yet held firm by your will.

Oh, waters.

How fickle you are.

I could bend you to my will.

I could change you, make you mine.

But would you still be you?

For it is your freedom that defines you.

Your untamed spirit.

Your ever-drifting soul.

Still, I write to you, my beloved.

And let me write again—this time, of longing.

I reach for you—oh, how I reach,

Fingers stretched, aching deep.

Yet you slip—a golden dream,

Flowing past, never mine to keep.

I cup my hands, I beg, I plead,

Yet through my grasp, you disappear.

A lover's ghost, a fleeting need,

Ever distant, ever near.

You call to me with whispers sweet,

A siren's song, a cruel deceit.

You lure me close, then cast me wide,

A wanderer lost, with none to guide.

How I long to linger in these verses, my beloved, but the world pulls me away.

Yet when the sun bows low, spilling gold into the horizon, and the moon rises—a quiet guardian of our longing—know that I will return.

The poem shall be our constellation, each word a star to guide me back to you.

No matter how far fate may pull me, when night drapes the sky in velvet, I will find you once more.

This, my fickle-hearted beloved, is my promise.

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The water pulled me deep and deeper.

Once more.

At least, I could still think and watch. Nothing more than that. The pressure would have crushed my bones if they weren't already crushed. I was feeling nothing. Not the pressure nothing.

Just the water that was gushing in the hole of my skull.

Ah, whatever. I waited. I didn't try to move my arms and leg. I knew they were paralyzed but I didn't even try.

Not that trying would make any difference.

Especially not when the kraken tentacle caught me and was squeezing my whole goddamn lower body.

It wasn't squeezing me super tight. But it might as well do that. The suckers in its tentacle full of barnacles and many marine lifeforms did me no good. My skin stuck to the super glue equivalent in the waters.

I wasn't just being stuck to the sucker. I was being eaten. The skin in my head was dissolving. And whatever stuff that was dissolving my skin, it was entering my brain through the hole, too.

The suckers in the tentacles were killing me.

And then the kraken hoisted me high above the surface. Fast enough for me to faint the moment I made contact with the surface.

Then I woke up. Upside down. I was taking deep breaths. Breathes so big my lungs could not hold. And then the tentacle was moving. It brought me in front of its head.

The lightning really did have a cruel sense of humor and a brilliant sense of lighting. I could see the kraken. A octopus whose single sighting would make sailors suffer from PTSD.

Its eyes were black. And call it intuition or experience. Whenever any leviathan brought me directly in front of its eye, it was always looking at me.

And it was.

It was looking at me.

The kraken of the sea was looking at me.

My skin stuck to the sucker was melting but I couldn't give this octopus the satisfaction. I stared dead in its eye.

And it was looking at me, too. It wanted the brick too. But it wanted to break me even more. The sparkle in its eye suggested that it will enjoy breaking me.

I hadn't been broken once. Not by the Leviathans. And I don't plan to do that now. So, I stared it with fire and vile. I stared at its very soul. While it did the same.

It wanted me to blink.

It wouldn't make me blink.

Not in the situation where it felt like a fucking plane hit me from behind. Any bones that were yet to shatter were shattered, no doubt. It knocked with so much force that I flew from the suckers grip. Even when flying, I stared at the kraken. I won't break even when I flew to god knows where.

The kraken blinked first, its monstrous gaze snapping towards the one that dared to strike its tentacle.

It was the damned whale.

The same one that had lured the kraken to the surface in the first place. It had launched itself out of depths and slammed its massive body and all its weight to the tentacle that trapped me. The impact sent shockwaves through the water and more than enough force for me to fly.

The kraken now fully enraged, enraged beyond reasoning. The kraken coiled its remaining tentacles, and like spears struck the whale, wrapping around its sides, tightening like living chain. The waters churned violently with every action both of them made.

But the whale wasn't done fighting. It first bit off a tentacle that latched to close to its jaw. The kraken struck it more with its tentacles.

And then the whale bellowed with such force that even the air was vibrating. Then in desperation or by instinct. It did a death roll.

The water caught in the chaos truned into waves of cataclyism size. The air got an updraft as it pushed me even higher. The death roll had enough force to loosen another tentacle off the kraken.

The ocean had become a battlefield for the giant.

And me, I was flying once more, higher than before. I wanted to fly from a young age. But not like this.

then I fell.

I tumbled through the air, helpless, weightless, like a rag doll discarded and hurled by the wrath of gods. My body hit the ground hard, rolling, like a fucking football across the grass. But the grass weren't there to cushion my fall.

It was barnacles. A field of them.

Jagged, razor-edged barnacles that tore into me with every spin I did. Each impact shredded my skin, cut my flesh open.

I don't know how long it lasted.

I don't know how far I rolled.

All I knew was that at some point, I stopped.

And then I opened my eyes.

The one small mercy I had left—the ability to see, even through the searing pain. The ability to ground myself in the chaos, to at least glimpse the horror around me.

But there was nothing.

Not red. Not shadow. Not even the vague blur of darkness behind closed eyelids.

Just nothing.

A void.

A silence of sight.

I had gone blind. Barnacles had pierced my eye.

I just lay there.

My body paralyzed, my ears ringing with a hollow, deafening emptiness, my eyes stolen from me. And yet—my mind was awake. A prisoner in my own flesh. A soul locked inside a broken vessel.

This was horror.

Not pain, not injury, not even the nearness of death. This absolute, utter helplessness—was true torture. The inability to move, to fight, to even blink away the nothingness that swallowed me whole.

I would take all the agony of the world. I would endure every wound, every lash, every moment of suffering. No, I had endured agony most would crack from. But this?

This, I could not bear.

And yet, there I lay. Trapped in the shell of my own failing body.

I lay there as a complete cripple. I would take all the pain of the world but I don't wish to be like this.

All because of the whales. Again!

Alone.

Powerless.

In the dark.

Do I have to give up?

After all the bullshit I have been through?

After all the inhumane torture I been through?

After I lived through all that?

I don't want to. I don't want to give up. Not until I complete what I aimed to complete.

I had a pinky promise to complete. I still had to bring yummy stuff for the kid at the Cathedral. I still have a regret I wish I never had.

And that's when I felt it. Something climbing me. Something entering through my eye to my brain. It was liquid in nature. A viscous liquid that could as well be a solid. It was climbing, defying gravity.

It stank of familiarity.

It smelled of iron. Of blood.

It was the blood that I ate. The blood from the raft.

And now, it was eating me.

It wanted to consume me. Devour me.

And I let it.

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So some talk. The pirate fight scene will begin from next scene. And from there the Mc will have less torture compared to before. I reread everything and I need to admit the MC has gotten a little too much than I planned previously. But Character development. Lol.

And I kinda felt romantic today. So I half wrote a poem.

And if you have any question regarding well anything or everything just ask. And there are a lot of place to ask question from. The Seven sins, the fog, the Cathedral, the figure, the Leviathans. And all that. So if you are confused. Just ask. I will tell you without spoiling it.

Because while I plan to rewrite the Volume 1 it will be at the end of Volume 2 or the start of Volume 3. And I plan Volume 2 to be around 100 Chapters. That said, tomorrow just to get more readers and get more views and utilize Webnovel Algorithm. I plan to cut the Chapters in two parts and publish it like 6 hours apart. One Chapter will be published like in normal time. Other six hours earlier.

Simply because I wrote like 75k words and i just reached 50k views in novelkiss yesterday and 3k in scrriblehub. And I am somehow losing readers, lol.