Chapter 329. Who Does She Take After?
Charles looked up and saw the Pope floating above him. The old man was dressed in a magnificent gold-trimmed white robe. Charles turned and saw oval-shaped airships behind the cathedral on Hope Island. The signature triangular symbol of the Divine Light Order was painted on the blimps flying so high they almost touched the domed ceiling.
The nearly dozen airships were in a neat formation. There were massive chains dangling off the side of the airships; evidently, the airships had transported the massive steel spires that had pierced Swann.
When did the Divine Light Order's technology become so advanced? Charles thought with a frown.
"Charles, it's rude to get distracted while speaking to your elders," the Pope said with a tinge of dissatisfaction in his voice.
Charles' gaze landed on the Pope, and he said, "Thank you for your help."
He couldn't quite deduce the Pope's thoughts, and the latter was an enigmatic old man in his eyes, but Charles still knew that the Pope had indeed saved his life earlier. Thus, he decided to express his gratitude to the old man.
"Who's that? Your friend?" the Pope asked curiously while staring at Sparkle.
Sparkle was still holding up Charles with her tentacles. She was curious about the old man giving off a radiant golden light, and she stretched out a tentacle toward the Pope.
However, Charles stopped Sparkle with his invisible tentacle and said to the Pope, "I'm not too sure, actually. I'm going to tell you once I've figured it out."
The Pope stared alternatingly between Charles and Sparkle. Eventually, he nodded and said, "It seems that you and your tentacle friend have your own private matter to deal with. Go ahead and settle it first. I'll go check if Swann is actually dead."
The old man flew toward the crab beneath them.
As Sparkle's tentacles lowered Charles slowly to the ground, the islander's cheers pierced Charles' ears. They had defeated an enemy as mighty as a god and had even survived the ordeal!
The ships out at sea started returning to the harbor while the green heads of the Deep Dwellers plunged into the depths. Swann had fallen, while the Divine Light Order had arrived with their Pope to reinforce Hope Island.
The Deep Dwellers Elders knew that their attack had failed. They were strong, but they knew that they couldn't possibly withstand the attack of the Divine Light Order, the Elizarles Shores, and Hope Island all at the same time.
They had to flee, and they had to do it quickly. Things would get quite troublesome if the three forces managed to surround them.
The islanders cheered even louder at the Deep Dwellers' retreat, but Charles couldn't celebrate at all. He had a major issue he had to handle, and it was in the form of a cluster of eyeballs right in front of him.
Pop!
A green eyeball—fifty centimeters across—popped out of the water and rolled to Charles' feet.
Charles' expression was complicated as he stared at the green eyeball.
"Daddy... play..."
Three seconds later, Charles sighed at length. One of his invisible tentacles picked up one of the smaller eyeballs and hurled it at the massive green eyeball with a cross-shaped pupil.
Swoosh!
The eyeball flew back straight toward Charles, and he batted it away with precision, sending it back into the sea. Just like that, and in the middle of the chaotic harbor, Charles batted away every single eyeball that emerged from the pitch-black sea. More and more eyeballs appeared in mid-air, and they would occasionally rub against each other, generating a giggling noise.
Charles caught one of the green eyeballs and gave it a gentle squeeze. "What's your name?"
Since he found out that the eyeball before him was his child, Charles no longer found it as repulsive as when he first encountered it.
"Spark... Sparkle..."
"Sparkle? Okay, where's your mother?" Charles asked.
As soon as Charles' words fell, Sparkles' tentacles and eyeballs flickered frantically, and every single tentacle and eyeball converged on the cross-shaped pupil before disappearing completely.
"Hmm?" Charles hesitantly reached out a hand toward where Sparkle was just now.
Swoosh!
Sparkle abruptly reappeared, and Charles' outstretched hand was sucked into the cross-shaped pupil. Flustered, Charles attempted to pull his hand out, but a fair hand grabbed his hand.
"What are you doing? I'm busy, so you better have dragged me here for a good reason!" Anna shook Charles' hand off of her hand as she emerged from the cross-shaped pupil clad in a tight-fitting purple dress.
She looked around with an annoyed gaze, but her eyes instantly lit up when she saw Swann. The excited light in her eyes made her seem as if she were a young girl standing before a branded handbag in a luxury store.
"Goodness, is that Ronker? No wonder I haven't been able to find it. It turns out that it decided to come here. Wait, it's badly damaged. I wonder if it's still usable..." Anna muttered.
She was about to go over to Swann, but Charles pulled her back.
Anna turned and found Charles pointing at Sparkle.
"What is that?" Charles asked.
"What do you mean, what is that? She's your daughter! Oh, is it that surprising that you just can't believe it?" Anna replied with a playful smile.
"But you clearly are... how could both of us have..." Charles stammered. Anna's words had shattered his doubts.
Meanwhile, Sparkle's tentacles gently wrapped them.
"Well, if there's a will, there's a way. I simply found a way. I wanted to tell you about her long ago when you'd just been cured of your mind corruption, but I was afraid that you'd go crazy again, so I decided to give you some time to yourself."
Anna stepped forward with her high heels and wrapped her arms around Charles' neck. She looked slightly askance as she asked, "What's wrong? Are you not happy that I gave birth to your child?"
Charles removed Anna's arms around his neck, and he sounded helpless as he said, "No, that's not the point. You said she's my daughter, so how come she looks like that?"
Anna grimaced and started poking Charles' chest with her sharp fingernail, making him retreat as she said, "Do you really think that Sparkle looks like that because of me?
"I'm just an ordinary Dioite, so how could I give birth to something as huge as Sparkle? I also want to remind you that you've contributed as well, and since she doesn't take after me, she obviously takes after you, you scumbag!"
"What? She takes after me?" Charles felt like the mental state that he had just fortified a while ago was crumbling once again. He turned to Sparkle and stared at her for quite a while before looking down at himself and his human form. He felt like his mind had become mush at Anna's explosive revelation.
Anna huffed and puffed as she stomped her way over to Swann.
"Anna!" Charles hurriedly chased after her and said, "Please explain clearly. How could Sparkle possibly take after me? Could it be because of my tattoo?"
Anna looked both helpless and annoyed as she said, "I didn't expect you to be this slow-witted. Have you still not realized that your physique is a bit different from ordinary people after you've visited all those dangerous places?"
"My physique?" Charles froze and went silent as scenes flashed across his mind.
"Your intuition is wrong. We're not the same as these riffraffs. We're the chosen ones, while they're nothing but vulgar commoners," the Pope said.
"That's why I said you're lucky—you're lucky for the fact that you've absorbed two Origin Essences, yet the side effects you've experienced aren't as devastating as what our test subjects had to go through before dying. Really, I feel like dissecting you to see what's going on beneath the surface," Laesto said in his wheelchair.
Finally, he recalled the freakish mutation that had occurred to him upon falling into despair when he first discovered Dawn One. He recalled seeing his own fingers morphing into octopus-like tentacles riddled with eyes.
The scene of various amorphous organs sprouting all over him remained vivid in his memories. He saw appendages resembling those of crab claws, ballooning orbs of dark matter, and even triangular deformed dead fish-like eyes.
Charles was beyond stupefied—was he staring at his own monstrous self at the time?
"Could it be that... I wasn't hallucinating back then?" Charles muttered incredulously.
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