Sand watched the sunrise set the sea on fire. The light of dawn shone upon his face, giving it a ruddy gloss as he stared blankly at the surface of the water, his mind lost in the labyrinth of his thoughts. The calm waters mirrored the sky, painting the world in shades of orange from horizon to horizon.

“They’re here,” said Lirael as she joined him, seating herself sideways on the railing and looking out over the water. “The Sunfish.”

Following her line of sight, Sand noticed small clumps of darkness rising up from the depths of the water and spreading across its surface. Squinting a bit, he realized that the shadowy masses were groups of jet-black fish – an entire shoal swimming just beneath the water. As the Wavestrider cut across the sea, it scattered the fish, only for them to regroup after it passed.

The water in the Thousand Sea might be clear as glass, but even at noon with the sun directly overhead, one wouldn't be able to see the bottom due to the water absorbing and scattering the light. Normally, this would leave the seabed in perpetual darkness, but due to the existence of the Sunfish, that was not the case.

The scales of the Sunfish soaked in sunlight, making them look darker than black. Once they absorbed the light to their limit, they swam downwards to the seabed before releasing the stored radiance like tiny suns. Hence their name.

The algae and the seaweed that populated the coral reefs at the bottom of the sea depended on this light to grow. And the flora, in turn, was consumed by the Sunfish and the myriad other species of marine life. This was why the Sunfish were also known as the Farmers of the Sea.

As the two of them watched, the dark depths lit up as more and more of the fish completed their round trip to the surface. Rendered fuzzy by the intervening water, the oranges, pinks, greens, reds and blues of the corals formed a marbled expanse of colour dyeing the entire sea in their hues. For the first time in his life, Sand caught a glimpse of the Thousand Sea in all its glory.

It looked like a scene straight out of a dream.

The Wavestrider forged ahead through it all, a magical wind filling its sails.

The sun climbed up from the horizon, making its way across the cerulean dome of the sky as the day wore on. As it reached the zenith, Sand noticed that the numbers of the Sunfish were tailing off. Peeking over the edge of the vessel, he saw that the water beneath was growing murkier the further they went. A quick scan of the sea in front of the ship showed him that the waters ahead were jet-black as far as the eye could see.

He was just about to report to Lirael when Ezekiel’s voice drifted down from the crow’s nest. “Worry not, it’s but an old friend.”

Looking up, squinting against the bright glare of the sun, Sand found the man staring off into the distance ahead. He highly doubted ‘friend’ was the right word here. Ravenous monster was probably the more appropriate descriptor. Anything this far out in the open sea and powerful enough to affect such a large Territory wasn’t something to be trifled with.

As a precaution, Sand lashed himself to the mast with a length of rope. He'd had enough of being tossed around.

Ezekiel’s expression grew serious as the Wavestrider penetrated deeper into the region of black water, the Sunfish growing scarcer before vanishing entirely. Whatever lived here didn’t seem to welcome the little marine farmers’ presence.

From above the crow’s nest, the entire region looked like a blot of ink upon a painted canvas, the distant edges barely visible even to his keen eyes. It was as though they were traversing a sea of ink.

Despite how outwardly relaxed he had sounded, inwardly he was cursing. It was just his luck to run upon the Kraken on one of the legendary monster’s migratory jaunts.

Beasts that had condensed their Dungeons were, in essence, mobile natural disasters. Unlike the case in Tier 5 where they were tied to their Territories, upon their promotion, the Territories became tied to the Beasts, moving along with them.

Be it the dreaded Thunderbird that carried a storm on its travels across the heavens, the Glacial Dragon – the harbinger of winter, or the Kraken whose territory of ink was feared by sailors as the Graveyard of Ships, they all left death and destruction in their wake as the environment of their Dungeons clashed with the natural environments they passed through.

Unlike a human mage who could only increase the size of their Dungeon after it was formed by annexing a related Dungeon, with negligible gains from managing it well, the Territories of the beasts grew automatically with time as they absorbed the Aura of the world. That was why the strength of a beast was judged by its age. A ten-thousand-year-old monster like the Kraken was obviously at the very peak of the food chain.

The atmosphere grew oppressive as the Kraken’s Domain covered the ship, pushing against Ezekiel’s, probing his depth. Jet-black tentacles emerged from the sea, shedding water in torrents. Each one was nearly as wide as the ship and the small part that was exposed hinted at the hundreds of metres that lay underneath. They formed fleshy arches on the water or towered up into the sky, caging them in from all sides.

Under ordinary circumstances, if they were to run upon such a beast, their fates would be sealed. But in this case, there were two factors that gave them a chance at survival.

Firstly, a Dungeon Beast wasn’t dominated by its instincts like an ordinary animal. With the formation of their Dungeon, their wisdom too was activated. Their intelligence was no worse than a human’s and a specimen as powerful as the Kraken might even be a bit smarter. It wouldn't just attack blindly; it knew how to balance risks and rewards.

Secondly, studies of the Kraken showed that it went through cycles of weakness and strength with a weak period lasting a century every millennium or so. It was speculated that this was the result of the old Kraken dying and passing on its Dungeon to its successor. The hundred years of weakness was the time it took the new Kraken to adapt to and grasp the strength of the inherited Dungeon.

A lot of attempts had been made to seek out the Kraken in its weak period and kill it, but the sea was too broad and the Kraken’s stealth capabilities too strong for them to ever amount to something. Going by the scholars’ predictions, right now it was a weak period for the Kraken. Judging by the emaciated size of its Territory (compared to the horizon spanning extent in its heyday) the predictions were correct.

Now, Ezekiel just had to convince the monster that he was too tough a bone to chew. Convince it that the effort required to defeat them would be much more than what it would gain from consuming them.

The light around them began to dim as the Kraken exerted its power over the world, until even with the sun directly overhead, very little of its light and none of its warmth made its way through to the deck of the Wavestrider. Sand watched with clenched fists and barely disguised envy as he watched it turn noon to dusk in an instant.

Ezekiel immediately sent a message to Lirael, instructing her to suppress her Aura as much as she possibly could. After all, an Embryonic Dungeon was a rare delicacy for any Dungeon Beast as much less effort would be required to dismantle and digest it.

Then he sent a command to the lightning elementals manning the ship. Dropping whatever task they were doing, they all froze for a short moment before their forms collapsed inwards into spheres of purple electricity. Thin tendrils of lightning began to stretch out of the spheres, braiding together into slim tentacles and soon, in place of the sailors, there were Lightning Jellyfish floating above the deck of the ship.

Ezekiel opened the gate of his Dungeon. A circle of crackling purple electricity formed in front of him and out of it a swarm of the Lightning Jellyfish gushed out, joining the others and blotting out the sky.

The swarm surrounded the ship, encasing it in a cloud of electricity that crackled and snapped threateningly. The Kraken seemed to hesitate as its tentacles recoiled slightly from the lightning.

Everyone on the ship held their breaths, waiting for the behemoth’s decision.

Their hearts leapt up to their throats when one of the massive tentacles stretched towards them and tentatively poked the swarm. As it drew close enough, a thick discharge of electricity arced from the electric cloud and shocked it. The fragrance of roasted squid spread in the air as the tentacle jerked back.

Enraged, the Kraken began thrashing the water with its tentacles, turning the calm sea into a raging whirlpool. It was only with a great effort that Ezekiel managed to keep the ship from being drawn into the centre of the vortex.

All the tentacles shot upright as though preparing to slam down on the ship, but at the final moment, they deviated their course and slammed down behind the ship instead, creating a great wave that carried them out of its Territory and unceremoniously dumped them outside.

Ezekiel didn’t waste any time in recalling the Jellyfish into his Dungeon, leaving a few to transform back into sailors. Summoning the magical wind, he put as much distance between him and the Kraken as he could before it changed its mind about letting them go.

Sand, who had lashed himself to the mast to prevent himself from being thrown off, untied himself and forced the feelings of nausea down.

Turning back the way they came, he noticed the Kraken retracting its tentacles into the water. Soon, the ink in the water began to pale, until it disappeared entirely, leaving no trace of the nightmarish creature. The sea reverted to a smooth stretch of water mirroring the blue sky.

After a while the Sunfish returned and the vibrant colours of the corals shone through, blurring the boundaries between dream and reality once again.