CHAPTER 68: SEA EMPEROR

"Damn... this really looks like the Sea Dragon Leviathan! That dinosaur like head is way too obvious!"

"Holy crap, this thing is pure dominance!"

"No wonder it can kill a Reaper Leviathan. They’re both Leviathans, but this one’s the heavyweight champ!"

"Seeing it in person is unreal... thank you for making my dream of seeing a giant beast come true!"

The chat was going wild, and PureWhite’s voice came through, nervous yet thrilled. "This, my dear viewers, is the Sea Dragon Leviathan! Just look at the sheer pressure it gives off!"

"But we’re not done yet, this monster has a terrifying ability. Let me show you."

PureWhite launched a biological decoy toward the Sea Dragon Leviathan’s position.

What happened next stunned everyone. Instead of charging after the bait, the creature opened its massive, blood red maw... and spat out a gigantic fireball!

Boom! Boom! Boom!

It wasn’t just fire, it was molten lava wrapped in flames. Each fireball was five meters wide, and the poor decoy was obliterated in seconds, leaving nothing but smoke.

"It breathes fire?!"

"Are we sure this isn’t a fire-breathing dragon?!"

"No way... this has to be the strongest creature in the deep sea!"

"Tch, ridiculous. It’s already a massive beast, and it has special attacks on top of that!"

"I thought it was a melee fighter, but turns out it’s a long-range mage too!"

The audience could hardly believe it. This was beyond overpowered.

"How do you even fight something like this?" someone muttered in chat.

PureWhite explained calmly, "If we approach head on, we’ll either get roasted by fireballs or torn apart by the Sea Dragon. Decoys don’t work, and even the Stasis Gun won’t kill it."

A pause. Then his tone shifted, almost smug. "I died here plenty of times before figuring it out. But the devs did give us a way through, a hidden tunnel inside the nearby reef."

He piloted the Cyclops toward a massive wall of rock. And sure enough, there it was, an almost invisible opening in the stone.

"No way, it’s actually there!"

"Bless the devs for his mercy!"

"But man... that’s way too well hidden. You’d never find it without looking closely. Thank goodness for PureWhite!"

The chat was full of admiration, but the Cyclops was too big to fit inside. PureWhite switched to the Sea Mantis and headed in.

The narrow grotto twisted and turned, but according to the coordinates, he was getting closer to the Sea Emperor’s Incubation Center. After a while, he emerged on the other side, having completely avoided the Sea Dragon. Ahead lay a massive vertical shaft in the seabed.

It wasn’t natural, its perfectly square walls made it clear it had been excavated by intelligent hands.

"This," PureWhite announced, "is the entrance to the Sea Emperor Incubation Center."

He dove in.

The shaft opened into a colossal lava lake, glowing like an endless sea of molten fire. And in the center, standing alone above the burning expanse, was a towering structure.

"There it is, the Sea Emperor Incubation Center!"

"My god... they actually built it inside a lava lake?!"

"What were the Pioneers thinking? This is a death trap!"

"Death trap or not, this scene is insane. That endless lava...!"

"Seriously, every frame of Subnautica could be a wallpaper."

Switching the Sea Mantis to grappling mode, PureWhite latched onto the rock walls above and swung forward like Tarzan.

"Warning, the environment here is brutal. Neither the Cyclops nor the Seamoth can handle the temperature. The Sea Mantis is your only option. But even then, you must know how to use the grappling hook. Miss a latch, and you’ll fall straight into the lava. Instant death."

He chuckled dryly. "Don’t ask how many times I’ve fallen. Let’s just say... double digits."

The viewers winced in sympathy. The devs weren’t just designing enemies, he was using the environment itself to kill players.

After several tense swings, PureWhite finally reached the platform at the entrance. The door was sealed behind a shimmering force field.

"Remember the Pioneer Key we picked up at the Disease Research Center? Time to use it."

Slotting the key into the console, the force field dissolved with a low hum. PureWhite stepped inside.

The temperature dropped instantly. Outside, the lava lake had been over 100 degrees Celsius, but here it was a cool twenty. The Pioneers had somehow kept the seawater out entirely.

The entrance hall was massive, easily the size of four football fields, and in the center lay a single, enormous pool.

PureWhite approached, his voice tinged with anticipation. "Get ready, everyone. An intense scene is incoming."

The chat went quiet. They all knew what was coming.

He reached the pool’s edge.

WHOOSH!

A massive wave surged upward, and a colossal head burst from the water.

"...!"

A soft, calm female voice echoed in their minds, the same one they had heard in hallucinations before.

The Sea Emperor Leviathan had appeared.

Its insect like head and massive green compound eyes locked onto PureWhite.

"Holy Shit! That scared the life out of me!"

"Just the head alone is the size of a two story building!"

"So this is the Sea Emperor Leviathan... it’s like someone magnified a mantis a thousand times!"

"Wait... is it actually bigger than the Sea Dragon?!"

"Where’s the gentle big sister vibe? Why does she look like this?!"

The sudden appearance of the Sea Emperor Leviathan’s massive head startled the audience. That gentle, intellectual sounding voice coming from such a terrifying face felt completely out of place.

Some viewers even joked that it reminded them of a certain streamer who looked nothing like her voice suggested. But of course, they knew, if a fish really had a human face, that would turn the scene from surprising into pure nightmare fuel.

"Are... are you the Sea Emperor Leviathan?" In the video, PureWhite was clearly shaken, taking several steps back before speaking in a trembling voice.

"I have no name," the Sea Emperor Leviathan replied calmly. "That is the title the Pioneers gave me. They built this prison to keep me here, hoping I would hatch offspring for them. But they never got their wish, and in the end, they died. You, too, carry the infection. I am curious... what choice will you make?"

With that, the Sea Emperor Leviathan slipped back into the water, sending another wave crashing against the pond’s edge.

PureWhite dove in after her.

For the first time, everyone could see the creature’s full form. Her body resembled the Sea Dragon Leviathan’s, scaled and powerful, her hide a deep tan, her tail ending in a mass of tentacles like those of an octopus. But she was even larger than the Sea Dragon, easily three hundred meters long.

A three hundred meter long leviathan.

The massive pool she lived in seemed huge by human standards, yet compared to her size, it was like keeping a goldfish in a bowl barely big enough to turn around.

The viewers couldn’t help but gasp."No wonder they call her the Emperor of the Sea, she’s almost twice the size of the Sea Dragon!"

"And she’s not aggressive at all... she’s gentle, like a Reefback."

"Not just gentle, she’s actually talking to us!"

"In Subnautica, this is only the second intelligent creature we’ve met that can communicate with us directly!"

"Come with me," the Sea Emperor’s voice echoed again in PureWhite’s mind.

"Alright!" he replied without hesitation, following her down toward the depths of the pool.

"Sea Emperor," he asked as they swam, "you’ve been reaching out to me through electromagnetic waves since I arrived. I came here because you want your freedom, right? You want me to help you escape?"

It was obvious to him, this cramped prison was unbearable for a being of her size.

"Freedom..." Her voice softened. "It is a distant concept to me. Once, long ago, I did crave it. I can’t even remember how many decades or centuries I have been here. I dreamed of escaping, of roaming freely across this planet." She paused. "But that was in the past. Now... I no longer need freedom."

"Why?" Pure White asked quietly.

"Because my time is nearly over," she said. "I can feel it, death is close. I am not afraid of it. All living things return to dust eventually. But... I cannot leave my children behind. They have been trapped here with me all this time, never even born to see the world."

Her massive form guided him to the very bottom of the pool, where a green platform rested. It was clearly artificial, something the Pioneers had built. Resting on it were six enormous eggs, each more than two meters tall, their shells mottled with brown spots.

"My children are still inside. Unlike me, they have a future. I want you to help them hatch."

PureWhite hesitated. "But... if the Pioneers couldn’t do it, how can I?" He remembered clearly, the Pioneers had imprisoned the Sea Emperor to produce offspring, hoping to use an enzyme from the hatchlings to cure the Kara infection. They had failed completely.

"You can succeed," she said firmly. "The Pioneers failed because they did not know my young require a special hatching enzyme to break their shells. I will tell you how to create it."

The moment she finished speaking, PureWhite’s HUD lit up with a new notification: Hatching Enzyme Blueprint Acquired.

Opening the recipe, he was stunned. The ingredients weren’t rare at all, they were common plants found in the shallows.

"Wait a second," Pure White said, baffled. "If it’s this simple... why didn’t you tell the Pioneers? Why let them keep you locked up for so long?"

It wasn’t just his question, the audience watching the video was thinking the exact same thing.

If she had told them from the start, the Pioneers could have been saved, and she wouldn’t have been imprisoned for centuries.

"Because their technology was too advanced," she explained. "They wore artificial bodies, machines of incredible defense. Those shells blocked the electromagnetic waves I use to communicate. I tried other ways, but they ignored me. To them, I was only a test subject."

The chat exploded.

"So that’s it!"

"Holy crap... they doomed themselves with their own tech!"

"Exactly! They thought they were untouchable, solving everything with their machines and experiments. But because of that, they couldn’t hear her... and without the antidote, their whole race died out."

"Talk about irony, killed by the very technology they relied on!"

The viewers couldn’t stop talking about it. It was absurd, yet it made perfect sense.

If the Pioneers had treated the planet’s creatures as equals, instead of experiments to be dissected, maybe this tragedy would never have happened.

1800 Words.