Born in Blood

527  Sea Slang

Liam looked at the corpses again.

"These two?" he asked. The frog and eel nodded reluctantly, still ashamed.

"Why are you throwing them under the bus? Aren't they your kin?" Liam asked the eel and crowned frog.

They grew confused.

"What is… under the bus?" the eel questioned, confused. Right. These were still fish.

Liam had to use sea slang.

"Why would you throw them to the Unholy Lamprey?" he corrected, and the two understood what he meant. "I have like two hundred children," the six-toothed eel said. "This one was the eldest and the one that caused me the most trouble. I'm happier with him dead, to be honest."

"Same here," the Rock Frog leader admitted. "Plenty of fish in the sea!" He laughed, and the eel shared a short laugh with him. Their laughs sounded incredibly weird. It was more of a 'kekeke'. "He was planning to overthrow me," the six-toothed eel growled suddenly. "That's why he kidnapped the princess… knowing they'd send someone like you." "So who killed them?" Liam questioned. "How am I supposed to know!" the eel said exasperatedly. "I can't interrogate a corpse, can I?"

Liam gave the eel a frown. "Where's the princess now?" "Maybe try speaking to the Pink Rosary Quadrant?" the frog cut in with a proposal. "What makes you think they haven't orchestrated the kidnapping themselves?" Liam's eyes moved to the frog's.

After a second of thinking, he nodded nonchalantly.

"You have a point," Liam said. "I guess I'll do that."

The six-toothed eel and the crowned frog nodded their heads, and their pack subtly agreed. But stopped.

Then, he looked back at the eel and frog with a piercingly dead gaze.

"There's just one little thing I have an issue with, though." The pack leaders tensed.

"And what's that?" the eel asked. A tense pause.

"Why do I sense traces of pink glitter on your bodies?" Silence.

The eel and frog both inspected their bodies, raising their fins and looking at their underside.

Then, they noticed the minute patches of pink glitter, barely noticeable and atomically small. The only reason they even noticed it was because Liam brought their attention to it.

Judging by the pack's surprise, even they weren't aware of it. The six-toothed eel and crowned frog both sighed at the same time… then raised their heads with a deadly glare.

"You had to make this difficult, didn't you?" the six-toothed eel growled with hostility, its voice cracking and distorted.

"No point in hiding it anymore," the crowned frog said with a long sigh. WRSH!

Both the eel and rock frog exploded with spiked tentacles. Liam pivoted his foot and dodged to the side, immediately countering with a sharp vertical swing of his odachi. SHING!

A tentacle was severed, spurting black blood. Liam jumped back as another tentacle shot out from his side, which he severed just as fast. SHING!

After that, there was a terse silence.

Liam looked forward.

Both the Rock Frogs and Moray Eels were killed by the sudden attack. Their bodies were pierced by dozens of tentacles, which had emerged from the crowned frog and six-toothed eel's bodies. A moment later, the tentacle tips hissed, draining the frogs and eels dry and mummifying them. Speaking of which, the two creatures were undergoing a strange transformation. Their rigid skin, initially rock-hard, grew soft and changed color, while their bodies peeled off in layers. After a few seconds, their true forms had been revealed.

Cuttlefish.

Everything clicked into place. Cuttlefish had immaculate camouflage abilities… far greater than that of an octopus or squid. But the two in front of Liam were a league of their own. They could even replicate the centers of power of another creature, since Liam's Spirit Sight didn't spot any differences between them and the Moray Eels or Rock Frogs. Their streamlined bodies were an array of vibrant colors which put rainbows to shame, each of which interchanged in a hypnotizing pattern, including their slitted eyes. A cluster of spike-tipped tentacles covered their maws, which danced with the waves. "So you're the two losers who impersonated me," Liam said with a frown. "Identity theft is not a joke. Millions of families suffer every year!"

Silence.

The joke fell on confused ears. The rainbow cuttlefish's cast each other a weirded out glance, then looked back at Liam with a hostile gaze. Liam added nothing more and held just his odachi, silenting awaiting the first move.

Against these two fish, the Black Blade sufficed. Sharpness was the ideal quality… at least, for now. This was it.

The Path began when Liam took his first steps. If he wanted to learn about the intricacies of the Path he envisioned, he had to delve deep – either centering his fighting style around what he wished for it to be, or root his mind into what decisions befitted his morbid, vile personality.

It was… harder than it seemed. Through talking with the Zeniths of the Temple, it was clear that one's Path manifested on its own – either through constant repetition or painstaking effort, or an enlightenment that shone light on one's mistakes or strengths. With Liam's luck, it was probably going to be a mixture of both the former. 'Can't be enlightened if I have no sanity, can I?' Oh well.

Liam gave the two cuttlefish an assessing look. With his acute judgement, Liam placed both at the upper tier of Rank 4. That made them formidable. However, with his Spirit Sight, Liam could also tell they had Paths of their own!

Except, he was already having trouble understanding the Paths of those above land, unless the Zenith in question told him personally what it entailed. Sapient sea creatures were much more complex in comparison.

The cuttlefish looked practically the same, but Liam gave them a name just for convenience sake. The one on the left was Davy, and the one on the right was Jones. "Wait, before I kill you two," Liam said casually, "where's the princess?"