Chapter 316: Transform – Transform for Me!
The great whale was astonishingly fast—faster, it seemed, than the speedboat Everly had acquired for free.
When it swam at full speed, riding on its back felt just like sitting astride a high-powered jet ski. The warm, humid sea breeze and the spray of seawater rushed toward her, washing away the oppressive heat of midsummer. At certain angles, the mist thrown into the air even caught the sunlight, weaving brilliant rainbows across the sky.
And all Everly had to do was enjoy the ride.
She didn’t have to worry about falling off, nor did she need to think about navigation. Whenever her tired back started to ache, the tent*cles wrapped around her waist would thoughtfully curl into shape, acting as a comfortable backrest.
If only she had some electronic device with her, she would definitely have taken a few photos to commemorate the moment.
After swimming eastward for only a few minutes, the whale and its passenger left the sunlit waters behind and plunged into a region shrouded in wind and steady rain.
It was then that the great whale began to slow down.
At first, Everly assumed the rough weather was forcing it to reduce its speed.
But as time passed, she gradually realized something was wrong.
The great whale was burning up.
Whales were mammals, so they naturally had body heat. Under normal circumstances, however, that heat was locked inside by their thick blubber and resilient skin. Touching a whale’s skin usually felt almost the same temperature as the surrounding seawater—perhaps just a little warmer at most.
It should never have felt hot to the touch like this.
If even its skin was this scorching, Everly didn’t dare imagine how high its internal body temperature must be.
There was another worrying sign as well.
The tent*cles wrapped around her waist had gone limp.
Earlier in the journey, they had been lively and responsive, feeling almost like another sensory and expressive organ for the great whale, distinct from its eyes, mouth, or ears.
While serving as a seatbelt, the tips of the tent*cles would also wander around Everly with the curiosity of a playful kitten. Sometimes they’d poke at the buttons on her clothes; other times they’d hook a lock of her hair, curl it around themselves, and give it a couple of gentle tugs.
Since their exploration was completely harmless, Everly usually ignored it. Only when one happened to pull her hair too hard would she give it a light smack, the way she’d scold a mischievous cat or dog, and say, “No.”
The moment she stopped it, the tent*cle would immediately behave itself, obediently ending its little act of “crime” and moving on to investigate something else it found interesting—her curled fingers, the strange bracelet on her wrist, the rip in her jeans…
In Everly’s eyes, the great whale’s tent*cles were like energetic little children. They were endlessly curious about everything they encountered—innocent, inquisitive… and just a tiny bit annoying.
But after the whale’s body temperature began to rise, Everly could clearly feel the tent*cles becoming less active.
Now they resembled little animals wilting beneath the blazing midsummer sun, lying limply across her lap. The fleshy membranes at their tips parted slightly, revealing rows of sharp teeth that rhythmically contracted inward and expanded outward like pulsing blood vessels, as though they were struggling to endure something.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
Everly asked worriedly, reaching down to pat the whale beneath her.
“Woo…”
The whale answered with a low, subdued call.
Everly couldn’t understand what it meant. She was about to try asking in a different way when the great whale suddenly stopped swimming altogether, coming to a halt amid the storm-lashed sea.
“Woooo—!”
Another whale cry rang out.
For some reason, it sounded completely different from before. The call was slightly off-key, long and mournful, carrying a piercing anguish, as though the one making it were enduring unbearable torture.
“Hey… are you okay?”
Everly stroked the great whale beneath her and found that its body had become even hotter. It was so hot that the moment her palm touched it, she instinctively wanted to pull her hand away.
The great whale was still calling.
Or rather…
It was crying out in agony.
The tent*cles wrapped around Everly’s waist trembled with violent spasms. Barely able to support themselves, they struggled to lift their soft bodies long enough to gently lower Everly into the water.
The instant she was off its back, the enormous creature beneath the waves began thrashing without warning.
It was clearly in excruciating pain.
Its sleek body convulsed uncontrollably, its pupils dilated from the agony. Every powerful slap of its massive tail against the sea sent towering waves several meters high crashing in every direction.
Everly tried several times to swim closer, but each attempt was swept aside by the whale’s flailing body.
At last, the great whale ran out of strength.
Like a dying fish, it floated weakly on the surface, exposing the very belly it had stubbornly refused to let Everly touch before.
To her horror, she saw that its white underside was now covered in countless dark red hemorrhagic spots.
The bruises lay deep beneath the skin rather than on the surface. They had clearly originated from inside its body, as though someone within were repeatedly stabbing the whale with a sharp weapon.
Could it be…
Remembering what the whale had swallowed earlier, Everly felt a chill run through her entire body.
She immediately swam over, forcefully pried open the whale’s tightly shut jaws, and poured three drops of the Panacea into its mouth.
As she administered the medicine, she discovered a gruesome wound inside the whale’s mouth.
A fresh gash, deep enough to expose bone, began at the upper gum, sliced across the roof of its mouth, and continued all the way to the base of its tongue, leaving behind a savage laceration.
The wound was unmistakably recent, clearly inflicted by a sharp blade. The flesh along its edges was torn open, and blood streamed down relentlessly, coating the whale’s entire mouth in crimson.
Other than Gary, Everly couldn’t imagine anything capable of inflicting such injuries on the great whale.
No wonder it had resisted opening its mouth earlier.
It had probably been afraid she’d discover this horrifying wound.
After giving it the medicine, Everly tightly gripped the nearly empty vial in her hand, held her breath, and watched anxiously for any change in the whale’s condition.
The great whale was one of the very few supernatural creatures Everly had ever encountered that was genuinely friendly toward humans.
It had saved her life twice.
Emotionally, she didn’t want anything to happen to it.
Logically, she wanted that even less.
Gary was trapped inside the whale’s stomach. If the whale couldn’t pull through, Gary would be released back into the world. When that happened, it wouldn’t just be the whale that died—she’d die right alongside it.
Fortunately, the Panacea really did ease the whale’s condition.
As two drops entered its mouth, the gruesome wound inside immediately began shrinking at a rate visible to the naked eye. Within moments, it had closed, leaving behind only a faint scar. Looking at the whale’s belly again, Everly saw that most of the ugly hemorrhagic spots had vanished as well, leaving only a handful of tiny red specks.
The exhausted whale gradually regained consciousness.
It let out a soft, gentle whimper and nudged Everly’s hand with the tip of its snout before paddling its pectoral fins and swishing its tail, trying to roll itself upright.
Once.
Twice.
Three times…
Perhaps because it was still too weak, it failed every attempt.
Everly had been thoroughly frightened by what she’d just witnessed.
She glanced at the vial in her hand.
There were four drops of Panacea left.
After a brief moment’s hesitation, she made up her mind, pried open the whale’s mouth once more, and dripped another drop inside.
The great whale had saved her life, and it had even swallowed the menace known as Gary.
It was more than worth four drops of the medicine.
Even after using another one, she’d still have three drops left—just enough to save herself once if necessary.
The medicine worked immediately.
After swallowing the additional drop, the last few red spots on the whale’s belly disappeared, and its underside returned to its original snowy-white, smooth, and adorably rounded appearance.
Not only that, but the whale’s movements also lost their earlier sluggishness.
With a flick of its tail and a sweep of its fins, it effortlessly rolled itself upright.
“Ahh… ahh…”
The great whale opened its mouth and called out to Everly.
She assumed the sound meant it had fully recovered.
But in the very next instant, the whale’s body suddenly began to collapse inward.
Like butter melting on a scorching-hot iron plate, its enormous form rapidly caved in upon itself in a transformation so grotesque that it was straight out of a nightmare.
It wasn’t just the whale’s skin and blubber that were affected.
Its flesh and bones dissolved as well, melting together into a grotesque slurry of red, yellow, and white fluids that spilled into the sea, where the wind and waves scattered them in every direction.
Everly had been floating right beside the great whale.
When it melted, its eye had been no more than a hand’s breadth away from her.
A tiny, bead-like eye.
Its black pupil was encircled by a beautiful ring of blue, its gaze calm and distant, sometimes carrying a hint of innocent bewilderment.
Those were unmistakably the eyes of an intelligent creature.
And yet, right before Everly’s eyes, they shriveled and collapsed like a plastic bag tossed into a bonfire, dissolving into streaks of blue-black residue that blended into the oily fluid and vanished with a single crashing wave.
Everly’s heart clenched.
For a terrifying moment, she almost thought she’d overmedicated it—that she’d somehow fed the poor whale so much Panacea that it had literally burst apart.
Splash!
Another enormous wave crashed over the sea, mercilessly scattering the whale’s liquefied remains.
Then, in the center of the remaining sludge—
There was an enormous egg.
It looked remarkably similar to the giant egg Everly had seen in the painted world. Its surface was rough and uneven rather than smooth, covered in green and dark teal vein-like patterns.
Unlike the egg from the laboratory, however, this one was also speckled with patches of blue and dark crimson-black.
A fun fact:
Gary was a serial killer.
The son of an evil god.
But he was not an egg.
So this egg almost certainly had something to do with the great whale.
Especially because the blue markings on its shell were the exact same pure Klein blue as the rings around the whale’s eyes.
That naturally led Everly’s imagination to run wild.
For example…
Maybe the great whale had been pregnant all along. Then it swallowed the toxic menace known as Gary, and after Everly force-fed it all that medicine, it went into premature labor, laying the egg before dying.
Or perhaps the whale had simply eaten enough to accumulate the energy it needed, awakened the power hidden in its bloodline…
…and completed a Pokémon-style evolution.
As Everly was studying it, the egg floating on the sea suddenly trembled.
Crack.
A fissure appeared across its surface.
Startled, Everly instinctively squeezed out the last trace of her psychic power, forming a fish tail in place of her legs. She assumed a ready stance, prepared to flee at the first sign of danger.
Crack… crack-crack…
The fracture spread like a spiderweb, racing around the eggshell.
Then, several long, pale human fingers pierced through the inner membrane. Grasping the broken shell, they pushed upward—
Crack!
With the sound of shattering shell, the top of the egg was lifted away.
Curled inside the broken shell lay a soaking-wet young man.
His body seemed boneless as he draped himself limply over the shattered eggshell, breathing weakly.
Then he lifted his head…
…and met Everly’s eyes.