Chương 125: 4.15 The Typewriter - Leroy Anderson (1:39)

Z3ke (Original Poster) So… that's what I've been up to. How about the rest of you? PixelBaron Haaaa. Zeke, how the hell do you follow up a battle with "how are you all doing?" WireApe And then everyone roared in disbelief of still being alive after fighting a friggin kaiju as a meatbag on floating wood in the middle of an ocean. Z3ke (Original Poster) Actually, no. Nobody roared with excitement, which is kinda the weird part.

I've been sitting here trying to write about what all we've been doing since the fight finished and I keep deleting it because it doesn't sound right or believable. But… it's been happening. Ugh, okay. I'm rambling. I've been thinking about all the other fights that I've been involved in - the Reclaimer, the Hemocyte Swarm, the Black Teeth - and when they finished there was always some kind of release afterwards.

It was like the fighting would end and there was a moment where everyone would look around, realize they were still alive, and just sort of sag with relief. | and everyone roared in disbelief | That's what normally happens. You kill a massive skyscraper-sized monster and afterwards you wanna shout to the world that you're still alive, and fuck that thing that tried to kill you, and you're flipping the bird at it. But this time is different.

The battle is finished and instead of that huge rush of relief we're all just sitting here in this weird ass purgatory where no one really knows what's gonna come next. One second there was a bunch of screaming and gunfire and ships crashing into one another and zombies trying to eat our faces, and the next there was this horrible, enormous silence that swallowed up everything. The armada is still floating around. Technically.

Everywhere I look I'm seeing ships, but they're completely different from the fleet that started this whole fight. Most of them are sitting dead in the water with their sides torn open. There are a bunch of sailors scrambling around on the decks of the ships, trying to keep them from sinking. Other ships are just drifting, having been caught up in the currents with no way to steer or fix whatever is broken. The water is filled with signs of battle.

There're broken ships all over the place and wood and metal and wreckage and bodies bobbing up and down in the ocean. Everyone is exhausted and it all just feels odd. It's like the adrenaline of the fight has just dissipated and we all want to collapse. No one is cheering or celebrating or even talking all that much. Instead, we're all kinda just… waiting. A few ships from the armada are still seaworthy and they've been going around and pulling people up out of the ocean and trying to help with whatever they can.

They're hauling sailors onto the decks, trying to plug the gaping holes in a few of the ships, moving supplies, caring for the wounded, and doing all the boring little things that are important at the end of a battle. And while they're doing that, I'm seeing people surreptitiously glancing over at the Kraken.

It's kinda like everyone is waiting for someone to come along and tell us that, yea it's actually dead, or tell us what killed it, or tell us what we're all supposed to do now that the thing we were desperately trying to survive is gone now. IridumSky You know… I never quite expected a giant kraken kaiju fight to be almost monotonous. Then again, can't say it's not realistic. im_Panda It's probably because Zeke isn't the MC in this fight. He's 1 mediocre soldier in an armada of ships.

He isn't cannon crew and he isn't a captain, nor is he steering the ship. It's like he's AT the fight against the Kraken and not FIGHTING the kraken. Reader | or tell us what killed it, | It died of Plot Armor Cold_Reboot My problem with it is that we didn't really get much of the actual fight. If you go back and read his updates, most of Zeke's attention was on trying not to slip and fall because he messed up the grip glyphs. We've got bits and pieces of the Kraken fight, but not really the fight itself.

GnomelandSecurity | he messed up with the grip glyphs. | In his defense, he didn't completely fail with the grip glyphs. Dood did what he needed to and there was no way that the glyphs would last through ALL the damage the Kraken did to the ships. Cold_Reboot Uhh… did we read the same fight? The glyphs he put down on the Why Not were wiped out BEFORE all the zombies attacked. How many sailors didn't get the chance to fight back or escape because the glyphs they were counting on failed before the fight even started?

Z3ke (Original Poster) Oh, I'm sorry. Did you not hear the part where the Kraken beat the shit out of our ship and overloaded the glyphs? How was I supposed to stop that from happening? Also, you're complaining that I didn't adequately write up what happened in the fight. Did you all want me to stand on the deck with my Tech Slate open and take detailed notes about the battle so I could write up a proper field report for later?

Because I was under the impression that you all would rather I not get eaten by the undead while my ship was literally coming apart underneath me. If that had happened, you wouldn't have been getting any field report. And if you want to criticize that the battle was too confusing… well, that's what battles are. There were zombies rushing at me, people screaming and shouting, pieces of the ship going kablooey and me desperately trying to keep my footing and stay alive.

Meanwhile, seemingly whenever I looked up Simon was doing something catastrophically stupid. So, yea, sorry I didn't watch the death of the Kraken with all the scientific rigor you expected. I saw us creep closer to the thing, I saw Simon jump, I saw the flash of red, and then I saw the Kraken's tentacles go limp. The bioluminescence stuff on its skin disappeared and the Kraken stopped moving and everyone stopped shooting. I was alive, the Kraken was dead, and that was the end of the fight.

Sorry it's not as cinematic as you all were hoping for. VeneratedWitchHunter | It died of Plot Armor | That's my criticism of the fight. Zeke, when you first started writing this story I complained a bunch about you breaking canon. I think we can all agree that I've backed off a lot on that. You've dropped a ton of lore on this forum that has proven to be canon - Corva, the House of Seasons, Rank 11 - so you've earned some leeway from me.

Frankly, whenever you come up with something that people thought were obvious violations, after second and third looks everyone has found out that there are explanations to it. So I've stopped doubting you on that. BUT, now you're breaking your own rules. You're constantly going on and on about how you're in a real world and not a video game. That's one of the defining premises to your whole story.

You don't have a game interface, you're not some magically overpowered protagonist, you don't have convenient quest markers, and you've gone out of your way to talk about how the people around you are real and things are actually happening to you. Then you go out and fight the Krill Kraken like it was a raid boss. You literally described the fight as if it were a video game sequence: armada damages it to bring down the HP, second phase starts and Simon does a big attack, and then the Kraken dies.

But that's not how real fights work. For starters, the Krill Kraken was a Living Story. That's not just a fancy title for a big monster. It means that the thing existed in the cultural memory of an entire ocean-going civilization for centuries and its existence was tied to something much larger than the physical creature swimming around in front of your ship. There's a good reason that Mal told you to stay away from the Living Stories, and that's because they're dangerous AF.

That's not even what's most bothering me. Think about the actual mechanics of the fight. You had an armada shooting at it, which I'll buy. That's plausible. A bunch of ships concentrating fire on a gigantic kaiju is believable. You can damage it, you can injure it, you can blow chunks off it, and you can even cripple it. BUT THE THING DOESN'T HAVE A GODDAMN HEALTH BAR. So why are you treating the fight like it has one?

You can't use the whole "that's not how boss fights work" as an explanation for something when you've spent the whole story establishing that the world doesn't work like that. MushroomCleric Uhhhhh… I'm not sure what Venerated's criticism is. Zeke didn't mention anything about a health bar. Am I missing something here?

NullSigil Hmmm, I think I understand what Venerated is getting at here, but there's also a non-zero chance I've completely misunderstood him and I'm about to confidently explain an argument he's not making. Let me put on my 'angry Venerated' translation hat and get to it. I don't think his complaints center around Zeke describing the Krill Kraken as having a literal health bar. He obviously didn't do that.

I think Venerated's complaint is that Zeke is treating the whole 'do enough damage to the Kraken' as if it would automatically kill it. Think of it like this. Say you go outside and you're suddenly attacked by a rabid bunny rabbit with a personal vendetta against your ankles and several unresolved childhood issues. The bunny charges you and starts gnawing at your feet, and it could do some serious damage. It could tear up your tendons. It could make you fall over. It could cause enough pain that you pass out.

It could turn your afternoon into a medical emergency. There are plenty of ways for that furry little psychopath to completely ruin your day. But biting your ankles doesn't automatically mean the bunny has killed you. For it to actually kill you, it would need to hit something important. It would need to go for an artery, or your throat, or your heart, or your brain, or something else that is critical to keeping you alive. That's the distinction that I think Venerated is making.

The armada can damage the Krill Kraken, but that doesn't mean it could kill it just by targeting the tentacles. VeneratedWitchHunter YES. THAT. Just because you blew up ONE tentacle and had the armada shooting at it doesn't mean that the Krill Kraken should have been killed. Lorem-Ipsum Zeke, I found another potential problem with your description of the fight.

I'm not going to go full Venerated and start yelling about violations - I've learned my lesson - but you might want to take another look at the part where you said the bioluminescence disappeared. That's not what happens in Syndicate's Wake. The green glow stays on the Krill Kraken after it dies, and it remains there until the body is looted, at which point the entire corpse disappears. Venerated actually made a fair point in that you're not obligated to make the real-world version work exactly like the game.

The Krill Kraken body won't despawn after the fight. But the green glow should still be flashing. It's not supposed to be a magical effect that the Kraken uses during combat. It's more a biological characteristic of the creature itself, specifically associated with its deep-ocean origins. So having the entire thing suddenly go dark the instant it dies is, technically speaking, inventing a game mechanic that doesn't exist. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Z3ke (Original Poster) I don't know what to tell you guys. I'm literally looking at it right now. The thing is floating in front of me and there isn't any green glow around it. During the fight the thing was glowing bright enough that you could get a sense of the size of the thing. The glow was shining through the water and there was a pattern that shifted across the Kraken's body whenever it moved. But now it's all gone. The Kraken is still there. The body didn't disappear or anything.

It's just a gigantic, dark shape floating in the ocean. I don't know what else you want me to say. That's what I'm seeing. Babybloos <HERE> Zeke, I'm linking a video of somebody killing the Krill Kraken in Syndicate's Wake. If you skip ahead to around 20: 33, you can watch the death sequence. The Kraken goes down, the fight ends, and the guy spends another couple minutes talking about how difficult all that was before eventually getting around to looting the body.

During all that time, the green bioluminescence is still visible. I'm with Lorem on this, although I want to stress that I'm not saying your update is shit. I'm just saying that you might have made a small mistake because you remembered the sequence differently. Z3ke (Original Poster) I'm not saying that the game is wrong. I'm not saying you're all wrong. I'm telling you what I'm looking at RIGHT NOW. The Kraken is still floating there, it's dead, and the green light that it was giving off is gone.

I'm not looking at a recording of the Kraken right now. I'm looking at the actual dead thing. Foppery-andWhim Are we forgetting who we're talking to here? I'm actually surprised that this is coming from both Venerated AND Lorem. The last time you two decided Zeke was obviously wrong about something, you both got proven wrong in the most spectacular fashion. At this point, if Zeke says something my first response is probably going to be: oh shit, what new piece of canon did he just accidentally discover?

Maybe the game keeps the green glow on the Kraken until the body gets looted. That doesn't necessarily mean that Zeke is wrong about what he saw. If anything, the "mistake" that Zeke made is pointing to something crazy that is about to happen. MushroomCleric OOOOO. We gotta find a paw print, that's the first clue! We put it in our notebook and now what do we do? First clue: green glow disappears. Second clue: red flash. (What was up with that?) Third clue: what's going on with Simon?

I have no idea what any of those three things mean, but I'm already emotionally invested in the investigation. HexaDeweyDecimal Wait, you're suggesting Zeke is up to something again? Are we about to get more canon dropped into the forum? Everyone shut up!! Shut your faces and pay attention. Foppery-andWhim I'm not saying that's definitely what he's doing. But I'm also not not saying that. Let's replay the whole sequence of the fight. The armada shot the Krill Kraken and drew its attention.

Then the fire ketch exploded and tore up its physical body and forced it into a weakened state. After that, Simon made his move and jumped at the Krill Kraken. There was a flash of red and suddenly the fight was over. That makes me think that the armada wasn't actually responsible for killing it. Venerated is right in one thing in that Zeke keeps talking about 'the real world,' and I don't think he would suddenly write up the Krill Kraken like he's a raid boss.

Which means that the armada did enough damage to create an opening for Simon, and it was Simon who actually triggered the kill condition for the Kraken. NullSigil I was going to say that's probably the most reasonable explanation, but then I remembered which forum I'm posting on. Congrats Foppery, you have opened the floodgates to approximately fourteen competing theories, six of which are going to involve Simon secretly being three gods stacked in a trench coat, and one will somehow blame Corva.

CrumhatB Okay, but we do have one thing that might actually matter here. Zeke specifically said there was a flash of red. It happened after Simon jumped off the ship to attack the Kraken, and that feels like a detail that's important. My guess is that it's what allowed Simon to kill the Living Story. Maybe he's got a special weapon or something. Perhaps Simon needed to have the Krill Kraken weakened enough that his weapon would work.

If Simon has been hunting the thing for a while, it would make sense that he came prepared for the one part of the fight that nobody else could handle. StoryLeech Okay, but if Simon had a magical Living Story murder-weapon, why didn't Zeke notice or say anything about it? He spent enough time with the man over the last few days that you'd think Zeke would have dropped hints about it. Ch3micalBurst93 The red cowboy boots. THE RED COWBOY BOOTS!!! It's the obvious answer.

Simon jumped off the ship wearing the RED cowboy boots. There was a flash of RED. I'm not saying I've got the evidence, but those cowboy boots have been suspicious from the beginning. ArtooDeetoa Ha. Ch3mical just… no. No man. Those are just random boots that Simon likes to wear because he's insane. If the boots do turn out to be a secret weapon that kills Living Stories I will personally apologize to you, but until then I'm begging you to go outside and touch grash. MapHackJunkie | there was a flash of red | Dood.

I completely missed that detail the first time around. Holy shit. That actually might be important, because Zeke's described magic and weapons before and he didn't just give a single line about them. A red flash doesn't tell us what kind of magic it was, but the timing seems important. It's reasonable to assume that Simon was directly connected to the Kraken's death.

DuckDetective13 Hmm, maybe he figured out something about the rules governing it and knew a specific condition that needed to be met before it would actually be killed. But if you put it like that, it makes it seem like the whole battle was an elaborate distraction with hundreds of sailors forcing the Kraken to focus on them while Simon waited for the exact moment when it was vulnerable enough to do whatever he needed to do. YabbaDabbaDoobie Do you think it was a melee attack?

If it was ranged, he wouldn't have needed to push the fleet forward. He could have just sat on the edge and done whatever he was doing. I'm thinking he needed physical contact, OR he was doing some kind of ritual, OR he had an artifact that only worked from inside the Kraken. CrumhatB Yo Zeke, quick question about the flash. Was it an explosion? If so, that would narrow things down a lot. Z3ke (Original Poster) No. At least, not that I know of. It was just a flash and then the fight was over.

I didn't feel any heat coming from the Kraken. There was an explosion from the fire ketch, and a bunch of things were on fire afterwards, and I definitely felt the heat from that. But whatever the red flash was, I've got nothing. VeneratedWitchHunter … So you're suggesting that Zeke has found ANOTHER chunk of canon that none of us discovered yet? I retract all my complaints. Forget everything I said Zeke. I am fully on the lore train. Someone get me a ticket because I'm not getting off.

7Spirals That's what I'm talking about. Half of you all complained that Zeke's description didn't match the game, but now we've got people tearing through old wiki pages because none of us can explain a red flash. Zeke, I've got some mixed feelings about you right now. On the one hand you can't keep doing this to us. You can't keep dropping tiny details that imply we've all missed something massive and then act surprised when we lose our minds about it.

On the other hand I'm having the time of my life and I've already opened like fourteen tabs. You just know that this forum is going to spend the next 24 hours making conspiracy boards. Malv0lio (Primary) I think we've crossed the threshold from "interesting theory" to legit. I suggest we all split into groups and divide up the questions because if we're all looking at the same wiki pages we're not going to get anywhere.

Group one goes through Emberveil looking for anything - weapons, spells, rituals, artifacts, quest items, environmental objects, whatever - that has a documented interaction with Living Stories. Specifically, you're looking for anything associated with breaking, destroying, or resolving them. If it gives off a red light visual effect, flag it immediately because that's the only concrete hint we've got to go on right now.

Group two looks at whether there's any established mechanic in the lore for sacrificing your own life force to kill something. Important caveat here: Simon is, as far as we all know, a normal human. He won't have the mana pool to one-shot a Living Story that's been around for centuries, so whatever he did probably wasn't a straight damage play. Think weird. Group three goes through both Emberveil and Syndicate's Wake looking for single-use items.

The reasoning here being that if Simon had something capable of killing the Krill Kraken, he didn't craft it himself. He's a pirate, which means he most likely pirated it. Zeke mentioned that the first fire ketch was loaded with magical items that Simon "collected" from merchant ships. So we're probably looking for something coastal, something nautical, and something that wouldn't obviously read as a Kraken-killing superweapon. If it did, you'd assume that the forum would have found it already.

And someone needs to look harder into the bioluminescence stuff. That detail is still bothering me. I don't think Zeke made a mistake there, and he reiterated that it has disappeared. Z3ke (Original Poster) I just want to be clear that if there is undiscovered canon in here somewhere, that's genuinely news to me. But also… none of you guys are gonna listen to me so I'll just be over here watching you all spin up a research operation. Carry on I guess. MapHackJunkie I'll lead the single-use artifact group.

I just started a new thread <HERE> for anyone who wants to dig through the unique items, hidden quest rewards, and world objects. SomePeopleCallMe_Maurice Worth flagging before you all go too deep on quest rewards. If we're following Severance Systems logic, those quests are player-facing only. Simon wouldn't have any access to them. So whatever he had, it probably wasn't given to him by a quest giver.

It's got to be something that exists in the world itself, and probably in a place that most people never thought to look. TKTK_tktk Ooo, this is making me think about the Witness Chambers. You all remember how Zeke was able to crack that puzzle? He took a lens from the Hemocyte Swarm and stuck it on his flashlight. It was two pieces of trash that individually did nothing and together managed to give him the answer to the puzzle. Just saying that the artifact thing might go a little wider than you're all thinking.

You've got to see even trash objects as important. If we're looking for something that can interact with a Living Story rather than just an object that does a million points of damage, you'll need to expand the scope a bit. Lorem-Ipsum I've got the first group. Weapons and spells. On it. ResistanceIsAnnoying I'll take the life force sacrifice theory. If anyone has solid knowledge of glyph mechanics, come join me.

I don't think Simon used a glyph to kill the Kraken because he was way too enthusiastic about Zeke laying down Grip Glyphs before the battle. Someone who already knows about glyph work wouldn't have reacted like that. But there might be adjacent mechanics worth looking into. Thread incoming. NullSigil And I shall supervise that group. MushroomCleric Translation = Null isn't doing anything. NullSigil Uh, that's where you're wrong. I'm providing moral support and making unhelpful comments from the sidelines.

It's a critical role and one I take very seriously. PatchNotesOrDidntHappen Hey, can I throw something out before everyone runs off to their groups? I know Mal mentioned the whole bioluminescence thing and nobody picked up on it yet, so I want to make sure that it doesn't get buried. What if the glow stuff isn't just camouflage or whatever it is that biolouminescence does for deep-sea creatures? What if it's not even a biological thing? 7Spirals What else could it be?

PatchNotesOrDidntHappen This is turning into a theory crafting thread, so you can't get pissed when I theorycraft. But what if it's a seal? What if it was something like a containment seal that Simon broke, and the ruby red flash wasn't an attack but the seal shattering?

There was that one quest - and someone needs to check out the wiki and pull it up because I've been looking for it for the past five minutes and can't find it - where an NPC has a throwaway line about monsters being "sealed away beneath the old places" and everyone was just assuming that he means imprisonment. Well… what if that glow stuff on the Krill Kraken was a seal? SlothTurtle I want to take a moment to appreciate the sheer paranoia that has gripped this forum.

Five minutes ago Venerated was bitching about Zeke breaking his own canon. Now we're looking at suspicious red flashes and life-force sacrifices and thinking about seals on a monster because an NPC made a throwaway comment. I'm proud of us. Terrified at what this says about us, but also proud. Footballish You're missing something. If the seal was broken, then it should have been broken in the game too. The Krill Kraken has been killed thousands of times and the "seal" never disappeared. MushroomCleric Ooo.

Except it was never killed by Simon Pucco wielding… whatever he was wielding. Maybe he knew how to break the seal and that's what the red flash was. OOOOOOOOOOO THIS IS GETTING BETTER BY THE MOMENT. Foppery-andWhim Okay, but what was the seal supposed to do? It obviously wasn't there to keep the Kraken placid, because the Kraken was very obviously NOT placid. The thing was hunting people. If the seal's purpose was to keep it calm or prevent it from attacking, it was doing a shit job at it.

Lorem-Ipsum Not saying I agree with the theory… but if the bioluminescence glow was a seal, it could have been keeping the Living Story anchored to a particular place. Or maybe it was stopping it from manifesting a stronger form. NullSigil Yes. YES. This is why I love DeepFracture. We've gone from "what killed the giant squid?" to "was the giant squid's glowing skin actually evidence of an ancient containment mechanism?" in approximately twenty minutes. This is why I can never leave this forum.