Chapter 249: Rank 16/21 The circular central hall was exactly as they’d left it. Twenty-two archways arranged in perfect symmetry. Sourceless light illuminating polished stone floors. And completely empty. The sailors who’d chosen to stay behind were gone without trace, their whereabouts and current state unknown. "So they truly didn’t survive...?" Althea muttered. Finn didn’t answer. Whether they were dead or not, he didn’t really care all too much now. Perhaps that was cold, but in his current state of mind, such worries eluded him. He moved to the center of the hall, turning slowly to examine each archway in sequence. His mind was already working, drawing correlations based on what he’d faced in the last corridor and what he knew. There were twenty-two corridors here. And twenty-one soul masses in his future inventory. Corridor twenty-two, the last one, correlated with the Crimson Fist Baboon. Rank 21/21. The weakest soul mass he’d had in the future, which was now integrated into his soul. His eyes moved to Corridor 16. He remembered the Ferropteryx from the vision. The iron-winged eagle. Rank 15/21 in his future hierarchy. It would be there. Somewhere down that corridor. The pattern was already obvious. This temple wasn’t a random collection of divine inheritances. It was a physical, chronological collection of his future soul masses. He wasn’t hunting for new powers. He was collecting his future self. Piece by piece. This was exactly the kind of temporal nonsense that seemed to define his existence now... But there was a discrepancy. Twenty-two corridors, yet only twenty-one soul masses... Finn’s gaze moved to the first archway. The one directly opposite where they’d entered the hall. The highest rank. The most powerful position. Whatever is in there is gonna be something entirely different for sure... Finn mused internally, frowning before his gaze moved to the next corridor. The one that correlated to his Rank 1 soul mass. In his future timeline, Rank 1 had been... he frowned. He couldn’t remember. Not clearly. There was something there, he knew that much. But the details were hazy like he’d actually come in contact with it but lost the memory. "Arros." Althea’s voice drew his attention. She was standing near another archway, frowning. "What is it?" "Vara entered the seventeenth corridor," she said. "Through here..." Finn moved to stand beside her, looking into the darkness beyond the arch. Corridor 17. He rifled through his memories of the future. His soul mass inventory. Rank positions. Rank 16 was blank. He’d never used it or even tried to access it at all. And Vara had gone down Corridor 17, which she had said was the Sea God. Her great-grandfather’s patron. The forgotten deity she’d come here to restore. Which meant Rank 16 in his future inventory was the Sea God’s soul mass. Finn’s jaw tightened. If Vara successfully claimed that inheritance, she’d have access to power he was supposed to collect. She’d disrupt the predetermined path his future self had followed. Or maybe she was part of that path. Maybe she’d always claimed it and then he’d taken it from her later. "We’re going after her," Finn said. Althea nodded without hesitation. Ailin simply moved to follow, her expression unreadable as always. They entered Corridor 17. And very quickly the difference between this and the Crimson Tyrant’s corridor became apparent. Where the Tyrant’s corridor had been warm with defiance and rage, this corridor was cold. The air felt damp. Heavy. Like they were walking underwater, though they could breathe normally. The walls were slick with moisture. The pressure increased with each step forward. Not crushing like the second trial’s gravity press. More subtle. Like descending deep underwater. This corridor was much longer compared to the Crimson Tyrant’s. They continued for nearly five minutes until suddenly, halfway through the corridor, they stopped. Vara and Slick Jones were right ahead of them, both standing perfectly still, staring at the damp walls with dilated pupils and slack expressions. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶 "Vara," Althea called out. No response. Neither of them even blinked. But Finn, with his Soul sight’s enhanced perception, immediately saw the problem. Both their souls were leaking. Their consciousness was bleeding out into the environment. Thin threads of something he could only perceive as them stretched from their bodies into the walls, the floor, the air itself. The soul mass in this corridor was dissolving them gradually, absorbing their individual consciousness and making them a part of itself. They were being diluted until the parts of them that made them who they were would be too diffuse to matter anymore. "Can we save her?" Althea asked, though her tone suggested she was considering whether they should bother. Finn understood the calculation. Vara would have absolutely made the same pragmatic choice to leave them if the situations were reversed. She’d proven that already by abandoning the crew in the central hall. But... "If I don’t intervene, the Sea God’s soul will absorb their strength," Finn said slowly. "That will make it stronger when I eventually have to face it. Better to deny it that nourishment." Also, practically speaking, he needed to understand how this dissolution worked. If he was going to claim higher-ranked soul masses, he needed to know what he was up against. "Touching them will accelerate the process," Ailin said quietly. "Your soul density is greater now. Contact will act as a bridge, speeding their dispersal." Finn nodded. That tracked with what he was observing. And he couldn’t use the expanded consciousness technique again. Not yet. His soul felt fatigued from that earlier effort. So brute force was out, and direct soul intervention was also risky. He’d have to be more surgical. Finn activated his Error vision, letting the green glow fill his eyes. The corridor’s true nature revealed itself in layered frequencies. The walls weren’t just walls; they were conduits. Channels through which the Sea God’s presence flowed, touching everything, pulling everything toward dissolution and integration into itself. Both Vara and Slick Jones had distinct frequencies. Their souls had specific resonances that defined them as themselves. And the corridor was slowly re-tuning those frequencies. Blending them into the background hum until there was no distinction left. This was the Sea God’s specialized ability, Finn realized. Not overwhelming force or conceptual dominance over reality itself. Just this — dissolution. An almost passive consumption that made everything within its domain gradually become part of the sea. He couldn’t attack the Sea God directly. Even though the power gap was reduced now that his soul was much stronger, the entity was still significantly more powerful than the Tyrant had been. His current soul density wasn’t sufficient to subjugate a soul mass operating on this level. In a direct confrontation, he’d lose. But he didn’t need to attack it. He just needed to glitch their connections to the room itself. Finn extended his hand toward both of them, not touching but focusing on the threads connecting them to the corridor. Through Error vision, he could clearly see the lines of dissolution slowly pulling them apart. "[Invalid]," he whispered. The command rippled outward from him, targeting both sets of connections simultaneously, declaring them false, treating them as logical errors that needed correction. The threads flickered and stuttered. For a moment they tried to reassert themselves — this was how reality worked here, they insisted. But Finn’s enhanced soul density gave the command a level of weight it wouldn’t have had before. His presence was more real than the corridor’s rules now. When he declared something invalid, reality had to seriously consider whether he might be right. The threads snapped. All at once, both Vara and Slick Jones’s consciousness slammed back into their bodies like rubber bands released. They gasped in unison, lurching forward. Vara’s hands flew to her chest as if she’d been drowning and just broke the surface. Slick Jones stumbled, catching himself against the wall before immediately jerking his hand back. Their eyes were wild. Panicked. They looked around frantically, taking in the corridor, Finn, their own hands like they were confirming they were real. Then Vara’s gaze locked onto Finn, and what he saw there wasn’t gratitude. It was terror. "W—What..." she tried to speak but couldn’t seem to form words. Her breathing was ragged. "What are you?" Finn didn’t answer. Vara seemed to realize she wasn’t getting a response. She pressed a hand to the wall to steady herself, then immediately pulled it back like it had burned her. "It’s not..." she started. "The Sea God’s true form... I—It’s not like I thought... It’s..." She struggled for words. "It’s a maw. A maw that swallows everything it sees. Everything in its path falls into it like gravity..." Finn nodded slowly and filed that information away. This soul mass was significantly more powerful than the Tyrant, and it operated much differently too. His approach would have to be different. Cautious. The Crimson Fist Tyrant had been a beast trying to become a God, retaining enough individualized will that Finn could subjugate it. This Sea God was something that had evolved specifically to consume and integrate. To turn individuals into collective. To make the discrete become diffuse. His Soul Subjugation edict would need refinement before he could handle this. He’d need more soul density, more understanding of how to resist dissolution without being pulled apart first. "We’re leaving," Finn said. "I’m not ready to face this corridor yet. It’ll be hard to claim this... Sea God soul mass without building up from the weaker ones first." "Soul mass...?" Vara repeated Finn’s words quietly as the expression on her face rapidly soured. Despite Finn’s apparent superior supernatural abilities that she’d just witnessed, she did not hold back in showing her vehement opposition to his statement. With a cold tilt to her voice, she seethed: "You plan to claim the Sacrament of my God? The inheritance that is mine by right—?!" "First off, it’s a soul mass," Finn cut her off immediately. "What you call a Sacrament, I call a soul mass. And yes, I’m going to claim this one—In fact, not just this one..." he leveled his gaze at her, staring her dead in the eyes as he spoke. "...I’m going to claim every single one inside this temple."