Shrouded Seascape

Sparkle stretched her hand out gently, and her fingers transformed into tentacles that wrapped around Lily, who was on the ground.

"I'm familiar with that feeling, but it's a feeling that has become more and more unfamiliar to me as my mind matures.

"Perhaps your immature mind is the reason you've been struggling with that feeling for so many years. I think you should address your childishness first before thinking about your parents."

No one would like to be told that they were childish, and Lily was no exception.

"But what can I do?! I also don't know why I'm like this! I don't want to stay a child forever; I want to mature, too! Also, you're not much older than me! What gives you the right to say that I'm childish and immature?!" Lily retorted.

Sparkle sighed lightly and said, "Come with me to my place. I'll try to see if I can help you. Our circumstances are both special, after all."

Sparkle's selflessness made Lily feel a bit embarrassed. She looked and sounded awkward as she said, "Sorry, I went overboard just now."

However, Sparkle didn't mind at all. A white light flashed, and the two found themselves standing before a house in a residential area. They were on top of the World's Crown, which Sparkle had replicated perfectly.

Amidst the vast swaths of dilapidated buildings, Sparkle's house was particularly eye-catching.

"Coconut juice."

Sparkle's figure became slightly transparent before returning to normal in the blink of an eye. Her hand was empty just moments ago, but now, she was holding an opened coconut.

"Drink up."

Lily was a bit hesitant in the face of the opened coconut. When she saw the teeth marks on the coconut, she couldn't help but remark, "Um... I think someone was eating that just now…"

"You're a mouse, but you're pickier than humans. It seems that you've never experienced true hunger. Nene and the others are never picky."

Sparkle flipped her palm, and a newly opened coconut appeared in her hand. She then handed it over to Lily.

Lily promptly stuck her furry head into the coconut to take a sip of the juice before looking up at Sparkle and asking, "How can you help me become more mature?"

Lily longed to see her family, but her desire to become more mature took precedence over her longing. Lily didn't want to stay as a child for the rest of her life.

"You have to master the power inside of you. Your power is from the Light God, and I'm sure that once you've mastered it, you will be able to shatter the restraints that have been suppressing the maturity of your mind."

"Mmhm! Okay, so what should I do?" Lily asked, sounding curious.

"All right. I want you to accept the power inside you. Don't reject it. Close your eyes and feel it. Once you can feel it, try to make it spread throughout your entire body."

When Lily closed her eyes, the right half of Sparkle's figure melted, and more than a dozen tentacles riddled with green eyeballs sprang up, staring intently at Lily.

A radiant sunlight burst out of the mouse, and Lily started floating in midair.

However, the radiant sunlight seemed to be under corrosion, and it dimmed gradually until it scattered into seven colors. The seven colors seemed to be under corrosion as well, which made them look like a decayed rainbow.

Lily frowned in pain and began struggling instinctively against the corrosion.

"Focus. I'm guiding the power inside you. Memorize this feeling. Now, I want you to gather that power while imagining it in the form of a spear."

The golden, radiant light from Lily slowly converged at one point, becoming more and more concentrated as time went on. Eventually, the radiant light transformed into a dark rainbow spear.

Sparkle's tentacles retracted just then, and the dark spear instantly shed its abyss-like color, transforming into a dazzling spear.

"It's shaking a lot! I can't control it!" Lily exclaimed anxiously with her eyes closed.

"If you can't control it anymore, then throw it away!"

Lily's eyes snapped open just then, and the dazzling spear in front of her flew away. It blasted a hole in the wall before vanishing into the distant horizon. Lily was left breathing in ragged pants from the exertion; the attempt had thoroughly exhausted her.

"Let's take a break and train again later. Your control over your mind is too weak, and you struggle to output even the smallest amount of energy.

"It seems that I must acquire some of the Western Seas' best meditation books; then, make you read and apply them before you can improve," Sparkle said. She was clearly dissatisfied with Lily's performance.

"Thank you, but… why are you helping me so much? The two of us never really played with each other before," Lily asked, casting a curious gaze at Sparkle.

"There's no particular reason. I just find you interesting, that's all," Sparkle replied, choosing to hide the truth from Lily. Truth be told, Sparkle had been feeling a bit restless these days. She felt that there was something amiss with her father's disappearance.

She wanted to go to the Sea of Mist, but Anna stopped her. When she asked her mother about what exactly had happened to her father, Anna refused to tell her anything about it.

There was little Sparkle could do, as she couldn't visit the Sea of Mist. One of the few things she could do was become even stronger, but her power level seemed to increase along with her age.

In other words, she was guaranteed to become stronger with the passage of time, but there was a drawback—she couldn't actively become stronger.

Sparkle had decided to help Lily because she believed that Lily could become as strong as the Pope, at the very least, if given enough time and guidance. Most importantly, she was Charles' crew member and was very loyal to him.

***

Charles was sitting calmly on a stool, eating the bowl of minced pork rice before him using a pair of chopsticks. The Foundation knew many things about him, and it included even his favorite food.

"I'm full." Charles wiped his mouth clean with a napkin before turning to the woman next to him and asking, "Where are we going next?"

Upon realizing that they wanted to absorb him into the Foundation, Charles concluded that the best course of action was to behave in a normal way.

"We're going this way; please follow me. We're going to scan your memories."

Charles' heart sank at the reply. Since they wanted to absorb him into the Foundation, it wasn't strange for them to conduct a memory scan.

"Alright," Charles replied and followed closely behind the woman. The difference in strength between him and the Foundation was too great, so he had no choice but to take things one step at a time.

There was a clean and spacious corridor outside the room. The minimalist style of the corridor was indeed very Foundation-esque.

Soon, Charles was sent to a room that seemed to have been made entirely out of flesh. The leather sofa felt as warm as someone's body as Charles sat on it and stared calmly at the mirror in front of him.

He was certain that there were people observing him from behind the mirror.

"Go ahead and scan him. I really want to know how he appeared in the Subterranean Sea. Logically speaking, it should have been impossible for him to be in the Subterranean Sea," Paiper said.

As soon as its words fell, waves that were invisible to ordinary people rippled from all four sides of the room and converged on Charles' head.

Meanwhile, a few long needles connected to optical fibers were forcefully inserted into Paiper's deformed worm head by some people wearing white lab coats.

Paiper's figure twitched, and all of Charles' memories flashed across its mind. It browsed the memories for a while before exclaiming in disbelief, "My goodness, what's going on with this guy's memories? Why are there traces of alteration in every single memory of his?

"Hmm? Why is there a hidden memory here? Who did this?" Paiper discovered a hidden memory in the deepest recesses of Charles' sea of consciousness. The sight piqued Paiper's curiosity, and it couldn't help but open the isolated memory.

The moment Paiper opened the isolated memory, it instantly learned that the memory contained a very unique existence—the Inexistence.

Upon sensing that it had been perceived, the Inexistence that had been orbiting Charles raised its skeleton head and gazed right at Paiper behind the glass.

Clang!

The long needles connected to Paiper fell helplessly to the ground with a loud clang.

The colossal twisted worm had vanished from the monitoring room.