Secret World: I Became a God Through Lies

Chapter 153: Iron Shadow on the Lone Reef: Berserker's Sorrow
"Only those with strong fists can survive."

"But loneliness isn't afraid of fists. It just rots inside you, inch by inch."

Roar, fire, roar, tear.

The "Steel Tide" slowly disintegrated in the blazing white light of the sky, like an ancient giant beast being cut open by fate.

The mysterious storm and the iron debris engulfed the entire sea, the screams tore through the eardrums, and the waves rolled up like tongues of fire burning the sky.

The masts were chopped into pieces, the gun turrets collapsed, blood flowed everywhere, staining the decks red, and the steaming smell of iron filled the air like the signature of the god of death.

Baroque roared and rushed towards the command deck against the wind, his lungs feeling as if they were burned by sea fire.

He only had time to see Captain Esther Laurean's last look - there was no fear in those weather-beaten eyes, only trust, unwillingness, and an order that could not be refused.

"Live, Baroque! Live for them!"

He lunged forward, trying to grab the outstretched arm.

But the next second, a roaring wave suddenly fell from the sky and knocked him into the air.

The storm swirled and flung him toward the boundary between the sea and the sky, and the world went dark with a tearing sound.

……

He suddenly opened his eyes and coughed violently, and a mouthful of cold sea water came out of his throat, mixed with bile and saltiness.

He lay sprawled on the black sand, his chest rising and falling like a broken sail.

The water receded, the sea breeze was calm, and the reefs were as jagged as sharp blades.

The half-broken mast was stuck in the sand, like a death knell, lonely and solemnly reminding someone of their failure.

He propped himself up and his eyes stopped at a wooden box that had washed ashore not far away.

The lid of the box was cracked and the iron buckle was broken. On it was a mottled inscription engraved in ancient handwriting: "S.TIDE".

He was stunned for a moment, his throat tightening.

This is not reality.

He was back again - that place that belonged only to him, that was in an endless cycle and from which he could never escape.

Nameless island.

The day was quiet and still.

There were no birds singing, no corpses, no flames, only dry sand, an empty sky, and the sound of his own breathing.

He stood up and began to move. His hands repeated the familiar process like a machine:

Split the dead wood, sharpen the edges with rocks, and build a simple hut.

The wind rustled the seaweed, and the sand rustled at his feet. Everything was just as he remembered surviving for the hundredth time.

Every step was as precise as a script, as if he had already engraved every process into his bones.

It's a survival instinct—and a forced punishment.

But at night, the wind began to howl, and the sound of waves hitting the shore became hoarse, as if crying for something.

The fog spread quietly, and in the darkness that the light from the campfire could not penetrate, vague figures emerged on the sea, just like a dead sailor returning to his dream.

He heard laughter. It was that of Deckard Lowe, the chatterbox assistant gunner who was always on the front lines.

His voice echoed on the wind, laughing like a drunk:

"That last shot of mine was loud enough, wasn't it? Ha, Baroque, you have to remember me!"

He turned around suddenly, but saw nothing. Only the wind bending the flames, and no one was visible.

"Stop dreaming...I've been dead for a long time." The voice came from the waves again.
This time it was lighter and farther away, like a farewell and also like a reminder.

He stood stiffly beside the campfire, as if there were silent ghosts standing behind him.

He didn't dare turn his head.

He knew that if he looked back, he would see their faces—the faces of his companions, charred, soaked by the tide, with broken necks and empty eyes.

That night, he sat with his back to the fire all night, his body as stiff as a rock.

Not for defense against wild beasts.

But he didn't dare look back.

Because he knew they were all there—his comrades, his captain, his brother.

Standing quietly, waiting for him, looking at him, asking him:

"Why are you still alive?"

Day .

He stopped counting the time. But his wounds began to itch, his memories began to flake off, and the air smelled of blood.

Limbs began to appear on the island.

The first thing was a twisted arm nailed to the mast. The knuckles were stiff as if struggling before death, and there were still pieces of someone's hair under the nails.

Then, the blood-stained military uniform slowly floated up from the cracks in the reef, floating up and down unsteadily, as if a restless soul was struggling repeatedly under the water.

Isabel Frostanchor's medicine box shattered at the end of the beach, and the medicine bottles scattered in an arc. Each glass bottle was immersed in a faint light, like a life that had not yet been extinguished.

When the wind blew past, the medicine bottles made a trembling sound like wind chimes, distant and mournful.

At night, the firelight was dim and the starlight was obscured by the island's nightmare.

Her shadow sat silently on the shore, her silver hair hanging down, and her pharmacist's shawl like a tattered flag in the wind.

She sang the old barcarolle in a low voice, her tone calm but filled with an irresistible sadness:
"Blood-dripping bullets, salt-rusted bones, I will sew up your wounds with my own hands..."

That was the Steeltide's requiem, the melody she had hummed while brewing medicine for him.

He once ridiculed the melody as too soft, but now his eyes were burning with heat when he heard it.

She never looked at him directly, but whispered in the darkness:

"If you were dead, I could still save you. But you're still alive, what should I do? Stitch up your wounds?"

The words pressed on his chest like cold iron, suffocating him.

He pounded the ground in pain, his fist hitting the wet sand, bringing up a cluster of drowned flames.

"Don't show up again... Go away!!"

But—the phantoms grew more numerous. In the swirling night fog, the figures of former comrades emerged one by one from the tide, the reefs, and the fireside, their shoulders torn and arms broken, their mouths bloodied, but their expressions serene.

They lined up on the beach, their faces blurred and their expressions silent, but they all said the same words:

"You should come down and join us."

Every word was like a nail, bit by bit hammered into the plank of his spirit.

He wavered for a moment.

His fists tore through the reefs, his knuckles already bleeding, but it couldn't stop the cold current that was gradually collapsing in his heart.

He couldn't understand why he was still alive.

tenth day.

The storm had not yet arrived, but the sky was as dark as the closed eyelids of the dead.

The night was starless and the sea was dead silent.

That familiar figure slowly walked out from the tide.

Gregor Verlinson, his former mentor, military training officer, and most trusted veteran brother, stood before the bonfire, wearing his long-tattered military cap, his face covered in blood and burns, as if he had just crawled out of a sunken ship.

But his eyes were still as sharp as before, calm yet sharp.

He stood straight with his hands behind his back, as if he was inspecting a soldier who was late in returning.

"You want to know why we died and you lived?"

Baroque gritted his teeth and did not respond.

"Because you're afraid. You don't live to save us, you live to escape death. Do you always think that as long as you can fight, you can avoid being chosen by fate?"

He pointed to Baroque's chest, where his heart was.

“No matter how hard your fist is, it cannot break the iron of loneliness.”

"Shut up..." He growled, his eyes red.

"You are not a warrior, you are a pawn."

"Shut up!!!"

He roared and rushed forward, punching through Gregor's image, but his fist hit the sand deeply, stirring up dust like dead ash.

He knelt on the beach, gasping for breath, as if his body was full of shattered magma.

Burning with rage and wrenching with pain, his roar echoed all around, but no one responded.

The sky seemed to hear his roar.

A deafening cracking sound was heard in the distance, and the sky of the deserted island was torn into a black hole under the collapse of the nightmare.
The tides were turbulent and the shadows were rolling, as if an inescapable judgment was approaching.

He looked down at his fists, the fists that had been used in countless battles, rescues, and slaughters.

——But it can’t save a life.

He finally understood.

This island is not a cage, nor a trial.

It is the coffin, the tombstone, and the eulogy that he cannot escape.

The sea sank, like a deep breath of the world.

The entire island was drained away by an invisible hand, the tide roared and rolled in my ears,

The black sand beach, broken sails and fire were torn into pieces by the spinning whirlpool before his eyes, dragging him into the cold deep sea.

The water pressure was like an invisible mountain pressing down on his chest. He struggled, paddling with his hands and feet, but he had no strength at all - as if his body no longer belonged to him, but was just an empty shell being dragged along by a nightmare.

In the abyss, a huge and cold metallic light flashed.

Not the surface of the water, nor an illusion.

It was a giant curved mirror made of steel, sunk to the bottom of the sea. It was heavy and cold, embedded between the corals and rocks, as if it had been waiting for a long time.

He saw it—a reflection in the mirror.

That is himself.

No, it's another "him".

The giant figure was covered in armor made of broken bones, with a broken beacon stuck in his chest and a torn battle flag on his back, like a statue forged from despair.

Even more terrifying was the familiar faces nailed to each vertebra of his spine—his brothers, his comrades, his captain—those people he had sworn to protect, but who had fallen one by one.

Their faces lay behind him like trophies, like instruments of torture.

That was his form after he gave up hope, the true nature of the Tide Giant.

A monster forged by loneliness.

The giant in the mirror slowly raised his hand and clenched his five fingers.

The sea water was like chains, wrapping around his limbs from all sides, heavy, cold, and impossible to break free from.

"You should have died long ago."

The voice was deep, like a judgment from the bottom of the sea, and every syllable was filled with the echo of death.

He roared hoarsely and responded through gritted teeth: "No! I am still alive to remember you!"

The monster in the mirror sneered, with no mercy in its eyes, only bottomless sarcasm.

"What's the point of remembering? Your life only makes our death seem more tragic."

At that moment, anger burned and broke free from reason.

Baroque suddenly jumped up, and the chains around him broke into pieces as he roared.

He raised his fist high in anger, gathered all his strength, and slammed it into the mirror.

Click.

The first crack snaked out like a thin snake, cutting through the face of the monster in the mirror that looked exactly like his.

"You were afraid of dying—that's why you were the last one."

Kaka!

The second and third cracks grew and spread wildly, and even the seabed began to tremble, as if even dreams could not withstand his anger.

"You don't want to be alone—but you never really belong anywhere."

boom! ! !
The last punch came down like a meteorite, and the mirror exploded into millions of pieces, reflecting his countless possible collapses.

The world in the mirror collapsed, and the sounds from the seabed disappeared bit by bit.

Baroque stood alone on the broken lens, the battle flag behind him was tattered, but still fluttering in the wind.

Shattered steel lenses lay around his feet like ashes from an altar.

He said nothing.

The sky was not bright and the night was still dark.

The nightmare has no end.

It just turns the page and opens the next round of deeper loneliness.

On the deserted island nailed by fate, Baroque opened his eyes again and again.

Everything goes to zero.

The same beach, the same sound of the tide. The bonfire is out, the broken sail is tilted, and there is no one around.

There were still bloodstains on his hands and anger in his heart, but he could no longer tell whether it was the mark of reality or the lingering warmth of a dream.

Only he is still alive.

Being alive is no longer proof of victory.

It is a punishment with no end.

"You can break an island, but you can't break the emptiness in your heart."

"Staying alive is the hardest battle."

In the wind, he silently clenched his fists, but no punch could fall.

Only my own shadow was reflected alone on the dying sea.

(End of this chapter)