Sunlight filtered through the clouds and fell on the ocean. The small waves glided through the ocean waters, weaving a pattern on the water surface.
Boom. Bang.
The tranquility was disturbed by the loud noises and a huge wave rose due to the collision of two enormous bodies in the middle of the ocean.
One body was withering between the tightly clenched jaws of the much larger monster.
Unaaang.
The sea imugi squealed in pain as the other monster tightened its grip to drag down the creature to the deep waters.
Both elongated bodies stretched on the water like snakes on the ground.
Ruwel and Michael stared at the ongoing battle so intently, they almost missed the arrival of Enzo.
He tapped down onto the pillar and nodded his head politely at them.
"What are we going to do now ? Are we going to join that and kill the monster or..."
He trailed off uncertainly with an uneasy expression on his face.
Even Enzo who always looked indifferent and bored, couldn't keep composure.
"Presently it looks like they are fighting between them."
Michael added in a calm tone.
But what he didn't say at the moment was that it could change in an instant.
Never before seen monsters. Their strange powers that could decimate and devastate countries.
Most of all, lack of information.
Humans have always feared the unknown. It was hard for them to accept things that are so different from them. Even Kim Su-bin has experienced them.
In the original world he came from, people fought because of different skin colours, different gender preferences, different religions and different races.
In this world, people still fight because they don't like that some worship demons while others worship a god. They don't like that some have black hair and are black in colour.
At this moment, the monsters battling out there were of unknown origin. They didn't know why they were fighting amongst them, whether they could turn on the humans any moment.
They didn't know whether the black monster was an ally or an enemy.
Whether to aid that monster or not was a crucial decision that could endanger all of this world.
When they were pondering on it, someone came to their minds. As one three of them turned to Kai, who concealed his presence and stood behind them.
'The balance of the world.'
Kai was quietly observing the battle between the monsters. Back then when Ruwel and Michael had argued, Kai had sharpened his senses with mana and stretched his senses, focusing at the edge of them to find it.
Utter darkness greeted him as his subconsciousness left his body and floated into the bottomless ocean.
It was standing on the edge of a cliff. Any moment, he would fall with no end in sight.
Even if one were to sharpen their senses and reach the ocean, searching the entirety of its with just the heightened senses, is a useless procedure.
Colourless and odourless, flowing fluidly like water. His subconsciousness shifted and became one with water.
At first nothing changed.
A second passed. Then another.
Then vivid blue entered his subconsciousness as his mind opened up.
Gleaming sea shells, corroded coral reefs, vivid coloured fish.
One by one, bit by bit, things entered his subconscious vision.
As his mind eye drifted towards the rock bedding, a cave hidden with in the inky blackness filled his mind.
Then suddenly a huge azure eye appeared within the darkness and stared right at him.
If he was a weak-hearted person, he would have fainted on the spot.
'Good thing I was prepared'
Kai sighed and comforted him silently.
After the fright he still held on to his mind eye and concentrated on the lavender-coloured energy.
He gently nudged it to trail over from his heart to his head, to then to his mind. He shifted his awakened power and entered the mind of the beast.
The sea dragon.
The queen of the sea serpents' nest. The only monster that could fight head on with the sea imugi.
The balance of the world.
'It was an interesting setting in the novel of 'God's grace.'
Kai reminisced with a small smile.
When Kim Su-bin read the original novel, he came across this. The world was maintained with the balance.
Everything in the world rotates around the principle of balance. It's not that if Kai saved the life of someone who was about to die, that another life would be taken.
It was not that kind of balance.
"When the god created this world, everything in it rotated around the principle of balance. Even so, he didn't control the fate of the humans and the creatures living in it. But when something that didn't belong in the world he created appeared, it must be balanced out. Humans of that world took a period of time to figure out that there was such a principle."
Those lines resonated in his mind the moment Kai saw that black ball of energy.
Unlike the normal monsters like sea serpents who had a mana stone in their core, the sea imugi had a black chaos stone as a core.
To balance it out, a stone or an energy equivalent to that should have entered this world along with that monster.
Kai remembered the moment he stepped out into the deck of the pirate ship, how his whole body shuddered with a tingling sensation as if to draw him out towards something.
As if the world wanted to piece him together with something that long since belonged to him. It was a strange feeling.
But that strange feeling was the reason he who had recently become a swordmaster noticed a monster that not even Michael and Enzo failed to notice.
The reason why he felt shudders running through him was because the god's power, the awakened power in his body reacted to the large amount of energy in the sea dragon.
Back at the inn when he woke up, he had studied the awakened power surrounding him. He remembered how a small amount of awakened power reacted to the large amount of that energy.
Chaos power, which was the power of demons could only be neutralized by the awakened power, which was the power of the god.
And a power equivalent to the chaos energy in the monster resided in the body of the sea dragon in the cave. With a slight nudge at its mind, it swiftly swam up and attacked the sea imugi.
Kai had tried to enter the mind of the sea imugi before during the battle, but he failed.
A wall made of chaos energy surrounded its mind and shielded it from intrusions. The insertion looked rough and uneven as if the shield was forcefully inserted.
Kai snapped back into reality hearing the calls of his fake name.
"Keith."
"Kid."
When he focused back, voices of Michael and Ruwel entered his hearing.
Worried expression on the faces of Michael and Enzo, and a hint of concern in Ruwel's eyes greeted him when he lifted his head.
"Sorry. What were you saying ?"
He asked calmly and curled his lips gently into a smile as if to reassure them.
Seeing this expression, lost and helpless expressions crossed their faces, like they didn't understand what to do with him.
'What ? What happened ? I was only lost in thought for awhile. Why are they looking at me like that ?'
Inwardly he kept panicking while he maintained in an aura of calmness outwardly.
Even though Kim Su-bin who transmigrated as Kai, was a talented person, he was a person quite oblivious to the feelings of others.
So he didn't understand how they perceived him. In their eyes, though he was mean to liars and traitors, he was kind and gentle to even strangers.
He was someone who had no hesitation to rush into battle for strangers. He took the forefront in killing the monsters and destroyed most of them.
It was true this battle wasn't a place anyone could sit back and watch. But he didn't have to take the lead in fight. They may have never seen these monsters before, but the knights and the mages accompanying them were the elite.
If they had managed to compose themselves well enough, it would have been possible for them to fight the monsters. But Kai took the lead in fighting them head on and killed them.
So they all had a favorable impression of him. To them, he was weak and strong at the same time. Like a helpless beggar child.
Beggar children are weak because they have no real standing in the world but they are strong because they have to be so to survive in a cruel world.
He was quite pitiful in their eyes.
"What's the matter ?"
Kai asked with expectant eyes.
After releasing a soft sigh, Michael asked in a gentle tone.
"What do you think we should do ? Do you think we should join the fight ?"
Hearing such words, Kai couldn't keep off his stunned expression on his face.
Alarm bells started ringing in his head.
'Why are these veterans asking me, a newbie such a question ?'
Who were Michael, Enzo and Ruwel ?
They were the power houses in the Southern continent. They have honed their skills through age and countless battles.
They didn't need advice from a newbie like him. In Kai's perspective this whole thing was absurd.
Seeing Kai's expression, they thought he was surprised that they had asked for his opinion at all.
They misunderstood that the adults that raised him didn't ask for his opinion. They felt angry behalf of him and felt a dull ache in their hearts.
The reason they asked for his opinion wasn't merely because they had no suggestions. But during the battle, they had observed how he fought his way through the monsters.
His unique way of attacking left a deep impression on them compared to the text-book perfect techniques they used.
Moreover, there was something they noticed about him.
His battle senses.
The ability to understand and guide a battle the way to be advantageous.
Though the power houses of the Southern continent had honed their battle senses through hard won fights, they could tell Kai possessed a natural battle sense with the way he dealt with the monsters.
They weren't wrong. Although, Kai himself didn't notice, how could he handle such a situation ?
Otherwise, how can Kim Su-bin, who transmigrated from modern times as Kai Morgan where no monsters lived deal with monsters like that ?
The moment Kai opened his lips, a loud noise as if something huge had crashed into the water reverberated in the air.
The massive icy dome they were in shook violently and caught them all off guard.
As the dome collapsed, Kai who was unprepared was thrown off of the pillar and was blown into the water. But he came to his senses and flipped mid air and landed on something warm and hard.
He looked down to see that he was standing on the fallen body of the sea imugi.
Swooosh.
A gust of warm and humid wind rained down on him as if something massive was breathing down on him.
Kai became stiff and slowly turned around, only to come face to face with the enormous sea dragon.
Swoosh.
Another breath rained down on him as the monster stared down at him and exhaled.
Only one thought reverberated in his mind.
'That shitty author ! Why did he have to make the monsters so huge ?'