Chapter 267
Chapter 267: Satan: Who Knocked Me Down One Place in the Rankings?
"Through offering, you can obtain the true Blessing of Water from the incarnation of the ocean."
Little Fish's voice rang out, bewitching as a siren's call:
"Don't you wish to live freely in the azure ocean, just like a true Sea Folk?"
Having said that, Little Fish extended its fin with a cool, icy touch and lightly brushed against the crystalline water ring flowing across Heni's arm.
Heni looked down at the Ocean Covenant on her arm, and upon being touched by it, she couldn't help but give a slight shudder.
Then she raised her head and looked at Little Fish again.
"Why would I choose to live in the ocean?"
Little Fish was momentarily stunned by Heni's question, its response caught in its throat.
"But living in the ocean is such a wonderful thing."
"Because you are a fish, but I am not."
Heni smiled as she looked at it.
Little Fish stared back at her in confusion, unable to quite comprehend her words.
In its understanding, the ocean was the most boundless and all-encompassing sacred place in the world.
To swim freely in the sea should have been the privilege of every fish.
Yet what baffled the fish was that the girl before it had chosen to refuse the ocean's embrace.
It didn't understand—for just as Heni had said.
It was a fish.
At that moment, Heni spoke:
"You're saying that if I make an offering, I can obtain the Blessing of Water from the incarnation of the ocean, correct?"
Upon hearing Heni's question, Little Fish grew so excited that it nervously flapped its tail, its large eyes blinking rapidly.
"Yes, yes, that's right!"
It truly liked the human girl before it. If she could live in the sea alongside it, that would be the best thing imaginable.
Yet a moment later, it realized it was wrong.
Heni extended a hand, channeling her magic.
Beneath her feet, a Magic Formation she had drawn at some unknown point rose up from the surface of the water.
A complex crimson Formation appeared beneath her, rapidly lighting up as several red rope-like tendrils wound around the water ring on Heni's forearm like phantoms.
The ropes suddenly pulled taut, wrenching the water ring in several directions at once.
The next instant, the water ring that had been spinning on her arm shattered like a broken pearl necklace, scattering in all directions.
The droplets gradually dissolved into the air.
Little Fish watched Heni's actions, and for a moment, it didn't know what to do.
Only when the last trace of water could no longer gather back onto Heni's arm did it finally understand.
The Ocean Covenant had been forcibly dissolved by her. Unilaterally.
She had refused the ocean.
Then, Heni's clear shout tore through the stillness of the air:
"Mr. Crocodile, please help me."
Laiton lowered his enormous body and placed one hand flat on the water's surface.
Heni stepped onto the crocodile's great claw and was slowly, leisurely lifted up until she was raised above his head.
Atop the enormous crocodile's head, her field of view was vast and unobstructed.
She could stand there and clearly see every area below, including all the Sea Folk living upon the ocean's surface.
Heni bowed her head and offered a friendly smile to Little Fish, who stood frozen on the water's surface below.
"Thank you for telling me all of this. At the same time, I am sorry for what you have been through."
It seemed she now understood what the Professor needed.
Heni unpinned the 6 star-shaped medals from her chest.
She gently opened the palm holding the 6 stars, allowing the badges to drift freely in the high-altitude wind.
The badges drifted as though guided, rising to the very top of the bubble, shining brilliantly like 6 stars suspended in the sky.
Each star corresponded to a different area, for 6 different zones.
Little Fish, baffled, floated on the sea's surface and looked up at Heni high in the sky.
What... what was she trying to do?
Behind Heni, a sea breeze quietly arrived, stirring ripples.
Several spotlessly white Formations rapidly swirled into motion behind her back, scattering like snowflakes.
These Formations overlapped one another, countless patterns shooting out from their edges, weaving together between the Formations like blossoming flowers.
"Observer concealed beneath the white void, entrust your reason and clarity unto me,"
"Should the world sink into nothingness and confusion, the eight hundred children shall become my eyes."
Before long, the exquisitely detailed Formation became extremely unstable, the entire structure seemingly trembling in the rush of Magic Power.
Yet Heni did not stop—instead she carved Runes into the gaps of the white Formation with even greater frequency.
The many Runes gathered slowly in the spaces between the Formations like lively little fish, and as though a steel needle had been driven into an iron frame, the entire Formation suddenly began to spin rapidly, becoming exceptionally stable.
The 6 star-shaped badges drew upon the white radiance and released a tide-like surge of magical energy.
Starlight spilled out from the edges of the Formation, cascading down upon the ocean.
At the instant it made contact with the churning sea, silver stars dissolved into the water.
Little Fish's enormous fish-school body floated on the ocean's surface. It raised its head and watched the great white wave sweeping across the sea, and immediately felt a force pressing toward it, causing its body to involuntarily tilt backward.
Little Fish looked up with wide eyes at the white stars falling from the heavens, then back at the spinning Formation in the sky, and was struck speechless.
You said you weren't a Council Member!?
The complexity of the Formation was simply beyond imagining as the work of a 2nd-Tier Mage.
What level of understanding of magic would it take to construct something like this?
The 6 stars transformed into 6 pure and lofty beams of starlight. The radiance spread like awakened spirits through the entire city, until it had completely blanketed the sky above the City of the Sea.
Countless Sea Folk dissolved into streams of water and rose up through the ocean's surface.
They tilted their heads back, gazing up at the descending white starpoints and the 6 brilliant stars suspended in the sky.
It was as though the stars in the sky were calling out to them.
"Offering... offering..."
They repeated the word again and again, as though yearning to break free from their shackles.
They spread their arms wide toward the 6 starpoints, trying to wholly embrace the ocean.
The Sea Folk of the entire upper city seemed to have been summoned and seized all at once.
Even the Sea Folk near Little Fish were not spared—they too spread their arms and began to pray toward the stars.
Offering, offering.
Little Fish watched all of this, its mind completely blank, even a little panicked.
In this moment, it seemed to understand something.
That human girl...
She was trying to offer all the Sea Folk of the entire upper city as living sacrifices to the ocean!?
The entire upper city held nearly one hundred thousand people, at minimum.
This meant.
That girl standing atop the enormous crocodile.
Was treating the lives of one hundred thousand people as though they were nothing.
All for the sake of completing her own objective.
Little Fish looked up at her, its voice trembling uncontrollably:
"A... a witch..."
"You are the true witch..."
Hundreds of thousands of people crowded densely upon the ocean, feeling strange frequencies pulsing upward from the sea beneath them.
The Formation flowed like musical notes, white stars falling from high above, merging into the body of each Sea Folk.
Like an emptied water jug, it liberated countless Sea Folk from their bodies.
And with that, they dissolved into clear water, flowing through the air.
***
One hundred thousand people, transformed one after another into streams, began to converge into a torrent in the sky.
The torrent grew ever denser, until the scattered streams transformed into towering waves.
The surging tide formed from one hundred thousand Sea Folk rolled up simultaneously from all sides of the city, crashing violently toward the center of the City of the Sea.
Viktor stood in the sky, hovering near the White Mist, watching all of it unfold.
A glimmer of approval flashed through the depths of his eyes.
Heni's performance had not disappointed him.
"Weija."
With his words, the blue water-droplet hair ornament atop Weija's head shimmered with a mysterious light.
Within the surging waves, the souls of countless Sea Folk were drawn out and pulled by an invisible force into those blue beads.
The more souls the water droplets absorbed, the deeper their blue became, the brighter their radiance.
"Something this precious—why would I let Dozarel have it?"
Though their souls had been extracted, the waves still crashed violently toward the White Mist.
The blue waves blanketed the dense white fog, rampaging freely.
Steam and rolling surf entangled each other, pressing and squeezing, neither yielding to the other.
The moment the wave fully bore down, the entire mist zone sent out pearl-like swirling vortices, which completely fractured apart.
The wave transformed into a soaring pillar of water surging skyward against gravity, climbing up into the high atmosphere.
The bubble above the City of the Sea shattered under the impact of the enormous water column.
The White Mist rapidly dispersed upward and outward in all directions, as though trying to engulf everything.
Little Fish stared with wide eyes.
"The City of the Sea... has been destroyed!?"
Then, even it was absorbed into the White Mist and disappeared without a trace.
***
Endless White Mist rapidly spread across the ocean's surface, as though utterly shrouding the entire sea.
Countless fishermen who had just set sail looked out at the White Mist from their boats, faces lined with worry.
It seemed there would be no fishing today.
Aboard a large vessel, a captain walked into the cabin and addressed the 2 passengers at his back with an apologetic expression:
"I believe I must offer you an apology, Your Grace. I'm afraid we cannot continue further into the deep sea today."
"The fog is too thick. We are very likely to lose our way."
The 2 passengers both had identical golden hair and noble attire, and one could tell at a glance that they were no ordinary people.
At that moment, the man addressed as the Duke was the first to speak:
"It doesn't matter."
"Simply anchor the ship nearby."
He turned his head and looked at Erika:
"My dear, haven't you always wondered about Viktor's strength?"
Erika blinked, not quite following, as she listened to what her father continued to say:
"Truthfully, I too have been deeply puzzled by it."
"So..."
Wuuuuu—
Before he could finish, the surface of the sea suddenly rang with a deep, resonant whale cry that exploded out from within the thick White Mist.
The sound was deafening, filling all who heard it with dread.
Erika heard it with even greater clarity, and within her heart, a voice arose.
As though she had understood the meaning carried by that whale's cry:
"Father... the White Mist... is speaking?"
Livi gave Erika an understanding glance, then straightened up and looked out toward the White Mist.
As if accompanying its emergence, a torrential downpour began to fall in heavy sheets.
The rain splashed into the ocean and drummed against the ship's deck, sending out dull, rolling reverberations.
At that moment, the sailors on the ship pointed toward the sky in terror and cried out:
"Wh... what on earth is that!!"
Between the White Mist, they could vaguely make out an enormous silhouette hovering in the air.
It looked like a massive whale, floating within the White Mist, slowly turning its droplet-shaped colossal body.
The sky-spanning black silhouette stirred a wave of dread.
Livi fixed his gaze on the vast shadow within the White Mist, as though he could see through that hazy blue—yet in the next moment it vanished into the dense white, completely hidden from sight.
Watching the colossal entity that had appeared before him, his eyes shimmered with extraordinary light.
Picking up from where he had left off, he continued:
"Then let us watch."
"The magnificent performance the most powerful Mage Council Member has brought to us."
His words had barely faded when another deep, muffled whale cry rang out once more from within the dense White Mist, bursting forth like a great drum being split open, releasing its thunderous resonance.
Wuuuuu—
The thick White Mist, laden with pouring rain, continued to whip the sea into frenzied waves.
The towering colossal form rolled within the deep rumble, plunging toward the vast expanse of the deep ocean.
The waves surged and roiled as a pair of bright eyes, like brilliant lanterns, pierced through the White Mist, cut through the darkness.
And shone upon the terror in every person's heart.
Calamity of Water—Dozarel
Lv—60