The mermaid's army would have broken rank in the first minute if not for Apolline storming the front line like a flaming hammer to a plane of glass.
Sensing the overpowering number of enemies, the Angel of Red didn’t bother holding back. She came like a fireball, consuming every patch of mud she stepped on in flames from the pit of hell. While it should be noted that Apolline’s fire was associated more with the concept of spontaneous combustion than the demonic variety, the monsters facing her couldn't really tell the difference by how they were having their bone marrow boiled. Acceltra’s magical law barely distinguished the agonizing pain of being turned to sludge by demonic magic from the good old death of burning. Both were equally ranked for an agonizing way to die.
As hot as the heat's output was, it wasn’t the primary cause of death for the newly spawned monster. No, most of the unfortunate spawns were crushed by [Seraph’s Ray] at bone-breaking velocity. Each flick of the spear severed several monsters into pieces.
As a massive ball of violence, it was obvious to Amibus=Neptunus that Apolline needed to be stopped. The four jellyfish towers went to work, spreading the net of Lethargy spell to slow down Apolline.
Unfortunately for Ambius=Neptunus, Apolline wasn’t the only heavy-weight throwing her weight around.
Xia came from the sky, raining the Wrath of Sol down on the gathering of sea spawns. Increasing the bloody and burning chaos by several fold.
However, it was Carolina who did most of the work—or to be more specific, it was her sea serpent zombie, dubbed Serpent #1.
Yes, the sea serpent carrying the necromancer toward her grand conquest was called Serpent #1. Yes, it was a name that wouldn’t win a contest any time soon, but the owner's taste shouldn’t take away from Serpent #1 power.
Lame name aside, Serpent #1 was the greatest experiment Carolina made since she lost every pawn in the escapade in Eleanor.
Left with virtually no zombies, Carolina was forced to restock by zombifying the army of isopods. Alas, she knew those sea insects weren't going to be enough, so she needed to delve into another entity they bagged during their initial battle at the sea—a sea serpent. It was a decent specimen for making a zombified minion, but Carolina had literally no raw material to make a composite zombie. As such, she was stopped from trying a new trick she had never used before.
Namely, Carolina decided to apply her [Plunder] with her necromancy skill.
The [Plunder] skill worked by temporarily sealing the target's ability and copying said power into a conceptual medallion. After the Angel Fall event, Carolina had obtained two medals: one from her victory over Deluge and another from the Lord of Mechanical Magic. Being a genius necromancer, it didn’t take long for Carolina to deduce how to merge the medallion with her zombie.
The decision was then boiled down to which medallion would be used, and the question had a simple answer.
There were no ‘if’, ‘but’, or ‘maybe’. Etaceh’s medal was too precious to use, given that it contained the Authority of a Lord. No matter how much of a pale imitation it was, anything that was copied from a candidate for the Administrator position was too precious to waste on anything but the best creation possible.
As a result, the former Blue Archangel's ability was consumed in the creation of Serpent #1.
And what a creation it was...
Even when she couldn’t create a composite zombie due to the unavailability of material, Carolina’s skill still shone through. Serpent #1 has all its blood vessels replaced with high-grade magic conductors and the heart replaced with a magical reactor. Unless someone cut open the serpent to reveal the mechanical part, no one would suspect the zombie to be a cyborg with better skill proficiency than even an advanced Blue Mage.
Using her incredible Blue Magic proficiency, Carolina covered the mud with a tidal wave of water while casting a Lethargy spell to slow down the opposing endless army.
This maneuver had both a beneficiary and a sufferer.
The mermaid combating the savage army of mutants was suddenly engulfed in their home element. Normally, coming to fight on the mud represents a significant risk for the mermaid due to the restrictive specification of their floatation artifact. With the water sweeping the battlefield, this weakness was greatly alleviated as the underwater army was back inside their element.
Meanwhile, Apolline—the sufferer—got to stare at the rushing wall of the sea coming to crush her.
“Carolina, you bitch!” Apolline yelled and ignited [Plasma Corona] to defend against the sweeping sea.
The sea met the wall of heat and exploded into steam.
Watching the show from the sky, Xia floated down to ask the culprit.
“Did you just try to drown Apolline on purpose?”
Carolina waved the accusation aside. “Do you think I can? The most I could—ack!”
The necromancer yelped as a bundle of seaweed tangled her leg and attempted to drag her off her zombie.
They were still alive? Xia though, knowing the act of the mutated Brine Eyes John the Pirate Lord.
Xia did some internal accounting.
Out of eight Pirate Lods, two—Espera the Chivalrous and Lambard the Nightslash—were captured. Omni the Brute was killed by Carolina. Xia herself bisected Blackhand and gutted Chrysler the Butcher who led the expedition.
Taking those into account, three Pirate Lords—Pangdu, Brine Eyes John, and Rami—were left in the opposing camp. Rami was apparently merged with her unfortunate crew to create a jellyfish siege tower and later even cloned.
This is what happened to Brine Eyes John and Pangdu. However, judging from an army of monstrous seaweeds and shell-armored monsters emerging to strike them from all sides, the cloning process must have some limit.
“Probably the Aura-density inside an Aura-user made it much harder to clone them,” Ciel said, coming down with a charged CODE: DUALITY for another attack. “I still wondered how it pulled this off for Rami. But that was a question for the future.”
Ciel pointed his weapon at the monsters rising from the mud and utterly annihilated it with a column of light.
Meanwhile, Carolina's leg was saved by the newly arrived Nuan, skipping across the surface of the sea. In a fluid, artful motion, Nuan severed the seaweed with the Aura Blade elongating from her hand. She grabbed the rope-like seaweed, found a foot hold on Carolina’s Serpent #1, and yanked the strand in her hand with every muscle her shoulder could lean on.
In perfect sync, Carolina ordered Serpent #1 to unleash hell.
With overwhelming command of the sea and pulling force, the water shot out in a sprout, delivering the tangled mess that was Brines Eyes John's body to the air.
Nuan didn’t waste the time to deal the finishing blow.
Aura Sphere
The sphere of burning Aura barreled into Brines Eyes John, incinerating him into nothingness. However, the assault wasn’t over. Waiting for the moment was Pangdu, who picked that moment to mutilate the zombified serpent the two were riding on with an Aura-imbued sword.
The slash caused massive damage. Serpent #1 nearly keeled over despite the layer of reinforcement material Carolina had invested. Both riders stumbled from their weakening footing, leaving Pangdu free to follow up its attack and finish the waning zombie.
Pangdu would have succeeded if Hikari hadn't gotten to the sentient shelled monster first.
Normally, Hikari would prefer to hover above the battlefield and snipe Pangdu with hypersonic projectiles. Alas, the inconvenience of expending every blade in her armory to pin down Ambius=Neptunus meant she was left with her bare fist.
But that wasn’t a problem; the Reaper was nothing if not flexible.
Using the [Magic Eyes of Phase], Hikari moved beneath the water as an intangible bullet unperturbed by water resistance until she landed a flying kick into the overly optimistic Pangdu.
The sheer collision exploded the sea like the detonation of a cruise missile, listing Serpent #1 to the side and tossing both Carolina, Nuan, and kicker herself into the sea.
Pangdu weren’t as fortunate as Carolina and Nuan, who got out of the fight with only a dip in the sea. The shelled monster sailed into Ciel’s tryout with the arsenal he picked recently.
Red Magic Rank 3: Flare
Black Magic Rank 3: Mental Pollution
White Magic Rank 4: Smite
It was a triple combo that stung to heaven. Pangdu was roasted in fire, jacked with agonizing mental torture, the blast with a pillar of light to the waiting executioner--Xia herself.
Xia’s sword flashed in a blink, chopping off Pangdu’s arm from the body that fell to the sea and vanished for the rest of the battle.
Meanwhile, the recent group of swimmers didn’t have it well.
“Can you please hold back a little?” Carolina said, paddling on the water surface. “Who kicks hard enough to topple literal sea monsters?”
Hikari, bobbing on the sea alongside her nemesis, didn't take this lying down.
“I came in to help, and this is the thanks I get.”
Nuan broke through the water surface to aid her ‘friend.’
“Stop being an ingrate, bitch. Hikari-chan did nothing wrong!”
“Can you stop trying to kiss the terminator?" Carolina yelled. “We need to… oh f-”
Right on cue, the swarm of crimson lightning began blasting down on the ocean. Everyone within the proximity of the sea was getting the shock. Be it Carolina and Co., the mermaid, or even Ambius=Neptunus’ own spawns. All victims near the ocean were immediately incapacitated by the burst of unstoppable electricity.
Ciel turned to look at the jellyfish towers, unleashing the large-scale AOE magic. That last attack just confirmed the towers were getting better at hiding their magic signature.
“We need to take down the defense quickly before we can move us to the next phase,” Ciel said, coming to the conclusion and channeling the spell to do the job.
Black Magic Rank 2: Slaughter
While most mages preferred to launch Slaughter in a valley, Ciel instead channeled his attack into a gigantic ball of darkness with the sole purpose of.
The gigantic Slaughter barreled forth as a distraction that couldn’t be ignored.
In Ciel’s mind, there were only two options against the stone he tossed forth. Either the opponent ignored it, or they revealed some more cards.
And revealed, the card was.
…
Sensing her comrades were taken down in mass, Apolline, barely fending the flood caused by Carolina, reignited her skill. The light of the fiery [Plasma Corona] drenched Apolline in crimson, but the rising darkness quickly overshadowed the glow.
Apolline looked up to see the source of the shadow, grabbed Ciel’s Slaughter out of the air, and squeezed the Black Magic into oblivion.
What she saw was a giant hind the size of a house connected to an equally sized arm.
“It is spawning a giant now?” Apolline screeched. “How is this fair?”
