Apolline was right in thinking that this wasn’t fair.

The mud of life spawning a gigantic giant was completely out of their calculation. As if the situation wasn’t bad enough, giant dolphins surrounded her army from behind.

Sandwiched between dolphins and the emerging giant, the mermaid army’s morale took a nosedive. Many were already incapacitated by the sudden lightning strike that shook them to the core. Although the stronger members of the army, boosted with Amy’s curse conversion cookies, survived the initial clashes and the subsequent shock, the sheer size of the opponents in front of and behind them sent sheer despair down the mermaid's throat.

Despite the odds, the blazing Aura rose to the sky like bonfire.

Apolline rose to the occasion, turning the curse-infused mud into crisp and shouting atop her lung.

“Gather yourself and hold rank!” Apolline yelled. “Reorganize into pincer formation. Do not worry about the backline. We have that cover!”

It wasn’t her command alone that galvanized the army of mermaids against the opposition. Her skill [Morale Booster] was an army buff that increased the troops fervor and combat effectiveness, making her the shoe-in commander to lead the assault.

The jellyfish towers took note of this and prepared to take out Apolline. One tower was charged with power, but a surprise attack from above cut it in half.

It was Nuan’s Aura Blade, as sharp and pristine as ever, carried to the target at hypersonic velocity by Hikari. In one fell swoop, one of the opposing pillars went down in a flash of Aura.

“You two actually tanked the lightning,” Apolline said to the two women descending from the sky. “And where is Carolina?”

“She got knocked out. We shoved her back into the Residence for now,” Nuan answered with a huff. Then her eyes suddenly widened at the descending attack. “Watch out!”

The three dodged the descending fist of the giant emerging from the cloud.

Apolline’s figure flared with light as the blazing Aura around her built into a firestorm. Fire compressed into the tip of her spear. With a swing, she delivered the compressed heat to another tower. Curses thickened into a soupy wall to intercept the attack. The flaming strike clashed against the barrier of grudge, sending a flash of heat splashing across the sky.

There was no question that the curse had effectively thwarted the attack, and the small opening allowed Nuan Yulong to reposition herself and deliver the Aura Sphere at the tower’s blind spot.

Noticing its comrade in peril, another defensive tower launched another lightning bolt to interrupt the attack. Alas, the bolt simply went through Nuan like she was a ghost—courtesy of Hikari’s Magic Eyes.

This left an opening for Nuan to take out the second tower with her Aura Sphere. The unstoppable ball of spiraling Aura crashed into the tower, severing the magical siege engine's base into a gruesome, bloody chunk.

But their small victory came at a cost: Hikari was exposed to fireballs from the two remaining towers. The Reaper dodged the attack by a small margin, but then something unexpected happened.

Amibus=Neptunus roared.

Although the turn of events was unexpected, it was not entirely out of the question. A creature so large and strong could not be contained indefinitely. Although thousands of restraining devices were used to weigh the beast down, it would not be enough to subdue something that was fighting for its life.

The soundwave, ladened with curses, struck Hikari directly. She had already been weakened by the Rank 6 Magic, and her Aura was not strong enough to withstand the blow. All she knew was that her mind was going blank.

Seeing Hikari take the hit, Ciel reacted immediately, diving from the sky to catch her before her body hit the sea.

After assessing the state of affairs in his mind, the Unity Lord grimaced.

They were down Hikari and Carolina. The mermaid was holding it out against the most misrepresented marine mammal on the planet, but they were bleeding people. Nuan and Apolline could barely handle the jellyfish witch towers spreading around magical bombardment.

As a sign of the escalating conflict, a newly-spawned giant finally emerged from the mud. The good news was that the Amibus could not stably spawn the giant, as its skin was melting like butter. While the melting skin was creepy enough, the empty, bloody holes where its eyes should be were the real prize-taker. The enormous monster from the realm of nightmares aimed its fist down at Apolline, intending to crush her.

Delivered with crushing might and speed, the strikes were faster than anything that could have been expected at such a towering height. It was a swift, merciless blow that seemed to completely erase Apolline.

The giant turned its attention toward Nuan, only to receive a rude awakening when the fist that had seemingly crushed Apolline cracked with a glowing red web before exploding into a blaze of fire.

Ciel also didn’t let this opportunity go and added a spell of his own.

Black Magic Rank 4: Puppetry

The binding of Black Mana wrapped around the giant at Rem’s behest, but it wasn’t enough to fall the goliath. The back of the giant erupted with blood as two pale dragonic heads sprouted out and aimed a mouth filled with fiery energy at Ciel.

Betty: Ciel, duck!

The giant never gets a chance.

Ciel swooped down as the torrent of dark-red light sailed through his previous position, plowed right through the giant head, and incinerated the third jellyfish behind it.

…

Breaking through the weakened storm were the Five Oceans, carrying the woman who made the perfect shot.

Marjorie could only gape after witnessing the weapon that somehow managed to blow open the enemy from a kilometer away from the battlefield. Betty’s newest skin-tight suit featuring mostly red pigment lined with blue and black stripes already came as a surprise, but her newest weapon took cake.

“What the hell is that?” Marjorie asked.

“Its name is CODE: CENTAURUS,” Betty answered, lining another shot. “Think of it as a long-range attachment for my family.”

…

CODE: CENTAURUS

Rank: Unique

• [Atlas Machina]’s Long-range Frame

• Spell Compression Engine

• Long-range Motion Calculation

Awakening: CODE_BREAK: Time-space Exemption

…

Santino eyed the weapon with admiration.

“Beautifully created,” commended Santino. “I believed it merged with your liquid metal golem and maximized its long-range abilities.”

Betty was so surprised by Santinos’ sudden burst of positive reception. 

"You are aware that Ciel created this, correct?" Betty said. “Aren’t you supposed to hate him?”

Santino huffed.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Santino said. “I still disapprove of your leader, but his creation should be counted separately. No one who fought on the battlefield would deny the value of ending the battle with minimal casualties.”

The sour knight admired the arNament from a respectful distance. Observing the metal frame encasing a liquid metal body, he beheld the incredible sight of a colossal liquid golem compressing itself into a long metal barrel, connected by a coolant tube and fitted with Ether-conducting glazing. Some part of Santino’s soul, the romantic corner that admired swords and charging cavalry, was enamored with the mechanical marvel in front of him.

“Your shot is too accurate from this distance,” Santino said. “How did you do it?”

“This attack module is built-in to incorporate [Atlas Machina]’s tech-assimilation ability and its processing ability,” Betty explained. “Ciel said it incorporates the golem’s processing power into a future prediction model and takes input information from the long-range scope to predict the target’s trajectory.”

Santino rubbed his chin with avid interest. “Interesting. What kind of ammunition was it using?”

"Obviously, a compressed spell,” Betty explained.

The Sorceress couldn’t help but wonder if Santino and Ciel would likely bond over weapons. Behind her, the observant Gordom Seyfert and Marjorie Everly subtly glanced at each other in bafflement.

Before the two could interrupt Santino’s newfound interest in the precision tool of murder, the sea shuddered.

This sudden change took Betty by surprise.

“What is happening?” The Sorceress asked as the ocean roiled. “Is Amibus doing something?”

“No,” Gordon said. “This one is from our camp; Sharley has finished winding up the Pond of Genesis.”

…

The Pond of Genesis

Ever since the extinction of the merman, this location has been the nursery where all the mermaids originated. In function, it was a conceptual incubator containing the genome of the mermaids, but time had changed that a little.

Nurtured by the wishes of generations of mermaids for 300 years, as well as an abundance of oceanic Ether, the conceptual artifact crafted by the Lord of Winter has been imbued with divinity and embryonic intelligence. In a sense, the Pond of Genesis is the sacred guardian that eternally preserves the prosperity of the mermaid race. As such, a certain function has naturally blossomed within it.

In an event where the mermaid-kind faced the threat of extinction, this Pond of Genesis would act as a miracle-creating artifact—a divine wand resonating with the Mermaid Queen. It was a fantastic but flawed weapon that taxed the Pond of Genesis so heavily that it cratered the mermaid’s birth rate for the next two decades. 

This miraculous power was only activated once, a hundred and fifty years ago, to safeguard the mermaid from the fallout from the upheaval of the Western Continent. Like her predecessor before her, Mermaid Queen Sharley prepared to unleash this secret weapon and ate the consequences.

While her soldier and allies bled, Sharley tapped into the innate connection imprinted on her the moment she was born into this role. This transcendence link connected her very soul to the Pond of Genesis and the continuance of the mermaids. Kindled with fire, the greatest guardian artifact of the undersea civilization finally awoke from its dormancy to grant a wish using the energy it had stored for over a century.

From a distance, in her carriage, Sharley shut her eyes and reversed the tide of the battle. With the force of her will, a ball of condensed, silky light rose from the ocean and descended upon the raging battle with a thunderous crash.

The unexpected attack flattened their enemy, leaving the mermaid, engaged in combat with the murderous sea creatures, stunned.

Far from the backline, Apolline, Nuan, and Ciel were also happy to receive the support. The silken light didn’t exactly destroy the last jellyfish tower, but it did wonder at raining damage on Amibus=Neptunus and forcing the magical siege creature into a backfoot.

Knowing she wouldn’t have a better opportunity, Apollin knew this was the moment she could open a path for Xia.

“Ciel, Nuan, tell the rest of the army to back off,” Apolline said. Her body erupted with Red Mana. “I am not sure I can control this spell.”

Knowing what was to come, Ciel and Nuan immediately retreated to inform the mermaid to back off the killing range.

With that, Apolline was free to start the end of this subjugation.

Red Magic Rank 7: Eruption