Reinforcements?

The evil god made a choice.

The two individuals split from the whole chose starkly different paths.

The membrane of the left half lost all its luster within seconds. The anchor points flickered out one by one, like light bulbs being deprived of electricity. The entire structure collapsed, shrinking to a tenth of its original size, its surface turning a decayed brown—and then it dissolved. Starting from the edges, it melted bit by bit into thick black sludge, silently flowing into the seawater below.

The Silver Dragon tilted its head, its vertical pupils tracking the direction where the black sludge was spreading. It snorted a puff of hot air from its nostrils. The tip of its tail twitched as if it wanted to chase after and crush the substance, but ultimately it remained still—it felt it was better to leave the decision to the two people on its back.

“It abandoned half of itself,” Klein said.

He stared at the direction where the black sludge was dissipating, his brow furrowing slightly. It had abandoned that portion far too decisively.

Klein’s gaze followed the trajectory of the black sludge as it diffused into the seawater, his lips thinning. Where did those things go... after melting into the sea?

He committed this question to memory. But now was not the time for investigation.

Because the individual on the other side had already begun to swell.

Certain parts were growing at a frequency far exceeding normal speed—as if something inside were pushing, prodding, and using brute force to tear the outer shell open from within.

Snap.

The first sound of tearing.

The membrane split open at the top, and a claw reached out from within. The claw was covered in a chitinous exoskeleton, with more joints than any known creature. The fingertips branched into three parts, each curling and groping independently—like a newborn testing the texture of this world.

A second sound. A third.

More rifts. More limbs.

A tentacle lined with suckers lashed out from a rift on the left. It was twenty meters long, its end dripping with translucent mucus that trailed long threads through the air. Following it was a head—no, two. Three. They squeezed out of different rifts, each in a different form.

The first head had the vertical pupils of a snake and the gill slits of a fish, puffing out a cloud of black-green mist with every opening and closing of the gills.

The second head bore branched deer antlers, but the antlers were tangled with seaweed and shell fragments, with some liquid dripping from the tips.

The third head had no facial features. It was just a mouth that occupied the entire area of the head. The mouth hung slightly open, filled with layers upon layers of teeth—at least seven or eight rows deep into the throat—and every row was slowly rotating like the blades of a blender.

Klein’s stomach churned.

It wasn't fear. It was physiological revulsion—his brain refused to process these things that shouldn't appear on the same body.

Then more heads squeezed out from various parts of the body. A fourth head emerged from the shoulder blade area, covered in coral-like hard protrusions. A fifth popped out from the waist, its flat head shaped like a stingray, with “fins” on either side twitching. A sixth—growing upside down from a rift in the spine, its neck twisted a hundred and eighty degrees, a pair of pupil-less white eyes staring straight at the sky.

Klein was reminded of illustrations from ancient texts.

Sirens, Hydras, Leviathans, Krakens—every human imagination regarding deep-sea terrors had been kneaded into a single mass and pressed into one body.

Wings burst from the spine—three pairs, all different in size and form. The smallest pair looked like the pectoral fins of a manta ray, flapping incessantly against the sides of the torso. The middle pair was covered in hard scales, emitting the sound of metal scraping when they unfurled.

The largest pair had a wingspan half the size of the Silver Dragon’s, and the wing membranes were covered in eye-spot patterns, every “eye” rolling around.

Watching.

Watching in all directions.

“It is solidifying.” Klein’s pupils narrowed slightly.

He looked down at his hand. His fingertips were still tingling slightly.

His runes had worked. The “Anti-Chaos” spell had forced the evil god to move from “formless” to “formed”—but the “form” the evil god chose was not to become a single kind of creature.

It chose to become all of them.

It had simultaneously manifested every gene from every source within it, every trait of every creature it had ever swallowed, and every trace of every ancient sea beast that had ever existed.

Now, it seemed this “form” was even more troublesome than the “formless” state.

The stitched-together body completely broke free from the constraints of the membrane. It stood tall upon the dark-green sea—if the word “stood” could even be used for such a thing. Its volume was significantly smaller than before the split, having discarded half of itself, but Klein’s perception delivered a piece of bad news.

Its density had more than doubled.

Energy readings were skyrocketing like crazy. The anchor points that were originally scattered across a massive volume were now all squeezed into this relatively “compact” body. Millions of anchor points, compressed into a single frame.

Klein took a deep breath and then exhaled.

“Ophelia.”

He didn't need to say more.

The moment the Silver Dragon dove, Ophelia had already left its back.

Her leap had no wasted movement. Her toes tapped lightly against a dragon scale, and she launched herself like an arrow, her silver dragon scale armor trailing a smooth arc through the air. The cold blue light of the runic inscriptions followed her trajectory, leaving a faint wake in the air.

The blade pointed toward the monster’s neck—if that position could be called a neck.

Battle qi poured into the sword, and a golden arc of light slashed down.

—It was blocked.

The tentacle’s reaction speed exceeded expectations. It moved horizontally in an instant before Ophelia’s sword could reach its target, its sucker-covered side facing outward like a soft shield to catch the strike.

The suckers exploded. The tentacle severed. Viscous body fluid splashed out, and a few drops landed on Ophelia’s spaulders—the runes flashed, and the liquid evaporated with a hiss, as if hitting a red-hot iron plate.

But the momentum of the sword had been significantly dampened.

Ophelia tapped her toes in mid-air, using the counterforce from pushing off the severed tentacle to shift two body lengths sideways, narrowly avoiding a second tentacle sweeping up from below. That tentacle swept through the space where she had just been, the resulting wind pressure tearing the air into white mist.

Before she had even stabilized her landing point, the head filled with teeth had already turned toward her.

The mouth opened. All the layers of teeth stopped rotating simultaneously.

A mass of dark-green energy surged from deep within the throat—it wasn't a spray, but a vomit. Like a giant beast throwing up, the mass of energy rushed toward her with a corrosive stench.

Ophelia dodged to the side.

Her sword moved at an angle, cutting in from the side, the edge sliding along the periphery of the energy mass. Golden battle qi poured along the blade like a scorching knife slicing through a block of dark-green jelly.

The energy was cleaved in two, passing by both sides of her body and striking the sea in the distance. Water vapor surged into the sky, churning over ten meters high.

The chest area of the dragon scale armor grew slightly warm. The heat conduction runes Klein had designed were at work—channeling the residual heat from when the energy mass brushed past away from the surface of the plates, preventing the heat from transferring to her skin.

Ophelia didn't even feel the heat.

Then came the wings.

The largest pair flapped once.

It wasn't as simple as blowing wind. Every eye-spot pattern on the wing surfaces lit up simultaneously as they flapped, and the air was crushed into a physical shockwave that pushed toward Ophelia. It wasn't wind pressure—it was a literal wall of force.

The runes across the surface of the dragon scale armor lit up entirely. Cold blue light connected from head to toe, forming a visible thin film. The shockwave slammed into the runic shield, and the light membrane dented for a moment—then it bounced back.

The runes swallowed the impact, converting and neutralizing it. The process took less than 0.3 seconds.

But the conservation of momentum was not a law the runes could defy. She was still pushed back over ten meters, her boot soles carving two white streaks through the air.

Ophelia retracted her sword while retreating, her body slightly angled to bleed off the last bit of residual thrust. By the time she steadied herself, her breathing hadn't even faltered.

Her golden eyes stared at the thing before her.

The three pairs of wings acted independently—the smallest pair was adjusting the body’s balance, the middle pair was gathering strength, and the largest pair was already closing to prepare for the next flap. The six heads each had their own will to attack; three were staring at her, two were observing the Silver Dragon’s position, and one—that upside-down head with white eyes—was staring at the sky, watching who knows what.

The tentacle’s regeneration speed—the one she had just severed—had already grown back halfway. The new part was darker in color and the suckers were denser.

Ophelia’s judgment was swift.

The protection of the dragon scale armor was more stable than expected. Every time she took a hit, the runes would instantly complete the energy conversion, eating and neutralizing the external force, so the impact she felt was as light as a mere nudge. Her battle qi output efficiency remained at its peak under the boost of that “field”—actually, it was slightly higher than her peak, as the resonance of the dragon scales continued to amplify every strand of her battle qi.

Her physical exertion was kept to an extremely low level.

With this fighting style, she could fight for an hour without losing her breath.

But Ophelia frowned.

It wasn't because she couldn't win.

It was because this thing was getting faster.

During the first clash, the coordination of those limbs was chaotic. The tentacles did their thing, the wings did theirs, and the heads acted independently—they were more like six different creatures sewn together, each fighting its own battle.

But in less than a minute, the coordination between them was visibly improving.

The tentacles began providing cover for the wings. When Ophelia’s blade neared the root of a wing, a tentacle would extend from the side to parry or interfere.

The heads’ long-range attacks began creating openings for the tentacles. The mist sprayed by the gill-slitted head was no longer an indiscriminate cover; it was precisely aimed at Ophelia’s retreat path, forcing her into the tentacles’ attack range.

The wings’ pressure waves began compressing her evasion space. The three pairs of wings flapped alternately, creating impacts from three different angles, squeezing the area where she could move smaller and smaller.

It was learning.

Learning from every clash how to use this new, physical body.

Sitting on the Silver Dragon’s back, Klein could see it more clearly than Ophelia.

The connection patterns of the anchor points within the evil god were being rewritten in real-time. Every time Ophelia’s sword landed on it, the structure between those anchor points would undergo a slight adjustment. For parts that had been attacked, the next defensive response would be faster. After a severed tentacle regenerated, even the arrangement density of the muscle fibers would increase.

After gaining a physical form, the evil god was demonstrating for the first time an integrated use of its many components.

The instincts of every marine creature and the talents of every mythological monster were being linked together by a unified will. Those parts that had originally acted independently were becoming a coordinated war machine at a visible rate.

It was growing stronger.

And the speed was not slow.

Klein’s hand rested on his knee, his fingertips unconsciously drawing some symbol. His brain was working at high speed—not thinking about how to help Ophelia, for she didn't need help right now. He was thinking about another question.

A more fundamental question.

“Klein.”

Ophelia’s voice came back from the middle of the battlefield.

Her tone was as flat as a still pond.

But Klein heard it.

He knew her too well. This abnormally flat tone meant she had completed her assessment of the enemy and reached a conclusion she didn't particularly like, but she wouldn't make the decision herself—she was waiting for his judgment.

She was asking: Can this guy be killed now?

It was a difficult answer for Klein to give.

Just then, the communicator at Klein’s waist vibrated.

He glanced down, his eyebrows twitching. The device belonged to Diancie, no doubt—he recognized the signal characteristics of that short-wave magic communicator he had modified. But the name at the end of the message made him look for an extra two seconds.

Augustus Julius.

Klein’s finger paused at the edge of the communicator, not opening it immediately.

Augustus. The Emperor of the Empire. The man who, by all rights, should be sitting in the deep palace of the imperial capital, had somehow made his way to this sea and was even using his daughter’s communication device.

This meant he had already met with Diancie. The group left on the island—Diancie, Lohr, Nelisa—were all now under the Emperor’s nose.

Klein expanded the message.

The text wasn't long, the phrasing was very restrained, using the honorific format for an external official. No small talk, no preamble, just one sentence:

“Mr. Klein, I have deployed more elite troops into the battlefield. You may call upon them.”

“He makes it sound so easy,” Klein muttered softly to himself as he put the communicator back at his waist.

The Silver Dragon’s tail flicked once, roughly meaning: You still have time to read letters?

Klein patted the scales on the dragon’s neck as a gesture of comfort.

Elite troops. He didn't know the number, but any unit Augustus dared to pull to the front lines at a time like this wouldn't be subpar. The question was—what could a conventional army do on this battlefield?

He looked up at Ophelia, who was currently locked in combat with the evil god.

Golden arcs of light carved one rift after another against the dark-green sky. She was fighting beautifully, her rhythm steady, without a single wasted step in her advance or retreat. But Klein could see that the damage her attacks inflicted on the evil god was being matched by its increasingly rapid regeneration speed.

If conventional soldiers went up, they wouldn't even be able to withstand the aftershocks of those tentacles swinging.

But Augustus wasn't stupid. He wouldn't send his elite as cannon fodder.

Therefore, the use of this army did not lie in a frontal assault.

Klein’s finger drew a circle on his knee.