Faces

Nelisa's smile rippled through the night rain, carrying a hint of unmasked playfulness.

Ignoring Nelisa's strange attitude for the moment, Klein and Ophelia shared a glance, reaching a consensus without needing words.

Since the enigmatic merchant president had resolved their worries about the harbor, setting out immediately was the best choice.

The longer they delayed, the more variables could arise from that unknown source in the sea.

The two gave Nelisa a slight nod of acknowledgment, accepting her favor.

Ophelia then turned to Klein, her royal blue vest with gold trim reflecting a cold light under the glow of the magic dome. Rain slid down the barrier, forming crystalline curtains of water around her.

"Do you have a way to move quickly?"

Her question was direct as always, skipping all unnecessary pleasantries. Her golden pupils reflected the distant sea shrouded by the blood moon, burning with an impatient fighting spirit.

Klein thought for a moment before honestly shaking his head.

He did possess some basic wind-based acceleration magic and could speed himself up by communicating with wind elements.

These techniques might be enough for daily use, but in this race against time, they paled in comparison to the terrifying speed Ophelia achieved through pure battle qi.

It was not a gap in skill, but a complete crushing of raw power values.

Seeing Klein shake his head, Ophelia did not ask another word.

She simply stepped forward and grabbed Klein's wrist with a crisp, decisive movement.

"Hold onto me."

Her voice was calm, yet it carried an unquestionable sense of command.

Klein was momentarily stunned but quickly reacted, obediently reaching out to wrap his arms around her slender yet powerful waist.

Through the layer of her royal blue vest, he could clearly feel the warmth of Ophelia's body and the terrifying battle qi that was poised to erupt, nearly overflowing from her skin.

"Hold tight."

Ophelia gave a brief warning.

Her tone remained calm, but Klein keenly noticed that the tips of her ears seemed to flush with an imperceptible redness.

Before his thoughts could finish wandering.

In the next instant, golden battle qi erupted from within Ophelia without warning!

Boom!

The stone slabs beneath their feet instantly shattered into a web of fine cracks, sending debris flying.

Klein felt an irresistible, massive force transmit from his waist as he was yanked along, turning into a streak of golden light that soared into the sky. He instantly tore through the curtain of rain, shooting toward the dark, distant sea.

The speed was too fast.

It was so fast that the surrounding scenery turned into blurred lines of light, and the biting wind transformed into a solid wall, pressing hard against his body.

Klein's breath was nearly stolen away in an instant by this horrific wind pressure.

If he hadn't moved his mana in time to form a weak protection over his skin, the wind pressure alone would have been enough to suffocate him. The sound of the wind in his ears screamed like thunder, and raindrops struck his mana shield with a dense, crackling sound, as if countless tiny bullets were bombarding him.

Is this... Ophelia's speed?

Klein was shocked.

He had seen Ophelia fight before and knew her strength was unfathomable, but only when being carried by her did he truly experience that pure, violent, and crushing sense of power.

This was no longer within the realm of humanity.

The sensation in his arms remained frighteningly stable.

Klein struggled to turn his head slightly, only able to see Ophelia's determined profile enveloped in golden battle qi.

At such extreme speeds, her hair was pulled into a straight line, and her golden eyes held only the ocean shrouded in crimson moonlight ahead.

Focused, calm, and unwavering.

This Knightess... is a complete woman of action.

Klein smiled wryly in his heart.

However, the feeling of flying while holding her like this... honestly, it was quite subtle.

He managed to steady his mind and began to concentrate, spreading out his mana perception.

Although he had already determined the location of the anomaly, it was better to observe again just to be safe.

In such terrifying high-speed movement, the naked eye had lost its function. Only an affinity for the elements could precisely locate the source stirring the wind and waves.

Klein closed his eyes, letting his mana extend in all directions like invisible tentacles.

The sea breeze was thick with water elements, but in one specific place, the flow of those elements was clearly wrong.

They were being annihilated.

Not consumed, not transformed, but vanishing from this world in a way that defied common sense.

It was as if they were being... eaten by something.

Annihilating water elements... violent... it is in that direction!

He opened his eyes and pointed his hand toward the pitch-black sea to their front left.

Ophelia understood immediately. The golden streak of light enveloping them traced a small arc in the air, adjusting their direction without a single error.

The cooperation between the two was surprisingly tacit.

No extra words, no hesitation. With just a simple gesture, the direction was precisely adjusted.

Fortunately, the source of the anomaly did not seem to be moving, or perhaps it was moving extremely slowly.

This saved them a lot of trouble in their pursuit.

Of course, even if that thing could move, it would likely be caught under Ophelia's terrifying speed.

Just a few breaths after Klein confirmed the location, Ophelia's speed began to gradually decrease.

The golden light slowly retracted, and the surrounding scenery changed from blurred lines back into clear silhouettes.

Finally, the two stopped above a reef several nautical miles away from the target area, landing silently.

Klein's feet landed on the slippery reef, and he nearly lost his footing.

Ophelia reached out to steady him before letting go, her gaze already locked onto the sea ahead.

She did not approach rashly.

The enemy before them was almost unknown, especially that eerie song which could directly affect a person's mind.

What made her even more wary was that with her keen perception of life force through battle qi, she was completely unable to capture any sign of life in the sea ahead.

That place was empty.

It was as if the thing stirring the massive waves was not a creature, but something... even more bizarre.

"Can you see it?"

Ophelia asked in a low voice, her words nearly drowned out by the sound of the waves.

Klein nodded, took a deep breath, and focused his mind, gathering mana into his eyes.

A faint blue light glowed in his pupils, a sign of mana-enhanced vision.

Then, he saw it.

It was a... bizarre sight that could not be accurately described with words.

In his vision, double images seemed to appear.

A slender, graceful figure was faint in the water. She had a fish's tail and a human's upper body, beautiful beyond anything mortal.

Her long hair drifted in the water like seaweed, and her face was as exquisite as a work of art.

It was a mermaid.

No, that wasn't right.

In the next moment, the silhouette began to distort.

The mermaid form that had been fairly clear just moments ago shattered like a broken mirror. After the fragments reorganized, they presented a completely different appearance—a human face, but grown upon the body of a bird.

The wings on its back were bent eerily, as if they had once been broken by some massive force and healed in a way that defied nature.

Feathers clung wetly to its body, shimmering with an ominous dark luster under the moonlight.

Its eyes opened.

There were no pupils in those eyes, only a swirling abyss like a vortex.

Even though that gaze was not looking at him, Klein felt as if it were piercing straight into the depths of his soul.

An indescribable sense of temptation rose from his heart, like countless fine threads pulling at his consciousness, trying to drag him into that dark seawater.

Their lips parted slightly.

The song changed.

It was no longer the ethereal, distant chanting from before, but became seductive and sweet—sickeningly sweet.

That sound seemed to bypass the eardrums, echoing directly in the brain. Every syllable was like a hook, tearing away at one's sanity bit by bit.

Klein frowned slightly.

"Sirens..." he murmured to himself.

Monsters from legend that used their song to lure sailors into the sea.

And now, it was right before their eyes.

Just as the thought occurred, the images overlapped again.

Fine scales emerged on the figure's body, and fins grew near its ears. Its aura shifted from seductive to an ancient, majestic coldness.

What emanated from the voice was no longer charm, but a deep-sea indifference that transcended human understanding.

That was the sea folk from the legends in his memory.

Mermaids, sirens, sea folk...

Countless types of legendary creatures associated with the ocean, song, and charm were constantly overlapping, flashing, and merging at the same coordinate point.

It was not a fusion of physical characteristics, nor was it a rapid change of form.

In Klein's mind, a more absurd yet more fitting thought surfaced.

It had no fixed shape.

Or rather, it possessed all shapes simultaneously.

It was as if... as if countless legendary sea creatures had been forcibly compressed and superimposed onto a single existence.

It was a mermaid, a siren, and the sea folk all at once, while simultaneously being none of them.

If he had to describe the thing before him, it was likely... a monster existing with multiple images at the same time.

A conceptual anomaly that should not exist in this world.

Klein felt his scalp go numb.

His logic was screaming at him to stop looking.

But he forced himself to stay calm, trying to find more information from that chaotic imagery.

Right then.

Beneath the surface of the water, those countless overlapping figures and all the faces of different forms seemed to sense something.

Slowly...

Slowly...

They lifted their heads.

All of their gazes pierced through the pitch-black seawater, through the night and the rain, landing precisely upon the reef.

They landed on him and Ophelia.

In that instant, Klein felt a bone-chilling cold surge from his spine straight to his head.

It wasn't fear.

It was a more primitive warning from biological instinct.

You have been targeted.