The golden meteor tore through the night sky and plunged headlong into the ink-black seawater.
Klein could not even see how Ophelia adjusted her posture in mid-air, only feeling an indescribable, boundless force explode outward with her at the center!
Boom!
The thunderous roar did not come from the sky, but from the deep sea.
The entire reef cluster shook violently under the impact, as if a terrifying earthquake had occurred on the seabed.
Giant waves dozens of meters high were forcibly hoisted up, only to be crudely torn apart by the erupting golden battle qi, turning into a sky full of boiling steam.
A beam of sword light, refined to the extreme, arrived even faster than Ophelia herself, piercing through layers of water curtains and slashing straight toward the monster formed by countless overlapping phantoms.
The monster's massive body seemed to have never expected such an attack method, nor was it prepared for any defense.
It simply floated there quietly, allowing that single beam of sword light, capable of splitting mountains and severing seas, to slash across its body.
Klein's heart suddenly tightened.
Did it work?
Was it that easy?
However, at the moment the sword light hit, there was no blood, no roar, and not even a hint of resistance.
The massive and bizarre monster suddenly turned into billions of tiny bubbles the moment the sword light touched it, quietly dissipating into the seawater.
The maddening song entrenched in his mind also came to an abrupt halt.
The entire world, except for the roar of the wind, rain, and waves, instantly returned to a dead silence.
But this was definitely not the end.
Klein knew it well, and Ophelia knew it too.
"Don't even think about escaping!"
A cold shout came from within the water mist.
Klein did not hesitate for a second, immediately raising his hand. He did not need to think; his body's instinct had already begun to coordinate with Ophelia's actions.
He whispered ancient incantations, and the mana at his fingertips instantly resonated with the violent wind elements around him.
Whish—
The gale reversed its course, forming a massive, high-speed rotating wind field centered on those dispersing bubbles. The invisible wind walls firmly trapped those billions of bubbles in place, not giving them any chance to return to the sea.
The moment the wind field took shape, Ophelia's second strike arrived.
The sword light was chilling, arriving later but striking first.
If the first strike was a point condensed to the extreme, then this strike was a surface that covered the heavens and the earth.
The golden sword light evolved in her hand into a dense, airtight net, descending from the sky and enveloping the entire wind field.
Sizzle!
The bubbles restrained by the wind field collapsed instantly upon contact with the golden sword net, making faint popping sounds.
There were no omissions and no blind spots.
This was Ophelia; this was the Sword of the Empire!
However, in the next second, a scene appeared that made Klein's scalp tingle.
The shattered bubbles did not disappear but instead turned into the purest water droplets, merging back into the seawater below.
Immediately following that, the surface of the sea began to churn and converge violently.
In just a breath or two, the seawater reconsolidated, and that bizarre monster appeared in its original position once again.
Klein stared at it fixedly, trying to find any trace of change.
There was only one conclusion.
Judging solely by its appearance, it was completely unharmed.
In the seawater, Ophelia's figure reappeared. She held her longsword, her golden battle qi still blazing, but Klein could feel that her brow was tightly furrowed.
The monster before them had completely escaped the sensory lock of her battle qi. The only thing she could use to judge the battle situation now was her own eyes.
Therefore, she did not actually know if her two rounds of fierce attacks had caused any substantial damage to the enemy.
"—Aaaaaaaah!"
Just then, the reconsolidated monster let out a scream that was shrill to the extreme.
It was no longer a song, but a pure howl filled with pain and malice.
It violently lashed its massive fish tail, and several towering waves, shaped exactly like its tail, surged with the force of ten thousand tons, attacking Ophelia in the sea and Klein in the distance simultaneously!
The giant waves came fast and fierce, nearly sealing off all space for evasion.
Klein whispered an incantation again. This time, he mobilized the power of the water elements.
In front of the giant waves, the moisture in the air instantly condensed, and layers of ice walls rose from the ground, attempting to block them. But the power of the waves was too overbearing, and the ice walls were crushed almost instantly.
But Klein's purpose was never to block them.
The moment the ice walls shattered, his communication with the water elements penetrated the body of the giant wave.
"Stagnation!"
The towering wave experienced an extremely brief moment of pause only a few meters away from Ophelia.
For this Knightess, that was enough.
Ophelia's figure turned into a bolt of golden lightning, seizing this fleeting opportunity to pass directly through the giant wave that seemed frozen in time, slashing out her third strike!
Unfortunately, the result remained the same.
Exactly as it had been with the first strike, after her sharp blade was about to touch the monster's body, the creature turned into a sky full of bubbles again, perfectly evading all damage.
Again!
Klein clenched his teeth.
Physical attacks were ineffective, or rather, the opponent simply did not give you the chance for a physical attack.
In that case, what about energy attacks?
He immediately shifted his thinking, the incantations flowing rapidly between his lips.
"Incinerate!"
This time, he no longer tried to restrain those bubbles but directly invoked the fire elements.
Roaring flames were born out of thin air, turning the area covered by the bubbles into a sea of fire.
The high temperature instantly evaporated a large amount of seawater, and the air was filled with a pungent burnt smell and thick water vapor.
He could clearly see those bubbles being rapidly evaporated and refined under the scorching of the fire.
However, the effect was still unsatisfactory.
Even though the bubbles were evaporated into water vapor by the fire, that vapor only swirled in the air for a moment before turning back into cold rain and falling into the sea.
Then, the monster condensed once again, as if everything that had just happened was merely an illusion.
Klein's expression became incredibly grim.
He began to try using his own methods as an alchemist to analyze this bizarre scene.
He activated his mana vision once again.
In his perception, the world turned into an abstract scroll composed of different colored elements and mana flows.
However, the location where that monster stood was a state of complete nothingness.
There was no elemental gathering, no mana reaction, nothing at all.
It existed there so abruptly, yet it did not belong to any known energy system in this world.
Although he had expected this, Klein could not help but feel a bit discouraged.
The inability to analyze it meant an inability to target it.
And being unable to target it meant all attacks were just a waste of physical strength.
The monster before them seemed to possess a literal form of immortality.
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