Chapter 447: Reunion of Old Friends |
"Master Mentor, three merfolk could do this much before, but now there are hundreds of them. I'm a bit nervous..."
As time slowly passed, the Bishop was gradually losing his confidence. Although he trusted Loren, he also hoped Loren would give him some reassurance.
If Loren hadn't come to rescue him, he really might have been done for here.
"Back then, they could do that much because they had the Merfolk Staff. Without that item, their ability to control seawater drops dramatically.
"Now that their Merfolk Staffs are all destroyed by me, the remaining merfolk are nothing to worry about.
"Moreover, these are just merfolk corpses. Their strength is far inferior to real merfolk."
"I see..."
Hearing Loren say this, the Bishop felt much more at ease and continued to dutifully guard Loren's front.
Just then, Loren heard the sound of crashing waves, and at the same time, his Intuition sent a warning signal.
Loren thrust the Requiem into the ground. The altar drawn with Loren's blood emitted a crimson glow, and several mages on the altar felt their magic being drained away.
"Keep praying. When I give the signal, release your spells."
As Loren's words fell, another tsunami appeared on the sea surface, its scale far surpassing the last one.
But this time, Loren and the others were relatively farther from the shore, so the tsunami's impact would be greatly reduced by the time it reached them.
This was already the limit distance. Going any farther would drag other cities into the disaster.
"Get ready. Natural Barrier!"
Loren chanted the name of a fourth-tier spell. Almost everyone here knew this most basic mid-tier Abundant Magic. More magic was drawn from the mages on the altar, and dense clusters of saplings suddenly sprouted on the beach ahead of Loren.
In just a few seconds, these saplings grew into towering trees.
At the same time, the tsunami surged in. Hidden within the waves were densely packed merfolk, their rotting faces filled with madness.
The mages behind Loren chanted incantations and began releasing their spells as well. Their magic merged with Loren's through the ritual.
The next moment, those trees began their second growth, eventually transforming into ancient towering trees that completely blocked the tsunami.
The tsunami slammed violently into these ancient trees, producing a deafening thunderous crash. Loren felt the earth trembling beneath him, causing many mages to stumble and fall from losing their footing.
This wasn't an illusion. The ground was genuinely shaking. The roots of these ancient trees had spread across nearly the entire city; otherwise, they couldn't have withstood the tsunami's impact.
This clash ended with Loren's side victorious. The waves were shattered, but the real killing blow was yet to come.
The merfolk rode the foam toward Loren, steering their waves with incredible agility. They skirted around the dense ancient trees and had already arrived before everyone.
This was the first time they had seen merfolk up close. Unlike the beautiful images they had imagined, these rotting faces filled them with fear and disgust.
"Return to Earth!"
Loren gave the next command. People didn't understand why Loren would have them release this first-tier spell for disposing of corpses, but since it was Loren's order, they just followed it.
These merfolk were, after all, corpses. Normally, a necromancer would divert some magic to protect the corpses under their control; otherwise, they could easily be one-shot by spells like Return to Earth that target dead bodies.
But there were too many merfolk here. The necromancer behind them certainly wouldn't have applied protective magic to each and every one.
His control over these merfolk wasn't very precise—evidenced by the fact that he hadn't even noticed Loren stealing so many of his corpses.
Clearly, Loren's guess was correct. Before these merfolk could charge over, they had turned to dust.
"Now focus on praying and channel your magic to me!
"Nature's Wrath!"
Loren released three spells in one breath. Nature's Wrath was a seventh-tier spell with a simple effect: it greatly enhanced everything related to Bountifulness, driving plants into a frenzy.
The moment Loren released this spell, those ancient trees went wild. They continued growing, chaotically and without restriction.
They seemed to come alive, constantly using their branches to hunt down the surrounding merfolk. Any merfolk entangled by the branches would turn into dried corpses within seconds.
"Giant Wood Strangulation! Dance of the Green Sea!"
Loren unleashed two spells in succession. These spells were simple and brutal, but effective.
Moreover, this time Loren had a medium to work with. This gave far greater power and range than generating plants out of thin air. With so many people's magic empowering him, it directly created a scene resembling a natural disaster.
The branches of these trees suddenly exploded. Leaves flew everywhere, slicing the merfolk in the air to pieces like razor blades, while the tree trunks transformed into giant pythons, grinding the merfolk on the ground into meat paste.
Strangely, Loren felt a sense of déjà vu, as if this were some formation from a xianxia world. But none of that mattered. What mattered was that it worked.
Under this almost one-sided slaughter, Loren's experience skyrocketed. He quickly reached level fifty. Loren casually added a point to Intelligence, then continued managing the overall situation.
Loren manipulated these trees, using them to expand his field of vision. He finally saw the current scene out at sea.
The merfolk that had just charged in were only a small fraction. Most of them remained in the sea.
At the very front, Loren spotted a familiar figure.
It was a half-merfolk. Her body had randomly developed fish-like features—irregular fish scales on her skin, one leg transformed into a fish tail, and several fingers on one hand turned into fins.
One of her eyes was a lifeless fish eye, while her other human eye burned with fury as it fixed on Loren:
"Loren, I've crawled back from hell!"
"Mara?"
The person before him caught Loren off guard. He had considered many possibilities, but Mara was the last name on his list. Loren had always believed that dead people were the best at keeping secrets.
And Mara had been dead long ago—deader than dead. She had been devoured by Pluto's Mouth, her soul swallowed along with her body.
"I'm back. Surprised?"
In the blink of an eye, Mara had already flashed before Loren:
"Not only am I back, but I'm also complete now. Stronger..."
Mara raised her hand. There was no gathering of magic, no warning at all, yet Loren's Intuition began screaming a frantic alarm.
Loren instinctively sidestepped. The next moment, the chest of the mage behind him became a hollow void. His eyes widened as he collapsed without even having time to speak his last words.
"This spell is called [Loss]. It's the power of the God of Sorrow..."
With just the first exchange, Loren recognized what this was. He also saw the fishing lines behind Mara and the black smoke swirling around her.
"God of Sorrow, God of Hatred, Angler... and if I'm not mistaken, the Goddess of Love and the Sea God as well. So many entities moved simultaneously to save you. In a way, you could be called a child of destiny."
In an instant, Loren fully understood Mara's current situation.
Now that he knew her background, she had completely lost her threat. Loren revealed a confident smile, and it was precisely this smile that made Mara even more enraged.
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