At the moment the alchemical array was activated, Klein’s brain was violently washed by an unprecedented torrent of information.
He was no longer “himself.”
At this moment, he was the core of the array, the—god—of this sea.
The ocean disintegrated in his eyes. It was no longer water, but endless data. The temperature, salinity, pressure, and mana content of every single drop of seawater... billions upon billions of pieces of information, like a flood breaking a dam, savagely poured into his consciousness at a speed capable of incinerating a mind.
It’s going to explode!
Any mortal’s spirit would not last even a millisecond under such an impact.
But Klein held on.
That surge of deep-sea pollution he had actively drawn into his body—the most malicious curse from the evil god—actually became his dam at this moment.
The black, maddening energy roared as it actively met the torrent of information, greedily devouring and filtering out the most explosive and chaotic parts, leaving only relatively pure data to be imported into Klein’s consciousness.
Fighting poison with poison. Using chaos to cancel out chaos.
An exquisite, madly perfect balance established on the edge of destruction.
Ophelia, below, could not understand the flow of that energy, but she could see Klein.
His body had become a living map.
The blue runic light paths and the black traces of pollution crisscrossed like two snakes strangling each other. The black lines grew and spread frantically, trying to consume him completely, only to be suppressed by the more brilliant blue light paths at the exact moment they were about to succeed.
The two powers ebbed and flowed in a repeating cycle.
He was like a man dancing on a tightrope, with abysses on either side.
The nearly insane smile on Klein’s face slowly faded, replaced by a non-human, absolute rationality. There were no longer any physical entities in his eyes—no sky, no sea, no Ophelia—only countless flickering points of data constantly appearing and vanishing.
He raised his hand.
And issued the first command.
—Decompose.
With him as the center, the entire sea began to churn, dismantle, and reorganize!
The seawater was being transformed.
Transformed into the purest, most active water elements.
The entire process was silent, without explosions or loud noises; there was only a soul-shuddering “sense of erasure” originating from the depths of instinct. It was as if a part of the world was being rubbed out by an eraser.
Then, the sea surface collapsed.
Visibly, and at a speed that defied all common sense, it descended frantically.
The silver dragon beneath Klein’s feet let out a suppressed low growl, its massive body involuntarily trembling.
It had lived for thousands of years.
It had seen continents sink, volcanoes erupt, and gods fall.
It finally understood the intention of this tiny creature.
Refining the ocean.
Ascending to godhood in a single step!
Then, using the level of existence of a god, he would completely uproot the pollution rooted deep within Ophelia’s soul!
Madman!
This man was an utter madman!
In the silver dragon’s vertical pupils, a rare trace of... awe was reflected.
...
In the communicator, Nelisa’s voice tore through its elegant disguise for the first time.
She was no longer the composed chamber of commerce president; only the most instinctive sharpness and fear of a woman facing the unknown remained.
“Klein! Answer me! What happened—the sea?! Where did the sea go?!”
There was no response.
“The ships! Our ships are falling!”
Following closely was Lohr’s roar, mixed with the whistling of the gale, as he broadcasted to everyone at maximum volume.
“Report! The sea level is disappearing! Repeat! It’s not evaporation, it’s not a low tide—it is completely, totally disappearing!”
They had just finished off the fragments of the evil god that had been flung to the edges by the array. The blood on their hands was not yet dry, and they hadn’t even had time to catch their breath—before witnessing the most absurd and bizarre scene of their lives.
The sea beneath them was gone.
In just a few dozen seconds, it had been erased into thin air.
The boundless ocean was now only a giant, bottomless pit. The muddy seabed was exposed to the sunlight, and countless stranded fish struggled for life in the sludge, making faint flopping sounds.
The massive imperial fleet and the ships of the Silver Scale Chamber of Commerce were like toy ducks in a bathtub with the plug pulled, falling with the rapidly dropping water level toward the exposed, wet, and muddy seabed below!
“Hold on to anything fixed!” Diancie’s voice rang out, young yet desperately suppressing her trembling.
The massive hulls slammed into the hard seabed with deafening crashes. Wood splintered, masts snapped, and panic spread through the fleet like a plague. Soldiers fell on the decks; some were praying, while others were crying out.
But at the center of the battlefield, Klein was oblivious.
Or rather—he couldn’t “hear” at all.
The only thing that could enter his consciousness now was data.
Human language, emotions, and fear were already things of another dimension.
All of his will was poured into the analysis and reconstruction of this ocean. Endless water elements were extracted, compressed, and compressed again.
The entire world was dead silent.
Even the wind had stopped.
When the last drop of seawater was finally transformed—that majestic volume of water that had covered unknown nautical miles, that vast existence that should have weighed billions of tons—it eventually condensed into a fist-sized crystal above Klein’s palm.
The crystal was pure blue throughout.
A blue so deep it didn’t seem like a color this world should possess. A glow slowly flowed across its surface, and inside—it seemed to imprison an entire collapsed starry sky.
Heaven and earth stood still at this moment.
Ophelia forgot to breathe.
She floated in mid-air, looking up at the man—her husband, now riding atop the silver dragon. One hand bore the malice of the deep sea, black patterns spreading from his left arm to his shoulder; the other hand held the source of the ocean, the blue crystal making his right hand look nearly transparent.
Black and blue, two kinds of light enveloped him.
On that face, pale as paper from extreme mental exhaustion, a faint smile slowly appeared.
It was an expression... she had never seen on Klein’s face before.
It was the expression that only an existence capable of creating—and destroying—a world was entitled to have.
Ophelia’s hand trembled slightly.
...
At that very moment.
In the distance, on a lonely reef that no one noticed.
Amidst the black rock walls exposed after the sea receded, a black-robed figure who had been silently watching all of this slowly raised her head.
Under the hood was a face mostly obscured by shadow.
She extended a slender finger, reaching out toward the distant direction where Klein was.
She seemed to want to touch that great creation across the vast space.
Using a voice only she could hear, she whispered a few words.
“The Sage’s Heart...”
She paused.
The golden eyes reflected the faint light of the blue crystal, and some emotion flowed within them—curiosity? Awe? Or a more complex feeling that even she couldn’t distinguish.
Finally, she added another sentence.
“...How terrifying.”
Her voice was very soft, as if she were talking to herself.
Then, her gaze moved past the crystal and finally landed on the man holding the Sage’s Heart in one hand.
She watched for a long time.
So long that the sea breeze blew her hood askew, revealing a lock of long hair.
Finally—
She curled her lips and called out softly.
“Papa.”
...
...
“Do not resist.”
Klein’s voice came from above.
Ophelia looked up at the man.
Only a nearly divine indifference remained on his face. There was no longer any warmth in those eyes—it was as if everything in the world had been reduced to basic particles in his sight, including her.
Resist?
How could she resist?
And why—should she resist?
Ophelia closed her eyes.
There was no hesitation.
A brief image flashed through her mind—it was the first time she had stepped into that rural manor, the young man standing at the door with sunlight on his shoulders, reaching out his hand to her.
...She chose to believe.
Ophelia completely let go of her control over her body, surrendering everything—her battle qi, her consciousness, and her soul.
Unreservedly.
In the next moment.
The blue crystal imprisoning the collapsed starry sky—the Sage’s Heart—silently turned into the purest light in Klein’s palm.
The stream of light was like an arrow.
Without giving her any time to react—it shot straight into her brow.
There was no pain.
Only a sense of being completely pierced, completely occupied by an icy coldness. It was as if she had been thrown into the freezing deep sea, yet she felt a strange peace while drowning.
Ophelia felt herself become a transparent vessel.
An overbearing will, carrying the weight of the entire ocean—no, it was the entire ocean itself—savagely washed through her entire body, her meridians, her bones, and the depths of her soul.
“ROAR—!!!”
A silent, soul-level shriek exploded within her!
It was the deep-sea pollution that had occupied her bloodline and lived in symbiosis with her for several years.
To this external power, it was an absolute heresy—a natural enemy!
The black power of the evil god fought back frantically, like a trapped beast pushed to a dead end, mobilizing all its remaining strength in an attempt to devour and assimilate this blue torrent. Just as it had slowly polluted Ophelia’s battle qi in the past, it wanted to turn this power into its own nourishment.
But this time—
It hit a steel wall.
If the evil god’s pollution was a disordered, chaotic “chaos” that devoured everything.
Then the power Klein was currently pouring in was an “existence” endowed with absolute “order.”
When chaos meets order, it is like darkness meeting light.
There was no room for a struggle.
The blue ocean source had no intention of entangling with it. It simply flowed. Calmly, irresistibly, it flowed.
Wherever it passed—those black, twisted, and insane pollutions were like words written on a beach being washed over by the rising tide.
There was no struggle, no chance for resistance.
Not even a trace was left behind.
They were forcibly expelled, decomposed, and reduced to the most primitive, harmless energy.
Ophelia could “see” wisps of black gas being squeezed out of her skin pores. They were like the fingers of a drowning person reaching out desperately, and the moment they touched the outside air, they were annihilated into nothingness.
The curse that had entangled her for years.
The thing that had caused her to wake up from nightmares countless times, that had made her check every morning if the black scales on her left hand had spread, that had forced her to constantly suppress mutations even while holding a sword—
At this moment, it appeared so incredibly fragile.
The purification... was complete?
No.
That wasn’t right.
Ophelia’s heart suddenly sank.
She felt that after expelling the evil god’s pollution, the blue ocean source did not recede.
It was not a guest that would leave after completing its mission.
It just naturally occupied the position originally held by the pollution. Naturally, as if it were meant to be there.
It flowed in her veins, replacing a part of her blood.
It was engraved on her bones, merging into her marrow.
It took root in her soul, intertwining with her consciousness.
Klein had not purified the pollution; instead, he had used a brand-new, more powerful, and more overbearing force to replace the old pollution.
Ophelia snapped her eyes open.
Her golden pupils constricted violently.
She could clearly feel—an unprecedented, unbreakable connection had been established between her and Klein, who was floating in mid-air.
That connection was not the love between husband and wife.
Nor was it the trust between comrades.
It was a more ancient, more primitive, and... more unequal relationship.
Like an inscription carved into the deepest layer of the soul, it could not be erased or resisted.
Like... a believer and a god.
Like... an apostle and a master.
Her existence, her power, her will—all had been stamped with a brand.
A brand belonging to Klein.
...
Ophelia’s perception was not wrong.
Klein had indeed briefly touched the realm of a “god” by virtue of the Sage’s Heart.
And the way he uprooted the curse for Ophelia was indeed not simple purification—no purification method in the world could erase a curse into which an evil god had poured all its effort.
He chose a more extreme path.
Using his brief divine status, he forcibly transformed Ophelia into his “Divine Apostle.”
The first.
And the only one.
From now on, any concept of the “sea” could no longer cause her harm.
Because she herself—had already become a part of the ocean.
She had become the only extension of authority left in this world by that briefly existing god.
...
Ophelia instinctively mobilized her battle qi.
Golden flames rose from her body.
But this time, it felt completely different.
The battle qi flowed through her meridians—with incredible smoothness. There was no longer any obstruction, no longer any foreign objects that needed to be suppressed. The heavy feeling that had plagued her for years, the constant tug-of-war with the pollution, had completely vanished.
In its place was a dizzying lightness.
The battle qi flowed through her left arm—
Ophelia looked down, her pupils suddenly constricting.
The skin of her left arm had actually become clear and transparent.
Through her skin, she could clearly see what was flowing inside—it was not blood.
But a miniature, surging azure ocean flecked with golden light.
Shimmering and undulating. Ebbing and flowing.
It flowed quietly in her veins, just like that.
“...”
Ophelia stared at her elementalized arm and remained silent for a long time.
She slowly clenched her fist and then relaxed it. Through her transparent fingertips, she could see the internal “current” surging with her movements.
Her power was stronger than before.
Stronger—by a lot.
But what was the price?
Was she no longer purely human?
“So... that’s how it is.”
Ophelia murmured to herself.
Her emotions were complex to the extreme. She raised her head and looked again at the man still floating atop the silver dragon.
Still pale.
Still inhumanly indifferent.
Still like a god.
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