Snake froze in place.
His vertical pupils shifted from absolute rage to terror, and from terror to something on the verge of collapsing.
“No! Stop!”
He shrieked into the surrounding water. His voice echoed through the deep sea, but there was no response.
He spun around and rushed toward the nearest cluster of suspended clansmen.
Standing atop the undersea ridge, Ethan watched with cold indifference.
“You piece of trash, here is my grand gift to you.”
Then, he snapped his fingers.
Before the Sea Snake's trident could touch them, the seagrass suddenly tightened.
Every single strand of seagrass tightened at the exact same moment.
The sound of bones snapping exploded from all directions simultaneously.
The sound was so dense it was impossible to distinguish individual snaps, like an entire mountain collapsing in an instant.
Dark green blood squeezed out from the gaps in the seagrass, spreading through the water into a massive cloud of blood that covered several hundred square kilometers.
Tens of millions of Red-Scaled Sea Snakes—all annihilated.
The Second-Tier Sea Snake stood beneath that massive cloud of blood.
His trident was still raised in a slashing pose.
A few severed strands of seagrass were wrapped around the tip of the trident, still swaying gently.
There was nothing left in his vertical pupils.
The rage was gone. The terror was gone.
He slowly lowered his head, staring at his hands.
They were stained with dark green blood, splashed onto him when he had sliced the seagrass earlier.
He raised his head and looked at the cloud of blood above him.
Wrapped within the bloody cloud were the shredded flesh, broken bones, and shattered scales of tens of millions of his clansmen.
The cloud of blood slowly drifted through the seawater, staining the entire ruined settlement a dark green.
His mouth fell open.
The corners of his mouth, split all the way to his ears, trembled violently.
His three rows of sharp fangs gleamed with a sickly green luster under the fluorescence of the luminous pearls.
Half-stifled sounds squeezed out of his throat.
It didn't sound like a shriek, nor did it sound like a roar; it was like something forcefully wrenched from the deepest depths of his chest.
And then, he erupted.
The dark green light on his trident flared violently.
A shockwave ring over a thousand meters in diameter exploded from beneath his feet, flipping the sandy seabed, crushing the ruins of the coral bone structures into powder, and tearing a massive hole in the bloody cloud overhead.
His scales bristled one by one as his muscles writhed violently beneath his skin.
Only one thing remained in his vertical pupils.
Madness.
Pure, unadulterated madness, devoid of any trace of sanity.
Opening his mouth, he unleashed a silent roar in all directions.
Sound waves rippled through the deep sea, making the seawater itself tremble.
He spun his trident in his hand, pointing its tip outward, but he didn't know whom to target.
He couldn't find his enemy.
From beginning to end, he hadn't seen so much as a shadow of his foe.
“Come out!” Snake's roar exploded across the seabed, the sound waves pushing the seawater away within a radius of several hundred meters, creating a temporary vacuum.
He slammed his trident hard into the sandy ground, and another shockwave erupted, blasting back the returning seawater once more. “Come out! Come out! Come out!”
Only his own echoes answered him.
Just then, the sandy seabed trembled slightly. The vibration was incredibly subtle, as if something deep beneath the sand had slightly shifted its body.
Snake suddenly looked down.
The sandy ground beneath his feet caved in.
A massive vortex over a thousand meters in diameter formed beneath his feet, the sand at its center sucked downward by an invisible force, exposing the black bedrock beneath.
The bedrock was covered in cracks, and a deep green light gleamed from deep within them.
The light grew brighter and more blinding, erupting from the cracks and staining the entire sea an emerald green.
Snake kicked off the sand, launching his body upward.
Countless strands of seagrass erupted from the center of the vortex.
This seagrass was thicker, denser, and faster than before.
Each strand was as thick as a palace pillar, no longer emitting any light but presenting a dark green luster that was almost metallic.
The seagrass tore through the water, the sonic booms it generated reducing all the sand at the edge of the vortex to powder.
They surged from the vortex, from the cracks in the bedrock, and from every single pore in the sandy ground, transforming the entire seabed into a primeval forest of seagrass.
Snake was swallowed by the seagrass.
The seagrass wrapped around his ankles and tightened, shattering his scales. It wrapped around his shins and tightened, his bones making a faint cracking sound.
The seagrass wrapped around his waist, his chest, his neck, and the arm gripping his trident.
He swung his trident to slice the seagrass binding his right arm, but the moment he cut it, ten new strands rushed in to take its place.
He opened his mouth to unleash an energy torrent, but the seagrass shoved directly into his mouth, boring down his throat and growing wildly inside his esophagus.
The trident slipped from his hand, sinking toward the seabed.
Snake's vertical pupils dilated to their limits.
His body was wrapped in layer upon layer of seagrass, from his ankles to the top of his head, leaving not a single inch of scale armor exposed.
The seagrass dug into the gaps between his scales, into his gill slits, and into his eye sockets.
He heard the sound of his own bones snapping, one by one, spreading from his limbs to his torso, and from his torso to his skull.
He wanted to screech, to roar, to curse his invisible enemy.
But the seagrass stuffed in his mouth prevented him from making even a single sound.
Ten seconds later, Snake finally lost the strength to struggle.
【Life Energy +86,584,723, Current Life Energy: 174,655,842.】
“Phew...”
Ethan let out a long breath.
“Today, the Red-Scaled Sea Snake tribe is completely wiped out.”
The seagrass withdrew from deep within the sand, carrying Snake's corpse and his trident, and delivered them to Ethan.
Ethan put both items into his ring, hovering above the ruins of the Red-Scaled Sea Snake tribe, looking down at the seabed that had been completely churned up by the seagrass.
Mana surged around him, and the patch of seagrass beneath his feet churned once more.
Tens of thousands of strands of seagrass sprouted from the sand again, burrowing deep into the ruins, winding through the collapsed architectural skeletons, and searching the warehouses and secret rooms buried beneath the sand.
They rummaged through the mixture of debris and Sea Snake flesh, stripping everything of value from the ruins.
Soon, the first batch of items was wrapped in seagrass and brought to Ethan.
Several chests of deep-sea ore of excellent quality, with aqua-blue light patterns flowing across their surfaces.
A dozen or so scrolls recorded on waterproof material, their contents unreadable for the moment.
A pile of fist-sized luminous pearls, the fluorescence inside them still flickering faintly.
The seagrass brought a second and third batch.
Various deep-sea medicinal herbs, unidentified metal ingots, ornaments carved from coral bone, and weapons inlaid with crystals piled up into a small hill in front of Ethan.
Ethan began sorting through them.
He put all the ores into his ring, selected the well-preserved medicinal herbs to store as well, and picked out the dozen luminous pearls with the strongest energy fluctuations, casually tossing the rest back into the ruins.
Most of those coral bone weapons and ornaments were Apprentice-level Wizardry Tools, which were of no use to him, but he swept them up anyway to trade for magic stones later.
A strand of seagrass coiled around a fist-sized, deep blue crystal and brought it forward.
Wave-like patterns flowed inside the crystal, looking extremely similar to the Sea Marrow Crystal Boulder had given him, though this one was of even better quality.
A few more strands of seagrass delivered several fist-sized, crimson scales.
The edges of the scales gleamed with a dark gold luster, their surfaces densely engraved with runic patterns. These were the natal scales shed by the Red-Scaled Sea Snakes, making them excellent materials for refining defensive Wizardry Tools.
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