"You're all right?"
Edmond's voice was filled with astonishment.
"I'm fine."
"This is the siren's song we're talking about?!"
Old Ed couldn't wrap his head around it.
"It's beautiful, truly beautiful!"
Elias interrupted his confusion, offering a sincere evaluation.
"Is it because your spirituality is high?"
Edmond fell silent for a few seconds before asking tentatively.
"Don't you worry about that; either way, I'm more clear-headed than when I was fighting the dream demon or the carapace husk!"
"This isn't scientific!"
Edmond was utterly baffled.
He had seen many self-righteous transcendents driven out of their minds by a single siren's song.
One by one, they would jump into the sea, torn to shreds with eerie, blissful smiles on their faces.
This kid wasn't even Scale One yet; how could he be fine?
What was even more irritating was that this guy just calmly shrugged his shoulders.
"Mysticism, buddy. Mysticism."
Edmond was left speechless.
Of course, while Elias appeared calm on the surface, he was actually wondering about it himself.
He had some guesses.
Connecting it to that sense of soul fusion he felt when he first woke up yesterday, perhaps the fusion of his soul with the original body's had produced some kind of 'quantity leads to quality change' effect.
The two souls overlapping had turned him into a 'giant' on a spiritual level.
Soul and spirituality were related.
Thus, he exhibited this extremely high resistance to mental attacks.
As for exactly how strong he had become, he wasn't sure.
However—
Why couldn't the dream demon's curse be resisted?
Elias frowned slightly.
That damn curse still plunged him into vivid hallucinations and nearly killed him.
Could it be that the power level of the dream demon's curse was far stronger than the songs of these sirens?
While Edmond was silenced by his retort, Elias didn't stay idle.
Strike while the iron is hot!
Since the siren's song was ineffective against him, the tables had turned!
He immediately raised the revolver in his hand, the muzzle pointing steadily at the confused siren on this side of the buoys.
This time, perhaps because his mindset was much more stable and the interference of unknown fear was gone, Elias's hand didn't shake, and his heart didn't race.
Bang!
The trigger was pulled.
The bullet accurately drilled into the siren's pitch-black right eye.
Splat!
Immediately after, the siren let out a shrill scream.
Its face instantly contorted into a mess, and bright blue blood erupted from the eye socket.
"Roar—!!!"
The agonizing pain drove it into a total frenzy.
It violently swung its long, scale-covered arms.
Following its movement, a mass of seawater nearby seemed to receive some kind of summons, actually hovering upward in defiance of gravity.
Countless water droplets compressed and condensed at its side.
In the blink of an eye, a trident made of pure water was created.
"What the hell? Spells?!"
Elias's eyes widened.
He clearly hadn't expected this situation.
They were just in a physical brawl a moment ago; how did it suddenly escalate to a magic duel?
This was cheating!
The water trident whistled through the air like a fired cannonball, hurtling toward Elias with the sound of breaking wind.
There was no time to dodge.
In this split second, Elias instinctively raised his left arm, holding the massive carapace husk headplate shield firmly in front of him.
Thud!
A dull impact echoed.
The massive force of the strike was transmitted through the shield to his entire body.
The incredibly hard headplate of the carapace husk did indeed block the trident's piercing blow; the weapon made of water disintegrated into countless splashes the moment it hit.
But the massive kinetic energy was very real.
Elias, who had been sprawled on the boat's hull, was sent flying by the force, creating a line of spray on the water's surface before slamming heavily into the sea.
Splash!
The cold seawater instantly enveloped his body.
Seeing this, the siren's single eye flashed with the pleasure of revenge.
Its strong fish tail slapped the water's surface, and it shot forward like an arrow from a bow, rapidly swimming toward where Elias had fallen.
It wanted to personally torture this hateful human to death!
Its speed was astonishing.
Elias had just poked his head out of the water and hadn't even had time to catch his breath when his collar was deathly gripped by a large, cold hand.
A massive pulling force came through.
Elias felt like a little chick being picked up; he was lifted directly by the siren and then slammed violently back underwater.
Glug, glug, glug...
Seawater poured into his nose and mouth.
In this life-or-death moment, Elias didn't struggle frantically with his limbs.
The moment his head hit the water, he used the momentum of being dragged to snap his waist, slamming the hard headplate shield on his left arm ruthlessly against the arm grabbing him.
Thud! Thud!
The sound of the exoskeleton hitting bone was dull and solid.
The siren cried out in pain and instinctively let go.
Now's the chance!
Having regained his freedom, Elias quickly surfaced and took a greedy, deep breath of air.
Only now did he empathize with why a certain ninety-five-year-old veteran loved using a shield so much.
But the siren hadn't given up.
Clutching its injured arm, it opened its blood-red maw and lunged at Elias.
This time, the distance between them was less than half a meter.
Elias could even see the nine tongues squirming inside its mouth.
Let's just call them tongues for now.
Elias's gaze was cold; the revolver in his right hand, which he had never let go of, was pressed directly against the siren's soft belly covered in fine scales.
This was true point-blank shooting.
Bang!
The final bullet.
The muzzle flash even instantly charred a circle of scales around it.
The close-range shot allowed the gunpowder's power to reach its peak, and the bullet pierced through the siren's abdomen without any resistance.
The siren's remaining black eye was instantly dyed with a layer of madness under the intense pain.
It didn't retreat; instead, its final ferocity exploded.
It lunged forward, its terrifying mouth—split to the ears—revealing a maw full of sharp serrated teeth as it snapped toward Elias's head.
Elias didn't back down; he moved in.
He slammed his left arm upward, stuffing the thick headplate shield directly into the siren's wide-open mouth.
"Here, have something tough to chew on!"
Crack!
A tooth-aching sound of snapping bone rang out.
The siren's forceful bite couldn't be stopped in time, and its sharp teeth slammed hard against the incredibly tough carapace husk headplate.
In an instant, shattered teeth flew everywhere.
Bright blue blood mixed with broken teeth instantly filled its mouth.
"Mmph!!!"
The siren let out a muffled whimper and let go.
It was like a mad dog that had bitten into a steel plate.
"Is the 'hard dish' tasty, brother?"
Elias mocked it, returning his left hand to a defensive stance with the shield while his right hand quickly holstered the empty gun and drew the sharp dagger from his boot.
The siren was driven mad by the pain.
It flailed its arms, its claws like sharp knives swiping at Elias.
Elias continued to block the attacks with the headplate shield while swinging his dagger like a demon.
Stab! Stab!
The dagger sank into the siren's chest and arms again and again.
Each time it was pulled out, it brought a spray of blue blood.
Of course, he also sustained several claw wounds himself.
In just a few seconds, more than a dozen bloody holes appeared on the siren's body.
It was finally afraid.
This suicidal fighting style was even more brutal than the beasts in their ocean.
It stopped its attack, its eyes revealing fear and the intent to retreat.
Just then, Edmond's urgent voice exploded in his mind:
"Get down!"
Without a second thought, Elias's body instinctively executed the command, and he ducked down into the water.
Whoosh!
Just a few centimeters above his head, a massive fish tail swept past with thousand-pound force.
The siren twisted its body, using the momentum of the tail swipe to dive into deep water like a stray dog.
A huge splash erupted over Elias's head.
He had barely dodged the fatal blow.
Elias held his breath underwater for a few seconds until he was sure there was no movement nearby before carefully poking his head out.
The waves on the sea continued as before, but the blood-drenched siren had long since swum off to who knows where.
"It ran?"
Elias panted heavily, feeling every muscle in his body trembling.
"It ran."
Edmond's voice sounded somewhat relieved.
Elias wiped the water from his face, the sound of his heart pounding violently echoing in his ears before gradually calming down.
He turned his head to look at the buoy defense line not far away.
The sirens who had been singing on the other side of the buoys had also stopped their chorus by now.
They gathered at the edge of the buoys, watching their companion flee in defeat, each of them becoming restless and agitated.
They shouted and threatened Elias, their mouths babbling in the sea-folk language.
A few hot-tempered ones even accelerated into a sudden charge, trying to break through the defense line to tear Elias apart.
Hum!
The moment they were about to cross the boundary, a nearly transparent curtain of light appeared out of thin air.
No matter how they slammed into it, the barrier remained motionless, firmly isolating them outside.
Elias finally saw clearly what kind of role the alchemy buoys played.
"It's like a Great Wall of Despair in the sea."
Elias looked at the scene and whispered to himself instinctively.
"The Great Wall of Despair? A very fitting metaphor."
Edmond clicked his tongue in his mind, seemingly savoring the phrase.
Elias had no time to discuss literature with him.
He struggled to swim to the small boat and flipped it back over.
The moment he climbed up, he felt like a sun-dried salted fish.
He needed to get back to shore immediately.
But looking at that group of sirens still gesturing and cursing outside the light curtain, Elias muttered while rowing.
"They're definitely cursing me, and it sounds pretty foul."
The small boat slowly moved away from this den of trouble.
Elias suddenly stopped rowing and turned around.
He raised a middle finger toward the group of posturing sirens.
"What does that mean?"
Edmond asked in confusion.
The corners of Elias's mouth curled up, revealing a flash of white teeth.
"Don't you worry about it."
"Anyway, I just cursed back at them."
Rate on N.U.
