The roar of the tide was like thunder. The clouds churned beneath a lead-gray sky, as though an overturned ink pool.
At this moment, the booming laughter echoing from the endless black tide was Threnodian Leviathan's.
"To think there exists in this world a fake whose frequency matches that person perfectly — marvelous, simply marvelous!"
Leviathan's thousand-meter-long fish spine broke through the water. Its bronze-tinted scales gleamed coldly, each one thicker than battleship armor.
The membrane wings spread between its dorsal fins unfurled, blotting out half the sky. Within the wing veins flowed eerie blue electric light.
An oppressive aura far stronger than that of the Sentinel — Jué — radiated from Leviathan's entire body, suppressing the strength of every one of Noah's characters by more than a single tier.
It laughed sharply. That massive body flicked its tail with surprising lightness. A hundred-meter-high wall of black waves rose up violently, crashing downward toward Noah like the collapse of the heavens.
Character switch — Sanhua!
"Frostbloom!"
In an instant the hundred-meter wave wall was frozen solid by thick ice. Noah, now controlling Sanhua, had eyes turned blood-red.
His vision was blurred, yet everything in the world appeared before him as frequencies — and among them, Leviathan's form was the most glaring.
Words could not describe what kind of existence that fish body truly was, because right now, in his eyes, Leviathan was a chaotic tangle of countless overlapping, conflicting frequencies.
If one had to describe it, it was nothing more than a messy, jumbled mass of black that made one feel viscerally uncomfortable from the depths of the soul.
Character switch — Jinhsi.
No good. The backlash from having time-sequence power shattered was still in effect.
"Interesting. The frequency on your body can actually change!"
Leviathan showed slight surprise, but immediately lost interest in Noah.
If Noah could have maintained the Rover's frequency consistently, it might have toyed with him like a cat with a mouse — repeatedly giving him despair, then a sliver of hope.
Then it would have delightedly watched this counterfeit struggle desperately, trapped with no path to survival, before casually erasing him once it was fully satisfied.
Unfortunately, this person had actually taken the initiative to switch to a different frequency — how utterly boring.
Fine. Just kill him directly!
Leviathan unleashed a deafening high-frequency roar. The sound wave made the black tide boil and surge. The hundred-meter ice wall shuddered violently and collapsed in cascading fragments.
Black ice and snow mixed with tide water crashed down. A figure shattered the ground beneath his feet, leaping high into the air. In midair, soaring wings suddenly unfolded, letting him glide and evade the black snowy mist.
In these brief moments, Noah had already selected the team composition he needed.
[Camellya, Sanhua, Rover.]
Originally the last slot should have gone to Verina, but bringing the Rover provided both damage output and the safety net of time-stop.
The soaring wings contracted in midair, then spread again. He changed direction, rocketing straight toward Leviathan.
"An ant trying to shake a tree!"
Leviathan opened its abyss-like maw. A beam of black-purple light shot forth.
Noah simultaneously drew Emerald of Genesis. Vast golden sword light carved a dazzling arc through the air.
The instant the two colossal energies collided, the entire world fell silent for half a second — then erupted in a nuclear-blast-like roar.
The surging shockwave hurled Noah — who had no foothold in midair — violently backward. Yet vines bearing Camellya's signature flower suddenly climbed up his body.
Character switch — Camellya.
Endless vines surged upward from the ruins of Ragunna that had not yet been swallowed by the black tide. They wove into a spiderweb-like network of landing points in midair, catching him.
Before he could even steady himself, light flared in Leviathan's four fish eyes. Four terrifying laser beams followed its gaze and fired.
Noah clenched his teeth. He leaped down from the flower vines in midair. A vine shot out from his palm, rapidly intertwining with the distant net, swinging him far away.
Dense vine nets formed across the ruins of Ragunna. He swung agilely through the air.
Behind him, four beams of utterly destructive laser chased like shadows — yet he always managed to pull away by the narrowest margin.
Wherever the lasers passed, vines shattered into pieces, yet under Noah's precise control they immediately sprouted new shoots and reconnected.
"Insect!"
Failing to land a hit after so long, Leviathan finally lost all patience. Its colossal body moved swiftly through the black tide. Its hideous maw unleashed another high-frequency roar.
The dense vine net disintegrated instantly before the sound wave. Without any foothold, Noah lost balance in midair. The pitch-black tide below drew ever closer.
Leviathan's blood-red maw — a hundred meters wide — burst out of the black tide. Beneath rows upon rows of tens of thousands of razor-sharp serrated fangs lay an unfathomable abyss of darkness.
It only needed to swallow Noah. The mental pollution inside its body — a hundred times stronger than the black tide — would automatically destroy every fragment of his will.
Bzzz—
An extremely brief time-stop froze Leviathan's body in place.
Less than half a second later, the time-stop was retracted.
Taking advantage of that fleeting window, Noah spread his soaring wings and slightly adjusted his falling angle in midair.
Emerald of Genesis blazed with blinding golden light in his hand. Carrying the full force of his descent, he drove the blade viciously into Leviathan's head — producing a piercing metallic screech.
With ferocious momentum, he pressed his elbow down hard on the hilt, slashing downward. The cold edge sliced through layer after layer of gray-blue fish scales until it sank deep into the long, pointed horn protruding from the fish's head.
Thick clouds like ink. Lightning tore across the sky. That solitary figure held his spine ramrod straight. The sharp blade sliced out from the back of his elbow.
Blood seeped from the wound, staining his white sleeves red. In midair, it twisted into dark crimson streams.
For an instant, the brilliant silver light of lightning illuminated every groove and line on his face with perfect clarity. Deep-set eyes burned with twin golden flames.
It was the madness of a cornered beast fighting to the death — and the final, stubborn defiance of someone locked in mortal combat.
Vast Spectro energy surged violently into Emerald of Genesis, exploding together with the muffled thunder rumbling between heaven and earth.
"Moment of resonance!"
Half of Leviathan's massive fish head was blasted apart by the terrifying energy, dissolving into black tide that scattered like fireworks in the sky.
The gigantic fish body slammed into the sea as though unconscious, raising enormous black waves.
Noah switched characters again. Endless vines rose up, firmly supporting him in midair.
The violent explosion finally allowed traces of the black tide to stain his body. The intense mental pollution made his head throb as though it would split open.
So dark… so red… everything before his eyes was dim and spinning… was that blood?
Noah bit down hard on his tongue, using sharp pain to drive away the hallucinations induced by the black tide.
The pollution of the black tide was like maggots on bone — once it took hold, it was nearly impossible to remove for the rest of one's life.
No problem. He would switch to Jinhsi later, rewind the flow of time, and erase the influence of the black tide.
"Help!"
A cry for help suddenly reached his ears. He forced himself to stay conscious and turned his head. Finally, on a distant ruin that had not yet been swallowed by the waves, he saw another survivor.
There was actually someone else who — like him — had not been fused into Leviathan's body during that bizarre prayer ceremony?
Vines extended. Noah swiftly arrived beside the person.
This was a young man dressed in extremely luxurious clothing, clearly of noble birth from some powerful clan. Yet the style of his attire felt oddly familiar.
Noah was about to open his mouth to ask — when suddenly every hair on his body stood on end. A low, muffled, piercing laugh echoed through heaven and earth, raising dense waves.
Leviathan — it was still alive!
The colossal body rose once more from the waves. Its head had already recovered completely. Even the broken horn now gleamed with chilling light.
Noah's full-powered strike earlier had failed to inflict any significant damage.
"Useless. This body is formed from the fusion of hundreds of thousands of people's remains. Unless you possess the separation authority of Imperator, you can never completely destroy me!"
Those words of absolute confidence seemed to freeze time itself.
On the ruins of Ragunna, Noah's fist clenched so tightly it trembled. A slender, crimson long sword slowly materialized.
Overclocking!
In an instant his eyes glowed with scarlet light. The crimson hue spread from the roots of his hair all the way to the tips. Beneath the blood-red tousled bangs, the originally resolute face now carried an additional layer of chilling killing intent.
Before him stood Leviathan, master of the black tide that had devoured all of Ragunna. And he — only one person, one sword, nothing more.