Chapter 821:
Oceanic Spiritual Beast (Three in One)
Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
As though ashamed of the attack, the white whale’s giant body wiggled. An ice arrow was shot out of the water ball beside it. It wasn’t just one, but a storm of ice arrows was fired at Abel. This was meant to target Flying Flame and its extraordinary speed.
There was quite a miscalculation, though. Abel was a rank fifteen wizard. Before the arrows got close, he used his “instantaneous movement” to move Flying Flame away. This way, all that was. .h.i.t was the white light that appeared when he left.
After teleporting to the white whale’s back, Abel produced another “lightning” spell rune. He threw two lightning streaks in a row this time. At the same time, Flying Flame spat out a white fireball that was even bigger than last time. Since the white whale was very sensitive in reacting to energy, it made an appropriate response in just a split moment. The water ball next to it shot dozens of smaller water b.a.l.l.s to extinguish the white fireball.
As for Abel’s “lightning,” it didn’t really try to guard against it because it was simply fast to defend against it. It didn’t really care, either. Lightning wasn’t going to damage it, to begin with. There was no point defending against an attack that would only leave a scratch.
The white fireball made contact with the first small-sized waterb.a.l.l.s, and the white fireball reduced in size after the small-sized waterb.a.l.l.s disappeared. It took about five of them to really make the ball disappear. Still, this was only a small portion of the large number of waterb.a.l.l.s that were unleashed. There was more than enough water in the sea, so even if Flying Flame canceled out the white whale’s attack, there was still an infinite amount of energy supply that it had to deal with.
Abel was speechless. He’d never seen a defense this difficult to break. The white whale had the entire ocean. It was like a c.o.c.kroach, unyielding towards death. He was starting to think it was a blunder to have left the battle fort this time, but as of now, the entire Holy Continent was in too much of a mess for him to bring everything with him. One was left at the wizard community outside Harry Castle, while the other was docked in the sky directly above the Carmel Palace.
And it wasn’t just that. It was already hard enough to use up everything on top of the middle of the ocean. Now that he was facing against a spiritual beast of this caliber, he decided that the best way to respond was to let Johnson handle it. He couldn’t let Johnson into the ocean, though. If it did, it was going to sink into the bottom of the ocean. He wouldn’t really know what to do. Besides, even if the battle fort and its two hundred small-sized war puppets and consecutive ballistas were here, he didn’t know how effective they actually were going to be.
In fact, Abel had pretty much given up on trying to beat the white whale. He was just trying to stall as long as he could until White Snow finished its promotion. After that, he was planning to flee to White Cloud and use its teleportation ability to escape. At this point, running away wasn’t something to be ashamed of. It’d actually be quite stupid if he tried to fight a top-level spiritual beast when it had a geographical advantage over him.
After changing his mindset for a bit, he decided to go with a different approach. He produced an “instantaneous movement” spell rune in his left hand and a “lightning” spell rune with his right. Flying Flame had completely stopped attacking at this point. Instead, it was only responsible for flying at full speed. It completed a circle around the white whale non-stop, and its master continued to taunt the enemy with his “lightning” spell.
Under Abel’s provocation, the white whale grew distracted from White Snow. It was too angry with Abel. Instead of going for its snack, it decided to go for the human that made it look like a fool.
Suddenly, the giant water ball beside the white whale began to shake; multiple ice frosts split from the surface. It tried to slow Abel and Flying Flame down with its freezing effect. Usually, the two didn’t have to worry about something like this, but as there was simply too much of a difference between them and this legendary beast, the frost managed to get them as soon as it covered their entire body.
Abel’s knight ability activated as soon as he was riding on top of Flying Flame. He would like to think that it helped him get rid of the slowing effect, but that was clearly not the case. The white whale’s ability was way above what he and Flying Flame were capable of repelling against.
After seeing that Flying Flame being slowed down, the white whale immediately shot out a storm of ice arrows towards Abel. This was when the “instantaneous movement” in his hand was beginning to be activated. He disappeared from the shooting range with Flying Flame, but as though having seen through this move already, the white whale quickly shot out an ice arrow that flew a lot faster.
The timing was perfect. The arrow got close to Abel before he activated the “instantaneous movement” spell. It was supposed to hit, or so the white whale thought. Abel activated the “melting potion” on his belt a lot faster than the white whale expected. This gave him quite some time to teleport away from the arrow before it did anything to him. This all might seem quite tense because it was happening too fast, but with the acute vision and the digitalization activated, he was confident to have created enough time to make the right response.
“Ice elemental spiritual beasts, agh!” he cursed, meanwhile throwing his futile lightning towards the white whale. The white whale grew quite frustrated as well. After realizing its attacks were useless, it became more and more irritated.
Suddenly, the white whale made a move that Abel couldn’t quite understand. Its giant body slammed down onto the water below. Before he understood what it was trying to do, the water that it splashed became countless arrows fired towards the sky. These arrows covered up the entire sky, blocking almost all the possible exits that he and Flying Flame had. It became impossible to escape with the “instantaneous movement” since the covered range was about a kilometer long.
“d.a.m.n! This won’t do. I’ll have to come back for revenge after I get stronger.”
Abel made the call early. There was no point in dodging, so he decided to just not dodge at all in the first place. Also, White Cloud was just above him. He couldn’t just block the attacks that were going his way.
As the golden combat qi flashed in the “steel” sword in his right hand, the “vow of the ancient” s.h.i.+eld in his left hand suddenly disappeared. He was getting another spare “steel” sword. Simultaneously, by controlling the steel sword with his main spirit, he commanded his druid spirit to take charge of the steel sword in his left. He turned the world stone fragment’s acute vision and digitalization ability. He had to be careful when he was doing this because there would be quite some excess strain to his soul power if he weren’t.
Both of his “steel” swords would strike down one ice arrow when he deflected them. It wasn’t like he was breaking them. Instead, he was just tipping at them, so they changed to a different course. It was the most efficient method he could think of to counter against the hundreds of arrows precisely pointed at him.
When the steel sword in his right was. .h.i.t by one of the arrows, the chilling qi quickly went towards his flesh. Before it did, however, he already took out a melting potion and drank it. The melting potion’s effect was supposed to last for two seconds. During this period of time, no freezing would work on the person who drank it. It was pretty expensive to make this, by the way. If he didn’t get the recipe (by luck) in the forest outside Dock Kurast, he almost never thought that he would get the chance to actually make it.
Anyways, the freezing effect didn’t work since he was using the melting potion. He then deflected another ice arrow with the steel sword in his left. This time, the chilling qi wasn’t sent over at all. From the white whale’s perspective, the two swords in the human’s arms were like tentacles of an octopus. The blades multiplied, forming an invisible s.h.i.+eld that forced the ice arrows to change their courses. It was devastating for a white whale, actually. It never thought that its most destructive technique would be neutralized in such an effortless, quiet manner.
Abel could see the white whale’s eyes turning red. It’s been years since it last found a worthy opponent in these waters. The human in front of it was supposed to be weak. It was the same with the young dragon. They weren’t supposed to pose any threat, but the constant provoking and taunting was not something it could bear seeing. The thought never came that it was the one that started this fight, but to be fair, the real problem arose since White Snow didn’t pick the right place to promote itself.
So the white whale opened its large mouth and sucked the ocean. There was an oppressive shriek that pierced through the air. The suction turned the surrounding area into a domain of vacuum. Water in the shape of a dragon flew towards its mouth.
Abel looked serious now. This white whale sure had a lot of tricks. He foresaw that this attack would be stronger than the previous, so he decided to sheath both “steel” swords in his hands. Next, he revealed the only mana cannon from his portal ring. It was a shame that he had to use it here, but there was no other choice.
When he was just about to use his trump card, a strange sound came like rain. It sounded like there wasn’t a lot of it at first, but the dripping noise grew more and more. Abel could feel himself s.h.i.+ver. His instincts told him to respond right away, but at the same time, he couldn’t help but wonder why the battle command spirit didn’t warn him.
Abel connected to his sign card with his power of the Will, “Scan this for me, battle command spirit. I need you to tell what types of creatures are approaching.”
The battle command spirit immediately replied, “Understood, Sir Elder. The scanning will commence now… Flying fish have been spotted. The number is too great to be calculated.”
Abel was not very happy to hear that. It might be the same flying fish beast that got The Goff Family’s sky s.h.i.+p fleet. He wasn’t sure if that was the case, but the white whale that was in front of him was still very much alive. His thinking delayed him from firing his cannon. The white whale also stopped. Instead of continuing on its attacks against Abel, It turned around and faced against the direction in which the flying fish were coming over. There was fear that in its eyes, something that Abel would’ve never expected.
Could the flying fish beast pack be stronger than this white whale?
There wasn’t that much time to think. The next thing he saw, the white whale started sucking and spitting seawater at the flying fish beast pack. The liquid crystalized immediately when it left its mouth. It was meant to shoot the flying fish beast down. It was quite a thing to see. The flying fish beast pack was like white snow in the sky. If he had to find a way to interpret it, it was like countless souls were colliding into one to convey some sort of message.
The flying fish beast pack was clearly trying to reach White Snow. Before that, however, they must bypa.s.s the white whale and Abel. The white whale was the easy target, so they decided to attack it first. The white whale, knowing how terrifying they were, unleashed its most powerful attack at them. The ice crystals became a cloud of mist. The ice b.a.l.l.s spun and spun, creating countless ice arrows that shot towards the pack of fish. Weirdly enough, the fish beasts did not resist in any way, but were shot and frozen, then finally fell into the water.
Still, there were thousands of thousands of them. The attack was enough to kill several thousands, but there seemed to be millions in the entire pack. Even from the air, Abel still couldn’t the end. They were everywhere, no matter which direction he looked.
After seeing how not-so-effective its attack was, the white whale went beneath the water. It looked like it was trying to flee, but there was no chance that Abel would let it. If the white whale got away this time, then he would’ve been responsible for taking care of all the flying fish beast for himself. So, after activating the “lightning” spell in his right hand, he cast it towards the beast, meanwhile generating the same spell in his left. The “lightning” hit the target, but the white whale only shook for a bit and slowed down only so slightly.
The second one worked the same. The white whale’s speed was clearly slowed down, but now was not the time to go after Abel. It was only concerned with running. Abel changed his method. His main spirit and druid spirit controlled each of his arms, casting “lightning” spells non-stop towards the white whale. This made him lose the ability to use his “instantaneous movement” spell and the ability to activate the potions that he had immediately. The tradeoff was that the casting speed of his “lightning” spell would be raised by 50%. The attacks only became more and more rapid as they rained down on the white whale.
The white whale was getting nervous. There was only a bit of distance between it and the ocean, but the “lightning” spell’s slowing effect was only so close from making the flying fish beast pack fly towards it. This was a life-or-death situation. There wasn’t enough time. When the white whale was about to touch the surface of the ocean, many of the flying fish beasts were already making contact.
The white whale’s water ball created countless ice arrows that flew towards the flying fish beasts to retaliate. It killed about several hundred of them, but that didn’t have much of an effect on the whole pack—the ones after paid no attention to the ones that were already slain. The only target was the front. Everything that was in the way was to be destroyed. It was that simple.
The white whale continued to activate the frost ability of its waterball. It also surrounded itself with ice frost, but there were too many of these fish for it to last even just a second. This cost the entire flying fish pack several thousand in total. The water ball was reducing in size at a pace that was alarmingly fast. Every flying fish beast coming in would grab a mouthful, fly towards the left, leave it there and fly back towards the pack. It was truly a terrifying thing to see.
Abel went from relaxed to pure fear. The waterball that gave him and Flying Flame trouble just then were now completely gone. There were scars all over the white whale’s body. It tried all sorts of freezing spells to obliterate any flying fish beast that was getting close, but a mere several thousand kills per attack was not enough to change the direction in which the whole pack was attacking.
Abel’s response to this was fairly simple. By using the soul chain, he sent a command to White Cloud to tell it to fly higher up in the sky in the opposite direction. There wasn’t really a need for him to do so because White Cloud was already teleporting several times away from this flying fish beast pack. Giving how monotonous the attack pattern of the flying fish beast pack was, it was pretty easy to know where to run. Still, as weak as they were, their speed and sharp teeth could do quite a lot of rips on the white whale’s tough skin. It’s not like they were very very keen on keeping all the glory. After attacking once, the flying fish beast would swarm back to the giant team before waiting for another chance to strike.
There was something strange in all of this, as far as Abel could see. Neither the white whale and Flying Flame were withdrawing their essence, but it wasn’t like they were doing much at all. The flying fish was not paying any attention to any sort of warnings the two creatures unleashed. Upon doing some a.n.a.lyses with his world stone fragments, he realized that the pack’s brains were like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. While the pieces were weak and small on their own, the damage of a few individuals was not enough to affect the entire population. Also, the population acted as a unified will, so the intimidating essence of another creature could only have so much effect on just a fraction of the entire pack. This made it possible for them to attack the white whale so directly and rather recklessly.
Abel was starting to understand why the dwarves failed. He thought that the reason they lost was their lack of strength, but the dwarves were powerful. If they weren’t, it wouldn’t even have been possible for two of the surviving fleets to make it back home.
In a world that was slowing down, the white whale struggled to move as the wound on its body continued to expand. Blood was rus.h.i.+ng out. Before it left the body, the flying fish beasts sucked it all away, eating it alive. Its screams became moans of agony. Its last struggle wasn’t useless, so it seemed. About ten or something thousand flying fish beasts went down with it as they fell into the ocean.
More flying fish beasts went over. The white whale could not be seen at this moment, despite how gigantic its body was. These tiny but deadly creatures swarmed around it like a tornado, and the beast was eaten alive sc.r.a.pe by sc.r.a.pe. Its bones were already showing after a few seconds. If Abel wasn’t using his acute vision to watch this, it’d be impossible for him to see that a giant thing about one to two hundred meters in length being disintegrated into nothing but a skeleton. Funny thing, actually. The flying fish beasts didn’t spare any of the white whale’s flesh and blood, but they didn’t have any interest in its bones.
Abel was starting to realize that it was his turn next. White Cloud was already drawing distance from afar, and they were escaping non-stop in the opposite direction.
Abel commanded, “Be quick about it.”
He didn’t choose to run with the “instantaneous movement” because he didn’t think that the flying fish beast pack could outpace Flying Flame. In fact, the white whale was probably a bigger threat than this pack. It possessed the ability to attack long distances with its freezing attacks, making it so that Flying Flame couldn’t move quickly enough. There was an option to let White Cloud escape, but in doing so, even if the white whale was nowhere as fast to make a chase, the chance of running into other spiritual beasts was still quite high. This was the ocean, after all. White Snow was literally a living bait with the promotion qi on.
It didn’t matter now, however. With no care of what they might run into, White Cloud carried White Snow to escape the front. Flying Flame was carrying Abel at its back. The flying fish beast pack was just done cleaning the white whale’s body, and they turned to started chasing after Abel.
A sea snake spiritual beast came over as well. White Snow’s promotion qi was probably attracting it. It rushed out of the ocean that was in the front. Its tail slammed heavily on the surface of the ocean, leaving a giant depression on the water. In doing so, it sprung itself to fly towards the same alt.i.tude as White Cloud. White Cloud didn’t retaliate. Instead, it teleported to another spot while Flying Flame made a sharp turn with Abel on its back. The sea snake wondered why its opponents didn’t stop at all, but the next thing it knew, the flying fish beast pack rushed over it and turned it into a skeleton before it even noticed.
In the same way, countless spiritual beasts rushed towards White Cloud as it tried to leave the area. Even if they couldn’t fly, they could still spring and rush into the air. However, most of them couldn’t get back into the water because the flying flash pack would almost always eat them whole whilst they were still in midair.
White Cloud spoke to Able through the soul chain, ‘I can’t hold much longer, Master.”
It made sense. White Cloud hadn’t rested ever since it left the ground. It had teleported too much. There was only so much stamina that it could spare, much less for its spiritual energy. There was no time for hesitation.
Abel sent a quick command, “Keep teleporting, White Cloud. Don’t stop. Keep it there for a bit longer. I’ll do something about it.”
After saying that, he took out a super death qi exploding ball from his personal storage box.
“1, 2, 3, 4.”
On the count to four, he threw the super death qi exploding ball out. At the same time, Flying Flame unleashed a dragon’s roar that erupted into the sky. As ineffective as it was, it still managed to make quite a lot of those flying fish beasts stop moving on the spot. It made them a lot slower when they were chasing after it and Abel. Since Flying Flame had the inferno “special quickening” ability, it managed to get away from the death qi without being touched by it at all.
So the super death qi exploding ball dropped into the bunch flying fish beast pack. The explosion happened as soon as it landed on them. The shock wave swept through the ones at the front, crus.h.i.+ng their bodies in every direction. It was weird since Abel thought that the explosion would only happen two seconds after throwing it out. He thought that there was something wrong in his calculation, but actually, the problem was with the super death qi exploding ball itself.
While it would take six seconds for most super death qi exploding b.a.l.l.s to work, the explosion itself was not a constant process. In fact, all Abel’s ever tested was on how to make the explosion last longer. It was the same for the super exploding ball. He just needed enough time to run. There was no need to make sure that the timing was accurate, so he never experimented with it.
This made things quite dangerous. Flying Flame was fast, but the shock wave was catching on as well. Being possibly the fastest creature alive was not going to make this any easier. When the shock wave was about to hit, it and Abel became a white light that disappeared from the spot. They then reappeared to a spot that was about four hundred meters in front of the shock wave.