Anbaixiu gripped Aeolus's severed head in his hand, yet decapitation and a slashed chest were hardly fatal injuries to the lad.
What Anbaixiu had not anticipated was that a new head sprouted directly from Aeolus's severed torso, while the head held in his grasp dissolved straight into seawater.
Just what kind of physiological structure did this brat possess? He seemed capable of freely transmuting between flesh and blood and seawater.
Could it truly be that as long as the waves rolled on, he would never die?
Having regained his freedom, Aeolus showed no courtesy toward Anbaixiu. Though he had no idea why the lich had suddenly donned a suit of armor, not a trace of fear showed on his face.
Just armor—as if he didn't have any himself?!
A shimmering carapace materialized over his body, bearing a close resemblance to a lobster's shell. Drawing upon the ocean currents once more, Aeolus surged toward Anbaixiu.
Aeolus's harpoon clashed with Anbaixiu's magebreaker blades once again. Both moved with blinding speed, as if the water's resistance did not exist.
Anbaixiu was astonished. After just a few days apart, the lad had grown stronger still. This lobster-like magical armor did not merely provide defense; it seemed to augment his physical capabilities, noticeably accelerating his strikes.
High-tier warriors could physically snap their weapons with such finesse that they could castrate a fly with a greatsword, and Aeolus now displayed a touch of that very mastery. His harpoon was ponderous yet remarkably nimble, breaching the defense of Anbaixiu's magebreaker blades multiple times and carving a flurry of scratches across the mithral mecha.
The harpoon was undoubtedly an enchanted weapon as well; otherwise, it could never have left marks on mithral.
And judging by the lobster-like magical armor around him, the boy truly was the chosen of the Kuo-toa Goddess!
With a sweep of his arms, Anbaixiu parried the downward cleave of Aeolus's harpoon. The tremendous force sent visible shockwaves rippling across the seabed.
Seizing this brief deadlock, Anbaixiu spoke once more. "Aeolus, I'm happy to fight you, but at least give me a proper reason. What exactly did I deceive you about?"
"I am searching for Ariel!" Aeolus raged. "And you tricked me into seeking out that fake among the merfolk! You're trying to stop me from finding Ariel, and you dare claim you didn't deceive me?!"
Aeolus roared, and a torrent of churning water erupted from his harpoon, driving Anbaixiu's body violently toward the ocean floor.
The sudden underwater vortex slammed Anbaixiu deep into the silt. An instant later, Aeolus raised his harpoon high and thrust it toward the lich's chest.
Yet the tip of the harpoon skidded off the surface of the mecha and drove deep into the seabed, inflicting negligible damage, while Anbaixiu's magebreaker blades once again pierced straight through Aeolus's chest.
Aeolus stared at his chest in disbelief. The magical armor enveloping his body was tougher than steel, so how could two unassuming daggers slice through it like bean curd?
Having learned from earlier, Anbaixiu did not cut Aeolus in two. Instead, his hands clamped tightly onto the youth's frame. "Aeolus, you claim I'm stopping you from finding Ariel—are you out of your mind? From the very start, I asked if you knew anything about her other than her name, and you said you didn't even know that much yourself!
"I told you back then that Ariel is far too common a name across the sea, so there was no way to tell which one you were looking for. I didn't even know who you were searching for, so how could I possibly stop you?"
Aeolus coughed up blood, his ferocious, enraged expression faltering for a moment.
Something seemed off. What the lich said actually made sense.
Yet it was the Kuo-toa Goddess who had told him that this lich was a liar who had been keeping him from finding Ariel all along.
Sensing the shift in Aeolus, Anbaixiu released his grip and said, "Aeolus, I don't know what you've been through these past few days, but calm down and think. In the beginning, you said you wanted to find Ariel, and I told you that searching like that was completely aimless. Later, when I heard that the merfolk High Priestess was named Ariel, I brought you to meet her to see if you could recognize her..."
"The Ariel I'm looking for isn't that one! She isn't a merfolk!" Aeolus coughed blood, shouting agitatedly.
Anbaixiu roared back in equal fury, "Don't you have to see someone first to know whether it's her or not?! How could we confirm it without meeting? Do you take me for the Goddess of Fate, able to conjure whoever you want the instant you ask? Did I ever claim before the meeting that she was the Ariel you were looking for? I even asked you repeatedly if there was any way besides her face to verify her identity! You didn't know, and I never said she was definitely the one—I only brought you along to check! How on earth does that make me a liar?!"
Aeolus froze again. What Anbaixiu said was entirely true. Looked at from any angle, the lich hadn't lied to him.
"Could I... have been mistaken?"
Just as Aeolus began to ponder this, a mad, chaotic voice echoed in his ears: *Don't listen to him. He's still lying to you. From the very beginning, he knew exactly which Ariel you were looking for, and he led you in circles on purpose. If you don't believe it, ask him—ask if he knows another Ariel.*
Aeolus's eyes shifted, and he demanded, "When I first told you I was searching for Ariel, did you already know where she was? You already knew an Ariel back then, didn't you?!"
Anbaixiu did not answer. He was starting to sense that something was wrong—Aeolus's mind was unwell.
Before, Aeolus had simply been foolish, but he still possessed normal logic. Now, however, he seemed unhinged and neurotic, much like the Kuo-toa Goddess.
Anbaixiu expanded his perception, carefully probing Aeolus's condition, and quickly pinpointed the problem.
Upon Aeolus's forehead, an eerie strand of magic had manifested as thorny brambles stabbing deep into his brain.
*Crown of Madness?! No, its effect is far stronger than that spell!*
Crown of Madness was merely an ordinary second-circle spell with modest casting requirements. Its effect was to drive a target mad, causing them to attack everything around them indiscriminately.
Yet Anbaixiu had never heard of Crown of Madness persisting after death and rebirth. Furthermore, Aeolus was not attacking friend and foe alike; rather, his logic was warped, accompanied by uncontrollable mania.
"Aeolus, what on earth happened to you? Perhaps I can help you!" Anbaixiu asked.
Even if it were a deity's curse, there were ways to resolve it.
Aeolus refused to listen. Raising his harpoon once more, he snarled, "Did you know Ariel all along, yet chose not to tell me?!"
"Nonsense! I already told you I know plenty of Ariels, but I had no idea which one you were looking for!"
Aeolus shook his head frantically, muttering over and over, "No, you're still lying to me! I know it—you've been using me from the very start!"
Anbaixiu was now certain that the lad had lost the ability to reason. This bore the unmistakable touch of the Kuo-toa Goddess. Persuading him with words would be impossible.
During the time they had been clashing here, the kuo-toa behind Aeolus had also arrived on the battlefield. Those foolish creatures had begun chanting incantations, and countless gleams of magical light flared to life, illuminating the deep sea.
Anbaixiu sighed. Madmen were always the hardest to deal with.
"Aeolus, this is your last chance! Will you calm down and talk, or keep fighting me?!" Anbaixiu demanded loudly.
A flicker of struggle crossed Aeolus's contorted face, only to be quickly submerged in madness.
"Liar, you deserve to die!" Aeolus roared. "This sea is my offering to the great Talos, and you shall become my trophy!"
Anbaixiu shook his head helplessly. There was nothing more to say.
"In that case..." Raising the blades in his hands, Anbaixiu proclaimed loudly, "I hereby swear: You, Aeolus—a possessed madman, a villain who repays kindness with malice—I declare you my favored enemy! This grievance and enmity shall end only in death!"
Anbaixiu rarely made such chuunibyou speeches, but he was not doing it to look cool; he was fulfilling a ritual.
This was the power of a ranger: selecting a target as one's favored enemy, reattuning all abilities to gain comprehensive enhancements specifically against them.
Every attack a ranger made against their favored enemy enjoyed increased accuracy and damage, while all damage dealt by the favored enemy to the ranger was mitigated.
This was precisely why rangers drew criticism: against a favored enemy, a ranger was terrifyingly potent, but against any non-favored target, the class felt rather lackluster.
Now, using a ranger's favored enemy declaration for the first time, Anbaixiu felt an indescribable surge of power pouring into his body. Aeolus's silhouette became sharply defined in his vision.
Though this was legendary ranger power shared by Catherine, and Anbaixiu had rarely practiced it...
...a legend was still a legend. From this moment forth, Anbaixiu felt as though he could easily pin Aeolus to the ground and pummel him.
With a wave of his hand, a spatial rift tore open, and a young maiden stepped out.
"Naomi, it's been a long time since we fought side by side," Anbaixiu said to her.
Naomi gave a faint smile and spun her body around, swiftly shifting into a colossal shark.
Anbaixiu swung onto the shark's back. A ranger was never complete without their beast companion, and Naomi could also share the benefits of Anbaixiu's favored enemy declaration.
By the time Anbaixiu mounted the giant shark, the kuo-toa had finished preparing their spells. Hundreds upon thousands of magical incantations came hurling toward him.
Yet the moment this magic left the kuo-toa's hands, it began to mutate.
One intended to fire a Ray of Frost, but it morphed into a Fireball upon release, instantly detonating against the surrounding sea and blowing the caster head over heels. Another aimed to cast Hold Person, only for it to erupt into Chain Lightning; its aim went wildly askew, blasting their own allies into mangled gore. Still another kuo-toa intended to cast a mass buff, yet as soon as its hand went up, a cloud of poisonous gas burst forth, staining the seawater an inky, brackish green.
Such was the nature of chaotic spellcasting: not even the kuo-toa could guarantee whether their magic would warp, nor whether it would turn out to be a stroke of divine genius or suicide. Not even the Kuo-toa Goddess could predict the outcome.
The goddess might not be able to, but Anbaixiu could.
A bunch of fools, gambling on probability in front of a divination wizard?
The Dice of Fate had long since enveloped the entire battlefield, locking every spell-slinging kuo-toa into a disastrous outcome.
When those hundreds upon thousands of spells went off, the kuo-toa suffered several hundred casualties among their own ranks first.
This bizarre spectacle even stunned Aeolus. He had led the kuo-toa into many battles, and while their chaotic spellcasting was preposterous, sheer volume usually yielded at least a few miraculously effective spells. How could every single one have backfired this time?
In the brief moment Aeolus stood dazed, Anbaixiu had already arrived before him atop the giant shark. The magebreaker blade swept across his neck, lopping off his head.
And the instant Aeolus's head separated from his body, Anbaixiu immediately summoned the Golden Throne and cast a ninth-circle spell upon him—True Polymorph!
Chapter 439