Anbaixiu did not know the limit of Aeolus's regeneration; he only knew that the brat's regenerative ability was absurdly potent.
Therefore, Anbaixiu had to find a way to deal with this problem first; otherwise, he would only be squandering mana in vain.
True Polymorph was a formidable ninth-tier spell, capable in theory of permanently transforming a target into another species. Under normal circumstances, the transformation effect was difficult to pull off, as the more powerful a creature was, the higher its resistance to such magic.
Aeolus bore the blessing of a deity, making it extraordinarily difficult to polymorph him.
Thus, Anbaixiu had chosen to slay him first. The moment Aeolus was decapitated, his willpower would be compromised, making him far more susceptible to the spell.
Anbaixiu's plan proved a great success. The ninth-tier spell was cast without a hitch, and Aeolus's body instantly morphed into a fist-sized crab.
Even Anbaixiu hadn't expected it to go so smoothly, guessing that the effect of his Favored Enemy declaration had been a major help.
Yet just as Anbaixiu prepared to seize the crab, a massive current formed a vortex around it, flinging Anbaixiu and his mount away together.
"No way—he still keeps his original abilities even after being polymorphed?"
Anbaixiu was rendered speechless. This divine blessing was simply too overpowered.
Not only that, once Anbaixiu regained his posture, he watched as the crab that was Aeolus darted right into the ranks of the sahuagin zombies, where the zombies smashed it to pieces and devoured it.
And then, the brat regenerated anew in human form.
"Talk about extravagant! Just how much divine power does a blessing like this consume? That lunatic goddess truly spared no expense!"
Anbaixiu was helpless. Aeolus's capacity for infinite regeneration was entirely too ridiculous; for the moment, he truly could not conceive of a way to counter it.
In that case, he might as well just ignore him.
After their spellcasting had failed, the surviving kuo-toa howled and charged toward Anbaixiu. This time, only a handful of fools among them were still attempting to cast spells; the rest brandished lobster claws, opting for melee combat.
Anbaixiu patted Naomi on the back. As the two shared a mental connection, Naomi understood his intent immediately, wheeling around to ram straight into the kuo-toa.
Having just brewed a powerful spell, Aeolus saw Anbaixiu crash into the kuo-toa and had no choice but to dissipate the gathered magic; otherwise, this single attack would have slaughtered most of his own troops.
Anbaixiu, however, showed no mercy to the kuo-toa. The magebreaker blades in both hands spun wildly, turning the fray into sheer, effortless mowing.
The individual combat prowess of the kuo-toa was actually quite feeble. Unable to gamble on the odds with their chaotic magic, they posed zero threat to Anbaixiu.
Carrying Anbaixiu, Naomi darted swiftly through the water, snapping her jaws from time to time to bite several kuo-toa to death as she tore straight through their battle formation.
Aeolus pursued relentlessly from behind, constantly seeking to attack Anbaixiu with various ocean currents. But no matter how strong the brat's magic was, he could never rival Anbaixiu in spellcraft.
Anbaixiu's mecha could swivel freely in all directions. With a mere twist of his upper torso, he turned around and blasted several ice spells at Aeolus. Aeolus was repeatedly hindered by crowd control, utterly unable to close the distance.
Anbaixiu did not hold back either; with a barked command, all the sahuagin zombies surged toward the kuo-toa.
Since Aeolus could not be killed, he would wipe out these kuo-toa first.
A grand melee erupted. The sahuagin zombies were not mere puppets, but fully autonomous undead zombies capable of independent action, so Anbaixiu did not need to split his concentration to micromanage them—a single command sufficed.
Although the sahuagin zombies were low-tier and lacked special abilities, being fearless of death was more than enough.
Sahuagin naturally fought with claws and fangs to begin with, so turning into zombies hardly diminished their combat effectiveness.
Deterred by Anbaixiu's presence, the kuo-toa dared not resort to chaotic magic, putting them at a massive disadvantage in battle. In close-quarters combat, how could the kuo-toa possibly match the sahuagin?
Despite Aeolus having brought a larger number of kuo-toa, the battle turned entirely one-sided. The kuo-toa were battered into a steady retreat, and then the foolish fishfolk broke into a rout.
Never expect logic from madmen, and certainly never expect resolute will from them. Their minds were a tangled mess—they went berserk whenever the impulse struck, and when fear took hold, they fled without hesitation.
Before long, leaving behind a mound of corpses, the kuo-toa had completely fled, leaving only Aeolus dogging Anbaixiu's heels in stubborn pursuit.
Anbaixiu finally understood how the kuo-toa had managed to claim so much territory; it turned out this brat Aeolus had been leading the charge for them.
A powerhouse blessed with infinite regeneration was indeed extraordinarily vexing. Anbaixiu felt deeply annoyed, for he truly possessed no means of killing Aeolus.
Even if he had the zombies swarm Aeolus to pin him down and create an opening, Anbaixiu could only kill him once before he regenerated yet again.
"Damn it, I refuse to believe I can't find a way to deal with you."
Anbaixiu turned around and shouted to Aeolus, "Do you dare face me in a duel to the death?!"
Aeolus sneered, "Who was it just now that didn't dare duel and ran away the entire time?"
"If you have any guts, don't use your regenerative power!" Anbaixiu gritted his teeth. This blessing was entirely too cheap.
Aeolus retorted, "If you have any guts, don't use magic!"
Without hesitation, Anbaixiu said, "Fine, I won't!"
Immediately after, the magebreaker blades in Anbaixiu's hands spun wildly like fan blades.
Magic wasn't Anbaixiu's only craft. With nothing more than the Dice of Fate and his mithral mecha, he could crush Aeolus in close combat.
"You can't use those two blades!" Aeolus shouted. "There's something wrong with them!"
His own magical carapace armor couldn't withstand those two blades at all; they seemed to carry a potent anti-magic property.
Anbaixiu chuckled, sheathed the magebreaker blades, and pulled out a massive staff.
Forged entirely of metal, it was called a staff, yet looked more like a polehammer. Not only that, Anbaixiu's other hand drew a bizarre blunderbuss of unknown enchantment.
Aeolus fell silent. This lich truly had an endless array of bizarre tricks up his sleeve.
Aeolus thought for a moment and added, "Do you dare fight me with just your original bag of bones?!"
Anbaixiu said nothing. The idiot hadn't gotten any smarter, but he had certainly learned how to play dirty.
Anbaixiu simply rode Naomi and charged toward Aeolus. His plan was to overpower Aeolus first, then figure out a way to stuff the dying youth into his personal demiplane.
So what if you have infinite regeneration? Time Stop will freeze you in your tracks regardless.
This was the only countermeasure Anbaixiu could devise against Aeolus.
Though somewhat risky, the feasibility was high. Relying on his infinite regeneration, the lad fought with utter disregard for his life, leaving flaws everywhere. But just as Anbaixiu launched his charge, Aeolus seemed to receive a sudden message; his expression shifted, and he actually treaded seawater in rapid retreat.
It wasn't merely out of cowardice either. Aeolus shot Anbaixiu a venomous glare, then actually manipulated the currents to flee.
Anbaixiu did not pursue. Fast as Naomi was, she couldn't catch up to Aeolus in the open water.
Watching the receding currents, Anbaixiu cursed inwardly, "Damn that lunatic goddess!"
Anbaixiu presumed the Kuo-toa Goddess had warned Aeolus; otherwise, why would the brat suddenly chicken out?
Anbaixiu was half right: someone was indeed calling Aeolus back, but it wasn't the Kuo-toa Goddess.
That goddess was certainly deranged, but Anbaixiu's personal demiplane fell well outside the domain of her psychosis portfolio, so the Kuo-toa Goddess had no idea what effects Anbaixiu's space possessed.
The one truly calling Aeolus back was his wife, the lobster maiden Ariel.
When Anbaixiu had suddenly initiated combat, the sahuagin scattered and fled, attracting Aeolus who wanted to fish in troubled waters. In the end, Aeolus fought for a long time without successfully looting anything, only suffering heavy losses to his troops instead.
And right at this moment, another group arrived to take advantage of the chaos.
Another band of sahuagin was currently raiding the kuo-toa's territory, forcing the lobster maiden to blow the conch shell and summon Aeolus home.
Nothing was more important than his wife, so Aeolus had no choice but to disengage from the battlefield for now and return to see what had happened.
With Aeolus's departure, Anbaixiu commenced a new round of sweeping the battlefield.
The fallen kuo-toa were likewise refined into zombies by Anbaixiu. Over the course of the battle, he had lost a few hundred sahuagin zombies, yet gained several thousand kuo-toa zombies in return.
Such was war for the undead—the longer they fought, the more soldiers they amassed.
By the time Anbaixiu finished clearing the battlefield once more, Aige and her crew had returned in triumphant victory.
The campaign against the ixitxachitl was a resounding success. Aided by Pearl Dew, the threat posed by the ixitxachitl venom was drastically diminished. The Silent Night Pirates were strong enough on their own to overcome their adversaries, let alone with the aid of Anbaixiu's undead legion.
The ixitxachitl fled, leaving behind unhatched roe and over ten thousand corpses, while Anbaixiu's side suffered only the loss of some expendable fodder. It was, by all accounts, a glorious victory.
With both territories now seized into his grasp, Anbaixiu had no time to rejoice and promptly gathered the members of the Elegy Poetry Society for a war council.
Anbaixiu had recorded the entire battle with Aeolus just now. After playing it back, every member of the Elegy Poetry Society voiced their astonishment.
How could anyone fight an opponent who was completely unkillable and possessed immense individual combat strength?
[Dislikes Humans: Why does a punk like you attract this kind of freak every single time?]
Heji Stone decided to kick him while he was down; such opportunities were rare and had to be seized firmly.
[Ultraman Tiga: You call that a freak? Your horizons are far too narrow. I've even conned an Archduke of Hell, and two goddesses in a row were punished by Ao because of me—as you already know.]
[Dislikes Humans: xxxxxxxxxxxx!]
Heji Stone nearly ground his fangs to dust. Carelessly, he had let this lich flex on him once again.
[Crown of the Headless Horseman: I'm quite interested in having a go at him, but underwater takes all the fun out of it. I'm no good at swimming.]
[Mute: Had I known earlier, I should have finished him off back then. Perhaps I could have directly devoured his body and soul, disrupting his regenerative ability.]
Anbaixiu replied helplessly: [It wouldn't have made much difference. Aeolus bears the blessing of a deity. As we all well know, such an ability operates on the level of rules and cannot be broken by mortal power. After all, you haven't become a true deity yet; the chances of disrupting the regenerative effect are exceedingly slim.]
It wasn't as if Anbaixiu hadn't considered using Finger of Death to directly annihilate Aeolus's soul, but the lad was more like a fixed state—no matter how he died, or which part of him was killed, all adverse effects were purged upon regeneration.
Anbaixiu had even cast True Polymorph to permanently turn Aeolus into a crab, yet after dying and regenerating, he returned exactly as he was, without the slightest alteration.
[Mute: So the only viable option is truly using your Time Stop effect to contain him?]
Anbaixiu shook his head and said, "I don't know, it's merely a conjecture. If a time-stopped state is also judged as death, then I'll truly have no way to contain him."
Aeolus's ability was absurd beyond measure, yet Anbaixiu had also spotted a weakness in it.
His raw power was static. Over their few encounters, Anbaixiu had sensed Aeolus growing stronger, but that growth was confined to his combat technique rather than his absolute power.
In other words, with every regeneration, the upper limit of seawater he could manipulate remained identical; he simply grew more proficient each time he wielded it, yielding better results.
This could be counted as the sole consolation. If this fellow could not only regenerate infinitely but also continuously level up and advance, then in a few years he would unify the oceans, and then the entire world.
Now the problem returned to square one: not how to kill Aeolus, but how to contain him.
After deliberating for a long while, the group proposed several different plans.
The first was naturally Anbaixiu's personal demiplane; using stopped time to restrain the opponent seemed the best approach. All it took was setting a trap to lure him into walking right into it. Given Aeolus's intellect, this shouldn't prove too difficult.
The second method was proposed by the Rose of Decay. She believed the vast majority of Aeolus's power derived from the sea; perhaps they could lure him onto land. Deprived of seawater's enhancement, setting aside whether he could still regenerate, his combat power would inevitably plummet, making him much easier to contain.
That was indeed a possibility. The overwhelming majority of Aeolus's abilities involved manipulating seawater; away from it, he would be barely stronger than an ordinary mortal.
And there was one final method, which was also the safest and most reliable.
Namely, seeking aid from a deity and having them intervene to strip Aeolus of his infinite regeneration.
However, there was a restriction here: any deity capable of stripping away an ocean-related blessing had to possess a corresponding divine portfolio. If you asked the God of Alchemy to intervene, even he could not revoke Aeolus's regeneration. Such was the function of a divine portfolio—analogous to a kind of administrative authority.
Without authority over the ocean, you had no jurisdiction to meddle with the rules of the sea.
Eadro seemed like a solid candidate. Were this goddess to step in and strip Aeolus's blessing, it ought to be a simple matter. Regrettably, Aige had just rejected Eadro's overtures, making it doubtful that the goddess would lend a hand.
[Ultraman Tiga: Let's not beg deities for patronage. Haven't we been toiling in these waters for so long precisely to ascend to godhood through our own strength?]
[Rose of Decay: Then what do you propose to do?]
Anbaixiu sighed, writing a sentence into the Necrotic Codex: [Try every single method, of course. I'll use World Weaving and the powers of a divination wizard to weave an imprisoned future for this brat.]
World Weaving was a spell capable of permanently altering terrain and climate. It could link the two newly conquered territories and reshape them to Anbaixiu's liking, allowing him to construct a flawless trap tailored specifically for Aeolus.
Although this spell was of an exceptionally high tier, that was no issue. That old rogue Gustavo Fring had already begun putting that gold coin to use on a massive scale, and Anbaixiu had already received his thirty percent kickback delivered by the God of Alchemy.
Once he kidnapped this brat Aeolus, Anbaixiu would extort a hefty ransom from that lunatic goddess—he'd pluck every last lobster whisker right off her face!
Chapter 440