Chapter 664: Oath by the Sea
Before him, the sound from Elizabeth, resonating like a funeral bell, softly knocked against Fisher’s ears. The sadness in her eyes dragged her gaze downwards until it finally touched the cold stones on the ground, infecting her with their chill.
Then, the golden flame in her hand flickered slightly, and the Godlin sword gradually extended its long, sharp blade, pointing downwards toward the ground.
Just behind Elizabeth, a bitter and salty sea breeze flowed from the crack in the sky that was visibly burning, wildly swirling her dress. It was then that she finally spoke:
“Just stay beside me for now, okay? Everything is already destined; it wouldn’t help to leave. I don’t want to fight you, Fisher.”
“Pah! Don’t come at me with that!”
At this moment, Emhart, who had been nestled in Fisher’s arms, could no longer restrain himself from his spectator status and flew up to perch on Fisher’s shoulder. He cursed at Elizabeth before him:
“Yes! I admit that everything Fisher did was ridiculous. He is probably one of the biggest perverts and scumbags in the world that likes sub girls! He has wronged you and others with his actions, so I’ve been berating him the whole time! Yes! He is a downright bad guy, a scumbag who deceives others’ feelings!
“But you are not a good bird either, Elizabeth! This is clearly your business between you two. If you’re going to collect a debt, shouldn’t you seek a creditor instead? You act like you’ve gone mad; your father and brothers have harmed you, and you killed them without caring. Why kill others? Did Fisher, this scumbag, wrong you? What’s the point of destroying this world? At least Fisher realizes his mistakes and takes responsibility without seeking excuses, but you don’t even understand that! Damn it! Help, Fisher!”
Emhart had barely sounded tough for a moment when Elizabeth’s cold, golden gaze swept towards him, and in an instant, the hard rock began to appear ominously on his book cover.
Fisher’s reaction was lightning-fast; as soon as this phenomenon occurred, he suddenly raised his sleeve to shield Emhart, while his body retreated suddenly for a distance, shaking off the part of his sleeve that had turned to stone.
Emhart sighed in relief, standing back on Fisher’s shoulder, wearing an expression of “I still have to talk for you.”
“Look at you; every time you meet Elizabeth, you act like a wooden stick. If you don’t speak up, we’ll both be finished here!”
Fisher gave him a speechless glance. Just now, this guy had also berated him, which amounted to “wounding a thousand enemies while harming eight hundred of oneself.”
However, as a bystander, he knew that what Emhart said was the truth.
He sighed, pinched Emhart’s book cover, and straightened his body to look towards Elizabeth. At this moment, the clash of flesh and blood being transformed by Alicia in the mountains became increasingly evident, urging him to make a quick decision.
He quietly spoke to the phantom beside him, attempting to communicate with the Fate Lord:
“Fate Lord, can I leave Alicia’s side to you for now? I want to deal with Elizabeth first.”
“No, even if I can subdue her, I cannot handle the chaotic being within her. She will still undergo the transition to the base and needs you to hurry and sever her link with that chaotic being. Besides, I don’t think you can handle Elizabeth at the moment. She possesses all of Pandora’s power and is close to completing the ‘Death Trinity’. You are at Nineteen Rank; I am just slightly stronger than you. Together, we wouldn’t be enough for her.”
“How am I only slightly weaker than you?”
Fisher expressed disbelief, and there was a moment of silence at the other end, followed by a tone that became exceedingly dismal:
“Aren’t you only at Nineteen Rank? What are you complaining about?”
“I’m only thirty years old; you’ve been around for so long.”
“You’re still the key to the Apocalypse Prophecy. What’s the point of such a weak savior? Are you going to run or not? If not, I’ll just leave you behind.”
“…”
The nature of the Fate Lord was even more realistic than Fisher had imagined. Just as he was about to say something, he felt the scorching waves of heat in front of him becoming more pronounced. He lifted his gaze and saw that the golden sword in Elizabeth’s hand had already sunk into the ground, blocking everything around them.
Elizabeth lowered her gaze, but her tone was still restrained:
“Fisher, I really don’t want to turn your feet to stone. Just stay there and don’t move, okay?”
Fisher looked at the Elizabeth before him, and in his palm, a silver Fluid Sword continuously extended downward until it reached its complete form.
He only softly spoke to Emhart on his shoulder:
“Emhart, hide in my arms.”
“Okay!”
Emhart obediently complied. However, before hiding, he glanced at Elizabeth in front of him, which instantly provoked Elizabeth. She became furious, including the eye of fate that was lodged within her, also incensed by Emhart, whether it was from his earlier words or from his current expression that appeared to be “showing off.”
Fisher could not see that look, nor did he know how Pandora’s eye perceived that gaze, which carried a sense of provocation, as if saying, “I’m crawling into your Fisher’s arms; your Fisher is going to leave with me.”
In the next moment, gold lines erupted densely around Elizabeth’s eyes, and in Fisher’s vision, a heavenly phantom he had seen before appeared beside her.
The eyeless angel floated around Elizabeth like a soulless spirit, and the phantom halo behind her constantly revolved, eventually bursting into dangerous and deadly red light.
Fisher, familiar with Hela’s body structure, understood this was a sign of the angel becoming angered.
Fisher had provoked Elizabeth, and Emhart had incited her eye of fate. Together, they truly made for a pair of misfits.
Elizabeth ceased to speak further. Without any action from herself, the phantom of Pandora hovering by her side leaned down slightly, grasping the golden sword in her hand, unleashing the power of Nineteen Rank instantaneously, alongside the sword bestowed by Xu, making Elizabeth’s aura extraordinarily dangerous in an instant.
Simultaneously, the aura of death spread continuously behind her. Just as Fisher caught a whiff of a strange, corpse-like odor, Emhart in his arms shouted:
“Be careful!”
Fisher’s gaze sharpened, and the Fluid Sword in his hand shot out violently, piercing through all the corpses that were beginning to rise like a meteor. He kicked the ground hard, preparing to leave this place, but Elizabeth would not let him have his way.
“Fisher, where do you think you’re going?!!”
The Pandora phantom beside Elizabeth suddenly opened its mouth and let out a fierce roar, utterly different from the elegant angelic figure from millennia ago; at this moment, it was more like a monster clad in Pandora’s skin hovering by Elizabeth.
Yet the power of Nineteen Rank was anything but illusory.
As Elizabeth’s furious scream echoed, everything in her sight began to turn to stone. Fisher’s retreating shadow abruptly hesitated. He looked down and realized that even his clothes and the flesh concealed beneath them began to be transformed into stone.
Yet Fisher did not panic. He quickly pulled Emhart from his arms to avoid him turning to stone, unleashing the chaotic life force from his body simultaneously.
Let’s not forget, he now possessed the nature of a “treasure.”
The next second, his body became blurred as if “stuck” together; he seemed to transform into a mass of human-shaped flesh, constantly retreating while petrifying yet simultaneously generating more flesh, resulting in the simultaneous processes of petrification and the growth of flesh, with the latter occurring faster than Pandora’s petrification.
Elizabeth was momentarily stunned as she watched the petrified “flesh” in front of Fisher transform into a series of “stone sculptures,” while Fisher himself never fell behind in the petrification process.
Seeing Fisher about to leave, urgency surged in her heart, and she had to follow to avoid Fisher escaping the petrification range.
Thus, she hurriedly peeled away from the phantom of Pandora beside her and rushed forward. In the next second, however, a piece of finely woven flesh suddenly burst forth from the corpses lying nearby, continuously growing and taking shape in mid-air until it completely transformed into Fisher himself, wielding the Fluid Sword.
Elizabeth momentarily froze, spinning around to see that the petrified flesh she had previously chased had completely turned to stone, devoid of Fisher’s image, while Emhart had long run off far to pursue Alicia.
As a human, even with Pandora and chaos at her side, she indeed lacked practical fighting experience at the mythical rank. Only when Fisher emerged from the corpse did she finally realize that his previous escape had been a ruse.
And she hadn’t even realized Fisher’s true plan; that relic, which had never exchanged a word with Fisher, was still aware of it?
He was actually considering turning back to sever her link with the eye of fate connected to the death trinity?
No.
If she discarded the eye of fate,
Then everything of mine, everything of mine would—
No, no, no, no, no.
“Pandora!!”
The emptiness in Elizabeth’s eyes suddenly shrank. As Fisher gritted his teeth and lunged towards Elizabeth’s eye of fate, the sharp call of the phantom behind her echoed in response to her fervent invocation, as it swiftly moved to Elizabeth’s back, tightly embracing her while swinging a terrifying sword at Fisher.
“Boom!!”
The overwhelming blast of heat erupted with the might of Nineteen Rank, exploding outward with terrifying impact the moment the Fluid Sword struck the Godlin sword.
The entire beach instantaneously collapsed, and the surging seawater was blasted upward, forming towering columns of water like mountains. The palace in front fell under the force of the shockwave, flinging all the guards who had rushed to worry about Elizabeth away.
The whole beach was utterly destroyed in the clash of that power, turning the royal private beach, which had been passed down for hundreds of years by Godlin, into a shell hole from the mythical battle.
As the surrounding dust gradually dispersed, the human guards and maids lying on the ground could not help but rise. However, at that moment, the sand and gravel thrown into the air and then falling made the entire scene obscure as if shrouded in thick mist.
“What happened?”
“Quick, search for His Majesty! Count the casualties! We—”
While the guards closest to the beach were perplexed as to how they miraculously survived the shockwave just before the explosion, a figure holding a golden sword gradually emerged from the swirling sand.
Upon closer inspection, it was a breathless Elizabeth.
“Your Majesty!!”
The guards excitedly exclaimed, unaware that just moments before the explosion, Elizabeth had already realized that such a shock would kill everyone around the palace, so she had used Pandora’s phantom to redirect the force towards the ocean, causing the beach to collapse entirely into the sea.
Fisher, intending to destroy her link to the eye of fate, had also been propelled into the sky due to the shockwave, disappearing from sight.
These guards felt an immense sense of relief to see their Empress unharmed, and many of the maids began to kneel in prayer to the Mother, thanking her for ensuring their Empress’s safety.
“Your Majesty! It’s great that you’re unharmed! What on earth just happened?”
Amidst the crowd, Diane, who had originally been busy inside the palace, ran toward Elizabeth in a panic, anxiously questioning her.
Seeing her looking a bit dazed and unstable, Diane couldn’t help but tear up, covering her face with her hands and bowing her head to weep,
“If anything happened to you, Your Majesty, I’d—I’d feel like I’d rather die… Wuu… Wuu…”
“Alright, stop the noise. I’m fine.”
For some reason, seeing Diane in front of her crying made Elizabeth, who had already been in a bad mood, feel even worse.
She felt like a furious lion with all her anger to release but could not utter a single word in front of these beloved subjects.
She simply clenched her teeth, her gaze dropping to the sky in a certain direction, speaking in a low voice,
“Leave the repairs here to someone else, Diane. Help me arrange a carriage back to Saint Nali. I want to return to the Golden Palace right now.”
“Wuu, alright, Your Majesty… Wuu…”
At this moment, in the woods about several tens of miles from the beach, the Fate Lord, bound entirely by ropes, was slowly retracting her hands, as if countless knots were being pulled back into her body.
Before her was Alicia, transformed into flesh and blood by her. The chaotic being within her began to engage in fierce resistance against the chaos that originated from Fisher, prompted by the warning, ultimately resulting in this fleeing demeanor. However, the Fate Lord easily captured and subdued her.
As the Fate Lord waited, there came a subtle whisper of wind from the woods behind her.
Without looking back, the Fate Lord spoke softly as though foreseeing the outcome:
“The moment you parted from her, the instant you kissed that Dragon Race, that was when you and she were doomed to arrive at today, no matter what you do, it would be futile. You think it was because you didn’t do well enough, she believes she can return to the past by embracing a new order—how foolish.”
“…”
In the next second, a figure with a complex expression emerged from the woods behind, walking towards them—Fisher.
“I only—”
“Heh, you just don’t believe in fate. You and she still have love. This love makes you both struggle and try in the turmoil, only to turn back and conserve energy when you hit a wall. Rather than wasting effort on things that cannot be salvaged, you might as well think about how to save this world, how to find Asuka again.”
“Hey, you old lady, your words are somewhat interesting. What does this have to do with their matters? Blabbering here, have you ever been in love? You have no practical experience but are trying to dictate everything?”
Emhart started voicing his displeasure, standing on Fisher’s shoulder and outputting bravely, causing the veins in the Fate Lord’s forehead hidden under the ropes to bulge; her trembling arms might just roll up her sleeves for a passionate confrontation with Emhart.
Fortunately, Fisher extended his hand to stop Emhart on his shoulder, who had sufficient aggression today, seizing the opportunity while Fisher was in a heavy mood and hesitant to speak to act as his mouthpiece, cursing Elizabeth and the Fate Lord alike.
Yet words would not change the essence of the matter; he merely took a glance at the Fate Lord’s back, sighed deeply, adjusted his state, and walked towards the struggling mass of flesh lying on the ground.
This lump of flesh was similar to the shape that “Anna” had turned into when the incident erupted in Saint Nali all those years ago, so twisted,
“Big brother, it hurts. Big brother.”
“…”
He bent down and reached out to pat Alicia on the ground, confirming that the chaotic being still resisted against the power that was altering Alicia’s constitution and had not completely transformed her into a base yet, letting out a breath of relief.
Thankfully, he made it back in time, and there was still a chance to restore Alicia to an ordinary human.
He extended his hand, continuing to allow his own flesh to alter Alicia’s body. With his involvement, the process of transformation became particularly smooth.
Alicia’s swollen flesh continually condensed until it began to take on human form; the remnants of chaos within her also began to retreat, ultimately, a voice resembling a bell, which resonated in his soul, echoed within Fisher’s heart:
“Fisher.”
At that moment, the chaotic force within him became particularly lively, as if the authority contained within was being drawn by the far-away voice.
Was it the voice of the source of chaos, that deity?
He swallowed hard, disregarding everything, lowering his head, and continuing to change Alicia’s constitution, even as the bell-like voice became increasingly indistinct like an illusion.
“You think you can escape the ocean?”
Fisher’s pupils constricted slightly, but his hands did not stop; in the next moment, Alicia in front of him instantaneously transformed into human form, and that voice completely disappeared, as if it had been an illusion.
“Success! Fisher! This little girl has turned back!”
Emhart happily flew up to Fisher’s shoulder, speaking to him.
On the ground, the long-unconscious Alicia’s eyes fluttered open like butterfly wings; she groggily opened her eyes, gazing at Fisher, and spoke to him in a blurred voice:
“Big brother, have we met before?”
Alicia rubbed her eyes and sat up. Fisher patted her head, confirming her condition. After verifying she had lost the nature of a treasure and had reverted to an ordinary person, he asked her:
“…Why are you asking that all of a sudden?”
“Well, it seems like I had a dream about it, that big brother agreed to bring back the remains of someone called ‘Anna’ back to the Southern Continent. Did you do it?”
“…”
Listening to the innocent confusion from the little girl before him, Fisher could no longer contain himself. He opened his mouth, his expression fracturing piece by piece, finally leaking out all the emotions he had been hiding in that shattered state.
Tears welled up in his eyes, his whole body trembling uncontrollably. Slowly, he reached out, tightly embracing Alicia, who looked confused and lost, pulling her into his embrace, as if he was simultaneously hugging someone he had never hugged before.
He trembled, whispering to Alicia:
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Alicia, I’m sorry.”
Alicia, not understanding why her big brother was so sad, could only smile and, mimicking an adult, patted his back, speaking in a childish voice:
“It’s okay, big brother. Just do it next time.
“If you forget the promise, you must never forget again next time, big brother.”
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(End of chapter)
