Chapter 449: A Goddess in Her Stead

Perhaps Ambrose had sensed on some level that the plan was flawed. Or perhaps Catherine's principled reaction had simply given him the space to think more clearly.

Using Ariel as a stand-in for Aiolos sounded elegant in principle, but on closer examination, there were significant modes of failure.

First: Thanos's attitude. Would he actually want to watch the same script play out a second time?

Second: Ariel was not Aiolos. Aiolos had been alone in the world, easy to isolate and manipulate. Ariel had a kingdom behind her. The kouto goddess could wrap a lone wanderer around her claws, but she could not casually "handle" a sovereign nation the same way.

Third: Ariel's character.

The Ragetide princess was considerably more formidable than Aiolos. She was the kind of woman who would challenge her own father to a duel with a warhammer if she disagreed with him strongly enough. She was not easy to manipulate, and in a rage, she was fully capable of simply slaughtering every kouto in the vicinity.

Thinking it through, Ambrose concluded he had probably chosen the wrong approach, a sign of the moral drift he was experiencing, where considerations of other people's wellbeing had begun to slip out of his calculations.

"The original plan was to have you help me subdue the kouto so that the kouto goddess would be forced to negotiate with me, and then propose the Ariel arrangement in that conversation. But it looks like I've made an error."

Kouto had minimal cognitive capacity, and as a consequence, their resistance to Catherine's charm effect was essentially zero.

One look at Catherine would probably make them forget their own goddess existed, which would give Ambrose the leverage to compel Blobdilpulp to the table.

That was why he needed Catherine. But the plan needed to change. Ariel wasn't the point anymore. He needed to find a different way to satisfy Thanos's peculiar appetite for drama.

But how?

He was still working that out when the Blacktide arrived at its destination.

Below was dark, unsettled water, dense with bubbles rising from the seafloor, making the sea look like it was constantly simmering.

This was where a large group of kouto lived.

The kouto had a notable distinction from other ocean races: most of them were amphibious.

They occasionally appeared on beaches, constructing crude shrines from sand and debris and then venerating what they had built.

The seabed here had been honeycombed into a system of interconnected caverns. Gas from deep below constantly filtered up through the openings, forming an unusual half-flooded cave environment where the lower portions were submerged but anyone swimming upward would find open air pockets above.

Whether this had been shaped intentionally or had developed naturally, Ambrose didn't know. He only knew it was the preferred habitat of the kouto.

The original plan was to submerge with Catherine and locate the kouto goddess.

But the plan had changed. Ambrose was about to turn the Blacktide around and think things through from the beginning.

Before the Blacktide could finish its turn, however, a massive vortex opened beneath them. Water surged upward a hundred meters in a towering circular wall, sealing the Blacktide inside.

At the center of the vortex, a colossal lobster-headed female form condensed from seawater exuded authority.

"You. You dare show yourself in front of me!"

The shriek cut through the hull of the Blacktide and drove itself directly into the souls of both Ambrose and Catherine. The pain was immediate and physical.

This was unstructured, undirected, and devastating divine power. It wasn't even a combat spell—simply the raw overflow of a deity's presence pressing down on mortal minds.

Though only an intermediate divinity like the God of Alchemy, Blobdilpulp was demonstrably more aggressive. The moment her avatar appeared, Ambrose could feel the magical field around them beginning to warp and distort.

This was Blobdilpulp's domain. Inside it, any spell he cast had roughly a one percent chance of behaving predictably.

Ambrose's dice of fate might cover that gap, but the expenditure would be enormous. He couldn't sustain reliable casting for long under these conditions.

He hadn't expected such a result. He hadn't even needed to bring Catherine; the kouto goddess had surfaced on her own.

Well then. Since she was here, they might as well talk.

Ambrose didn't bother stepping out of the Blacktide. He simply addressed the projection directly. "Esteemed Mother of the Sea, I come in peace today. I ask that you restrain your wrath and your power."

The goddess gave him no room to negotiate. She bellowed: "You are a deceiver known to all, a wretched undead, a miserable mortal! What right do you have to negotiate with me?! You came here for one reason—to face my fury, and then to become waste matter on the ocean floor!"

The wall of water surged higher. Mixed in with it were tens of thousands of kouto, riding the surge. When they reached sufficient altitude, they hurled themselves toward the Blacktide.

Tens of thousands of them, pouring from the water column like hornets from a shaken nest...

Ambrose swore under his breath and ordered the Blacktide to engage.

Dozens of gun barrels extended from the ship's flanks and began firing specialized rounds.

Each projectile that struck a kouto immediately began sprouting bone-white coral growth, skewering entire clusters of them simultaneously.

The Blacktide rotated constantly, sweeping the bone-proliferation fire across every attack vector. White coral bloomed with violent efficiency, encasing kouto bodies that then fell away in cascades.

Catherine watched, her skin crawling. She had never seen such efficient killing. The Blacktide was no ordinary weapon of war.

But none of it mattered. Even as kouto died by the second, they showed no fear.

The Blacktide's first magazine emptied. In the seconds it took to reload, dozens of kouto had already latched onto the hull.

Most were flung off by the ship's rotation, but enough had driven their claws into the armor to hold on.

A second wave of kouto quickly joined the first. Within minutes, the exterior plating was crawling with kouto, clawing apart gun barrels and weapons systems.

More undead weapon systems activated. The colorless air undead were released in invisible clouds, killing kouto by the batch; undead drones launched into the air to intercept any assault from above.

But raw efficiency was irrelevant against these numbers.

Among the kouto ascending through the waterspout were spellcasters. They started casting at the Blacktide, and someone opened with Meteor Shower.

Ambrose couldn't tell if a legendary kouto had done it deliberately, or if some chaotic wild magic surge had converted a Fireball into something vastly more powerful.

Four meteors grazed the Blacktide's hull, missing a direct hit but killing a substantial number of kouto beneath them. The kouto themselves remained unperturbed. Under the goddess's command—almost certainly a mass Crown of Madness effect—they came forward endlessly, caring nothing for the bodies falling beside them.

More spells followed, cratering the Blacktide's plating.

"She doesn't care how many kouto die! She'd sacrifice them all just to bring us down with them!"

It made no strategic sense. Destroying the Blacktide would kill Ambrose's physical body, and he would simply regenerate from his phylactery. On the other hand, the kouto would be dead permanently. This was pure spite.

Logical analysis did not apply to Blobdilpulp.

Still, Ambrose had no intention of perishing then and there.

The Blacktide was extraordinarily expensive, after all.

"Stay inside," Ambrose said to Catherine. "Don't come out under any circumstances. I'll draw the kouto's attention, so use that opening to get the Blacktide clear. If you can't fly out, use the ship's transfer array. Don't worry about me. I have plenty of phylacteries."

He was already sealing himself into his mithril armor as he spoke. He dropped down through the bomb bay.

Encased in silvery-white armor, he fell in a high-speed plunge. Every kouto in visual range immediately reoriented.

Chaotic spellfire poured down on him. Ambrose had no idea how many spells were landing; he used his dice of fate to deflect and neutralize what he could, drawing the swarm downward, pulling them away from the Blacktide. When the ocean surface was just beneath him, he twisted in the air and raised his right hand toward the mass above.

Even inside a different body, the brand Thanos had left on his palm still faintly glowed.

Without any hesitation, Ambrose cast the ninth-tier Storm of Revenge.

In a domain crackling with magical instability, thunder was conjured out of nowhere, engulfing every kouto in pursuit of him.

Lightning tore through them. And in this warped field, the discharge didn't simply end. It cascaded into a new magical effect.

Under Ambrose's full concentration, each dying bolt of lightning became a new attack entirely.

Thunder. Flame. Sonic concussions. Necrotic poison. Acid. Wave after wave of effects, each from a different school of magic, a compendium of destruction concentrated into a single churning vortex, shredding every living thing within the column of water.

Storm of Revenge was already devastating under normal conditions. Thanos's gift carried inherent amplification beyond the standard ninth-tier ceiling, and Blobdilpulp's unstable domain was multiplying its effects rather than dampening them. Ambrose channeled every remaining dice of fate into the casting, forcing the maximum possible intensity from every random effect.

The resulting Storm of Revenge was roughly an order of magnitude more destructive than usual.

In all his life, Ambrose had never witnessed this many spells discharge simultaneously. The light display made fireworks look dim. Violent magic tore through scales and dissolved flesh. The bones beneath were ground to fragments; the shattered remnants of tens of thousands of kouto rained down and stained the sea red.

He didn't know how many he had killed. He knew that even the kouto riding the water column at the edge of his range had been caught in the blast, a sweep that appeared to have cleared every living thing in his line of sight.

The bracelet on his wrist went dark.

This was the God of Alchemy's gift. While lit up, it meant that Thanos's gaze was elsewhere.

Now that it had dimmed, it meant Thanos was paying attention.

Of course. The Storm of Revenge would have resonated directly with its creator. Thanos had felt it and looked to see where it came from.

Overhead, the Blacktide was descending in pieces, hull compromised, covered in kouto, falling from the sky.

The storm's range ultimately hadn't been large enough. The ship had fought to climb, but the sheer numbers of kouto had won out.

Ambrose's soul hurt. That was the most expensive vessel he had ever owned.

"Die!"

He abandoned all restraint and summoned the Golden Throne. He extended his right hand toward the depths of the churning sea below.

The Golden Throne shrank by half as Ambrose poured the majority of its accumulated power into his palm. A mass of absolute darkness erupted from his fingertips and spread, flowing outward across the entire roiling sea surface, then descending like a net cast over everything beneath.

This was a mass Power Word: Kill.

Power Word: Kill normally targeted a single individual. Any creature whose life force was insufficient to survive the judgment died instantly, while those with sufficient vitality were unaffected.

Ambrose had poured most of the Golden Throne's reserves into this single casting.

Given enough gold, Ambrose could be the most formidable spellcaster in the mortal world. A spell that would have required an entire mage corps chanting for half a day, Ambrose could produce alone.

He was, at that very moment, the equivalent of ten thousand advanced mages casting in unison.

The dark net covered a radius of several kilometers, passing through the water as though it weren't there, reaching all the way to the seafloor. Everything living within that radius died instantly.

Moments later, kouto bodies surfaced by the thousands, filling the sea from horizon to horizon.

Ambrose had no time to process and grieve over the cost of that spell. He raised his gaze to the kouto goddess's projection, still present high above him. She hadn't acted directly. Even fully enraged, she wasn't willing to attack Ambrose personally. She had limited herself to commanding her believers.

He suspected the display had surprised her. No mortal should have been able to produce something like that on their own.

Then Blobdilpulp's lobster-head let out a shriek: "Thanos! It's you! You're disguised as a mortal! I can smell your lightning! You dared attack my believers? Aion will punish you for this!"

Ambrose smiled thinly and floated upward toward her projection. He raised his right hand and spoke, not to her, but to the brand on his palm, almost as if murmuring to himself: "Mighty Lord of Storms, I know you are watching. I ask you to witness my oath. I will deliver the grandest wedding I can contrive. And I will bring the kouto goddess Blobdilpulp to your divine realm to deal with as you see fit."