【40, 39, 38……】


  The ship cabin was gradually turning colder and colder. Roel stared calmly at the white-robed young man whose right arm had already been petrified, and the shuddering Douglas returned the stare too. He couldn’t comprehend how the other party could have possibly been here.

  “N-no, this is impossible. How did you manage to find……”


  “We exchanged gazes, didn’t we? How is your arm feeling?”


  Roel answered the doubt of the man, a small gift before sending him on his way.

  Douglas’s face immediately turned ghastly pale. He subconsciously lowered his gaze to look at his petrified arm. He couldn’t have imagined that the lingering traces of mana in his arm would have actually created a trail for the boy to find his real body.

  “W-wait a moment, I’m one of the executives of the Saints Convocation, and I have a high standing in the Scholar Guild too. Y-your name is Roel, right? Tell me what you want, and I’ll do my best to satisfy you!”


  Douglas’s white eyes gradually regained their color as he squeezed out a strained smile on his face. He anxiously revealed his high standing, hoping to convince the boy before him to spare him. To his despair, nothing he said could melt the cold look on the boy’s face.

  “Spare yourself from the effort. There’s nothing you have that’s important to me.”


  “Then what’s important to you? Tell me!!”


  “.…… Your absence. That’s what’s important to me.”


  Staring down at the enemy who had infiltrated SS Saint Mary to assassinate Charlotte, the frost aura shrouding Roel began to stir. Douglas staggered backward in horror. Then, all of a sudden, his body suddenly exploded, causing his flesh to fly outward in all directions as a fog of blood swiftly suffused the cabin.

  This was Douglas’s final bid for survival, his last trump card.

  Blood Flesh Dissection.

  This spell exploded his body, causing it to dissect into over a thousand pieces, each infused with his will. As long as one of them could escape, he would have a chance at revival.

  Of course, the price of doing so was the loss of his important organs and physical functions. He would become a being that was neither living nor dead. However, this was still much better than death. As long as a breath remained in him, he could slowly retrieve whatever he had lost. After all, this was a supernatural world where the impossible was plausible.

  Douglas knew that Roel wasn’t going to let him off, so he was decisive in the activation of his spell. The explosion that occurred in this small cabin produced a shockwave that blasted everything into the open sky.

  This was, after all, the self-destructive explosion of an Origin Level 2 transcendent. Its shockwave was powerful enough for someone from a thousand miles away to clearly feel its terrifying force.

  The warship Douglas was on, SS Saint Martin, split into two halves under the force of the explosion, and the pulpy mashed remains of the sailors tumbled into the sea together with shattered wooden splinters. Dust scattered into the air, veiling the surroundings.

  The fractured consciousness of Douglas felt a little reassured after seeing the explosion. Given that Roel had been in close proximity when it happened, even if the other party had survived the explosion, he should no longer wield the strength to pursue him anymore.

  The boy’s ability to freeze the surface of the sea was terrifying, but Douglas didn’t think much of it. There were high-level transcendents who could pull something similar to that off with their bloodline ability, but Douglas was confident that even an Origin Level 2 with ice-related bloodlines wouldn’t be able to stop the current him.

  Blood Flesh Dissection increased his magic resistance to a level where hardly any spells could faze him anymore. It was also due to this effect that he had chosen this spell amongst many others as his final survival means.

  Be it Brolne’s Chief Academic or Saint Mesit’s Angel King, none of them had the ability to stop him in this form. He was still young. As long as he survived this ordeal, he believed that he would eventually be able to return to his peak.

  By then, he would make sure to slaughter this darned bastard and everyone he cared about!

  With an unwavering determination to survive, Douglas’s body pieces began raining down into the sea.

  At the same time, Roel’s frost aura began to ripple outward, preparing to burst forth once more to freeze the sea. Seeing this, Douglas couldn’t help but sneer at the attempt.

  An ice spell from a mere Origin Level 3. How could something of this caliber stop me?

  Confident in his own spell, Douglas continued his descent into the sea, falling into the water with loud plops. However, what happened right after defied his wildest imagination that he even began doubting his common sense.

  He still ended up frozen.

  Why?!?!

  Countless doubts exploded in Douglas’s mind, but soon, he stumbled upon the real reason.

  Wait a moment, this frost aura is…… How could that be?

  Completely horrified by his realization, Douglas quickly channeled the still unfrozen bits of his body outward, attempting to escape from the expanding glacier chasing him. However, it was all futile. In just a few short seconds, both his body and mind sputtered to a halt, terminating the being known as Douglas.

  “You spared me a lot of time by mashing yourself up.”


  Standing on the surface of the sea, Roel looked at the thousands of flesh pieces trapped within the ice beneath his feet as he shook his head.

  To be honest, he was a bit perplexed as to what had happened as well. He could tell that the explosion into thousands of body pieces was Douglas’s escape means, but it didn’t seem to have done a thing at all. However, he swiftly shrugged these thoughts to the back of his mind. He could sense that Douglas had met his end, and that was all that really mattered.

  “Goodbye, Mister Douglas.”
……

  The familiar deck of a familiar ship; these told Roel that he had arrived at his destination. He landed onto the deck of SS Saint Mary quietly with slightly heavy breaths. In the background was a world of frost.

  Roel didn’t waste the last 30 seconds of Peytra’s Blessing to calmly return from the enemy’s frontline—that would have been utterly foolish. Instead, he made sure to pay a visit to some of the enemy ships.

  He froze the waters around the ships and ordered his crimson skeleton to tear out the ships’ masts. He wisely chose not to engage in fights but, rather, create favorable conditions for his allies.

  The goal of backstabbing enemies wasn’t about destroying the enemy formation; rather, it was to induce chaos and render them incapable of putting up a proper fight.

  Under Roel’s interference, seven of the enemy ships ended up being significantly slowed, and three of them were even frozen in place. These impaired ships became easy targets for the Golden Fleet to hit with their main cannons, a task that the fleet’s captains carried out without any hesitation.

  Just like that, Roel single-handedly determined the tides of the battle, sealing the conclusion of the fight. It was like a textbook example of warfare amongst transcendents, fully showcasing the terrifying influence high-level transcendents had on the outcome of a battle.

  It was just that Roel was fully aware that he wasn’t a proper high-level transcendent, so what he could do was limited.

  【3, 2, 1.】


  【Spell ‘Peytra’s Blessing’ has come to an end.】


  【Degree of Bloodline Awakening: 77%】


  【Evaluation: High (82)】


  Amidst the emergence of System notifications and the cheering warriors rushing over to his side, Roel’s vision began to darken. The frost aura around him dissipated, and the dim yellow mana previously surging in his body vanished as well. His knees caved in, and they would have knocked onto the ground if not for a person suddenly rushing forward to support his body.

  Ah, it’s Charlotte.

  Such a thought surfaced in Roel’s sinking consciousness as he looked at the blurry auburn-haired figure in front of him. His body had turned as stiff and cold as a corpse. Vaguely, he could feel tears dripping down on his chest, bringing his cold body a tinge of warmth.

  “Douglas…… That assassin is dead.”


  “I know, I know…… Stop talking.”


  Tears streamed down Charlotte’s eyes as layers of golden light emanated from her body. She embraced the black-haired boy tightly as she desperately channeled the golden light to force out the coldness that had permeated his bones.

  The commotion of the surrounding crewmates also died down. They slowly turned around and raised their shields up high, granting a little privacy to the couple, while they warily assessed their surroundings for any incoming threats……

  Roel’s interference had affected Isabella and Gordon’s fight too.

  The flagship of Gordon’s fleet, SS Saint Martin, had been blown in two thanks to Douglas’s self-explosion. While the Saints Convocation had chosen to help Gordon, their alliance wasn’t so tight-knit for Douglas to care about his allies when his life was in immediate danger. His selfishness was the final nail in the coffin for the conservative faction’s rebellion.

  The impact arising from the demise of the flagship wasn’t as simple as just lowering the morale of the fleet. It represented the destruction of the fleet’s command chain, causing the coordination of the warships to fall apart. The fleet formation fell into an utter mess, leaving many of the warships vulnerable to enemy attack.

  Perturbed by his fleet falling apart around him, Gordon eventually fell in defeat.

  The white-haired old man kneeled on the surface of the sea as he clutched tightly onto the deep cut on his abdomen. His usual air of solemnity had vanished without a trace. The sharp pain from his abdomen was causing his wrinkled cheeks to twitch uncontrollably.

  “Surrender, Gordon.”


  The comparatively less injured Isabella, shrouded in Golden Soul, descended to the surface of the sea. She persuaded him to give up, but the old man responded to her with a deep, guttural laugh.

  “No, the one who should be surrendering is you.”


  Gordon showed no signs of despair despite his imminent defeat. Instead, his eyes were gleaming with reverence. As if having sensed something, he turned around to look into the horizon of the sea. His body began trembling intensely from sheer excitement.

  “It’s over. It has arrived.”