“Alfonso…” Saul had wanted to approach him, but saw Alfonso merely look at him expressionlessly before transforming into black mist and diving into the seawater.

Something’s not right with him. Saul naturally wouldn’t chase after him to ask, because he had just seen another wizard staggering toward him.

Obviously another patient.

Saul quickly changed direction to meet them, thinking: Alfonso’s mental state is very poor, but there are no traces of pollution in his magical power. Where did he just go, and what happened? What about Royer? Why didn’t he come back together? Could they not have gone to the same place?

Saul absent-mindedly treated the newcomer, who was excitedly talking to Saul, “Lord Saul, Lord Alfonso has returned. Maybe Lord Royer will return soon too. As long as they come back, there’s hope of holding this place.”

“Yes.” Saul didn’t say much.

This place could originally be held, but the cost might be losing most of the Red Sea Trees.

Now that Alfonso had returned, if Royer could also return alive, perhaps most of the remaining Red Sea Trees could be saved.

To ultimately end normal combat, the defense formation still needed to light up again. Only then could wizards stop worrying about the Red Sea Trees in the sea and lure the black tide monster fish to the surface to kill them.

However, after a long time, Royer didn’t appear. Everyone’s hearts sank again with the continuously collapsing Red Sea Trees.

Saul once again released a wizard he had finished treating. The latter didn’t immediately leave but stayed in place to catch his breath.

Now everyone’s pollution situation was temporarily controlled thanks to Saul, but because they needed to fully block the black tide monster fish, Tribunal wizards couldn’t rotate normally in combat, resulting in very high magical power consumption.

Even though magic crystals could supplement magical power, the burden on the body was still very heavy.

And there was at least another hour before the defense formation restarted.

The only good news was that besides their area, although other places also had black tide monster fish flowing back, the numbers weren’t as many as here. If they persisted a bit longer, reinforcements should arrive.

At this time, Saul noticed that the speed of Red Sea Tree collapse seemed to have stopped.

“Did Alfonso do something?”

The seawater blocked Saul’s mental exploration. He could only vaguely sense an extremely powerful magical power fluctuation.

After several breaths, a figure suddenly shot up from underwater.

It was Alfonso.

His condition was even stranger. The black mist around his body was so dense it seemed to have become solid, and several black tide monster fish were trapped in the mist, being dragged toward a direction away from the Red Sea Trees.

He had many injuries and severe signs of black tide pollution.

But he had no intention of coming to Saul for treatment. Clearly, from previous mermaid experiments, he already knew how skilled Saul was at treating black tide pollution.

Yet he kept moving away without looking back.

Saul felt something was wrong.

He stepped forward two paces, but then someone else came for treatment. Saul could only stop, transforming his arm into tentacles to touch the patient’s arm while his eyes still watched Alfonso’s departing direction.

The other was heading toward the deep sea.

After the distance exceeded a thousand meters, Alfonso finally stopped with several black tide monster fish.

Saul could clearly see him take out a glass test tube from his body. Inside the tube was a drop of dark red something.

It somewhat resembled mermaid royal bloodline.

Then Alfonso tilted his head back and swallowed that drop of blood, casually throwing the empty bottle into the sea.

Then he took several more potions.

Saul hadn’t seen those potions before and didn’t know what they were for.

But his heart was pounding, and a chill rushed through his blood vessels to his entire body. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ NoveIＦire.net

The next second, he saw Alfonso’s entire skin crack like peeling wall paint, then fall into the sea.

The exposed red muscle under the skin quickly gushed large amounts of fresh blood, but that blood gradually changed from red to dark red, finally becoming black-red.

Although the blood gushed out, it didn’t drip into the sea. It seemed to lose gravity and surrounded Alfonso, gradually changing from a human form to a blob with blurred human outline.

Now, even lower-rank wizards without enough experience knew what Alfonso was going to do.

“Lord Alfonso!”

A wizard familiar with Alfonso couldn’t help but want to rush over, but was stopped by Saul’s shout.

“Don’t go! Everyone… must not approach within a thousand meters of him!”

“Don’t interfere at this time, when he’s making such a sacrifice!”

Saul’s voice made everyone stop, showing disbelief on their faces.

Then, something miraculous happened.

Those black tide monster fish attacking the Red Sea Trees actually gave up their assault and turned toward Alfonso, who had become a blood mass.

The underwater wizards couldn’t even find opponents for a moment and could only surface to look into the distance.

Rotting black tide monster fish surfaced one by one, numerous enough to form waves of corpses.

Saul also looked down at these monster fish surfacing.

“So the seabed was hiding so many black tide monsters. No wonder even Alfonso gave up and chose this method…”

Saul didn’t know how Alfonso managed to use his own flesh and blood to attract away the black tide monsters in the sea. This was obviously forbidden knowledge.

If used by someone with ulterior motives on land, it could cause sudden attacks by black tide monsters in undefended places.

Suddenly, a touch of white mixed with black entered Saul’s vision.

Disheveled long hair stuck to pale skin, with a cyan fish tail appearing and disappearing.

It was actually Pearl, mermaid princess Pearl!

Why hadn’t she left Nephret?

Saul raised his hand and flicked it. His arm transformed into semi-transparent tentacles and scooped up Pearl, who had just swum beneath him.

As soon as he lowered his head to grab Pearl, he was shocked to discover she had already entered a state of exhaustion.

That pale skin didn’t shimmer with pearl-like luster but was as white and shriveled as a dead person. Even having just left the water surface, her skin felt as rough as sand.

The cyan scales on her tail were also dull and lifeless. During the process of Saul pulling her up, several scales automatically fell off and dropped into the sea, swallowed by the waves.

However, unlike her body’s state of approaching life’s end, Pearl’s soul body had surprisingly been mostly repaired.

Perhaps it still couldn’t reach normal thinking ability, but at least it wasn’t as muddled as before.

Pearl seemed to recognize Saul. She grabbed Saul’s arm and opened her mouth.

“A…lonso…”

She actually spoke.

Pearl, who never spoke, actually spoke!

“A-lonso.”

Saul knew Pearl wasn’t calling him.

He looked up toward the distance. The blood figure staying on the sea surface had been pounced on and torn by the later-arriving black tide monsters. Gradually, not even a bit of red could be seen.

Only dense masses of monsters making “crunch crunch” gnawing sounds.

“A…lonso…”

Pearl looked into the distance and reached out her arm.

The number of black tide monsters surrounding Alfonso had reached over a hundred, and more black tide monsters were simultaneously approaching him.

“A…lonso…”

Pearl called again, her voice very weak, definitely unable to reach Alfonso’s ears.

The next moment, the surging black monster mass in the distance suddenly exploded massively.

No flames, no sound, only a ball of black mist that suddenly expanded and quickly engulfed the monster groups within five to six hundred meters.

For that instant, Saul couldn’t even hear the sound of waves.

“A-lonso…”

He only heard a weak voice that couldn’t carry three meters away, tinged with grief.

(End of Chapter)

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