"Get ready, Valak!" Bella shouted. The Nun immediately beckoned behind her, and the demons under her command carried a white-jade statue of the Virgin Mary out of the cabin. The Nun clasped both hands before her chest, bowed her head in contemplation, and began praying in a rather strange posture.
As she prayed, blood began flowing from the statue's eyes. The more it bled, the stronger the Nun's profane power became.
What being was she praying to? Bella had never learned the truth and had no desire to know at present.
Ten seconds later, the Nun's blessing enveloped the entire ghost ship. Several dark-brown stripes abruptly appeared on Jason's hockey mask, and his already powerful frame expanded another size. O'Rin of the Water's robes became extraordinarily ornate, and her slender sword looked as though it had been coated in deadly poison. Even in the deep sea, a green glow ran along its spine.
The surviving ghosts, vengeful spirits, and undead all grew noticeably larger. Some were even clad in sturdy armor.
Pyramid Head now wore prayer beads, his broad sleeves fluttering around him, while esoteric Buddhist scriptures covered his robes. For a moment, he seemed like the Corrupted Monk of old reborn.
The Flying Dutchman found an opening between the Deep Ones' attacks, cleaved through the waves and charged at full speed toward a point slightly to the right of Calypso's back.
Continuous battle and the loss of an arm had left Calypso's mind in complete disarray, but her basic combat instincts remained. She uttered a word of divine language Bella could not understand, then swept her remaining hand outward and raised a wave more than a hundred meters high and seemingly boundless in width.
The seawater reversed direction. Countless enormous sharks lurked within it, each averaging more than ten meters long, with razor-sharp teeth and terrifying bite force.
This time, Bella did not evade. She ordered the ghost ship to raise its ram and crash forward without fear.
A deafening boom erupted. The ram pierced three giant sharks in succession and forcibly split the wave apart. As a result, the ram snapped, and a massive crack more than five meters long tore from the ship's port side down toward the keel.
The ghost ship's life essence poured out wildly. The surrounding Deep Ones went mad and devoured the life essence spilling out.
The seawater Calypso had summoned possessed incomparable weight. Every drop struck like a heavy hammer. Although the ghost ship's defenses were formidable, taking the attack head-on still left the deck riddled with holes.
"A god is waiting for us to slaughter her! Don't stop—keep accelerating! Show her what the children of the sea can do!" Bella raised Frostmourne high and shouted.
Her words had essentially no effect on Jason or the Nun. Children of the sea? What the hell did that have to do with us?
But they worked on the Flying Dutchman.
The ship possessed a will of its own, and it too was filled with hatred for the Sea Goddess.
After taking one of Calypso's attacks head-on, the ghost ship was at least thirty percent damaged. Yet it did not slow in the slightest and continued straight toward her.
They were moving extremely fast. Calypso's body was enormous, making her reactions somewhat slow. By the time she realized the enemy had no intention of retreating, the ghost ship was already less than fifty meters away.
She roared viciously like a mindless beast.
There was no time to cast another spell. She reached out and drew back the wave she had already released. The water gathered into a winding, coiling dragon that looped from the rear to the front and charged back toward the ghost ship.
The move caught Bella off guard. She had been contesting control of the surrounding seawater with Calypso, and the result was total suppression. She had not wrested away even the slightest bit. Now that the water dragon was charging toward the stern, she could not ignore it.
The bow had a ram and thick armor, but the stern had nothing. If it were blasted apart, the entire ship might be destroyed.
Just as Bella prepared to cast a spell and block it, O'Rin of the Water suddenly leaped out of the cabin.
O'Rin of the Water soared dozens of meters into the air. Her slender sword released streaks of brilliant light as she met the Sea Goddess's water dragon head-on.
She stabbed the dragon's head—the source of its magic—more than ten times in rapid succession. The violent explosion that followed killed the sword saint of Mibu Village as well, sending her to await resurrection.
Calypso was severely depleted of divine power. With the enemy already before her, she abandoned magic and brought her enormous body down like a collapsing mountain.
The enemy had entered Bella's spell range, so she acted. She raised a hand and fired a gray ray—a Petrification Spell.
Calypso's enormous body completely disregarded the spell. She did not believe such magic could affect her divine form.
She lunged forward and raised her hand to smash the ghost ship. Halfway through the motion, just as she tried to exert force, she discovered that her body would not respond. She hurriedly looked down and saw the piranha-like head between her breasts being rapidly covered by petrification.
A divine body possessed tremendous resistance to magic, but the sea monster's portion of her body had only ordinary resistance.
Moreover, the Sea Goddess's divine body fiercely rejected the sea monster's flesh, leaving a persistent boundary between their energies. The piranha-like head was precisely where that boundary lay.
"Child's play!" The Sea Goddess's voice was filled with disdain. Such a spell could not stop her.
She mobilized divine power to suppress it, but Bella had already prepared her response. "Jason! Go!"
Without a word, Jason charged headfirst into the partially petrified monster-fish head, like Gonggong crashing into Mount Buzhou.
The creature's head was more than ten meters tall. Compared with it, Jason was like a tiny ant, but his strength was immense. He smashed through the petrified section with his head, then raised his blade and hacked furiously at the remaining flesh.
A muffled squelch sounded. The monster fish broke free from petrification first and snapped its jaws shut around Jason. In the next second, its dense, swordlike teeth would tear him to pieces.
"Valak!" Bella made another move and switched the Nun's position with Jason's.
One of Hell's pillar demons turned incorporeal and easily avoided the teeth. Then the Nun began praying from inside the monster fish's mouth. This time, there was no statue of the Virgin Mary to maintain equilibrium, and the gaze of some unknown being was immediately drawn toward them.
Calypso finally realized something was wrong.
To disrupt the Nun's prayer ritual, she had no choice but to deploy divine power outside her body and erect a barrier, temporarily transforming the surrounding waters into a divine realm to evade that needlelike gaze. Consuming divine power so quickly loosened the Sea Goddess's suppression and control of the sea monster.
The Nun wantonly released her profane energy. That chaotic, evil aura stirred signs of awakening within the sea monster's consciousness, which had originally been suppressed and forced into dormancy.
With a wet thud, the Flying Dutchman rammed into the Sea Goddess's lower ribs. This was another junction between their two energies. Like the final straw that broke the camel's back, the impact fully awakened the sea monster's consciousness. Its chaotic mind could not make sound judgments, and the attack drove it into complete frenzy, affecting Calypso's judgment as well.