The two serpents intertwined, each trying to curl in on itself. The clash between the two serpents, each attacking from their own domain, turned what was a helix into an eight figure loop, which was when the weaker and smaller wyrm was dragged into the sea by the leviathan.

'Mimicry - Merman!'

The toll of using mimicry not once but twice despite his zero mana, in rapid succession, began to take its toll on Noah, but he persisted. This was necessary; it was why he came here in the first place. Straining his spirit, tearing it apart. He would worry about everything else later.

The merman Noah slipped out of the eight figure the Leviathan had him in, but even the Leviathan had begun to expect his moves at this point. If the prey a hunter had caught could escape its net through a gap in it, it was only natural to expect it. And the leviathan that had now calmed down was an experienced hunter, maybe even more than any other species on the continent.

Immediately, it sent blades of water to converge on the merman Noah, who dodged them in rapid succession by reinforcing his merman fish tail to not only reinforce the ability of the form to perceive invisible water currents but also to move faster in the water to dodge them.

Noah swam deeper into the water. If he was going to take a suicidal risk, he would go all the way with it. No longer concerned about his rapidly decreasing possibility of survival, Noah plunged into the darkest depths of the sea, only granting the leviathan more and more of an edge. The unforgiving sea gradually robbed him of his sight, while the leviathan increased the speed and frequency of its water blades. Slash after slash flew after him, and the merman could no longer keep up.

His eyes were now no more than his white sclera, in contrast to the pitch black of the deep sea around him. His body operated on sheer instinct, and the vestiges of his conscious brain only operated to keep it that way. If his mind gave in now, there would be no point. It would mean he was doomed from the start. It would mean splitting his spirit was never something he stood a chance of accomplishing in the first place. Yet, it was hopeless.

The difficulty of spirit splitting scaled with its strength, or more specifically, its size. A large mana pool was synonymous with a large spirit. Noah knew this, but his hubris refused to let him believe he could not do it. This was why the method of spirit splitting was gradually replaced by spirit building. The ones with natural talent, born with a large spirit, were doomed from the start, forced to scale an impossible hill to gain strength. As an otherworlder with an unfathomably large mana pool, this challenge was nothing short of cruel.

The slashes began to narrow in on him, then started to hit. It started with slashes that sliced his skin in many parts of his body. Next, his fingernails. Hair. Bits of his scalp. Fingers.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

And then a slash cut his merman fin off. A fin was to a merman what wings were to a bird.

With its wings clipped, the bird would succumb to gravity. Realizing its state and giving up, the bird was now reduced to falling to the ground in what was an unceremonious fall from grace. From the elegant figure that those on the ground could only admire in awe to that of a bloodstain on the ground.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl as Noah hazily sensed a blade of water come for his head and heart at the same time. The blade, if hit, would kill him. It was no different from the blade of the reaper itself, and Noah… Noah couldn't react to it.

It was then. His heart beat. Just once, it beat. The beat itself was like all other heartbeats, but it carried something special with it. A bout of phantom pain. A vow.

The merman, still with eyes of pure white, contorted its teeth into a grit. The bird, with its clipped wings, flapped.

'Mimicry - Lic-'

The blades hit.

Three halves of Noah were torn apart, then torn apart again. Again and again, the blades struck Noah. A dozen blades per second, until he was dust, then the dust was reduced to dust. The thirst for vengeance of a being older than millennia was not quenched so easily. The Leviathan spent a full hour here. In the distance, the knuckles of a woman with red hair turned white on the hilt of her spear. She did not mourn. It was simply her turn.

She undid her ponytail and brandished her blade to its full glory. In just moments, the storm that had died down in the distance from the battle that had sunk to the depths returned, and it rapidly approached her. In just a few moments, the rain began to pelt her once again, and her shoulder-length red hair flew about in the tempestuous wind that accompanied it.

With a great roar of triumph, the serpent unfurled itself to its full length in front of Ariel's boat, casting a shadow that dwarfed it completely. Undaunted, Ariel looked straight into its eyes, which mirrored the darkest night, and pounced.

She landed on its scales and ran up it, attempting to reach near its head to strike its eyes.

But it was simply not possible. Now that the leviathan had regained its senses, it no longer rampaged like a toddler and launched blades of water from the sea to Ariel. Considering that the slashes did not harm the serpent itself through its own hard scales, it could fire them at Ariel recklessly, who would be hurt by them.

She ran and ran, yet made no headway. The damned beast was playing with her, only preventing her from reaching its own head by launching more slashes whenever she got too close, watching her scurry about.

Without being able to rest, she tired out soon, and the beast launched slashes aimed at her skin to flay her alive. It was sickening; it was gruesome, but Ariel walked through the pain. Amused, it sent lighter slashes that only penetrated skin and surface tissue at her to force her to yield to pain, but she tanked them.

'I will die on my feet, not my knees.'

The blood loss eventually caught up to her.

At some point, she tripped on the scales of the serpent she was running on in her anemia, and she fell. Into the sea, she sank deeper and deeper. The Leviathan did not finish her off. It had gotten bored now, and it began to subside the storm. It meandered around the area, reducing the boat to smithereens for its own satisfaction.

Deep in the depths, Ariel's mind began to slow. She thought about how at least if she were to die here, it was, at the very least, in battle, and alongside someone she found that could accompany her at the very end. Her mind could be felt form coherent thoughts at this point. Yet, she did not hallucinate the arms that stopped her descent before her world went black.