Chapter 128: Atlantean Army

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Arthur sped toward the starfish, aiming to pierce his spear at it's center, but as he approached, the starfish made a strange manoeuvre, dodging the attack, before smashing one of it's limbs into Arthur.

The blond Atlantean was sent flying backwards with such force he disappeared into the darkness of the sea. The surroundings also stopped emitting light as the trident was sent flying with Arthur.

Even plunged into the darkness, Edward could feel his surroundings, and how the starfish reached it's growth limit.

Each of it's limbs were now thirty meters long, making it about 60 meters tall. Even with Edward's Chi Sense that could sense everything in a 100 meters radius, he would need to be very close to have all of it's body inside his Chi Sense.

However, it was more than enough to feel the numerous lifeforms creeping up on him in the darkness. He could feel different kinds of animals, such as sharks, whales and all sorts of fishes coming toward him.

They all had a starfish on their faces, and were obviously being mind controlled. This made Edward conscious about the small starfish swimming around, he should avoid all contact with them.

After a moment of thought, Edward fuelled his Chi, and his magic erupted as the surrounding water started warming up.

In a couple of seconds, the water everywhere around Edward was boiling, but the lifeforms didn't seem to care about the pain, some even dying as they kept swimming toward Edward.

Seeing this, Edward inversed his hands' positions, and the boiling water was suddenly turned into ice. The sudden change of temperature needed quite a lot of energy, but it was nothing for Edward as he watched everything around him still.

His hands clenched into fists, and the surrounding ice cracked as it was forcefully shaped into compressed balls of ice. Everything within the ice was crushed into pieces as the balls of hardened ice hovered around Edward.

Then, Edward created a strong explosion behind each of the giant ice balls, sending round projectiles 1 meter in radius toward the giant starfish with great speed.

The starfish seemed a little dumb as it did not try to dodge, and the balls of ice tore holes into it's body, but did not go through. Instead, Edward stopped them, and once they were all within the starfish's body, he threw his arms to the sides violently, and the ice balls expanded back.

The starfish exploded into thousands of pieces as it was ripped apart from the inside. The giant remains of the huge beasts turned back into their original size as it died too, making it's corpse disappeared as a poor regular starfish was dispersed into thousands of tiny bits.

One opponent taken care of, Edward got closer to the cave where the starfish came from, but as he approached, several other starfish appeared, all of them growing as big as the last one. He counted 8 of them.

He wasn't scared in the slightest though, and rather looked at them with some indifference. Numbers wasn't a problem for him.

Without waiting for them to attack, Edward threw several wind blades through the water, which easily cut into the flesh of the giant starfishes.

At the same time, Edward took out Aeglos, and saw the water surrounding the spear tip freeze into ice. His lips stretched into a grin as he watched intently the starfishes approach him, and blasted off toward one of them.

Dodging their attacks, Edward slashed his spear at one of them, and made a rather devastating attack. Not only was it cut deeply into, the flesh inside the wound was frozen, and so was the skin around the wound. The water only served to make the injury worse.

Joining his palms together, Edward rotated them against one another as the water around them started emitting a powerful suction. In a matter of seconds, a large whirlpool started forming at the bottom of the ocean, of such strength that even those giant starfishes couldn't escape from it's pull.

At the same time, the ground below was transfigurated into large metal blades, each of them cutting deep into the starfishes with each turn.

But as Edward was having fun bullying them, he suddenly felt a strong shockwave enter his Chi Sense, and he barely had the time to shield his body before it reached him.

It came from the cave, and it carried such power that the whirlpool was forcefully dispelled, and fractures were formed on the ground. Thankfully, they were quite widespread, so only a small part of them hit Edward, making the impact manageable for him.

As the shockwave passed, Edward made a small grunt, before pointing his spear toward one of the starfishes. Then, the water behind him exploded with such force it sent him flying toward the starfish, and it didn't even get to react before Edward pierced through it, killing it.

At around the same time, Edward felt Arthur, who had been knocked away earlier, swim back to his Chi Sense as he arrived near the starfishes, and without waiting for them to notice his presence, pierced through two of them.

Like the one before, all those who were killed were turned back into miniature starfishes, and now only 5 giant ones were left.

Arthur seemed quite angry about how he was manhandled by the first one though, and attacked them in a frenzy as his trident pierced through the starfishes with ease, ripping them apart.

But as he destroyed another two of them, leaving only three of them, Edward felt another shockwave attack them, this time stronger than the last one.

Edward easily protected himself as he was ready, but Arthur only felt the attack when it entered his body, and he did not have any means to resist it other than relying on his body, so as the shockwave passed by them, while Edward remained fine, Arthur couldn't help but spit out a mouthful of blood.

But if the impact was strong on them, it was even greater on the environment. The water was turning turbulent, and huge rifts were created into the ground.

Edward created a fireball in his right hand, so hot the water in a one meter radius was evaporated, and couldn't approach him.

But as he was about to throw it on them, he felt a danger come from behind him, and hurriedly shifted to the side.

He did so just in time as a bright blue ray of energy passed by his previous spot, continuing forward to hit one of the starfishes, and killing it immediately.

For a moment, Edward took his attention off the starfishes, and turned around to look at the attacker.

They happened to be outside of his Chi Sense, but he could easily see them as Arthur was back and lightning the surroundings, not that he would have really needed it as they made more than enough light.

A small army had unknowingly gathered behind him, all riding on either sea animals such as enormous sharks, and others on futuristic looking vehicles.

At the center of the formation, was a bigger vehicle, which would probably be the equivalent of a tank, but under the sea. Edward guessed it was this thing that shot at him.

Edward's grip on his spear grew tighter as he recognized them as Atlantis' army, and knew that if he hadn't dodged that, although he wouldn't die from it, he would have been quite injured.

But before he could explain himself or retaliate, several more shots were fired from other tank like vehicles, and the smaller guns started firing too.

The sheer number of shots made it impossible for Edward to dodge as several beams hit his body. He tried shielding himself, but his shields were quickly destroyed as he was sent flying toward the starfishes.

Although dumb, the later also recognised the bigger threat, and all three of them welcomed Edward with powerful slaps as they sent him crashing into one of the rifts.

At this moment, Edward got to experience the strongest asset of those giant starfishes, their great strength, and understood why Arthur took a while to come back. The blow felt stronger than a hit from Thor. Without Mjollnir, of course. But still.

Coupled with the barrage of attacks from the Atlantean Army, Edward felt his injuries had stacked up.

He stayed in the rift for a moment, weighing his options, when he felt one of his Double Coins tremble.

Taking out the Mithril Coin, Edward watched one of his first enchanted artefacts which had for purpose communication, in case of him or any of those with a Coin got lost somewhere without any internet or phone connection, such as the bottom of the sea.

He had made quite a few improvements on them, as such they were now capable of transmitting short messages.

And this time, Edward could see several messages, all saying the same thing.

Big wave in West Spain.

A frown came to Edward's face, before he realized what was happening.

The big shock waves from earlier that passed through him, they injured him, but he remained fine. However, the terrain was quite impacted. If his theory was right, then this came from the experimental weapon stolen from the US, and it had created a Tsunami.

Maybe the shock waves had also hit Atlantis, dealing important damage, and they attacked him because they thought he was the one who did it.

A sigh escaped from Edward's lips as he thought about what to do. On one hand, he had to stop the tsunami, but on the other hand, if he didn't deal with the thing in the cave, the thing inside could simply create other tsunamis.

After a moment of hesitation, he flew out of the rift, and threw a bunch of giant ice spears at the Atlantean Army, taking them by surprise as they probably thought he was dead.

Then, without looking back, he sped off toward the cave. Before approaching it too close though, Edward forced the surroundings into the shadows before going through a portal.