"The entire angelic civilization is your dowry."
"Zhixin and Yan are the handmaidens that come with the marriage."
He Xi let out a breath, then mercilessly snarked.
"Bonk!"
"Ow."
Holy Keisha rapped He Xi on the head and stared at her, thoroughly exasperated.
"What are you even saying."
"Because it's true."
He Xi rubbed her head. This damned man-hater.
Earth, Haicheng.
At that moment, the battle between the mutant giant octopus and Skyler Quinn's group had entered its final stage.
Faced with four opponents whose combat power was roughly its equal, no matter how it struggled, the mutant giant octopus could do nothing.
By now it was completely suppressed; large portions of its massive body had already been frozen by Chris Frost.
"Ka-da, ka-da!"
The mutant orca simply bit off the parts of the giant octopus that had been sealed in ice. In its mouth, one could just make out a deep, dark void; hunks of that colossal body vanished inside, transformed into gentle, tractable energy that strengthened the orca's flesh.
"Roar!"
The mutant giant octopus bellowed, thrashing without stop, but as Skyler, Firewing, and Chris pressed their offensive, its struggles weakened. Its terrifying regenerative power still repaired the ruined flesh, but the speed had slowed to a crawl—
Far slower than the orca's rate of devouring.
As time passed, fully half of the octopus's bulk had been eaten away. The mutant orca's aura only climbed higher, surpassing by far the momentum it had shown at the outset.
By the end, it hardly needed Skyler and the others to strike at all; it could suppress the giant octopus on its own.
What made Skyler and the rest frown was that the orca now seemed to have lost its reason entirely, mindlessly tearing and swallowing the octopus's flesh.
It ignored the octopus's blows, ignored the wounds scoring its body, ignored the way Skyler, Firewing, and Chris hesitated at its behavior and no longer pressed the octopus as hard as before.
"Let's hope it isn't what I'm thinking."
Skyler watched the orca sink into frenzy, worry in his eyes.
"If I'm not mistaken, putting aside the Tremor-Tremor Fruit's power, the orca's original ability should be devouring. The Tremor-Tremor is something it absorbed via that devouring—this would also explain why it isn't afraid of seawater."
"As for this octopus, it likely also has a devouring-type ability. The longer I fight it, the more convinced I am it ate the Dark-Dark Fruit. I'm also guessing there's some personal hatred between it and the orca."
"If it were only that, it wouldn't matter."
Firewing paused there, frowning at the orca as she went on:
"But what I'm wondering is—after it eats this mutant octopus, will it gain the octopus's power? Like Blackbeard later on, who held both the Tremor-Tremor and the Dark-Dark?"
"If its stance toward humans is friendly, fine. But if it holds malice toward humans, that's no small thing—that's a severe threat."
Firewing wavered—should she stand by and watch the orca keep devouring, potentially creating a monster like Blackbeard with both darkness and tremor powers? Or should she interrupt it now, and wipe it out together with the octopus?
But if they chose to strike at it, then the question of its stance toward humanity would have only one answer.
If they failed to kill it outright, they would certainly face its revenge.
"That's the future. Right now it counts as our companion."
"If later it shows malice toward humans, then of course it will have to pay the price. But now—no."
Skyler shook his head. In the end he chose not to move against the mutant orca.
Whatever came later, for now the orca had shown no hostility to humans.
Call it pretense or playacting if you liked.
At least at this moment, they should not strike it.
"I can confirm that toward you, it truly feels friendly—close."
A soft voice, with a hint of youthful timbre, sounded. Skyler, Firewing, and Chris's pupils shrank; their bodies tensed in an instant, ready to fight.
That voice had not come from any of them.
Which meant someone else was in this space besides them?
No—not necessarily human. A mutant lifeform was also possible.
But if it was a mutant lifeform, then its strength far exceeded their own.
"No need to be nervous. I'm not your enemy."
Under their wary gazes, a pitch-black spatial wormhole irised open high in the sky. From within, an angel stepped out.
Wait—an angel?
Skyler and Firewing couldn't help their shock.
Even if they'd never been interested in Western mythology, they had heard of angels.
With the resurgence of spiritual energy, Huaxia had birthed powers like Skyler's divine-dragon ability and Chris's Extreme Ice Phoenix. If the West had an "angel" ability—or if some mutant creature evolved toward an angel—that wasn't impossible.
But none of them had thought that with the resurgence so recently begun, an angel would already appear in this world.
Though her face was youthful, it was exquisitely beautiful; her aura sacred and noble; her figure impeccable—
This holy, pure presence was unmistakably that of an angel.
Before such sanctity and nobility, the weak could not give birth to wicked thoughts.
It was like a mortal before a bodhisattva—only wanting to kneel, with no trace of lewdness or ill intent.
It wasn't only Skyler and the others. When Angel Zhixin appeared, the mutant giant octopus and the mutant orca below also stopped dead, both staring blankly up at the sacred, high-born figure in the sky.
Perhaps because Angel Zhixin was not an angel of the "mystic lineage," she lacked any bloodline suppression. After that heartbeat of daze, the orca simply gaped its jaws and clamped down on the still-stunned octopus with one massive bite.
"Roar!"
The pain jolted the giant octopus awake. With another hoarse bellow, it flung itself back into the fight.
It wanted to flee, but while keeping a wary eye on Angel Zhixin, Chris continued to command the ice, preventing the octopus from slipping away in the chaos.
Even if this angel turned out to be an enemy, the mutant giant octopus had to die today.
"So this is the world of the male god?"
"Resurgence of spiritual energy, awakening of abilities—huh? There are Devil Fruits as well."
"Armor, Imperial Relics… Props from tokusatsu and anime. The way the male god has modified this world is truly marvelous."
Angel Zhixin, almost without thinking, read the world's information. She hadn't expected that Brandon White would place objects from other worlds—down to things from anime and live-action shows—throughout this one.
With her ability, it was easy to see that the highest proportion of these items appeared in Huaxia.
On the premise that the ultimate victor would be Huaxia, he had remodeled the world, pushing the pace of civilization's development? She recalled Sister Yan's words and nodded in bemused acceptance. This part… she didn't really understand.
(End of this chapter)