< "Let the Demon Seed choose, you say?" > the evil entity muttered, clearly amused.

​< "Why haven’t I thought of that before? It can save me a lot of trouble from wasting my precious soul force." >

​Neo grinned upon hearing this. His plan was a success. Now, all that remained was to synthesize the Demon Seed with his body and tame it.

​< "Very well! Brace yourself, little one. May the Demon Race shine through your veins." >

​As soon as the abyssal entity finished speaking, a crimson pearl the size of a fist came into view, floating toward Neo. The very ocean seemed to come to a standstill. The water stopped moving, the abyssal oceanic lifeforms stopped breathing, and the pressure grew suffocatingly dense. The crimson pearl distorted the very space around it as it came to a halt just an arm’s reach away from Neo’s massive figure.

​Taking a deep breath, Neo reached out and grasped it firmly with his right hand.

​The instant his fingers locked around it, he felt as though he were touching a living furnace.

The heat was so intense that Neo felt his cells burning at an impossible speed. Even his specialized regeneration failed to mend the blistering wounds opening across his palm.

The crimson light flaring from the pearl became increasingly destructive, violently denying his existence.

​The abyssal entity laughed. < "Looks like you failed, little one." >

​But in the next moment, its laughter vanished.

​Flash!

​Following a sharp flash of radiant system light, the Demon Seed was forcefully paralyzed, its destructive momentum cutting off entirely. Then, as if guided by an inescapable mystical force, it turned toward Neo’s chest and merged seamlessly within his body.

​< "Impossible! This shouldn’t happen. Who are you?!" >

​The shock and anger of the entity were palpable, vibrating violently through the water. Neo merely grinned back, a dark, mocking smile playing on his lips as the synthesis progress neared completion.

​< "Thief! You stole the Primordial Demon Seed!" > the entity realized, its ancient mind finally piercing through the deception.

It rumbled angrily in a forgotten, blasphemous demonic tongue, cursing his very lineage.

​"#@&%£$℅~&#%@&+#@##!"

​Driven by absolute fury, it decided to attack at once.

​Swoosh!

​As it emerged from the deep abyss, the entity manifested a terrifying weapon, a massive staff forged from unholy, abyssal materials. It radiated an evil energy so terrifying that even the long-dead ghosts of ancient oceanic creatures began to scream in terror, creating a symphony of hell that echoed through the trenches.

​Woosh, woosh, whooosh!

​The weapon pierced through the crushing water at blinding speed, locking onto Neo’s position.

What was even worse : the Synthesis wasn’t finished yet:

"78%...91%.."

"Am I going to die?" he sighed inwardly.

There was absolutely no way of resisting this attack. Not with his feeble power at least.

Caught in the crushing depths, Neo prepared himself for the worse.

Just then, a giant demonic hand, covered with countless glowing, strange runes, materialized out of the dark void. It intercepted the trajectory of the unholy weapon, domineeringly gripping the demonic staff mid-strike.

Then, with an effortless flick of its colossal wrist, the hand hurled the weapon away, launching it with such immense velocity that it tore through the upper atmosphere and vanished toward the distant stars.

​"RUMBLE!"

​The simple movement stirred the entire ocean into absolute chaos. The sheer kinetic displacement triggered a massive underwater shockwave, causing the world above to suffer a catastrophic earthquake of 8.0 magnitude.

​On the surface, the ocean flipped into madness. Tsunamis rose hundreds of meters high into the stormy sky, crashing violently onto distant shores and completely reshaping the coastlines.

It looked as if a true natural calamity had descended upon the world from the deep ocean depths.

​Up in the shallower waters, the mermen and Zestia were violently thrown off balance by the underwater pressure waves. Tossed around like leaves in a tempest, they somehow managed to fight the currents and make it to the safety of the rocky ground near the underwater shelf.

​Though she was physically safe, Zestia’s heart hammered with intense worry for Neo’s safety. She knew he had dove far deeper than anyone else present, entering uncharted territory where the chances of getting caught in the epicenters of trouble were dangerously high.

​The churning ocean waves were terrifyingly hostile, and no sane person would ever think of diving back into that black abyss.

Yet, discarding all logical thinking and self-preservation, Zestia plunged directly back into the raging currents, desperate to search for the heartless man she had hopelessly chosen to care for.

From far away, the chieftess and her granddaughter watched the chaotic currents, feeling deeply uneasy.

​Just then, a crimson streak caught their eyes.

​"Grandma, that is..."

​"It’s the weapon that drove your grandfather mad," Marlene finished, a single tear falling onto the ocean floor. "It is finally leaving!"

​The staff continued to ascend higher and higher. What was strange was that its speed was still increasing. Normally, gravitational force reduces the velocity of a rising object, but the opposite was true in this case. It looked as though someone had specifically altered the gravitational field for the evil demonic staff.

​But why? What could be the specific reason? The answer lay within the vacuum of space.

​At the same time, Priest Salvatore’s imperial ship, along with his crew, was drawing closer to the Milky Way galaxy. The weapon was heading specifically toward that exact location, triggering an early alarm for the crew.

​"Your Eminence, something is coming our way!"

​Priest Salvatore became alert. In his divination, he had not foreseen any obstruction of this kind. So why this sudden anomaly? Could it be someone else playing with the strings of fate?

​Extremely alert, he closed his eyes for another short divination at the cost of ten years of his lifespan. What he saw made his body tremble in disbelief, his eyes turning bloodshot.

He saw his own body disintegrated in the impending collision.

​Without delay, he pulled an extremely precious escape scroll from his spatial ring. Then, without alerting his companions, he activated it and escaped into the void.

​The crew members remained confused. Why did the priest leave like that? Was he going to intercept the attack by himself? 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

​Their terrible predictions were proven wrong when the demonic staff, backed by the kinetic power of a thousand dying stars, collided directly with the titanic ship.

​"BOOOOOOOOOOM!"

​No divine shield and no amount of speed could help them escape the catastrophe. Everything was over in a single fraction of a second.

​But one question remained: who was the one who had saved Neo this time?