The earth shook. The valley of solid ice Bella had deliberately chosen began to tremble violently. Cracks spread across the frozen ground, and countless chunks of ice rose eerily into the air.
Bella closed the magic book, pulled out the two-handed sword, and retreated into the distance with the Demon Nun.
A wave that could not be heard with human ears swept across the entire area. Bella had anticipated it and prepared defensive spells in advance. The invisible, intangible energy struck her shield with a series of sharp cracks, like icicles stabbing into stone.
She knew it was the dragon's roar, the resentment and hatred Smaug had buried deep within his bones before death.
Necromancy was not inherently evil. Many necromancers merely tried to use the resentment of the dead as fuel without first releasing the hatred trapped in their remains. Lacking that crucial step was what made their undead creatures so sinister.
For the dead, resurrection was equivalent to receiving a new life. In comparative terms, the process was much like a living being first leaving its mother's body. Who would be full of resentment at the moment of birth?
In Bella's view, necromancy was neither good nor evil. It should exist in balance between the two, in the region between life and death. Its poor reputation came entirely from practitioners who had twisted its principles beyond recognition.
The wings emerged first, followed by the back and tail, and finally the head.
The hundred-meter-long Frost Dragon raised his head and unsteadily climbed out of the ice. Ghostly blue flames, the mark of the dead, flickered within his eye sockets.
He stepped forward, gradually adapting to the necromantic power within him and attempting to use it to fly.
Did his right wing seem a little thinner? Smaug turned his head, examined his right wing, then compared it with the left. The difference was not obvious, but the right side was indeed slightly thinner.
Had he always been like that, or had something happened after his death?
Smaug had never undergone a CT scan while alive, so he genuinely did not know what his bones had looked like.
He beat his wings twice. Seeing that the difference caused no problem, he stopped caring. He now flew through magic rather than aerodynamics. Whether his wings were thick or thin meant nothing.
Watching the Frost Dragon soar into the sky, Bella secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Good, her secret had not been exposed. Otherwise, she truly would not have known how to explain it.
The values of the dead and the living were entirely different. To the fire dragon Smaug, Bella had been his most hated enemy. But to Frost Dragon Smaug, who had crawled from the ice of Jotunheim, this moment marked his birth. He had embarked upon a different path, and his previous life experiences had almost nothing to do with him anymore.
Forging Frostmourne and resurrecting Smaug had nearly exhausted all the resources at Bella's disposal.
She rested in Jotunheim for two days and recovered nearly half her psionic power, then returned to Earth.
Godslaying required a target. Bella's choice was simple: Calypso, goddess of the sea. Three years had passed. It was time to settle both old and new grudges once and for all.
Without alerting Natasha, Bella contacted Old One-Eye through her own methods. The two flew to the Caribbean, transferred to a submarine, and descended into the deep sea.
They sat in silence inside the submarine for a while before Old One-Eye slowly spoke. "I remember you saying this wasn't the right time to dig deeper."
Bella answered with the expression of someone who had already seen through everything. "If I told you not to dig, would you actually stop?"
Old One-Eye showed no embarrassment whatsoever. "We did dig a little."
The depth of the excavation could not be observed with the Cauldron of the Cosmos, so Bella asked, "How deep?"
"Eleven kilometers below sea level."
Bella calculated briefly. That was roughly the depth of the Mariana Trench. Any farther down, and they might enter the subterranean world.
S.H.I.E.L.D., which was still formally called the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, had advanced at astonishing speed. In less than three years, it had established a series of workstations, observation posts, and enormous drilling machines in deep water where the pressure reached eight tons per square inch.
The submarine descended slowly, and utter darkness immediately enveloped them. Bella sincerely admired S.H.I.E.L.D.'s advanced technology and tremendous financial resources. How much money did it cost to build workstations and drilling rigs in a place like this?
The descent took two hours. When light finally appeared around them again, Bella and Old One-Eye had reached the station named Kepler and were observing Drilling Site 8374. According to Bella's earlier divination, Calypso had recently been roaming nearby.
The moment they entered the station, a tall, powerfully muscled man in a black tank top approached them head-on.
He threw a punch at Bella's face, and she immediately ducked behind Old One-Eye.
The man was forced to stop his fist. Grinding his teeth, he said, "You ambushed me last time! Do you dare fight me fairly? There are no electric eels to help you now. Stop hiding behind someone else. If you're a man—"
He cut himself off halfway. Bella had no intention of fighting him and saw no reason to bother.
"Namor, go on. Keep talking. Your ability amounts to beating up a woman. If you have real courage, do you dare hit the strong man beside me?"
Bella pointed her thumb at Old One-Eye. Compared with her, the 1.9-meter-tall man who wore a black trench coat everywhere certainly qualified as strongly built.
Old One-Eye silently shifted two steps to the left. Bella followed him closely. The two had originally stood in the middle of the passage, but after shuffling sideways like crabs, both ended up against the left wall.
Bella proudly raised the banner of womanhood, while Old One-Eye was equally shameless. The aggressive Namor could only concede defeat in the end.
"Hmph. I'm merely making use of you surface dwellers. Don't imagine you can order me around as you please!" he said angrily.
An inscrutable smile appeared at the corner of Old One-Eye's mouth, while Bella watched without expression.
Bella had originally worried that their forces were insufficient. Now that Namor had brought his own supplies and volunteered his help, she estimated that their chances of victory had risen by another five percent.
Namor had not come alone. He had brought several blue-skinned soldiers with him. They were Atlanteans.
Bella had knocked Namor unconscious with a psychic blast in the Savage Land. After waking, he returned to Atlantis and reclaimed his throne.
As it happened, Calypso was currently wreaking havoc in the nearby waters, and Atlantis had suffered considerable damage as well. At present Namor was less a king than the realm's chief enforcer. After being talked into it by the Atlantean council, he brought several soldiers to Kepler Station to contact humanity and seek a joint solution to the enormous threat posed by Calypso.
He believed he was using Old One-Eye and Bella, who had come with her own supplies to help. Little did he know that they thought exactly the same thing about him.
Everyone had different intentions, but their goal was the same.
Inside Kepler Station, they began discussing how to deal with Calypso.