The shadow ape clad in rainbow armor extended its right paw as it lunged forward sharply. The shadow stream, which was as wide as a man’s forearm, didn’t touch any of the golems. Instead, it struck the hilt of the Black Blade directly. Slowly, with a creak, it sunk in by about half an inch. This wasn’t enough to hit the golden artery. Only the tip of the Black Blade had passed through the giant’s flesh. The wound was comparable to a person’s finger being pricked with a simple needle. It didn’t even bleed.
However, Hadjar grinned triumphantly. He gave the order and dozens of miniature wisps of fog reached for the artery. They multiplied and branched out until a swarm of hungry, foggy threads touched the artery. They dug into it, drilled down and plunged deeper and deeper, until at last, they began to absorb the overwhelmingly abundant power. The giant didn’t even notice the essence of his Spirit being drawn out of his blood. The Black Blade wasn’t capable of absorbing the giant’s huge reserves of power. Rather, if you compared the effect to what a human would feel, the giant was losing just a drop of blood per ‘bite’. However this ‘drop of blood’ was more valuable than a hundred liters of almost anything else in this world. This seemingly pathetic bit of energy being consumed by the Black Blade contained the quintessence of the Spirit that the giant had cultivated over hundreds of millennia.
“Hadjar!”
Hadjar stopped focusing on the process and looked to the side. Dora was trying to get through to him. The elf girl’s face was pale and very worried.
Suddenly, he felt goosebumps ripple down his back. Hadjar instinctively jerked to the right with all his might, blurring into a stream of black fog. However, he was too late.
Something nicked his left leg. It touched it more softly than a falling feather. However, there was so much power, and, what was even more frightening, it contained so much of the mysteries of the Sword Spirit that, without even noticing his Technique for Strengthening the Body, his Call, and all the other defenses he had, it easily cut through Hadjar’s muscles, and then the bone. Thrown dozens of yards to the side by this touch, Hadjar smashed through about ten golems, and, after rolling across the giant’s shoulder for about fifteen steps, managed to stop his mad tumble.
Einen, while desperately trying to reach his friend, had watched as Tom Dinos had taken another amulet out of his spatial artifact, imbued it with power, then broken it open and released an attack similar to the one he’d made before.
However, while the young heir of the Predatory Blades clan had been able to create a barely noticeable, ten-foot crescent before, this attack... Einen felt the energy emanating from it, and it was more potent than Rahaim’s had been. It belonged not just to a Lord, but to a Lord at the peak stage! The crescent it created was as wide as a man’s hand and a dozen yards long. It looked like a scar in reality itself, moving through the air with impunity. Dinos didn’t care that there were several cultivators in his way, not just golems. Hadjar was one of those cultivators.
“Ha-”
“Hadjar!” came a shout from nearby.
Dora had managed to warn Hadjar before Einen…
Chapter 472
Lying on his stomach and keeping the Black Blade buried in the giant’s flesh, Hadjar watched as Tom’s Technique sliced through the monster’s neck. It broke through the thin stone scar and severed the artery.
Golden blood spattered the giant’s shoulder. He didn’t roar in pain because he still hadn’t recovered from the concussion the spell had given him. Then everything began to shake. At first, Hadjar thought it was an earthquake, but soon realized that these were the terrible death throes of the giant.
The giant, without even pressing his hands to his bleeding neck, began to fall on his back. The golems crumbled to dust, and the cultivators, plunging their weapons into the giant’s flesh, tried to hold on and not die along with the monster.
With a crash that kicked up huge clouds of dust, the giant fell on one of the hills. It cracked and exploded into rock fragments, each of which was the size of a boulder. As they rained down on the swamp, they caused huge waves to surge out in all directions and sank halfway into the quagmire.
As the giant’s body was hitting the ground, Hadjar managed to push off from the giant’s shoulder. Rolling down the slope of the hill he’d landed on, he found himself in a hollow. As he jerked away from the falling boulders, it took him a moment to realize what had burned away so much of his leg.
“Damn it!” Hadjar growled.
Because of his adrenaline rush and all the desperate fighting, he’d completely forgotten that he had been wounded by Tom Dinos’ amulet. A huge shadow covered Hadjar. A chunk of earth was about to fall on him. Hadjar held his sword out in front of him, intending to repel it, but a moment before it struck, he felt himself sinking into the ground. This was his third time travelling through Einen’s shadows. After popping out of the gray world that looked like a broken kaleidoscope, he couldn’t hold back. Hadjar threw up on the mire. Einen, who was sitting next to him, breathing heavily, didn’t react to this insult aimed toward his method of travel.
“Thank you.” Hadjar wiped his mouth and thanked his friend for saving him.
The islander nodded stiffly. A few seconds later, he helped his friend get up. What they saw was both fascinating and frightening. The truly gigantic monster lay on his back, covering the hill he’d landed on. His body trembled, and those motions caused high waves to surge out in every direction around his massive body.
Several cultivators stood on the creature’s chest, including the Dinos siblings and Dora. The elf girl was shouting at the youngest heir of the Predatory Blades clan:
“You’re mad, Tom!” She gripped the handle of her hammer. “I understand that what happened to those who participated in the formation was necessary! I can understand why you didn’t have time to shield everyone, but this! Using your father’s amulet when your fellow disciples were still in the way of your attack!”
Dinos snorted. “Oh please. A tiger has no equals among dogs.”
“It isn’t fair!”
“Shut up, Dora!” Dinos roared. Several of his servants came forward from among the fully-fledged disciples. Anise leaned forward with her hand on her blade. “They made a deal with me, just like you! And, mind you, I didn’t promise that I would ensure they got back to the School safe and sound. They made their choice!”
“And yet…”
“And yet, you are still as naive as you were seven years ago! Or have you forgotten what our Houses do to the naive?”
Dora recoiled as if he’d slapped her, turning pale. Saying something in a singsong language that Hadjar didn’t recognize, she turned and headed down the monster’s body. Tom watched her go, then cursed under his breath and turned away.
“It’s time to get the core.” Dinos, almost licking his lips, fished out another amulet from his spatial artifact. He placed it on the giant’s solar plexus, imbued it with energy, and waited. Soon, a flower of gray energy bloomed on the giant’s corpse. It grew, and its roots pierced the monster’s body. After death, he had lost his protection, and his skin had become as pliable as a human’s. When the flower grew to be over twice Tom’s height, its bud blossomed, revealing a golden stone to the world. Dinos, who was delighted at first, immediately seized it, but a moment later, he fell into an unprecedented rage.
“What the fuck?” He shouted, almost flinging the stone away from him. “What the fuck!”
The people around him recoiled from their master. No one wanted to face the youngest heir’s anger. Only Hadjar watched him with a faint half-smile on his face. Upon seeing this, Dora arched her right eyebrow in disbelief, and Einen rolled his eyes. Of course, to any other onlookers, he would’ve seemed the same as ever, with a stony expression on his face and his eyes mostly closed.
“What’s the matter, my Lord?” Anise asked anxiously.
“What’s the matter? Demons and gods, how can you even ask that? Look at it!” Dinos sent a stream of energy into the monster’s co
re. As expected, it began to emit light. This light was usually used to determine the Stage of a core. “This isn’t the core of a Primeval Giant, but an Ancient one!”
His words stunned everyone. The cultivators looked at each other and whispered:
“That’s impossible…”
“How can this be?”
“I’ll be damned if we fought an Ancient Giant, and not a Primeval One…”
“Dinos is lying…”
“Damn it! If this is an Ancient Core, he may not fulfill the terms of his oath!”
“Brothers and sisters, they want to deceive us!”
“Bloody aristocrats!”
Hundreds of angry and indignant glances were directed at Dinos. Anise moved in front of Tom in a single, elusive movement.
“Bloody dogs,” Dinos said, and waved his hand.
Hundreds of threads separated from his token and connected to the tokens of the survivors, including Hadjar’s and Einen’s. Each of them felt their tokens receive almost three thousand Glory points.
“Tom would never stoop to such trickery.” Dora shook her head. “But, by the Great Forest, I don’t understand what’s going on. We definitely fought a Primeval Giant! Why is the core only at the Ancient Stage?”
After receiving their reward, everyone stopped grumbling and began to meditate, heal their wounds, or rush to the corpse to begin filling small bottles with his golden blood. It could be sold in the Hall of Fame, after all.
Hadjar started toward the corpse, but Einen showed him eight bottles. The cunning smuggler had managed to collect the monster’s arterial blood, which was the most valuable.
In total, out of more than fifteen hundred cultivators, no more than two hundred and fifty had survived the battle. This explained the monstrous sum of 2911 Glory points that each disciple had just received. Hadjar wondered how many points Tom Dinos had gotten for this…
“You!” He heard a cry full of rage and malice.
Dinos took off. He was even faster than Anise had been. He crossed the tens of yards that separated them in an instant. Einen raised his staff, but he was flung aside with a light palm strike. Dinos had waved the islander away as casually as if he were a fly. Einen was flung back at least ten yards, skidding through the swamp, and a terrible bruise was spreading across his chest where the blow had struck him.
“You again!” Tom roared. He grabbed Hadjar by the collar and lifted him off the ground. “I swear, this is somehow your fault!”
A sword appeared in Dinos’ hand, and he swung it, fully intending to send Hadjar to his forefathers. A terrible attack came whistling down toward Hadjar’s head, and he was unable to defend himself. However, instead of blood, scarlet sparks shot into the sky. The sword had struck a hammer.
“Calm down, Tom!”
Hadjar had been saved by the delicate but strong hand of the eldest heiress of House Marnil. The two aristocrats stood opposite each other, breathing heavily and glaring at each other.
Chapter 473
“Go away, Marnil!” Tom growled. Anise landed on the grass beside him like a feather. Having removed her armor, she was now wearing only her black skirt and blouse. “I’ll kill this bastard!”
“On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that I want to!”
Tom made an imperceptible movement with his sword. His blade arced and suddenly appeared behind the hammer. It struck Dora’s throat head on. Such an unexpected attack, delivered at such speed, could’ve sent almost anyone to their forefathers, but Dora only moved to the side slightly. Tom’s sword, leaving a barely noticeable scratch on her skin, only managed to collect a few drops of pinkish blood. At the same time, the mighty hammer struck Dinos. Tom was hurled aside, flying several yards through the air, and then smashed violently into the mire.
“If you do that again,” The elf had no time to react before Anise’s blade touched her throat, “you’ll be running around in the Great Forest soon.”
Hadjar blinked a couple of times and mentally threw his hands up at what was happening. Until recently, he’d been certain that Anise was faster than anyone he’d ever seen or fought before. Then her brother had demonstrated a kind of speed Hadjar had never seen before. And now, as if she’d been hiding her true capabilities all along, Anise had left her brother far behind. The way she’d appeared at Dora’s right side and put her blade to the elf girl’s throat... Damn it! Hadjar hadn’t been able to track her movements or even feel the wind shift in her wake. It was as if Anise had stood seven yards away from Dora at first, and then simply taken a step toward her. It had looked more graceful and faster than a comet gliding across the sky.
“I never cease to wonder why you serve him, my dear friend,” Dora said with obvious regret.
Was Dora Marnil a friend of Anise Dinos? Perhaps fate had played a cruel trick on the seven great clans of the Empire.
“Leave her be, Anise,” Tom said, shocking Hadjar once again by easily getting up after taking a hit that could’ve easily shattered the giant’s golems. “Dora’s right. Our failure made me doubt myself. Thank you, eldest heiress of House Marnil, for bringing me back to my senses.”
Dora nodded slightly, and Anise immediately sheathed her blade. The look in her green eyes conveyed a sincere apology.
“It’s unlikely that this bastard has the power to reduce a monster’s core level from Primeval to Ancient,” Dinos sighed in frustration and placed the core in his spatial artifact. “That accursed spell... It was probably the spell that damaged the core ... This is an apology. Choke on it, you bastard.”
With a wave of his hand, Tom transferred another thousand Glory points to Hadjar’s token, then turned and moved back to the giant’s chest in one motion. Taking out a special, slightly curved carving dagger, he walked up to the giant’s head. Anise followed Tom after giving them a slight nod.
“Merciful High Heavens,” with no one to lean on and feeling exhausted, not to mention his wounds, Hadjar collapsed to the ground.
Einen came over to him at once. Not surprisingly, as he was a specialist in defensive Techniques whose Call created armor, the islander had escaped with only a few superficial abrasions and a couple of large bruises. One of them, the largest one, had been given to him by Dinos’ attack.
“Can you explain what happened?” Einen hissed.
He took out numerous phials and bandages soaked in some medicine from the numerous pockets of his clothes. Using these, he first wrapped and applied medicine to his own wounds, and then Hadjar’s.
He wasn’t being selfish when he did so. Hadjar, in his current state, couldn’t lift a finger, and if Einen lost consciousness, they both wouldn’t get any help. So it was necessary to first make sure that the islander wouldn’t pass out in the next few seconds. That was why he’d treated his own injuries first.
After making sure that no one was eavesdropping on their conversation (Dora, also armed with some phials, had gone over to the giant) and enduring a flash of pain after the ointment was applied to his wounds, Hadjar wheezed out:
“To be honest, I don’t know.”
“You don’t know how you spoiled the monster’s core without removing it from the monster? I must confess, my barbarian friend, that, until today, I thought that was impossible.”
“I know how it sounds, but I just offered the Black Blade a chance to eat it.”
“Not a bad meal.” The islander grunted. Scooping up some green goo, he smeared it generously along the length of the deep wound on Hadjar’s leg.
Hadjar, howling in pain, lost consciousness for a couple of seconds. When he woke up, Einen was already bandaging his leg. Blood and green splotches could be seen through the fabric, mixing together to form a mess that had a very unpleasant color.
“I figured that, if my ancestor was the Enemy of everything, he must’ve been able to do something to annoy the Spirits. I think he could absorb their power. After all, he had once been a tree that could absorb the power of the earth beneath him. I think that after the
gods experimented on him, his ability to absorb the power of Spirits didn’t disappear.”
Once he was finished with the bandages, the islander, after looking around, picked up a long stick (it looked like a piece of someone’s staff) and taped it to his friend’s injured leg.
“Makes sense to me,” Einen said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “So, is anything different about your sword now?”
Their Calls had disappeared long ago, and the Black Blade had returned to the depths of Hadjar’s soul. He had to exert a lot of effort to reach out to the depths of his consciousness in his current state. After finding the blade in the void, he probed it with his senses.
“It’s comparable to a Heaven level artifact now,” Hadjar said with a satisfied nod.
The joy didn’t last long. Hadjar noticed a bit of skepticism mixed with fear on his friend’s face.
“What?” He asked Einen.
“I sometimes think you’re even worse than a barbarian, my friend,” Einen said, checking the condition of his staff. He cursed when he spotted a crack at its base. He’d come out of the battle almost intact, but his weapon was badly damaged. “Two Energy Stones, though of poor quality, plus a fair portion of a Primeval Giant’s spirit. When you add all that up... Well, okay, it shouldn’t be an Imperial artifact quite yet, but it should be close to becoming one, at least.”
After some thought, Hadjar agreed. The ‘food’ he’d fed to the Black Blade could be considered a resource of extraordinary value.
Moreover, he wouldn’t have gotten any money for either of the stones or the piece of the Primeval Giant at the auction of Underworld City because they wouldn’t have had enough money to pay for them.
“This is terrifying,” Einen placed his staff on the ground and looked into his friend’s eyes. “Do you understand what happened?”
“I already said I don’t.”
“Think about it, my barbarian friend. You only inflicted a small wound on the monster, but you were able to drain almost a quarter of its power.”
Land of Magic Page 24