Chapter 135: The Skies Set You Aflame
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
After sending Mr. Snowman away, Mia quickly turned around and buried her head into Baiyi’s embrace. Her sentiment was plain to see as she squeezed her eyes shut in childlike glee, hugging his waist tightly and rubbing her cheeks against his chest.
Baiyi returned her gesture with a soft pat on her head. "Did that frighten you?"
Mia wanted to shake her head, but decided against putting up a bravado and just nodded honestly.
Looking up at Baiyi’s face, she flashed him a docile smile. "Good thing Mr. Snowman came just in time! I’m not scared anymore."
Her gaze turned downwards to the hammerhead plushie bound to Baiyi’s abdomen, and her voice turned less gleeful. "Sharkie hurt itself because of me though…"
"As it should be," Baiyi replied reassuringly. He quickly took the plushie away from its spot and dispelled the secret spell enchanted on it, returning the Monster back to the Void. Then, as he had done many times in the past, he used threads made from his own mana to stich up the tear on the plushie’s belly. With his dexterity, the plushie returned to normal in no time.
"There you go." He handed the plushie back to her.
"Wow! Thanks, Mr. Hope!" Her smile returning, she took her Sharkie from his hand and rubbed its white belly with her cheeks again. Her face fell a little when she remembered something. "Too bad Sharkie can’t move again."
"It will rise again to protect you, I promise." Not only that it will protect you, everyone inside rushes to protect you. And everyone here is a heavyweight in their respective field. Young lady, you’re even more privileged than a spoilt princess of an empire.
Baiyi took her hand and started towards the direction of their campsite just as the Divine Warrior and Attie had regrouped themselves as well.
The Soul Armature first checked on the Zhang Brothers’ injury. Little Bro Zhang seemed to have suffered the worst damage of all, as his bronchitis was severed from the attack. The chaplain’s desperate rescue had of course forcibly snatched him back from the grim reaper’s scythe, but an injury like that was still irreversible.
It seemed that there was no future in being an explorer for Little Bro Zhang anymore. At least, he could start his aspired domestic life without any consternation.
The rest of the party was also wounded in some way or another, but those were mostly non-lethal external injuries. They were easily treated by the chaplain’s magic as well as the Dole Family’s Nectar Potion, and the party recuperated.
After watching a few members of the party carrying the seriously-injured Zhang— whose hands were still clenched on his dagger— back into their tent, the chaplain finally had time for a breal. He replenished his mana with a mana potion and wiped the beads of sweat on his forehead.
"Looks like the situation still managed to turn grim enough to need me, huh," He sighed. "I really had hoped that this rescue mission could end without any incidents."
The Defense Knight, meanwhile, brought a tied-up captive to Baiyi. The captive was, of course, one of the cavaliers who was instructed to kidnap Mia. He had long lost the bluster a soldier had before a battle, he was shaking in his boots even as he stood, as if he could not wipe away the image of the monster he had seen off from his mind.
One could hardly blame him. His comrades were nowhere to be seen. Not that their whereabouts were unknown, the phantom behemoth had only left because it was full.
Not bad, Baiyi said, looking at the slightly unsatisfied Monster back in the Void. You executed my orders perfectly.
The order was simple. The Monster was not allow to scare Mia with its appearance, and it was not supposed to kill off every enemy. Baiyi wanted at least one to be left alive for questioning and the Monster had delivered exactly that
The Monster’s face brightened up at his compliment, and started getting excited. Its consciousness ran around him in circles, and even prepared to leap forward for a sloppy lick. Baiyi was, of course, mildly repulsed at the display of dog-like affection, so he hurriedly cried, Fine, fine! I get it! I’ll feed you bamboo shoots the next time I get a chance!
Looks like someone hasn’t given up on their lofty dreams of… evolving into a panda. 1
Back to reality, Baiyi studied the pale face of their captive, while the man returned the look with a quick scan with his own darting eyes. As the man looked down in fear again, Baiyi turned to Attie who was standing at his side.
"Talk to him."
When the captive saw the King he was accustomed to, he knelt instinctively, his head touching the ground as he begged his King to save him.
Attie almost too readily assumed her old regal bearing as she questioned the man. When she had most of the story cleared, she relayed it to Baiyi.
The captive was one of the common cavaliers of the Sprinting Wolf Clan. He departed for his mission in the early morning to capture Undine’s rescue team. The reasoning behind it was simple. When Baiyi had appeared that night, creating chaos in the royal court, the clan members had surmised that the rogue intruder must have his own team somewhere close by as support.
The clan had quickly deployed their men to scout for that hypothetical team, which led to the discovery of the rescue party. Identifying them as his allies, the clan then planned to hold the party hostage.
"Return to your new khan, tell them that the west of the Steppe shall forever be forbidden to you people. Break this taboo and all of you shall suffer the consequences," Baiyi declared as he used his acute wind blade to cut the prisoner loose.
Obediently, the man scrambled to his feet and sprinted back to his clan, submitting to his new duty as a messenger. He left with a question lingering on his mind... What new khan? He was blissfully unaware that the khan who had given him orders was already killed by the very man before him.
Once the man was out of sight, Baiyi looked at Zar’Zar. "I need a little help from Cuckoo."
The Divine Warrior nodded, bringing forth the majestic hawk-eagle to him. The bird of prey’s head was slightly high in a haughty angle, its brief stint as a freaked-out flying chicken long forgotten. Baiyi enchanted the bird with a remote surveillance magic, prompting Cuckoo to look at him suspiciously.
It flapped its wings, not detecting anything different with its own body, then took off in the direction of the royal court on Zar’Zar’s command.
The royal court was still a mess. The Warrior Gala was cancelled, while the remaining clans were already quick on their feet to reassemble their people in preparation for another game of thrones.
No one was quicker to seize what they saw as their birthright than the Sprinting Wolf Clan. Their men had already propped every military logistics onto their carriages to head back, completely oblivious to a pair of eagle eyes.
Once his target clan was located, Baiyi produced his Saint Quartz Staff.
A deep mumble was heard from his lips, and three intricate spell circles materialized around his head, waist and feet. The circles whirled around him slowly, inscribed on them were glyphs that contemporary sorcerers had long forgotten about.
Seeing a powerhouse sorcerer like him, who was used to performing spells casually without much elaborate actions, starting the spell in full sorcery formation was enough to tip off the common observer to the power the spell held.
"This spell… Could I be mistaken?" The Scholar voiced out her observation hesitantly. "Sir Hope—your current mana output is only on par with an Advanced Level sorcerer. Any attempt to accomplish ultimate magic should logically be impossible!"
Ultimate magic— magic of the highest order, inaccessible to any sorcerer but the most capable of magical practitioners. Apart from it's deceptively harmless label of 'level 10 magic', there was another term the common man used to describe it... Forbidden Spells!
"Don’t worry, this spell has undergone a bit of alteration, so it’s no longer a Legendary Level spell. With that amount of decreased output, I’ll wager it’s around a Level 7 or 8 magic now?" The Archmage explained. "Still, its damage output probably suffers no retardation."
As Baiyi’s chanting almost ceased, the power amplification glyphs drawn on his helmet started glowing in a deep, sinister red glow. The light radiated from them and gathered themselves before his chest.
The Huskar, who had been intently watching the entire incident, frowned. He might be a muggle, but his honed battle instinct for danger had easily picked up the power that was surging from the Soul Armature, building up into some sort of climax.
The others were no different. Despite being unfamiliar with the words coming out from his mouth, their sense of dread had heightened at the implicit understanding that Baiyi was tampering with something more violent than they could imagine. Nobody made a sound or move to avoid breaking his concentration.
At the end of his chanting, the three spell circles were ablazed. Flames rolled toward Baiyi, joining the unsettling dark crimson glow before his chest. Then finally, the tempest of flames rushed outside, leaving the sorcerer who had conjured them and seemingly dissipated in thin air.
Baiyi’s chanting had come to an end. He pounded the ground forcefully with the tip of his Saint Quartz Staff, and exhaled the last line of the spell:
"The skies set you aflame."
A rattling sanguine-red suddenly stained the sky above the Sprinting Wolf Clan. The clouds seemed to be set on fire.
The cavalries flanking the sides of their military procurements looked up and murmured, either to themselves or to each other, about the foreboding change of climate.
Then, a fine streak of light zigzagged from above, striking in lethal apathy in the middle of their congregation.
The men stopped and pointed at the light. Is this the War God’s blessings?
Little did they know that it was no blessing.
A spiraling ring of inferno suddenly descended from the sky, following the trail the white light had paved, and consumed the entire congregation. The heat emanating from its hunger ignited even the atmospheric air, as it engulfed the horses, people and supplies. It happened so fast that they did not even have time to register the pain.
As if satisfied, the ring of flames erupted, a long pillar spiraled to the sky into an ominous mushroom cloud. Heatwave formed from the newly-spawned magma gleefully extended themselves around the area. Lying in their wake was the earth, long passed its minerals’ collective boiling point, and sparks bouncing from one flaming rock to another.
Even the rocks could not withstand the condition that had birthed them, as they quickly dissolved into lava, flowing like the blood of the scorched earth itself.
If one were to see it from the sky above, a picture of the evergreen Steppe with a sudden opening of an ablazed eye could be seen.
The Door of Conundrum, the Association of Sorcerers, all the organizations were immediately alerted by the sudden, violent magical vibration. Towards the Northern Wastelands, they launched their remote senses posthaste.
A fire-based Forbidden Spell.
Harlek’s Incantation of Incineration.
Although it was a simplified version, Baiyi had simulated one that was almost the same as the original ultimate magic spell with the fortification from his amplification glyphs.
And all of the surviving barbarians who were spared from death, prostrated themselves on the ground, their lips mumbling in prayers and exaltations in the hopes of calming the fury of a higher power.