“Boom!”
Like a mini thunderstorm flickering at the bottom of the lake, the silver seemed to react violently with the water.
At the lakebed, sparks could be seen leaping.
That single explosion sent up a spray taller than Bella herself.
‘This… magic? No! Divine arts or Alchemy… impossible to tell anymore.’
Time seemed to accelerate with a drop of rain falling onto Bella’s forehead, and she hurriedly shouted, “Hurry, throw these in!”
On Bella’s youthful face was a mixture of indescribable surprise and shock as she rapidly directed her companions.
“How the hell can this jewelry explode… damn it!”
“There’s a problem!”
“Damn it, we’ve been tricked!”
Ruding and Parkes reacted simultaneously.
Parkes quickly pulled out a tome that allowed mental control over the Elf Slaves.
Vitz, guarding the lake’s surface, heard a second muffled explosion from the depths.
His eyes bloodshot with fury, he wildly swiped at the elves scattering silver around the lake.
Ruding also raised his dagger, rushing like the wind toward the Elf Slaves on the other side.
The battle was about to erupt.
Two magicians stopping a group of defenseless children?
Not to mention Parkes had a tome to control their minds.
This should have been an overwhelmingly one-sided victory.
All they needed was to stop those slaves from tossing the tampered silver into the lake.
No matter if this trick was Alchemy or Divine arts!
“Seven full years of preparation—I will never let anyone shake this even a little!”
Just as Parkes firmly believed this.
Lin Nuo, who had been curled up at his feet, pressed down painfully by the hilt of his sword and sweating coldly, curled his lips into a cruel smile.
While Parkes flipped through the tome, lips mumbling the incantations that would end everything, Lin Nuo suddenly sprang up and lunged straight at him.
“Master, watch out!”
Ruding, seeing the situation change, threw a dagger from his sleeve flying straight at Lin Nuo’s face.
“Don’t—!!”
By the time Parkes realized what Lin Nuo was about to do, it was already too late to stop it.
He only saw this small, magicless person—someone who could have been shattered by a casual strike from him—look calmly at the dagger flying toward him, showing no avoidance, with that same cruel smile on his lips.
This person even had the time to lean close to his ear and whisper with a devilish voice: “Old Deng, you’ve been tricked again.”
Ruding guessed that the strange power within Lin Nuo came from his father.
So far from the Clemence Family, only a mortal wound could trigger it.
Isn’t that dagger precisely that fatal wound?
“Boom! Boom! Boom!”
When the dagger was less than a foot from Lin Nuo’s face, the mysterious protective magic, his father’s power guarding him, as if sensing an absolutely unstoppable attack, suddenly erupted to full strength on its own!
The ground cracked around him like a circle centered on his body, rippling magical energy outward.
The tome, Parkes held by Lin Nuo, and Lin Nuo himself were blasted away by the shockwave.
That protective magic was designed for him, so Lin Nuo was unharmed.
Instead, having planned his landing point in advance, he was blasted toward the lakeshore, hidden by the tides, where he twisted his body and dived into the water.
“Plop—”
Looking up at the clear surface, Lin Nuo held his breath.
He aimed at a reef glowing with a misty icy blue light ahead.
A thought surged in his mind: ‘I’ve done all I can. The rest is up to you,’
The other brothers and sisters of those children.
***
On the right side of Silver Tears Lake, Vitz, now missing an arm, was just about to touch Bella’s face, trying to stop those hateful kids by some unfathomable, unimaginable, imperceptible method that interfered with his plans.
From the flank, a magic arrow, wrapped with all the power of an Elf Kin who had been controlled for a long time, and finally, briefly free, pouring out endless rage from within…
“Exploded forth!”
“Whoosh—”
“Bang!!”
Vitz, caught completely off guard, was blasted by the arrow’s incomparable force deep into the dense forest.
His shoulder was pinned to a tree, unable to move.
“It’s Master Lin Nuo’s plan!” Bella exclaimed in delight.
So from the moment those villains discovered and dragged them out, it was all Lin Nuo’s plan… he did it on purpose!
And it wasn’t just then; it must have started from much further away… in short…
He really could change everything!
“Even telling us, the lowly ones who could only be controlled, would hold him back… that was his greatest reliance… it’s all true! We are useful to him!”
Bella wiped the tears of joy from her crying comrades’ faces, urging them on to speed up the dumping of silver coins into the lake.
The tome was knocked away by Lin Nuo’s suicide-like attack, buying only this moment.
They… would never disappoint Master Lin Nuo!
“Lin Nuo Clemence!!!” Parkes, still dizzy from the powerful magic explosion on Lin Nuo, erupted in fury.
He drew his sword and slashed through a giant tree wide enough to be embraced by three people.
Taking advantage of the delayed Elf Kin approaching him, he sped up with his two pairs of light wings, picked up the tome, flipped it open, and was about to whisper the incantation again.
“Carriage!”
At Bella’s shout, all the Elf Kin instantly reacted, knowing exactly what to do now.
A nearby Elf Kin warrior threw a close-range short blade toward Ruding’s direction.
Another, understanding immediately, used shapeshifting magic to enlarge the short blade.
As Ruding, restrained by this unexpected rear attack, gave up trying to kill the Elf Slaves on the other side and dodged the flying blade,
Mina, also freed from control nearby, narrowed her eyes and drew her bow.
“Whoosh—!”
Her precise magic arrow struck the back of the blade, changing its trajectory.
The enlarged flying knife, like a giant hand swinging, bent its path.
As Ruding ducked to avoid it, he finally realized these Elf Kin’s true target was never him.
That strike directly knocked all the carriages along his path into the lake, the silver coins bubbling and gurgling underwater.
“Boom… boom… boom…”
The muffled explosions echoed from the lakebed.
Accompanied by a strange piercing whistle.
A towering wave tens of meters high met a flash of lightning and thunder.
The sky and earth dimmed.
A buzzing sound, like something angered, made even Ruding, closest to the shore, stiffen in place.
The shadows beneath the lake grew larger and larger, as if a colossal mouth was about to swallow all the water.
Though no whirlpool formed, everyone could feel the flow of ancient magic.
Ruding, trembling and unable to move, looked through the water’s surface in fear.
He saw the dark purple pupil of the Magic Whale beneath the lake, larger than his entire body, and its magic-gathering horn.
“It’s over… All over…” Ruding collapsed half-kneeling on the ground.
Bubbles and muffled explosions continued.
A beam of light shot up from the lakebed.
“Crack—”
The icy blue magic circle shattered completely.
The enraged Magic Whale’s attack easily broke the magic circle in one strike.
Parkes, trembling as he flipped through the tome, unable to chant in time, spat out a mouthful of despairing blood at the scene.
Pouring rain came down in torrents.
Parkes looked bitterly at the scattered silver coins on the ground and the Spirit Pearl crushed under his foot.
Lin Nuo’s cowardly, sweat-drenched expression clutching his stomach, and his later cold and cruel smirk pressing down on Parkes’ shoulder, like two faces intertwined—one divine, one demonic.
“No, it’s impossible…”
“I… I have practiced swordsmanship from age seven for seventy years, known for my caution, never once failing a mission. When the slaves of the last dynasty licked my shoes at my feet, Lin Nuo wasn’t even born!”
“And now… now I’ve lost to a person without magic, on the mission where I had the greatest advantage, losing to him and these twenty-three slaves… losing to the weakest of them all!”
Fake silver ingots, exposed identity, feigning weakness, all in a desperate gamble, giving that madman the slightest chance, entrusting the entire Angekesai House to him—
Parkes’ meticulously crafted cage, seven years in the making, the arrogance, ignorance, arrogance, and disdain he once showed before Amidina…
All were met with a counterattack from this four-winged swordsman, a counterattack he could neither accept nor believe!
Parkes steadied himself with his sword, barely keeping from bending over.
From the very beginning, the seemingly weakest Lin Nuo was never truly the weakest among those who thought themselves strong.
He accounted for every variable, even the protective magic on himself—
“Too late, it’s all gone… He has destroyed everything…”