The Amber Sword

Babarn sensed that Scarlet who was in front of him had disappeared and immediately came back to his senses. She didn’t disappear, but instead had overtaken him and circled behind him. It was so fast his eyes widened and he looked back somewhat stiffly, seeing only a fiery red streak in the corner of his eye – the end of a long ponytail.

Behind Viscount Babarn, the Kirrlutzian nobleman who had been leading the agitation saw the scene even more clearly. In his eyes, the mountain maiden was bargaining with Babarn a moment before, but suddenly, she was already one body position away from the latter. She stepped her left foot gently onto the ground, with her whole body tilted to the same side, and the lance blade in her hand was one step ahead, reflecting a cold light. She raised her head and stared at him, with a golden flame from within that could be seen in her eyes; her crimson ponytail fluttered with her movements, as if it were a dancing plume.

In the blink of an eye, the fire dragon was right in front of him.

Oh shit!

The hair on the Kirrluzian nobleman’s body stood up straight, and he subconsciously raised the longsword in his hand.

Tsing-

A line of sparks appeared. The Kirrlutzian noble staggered back, the force from the lance was so strong that he had to hold his own longsword with both hands to block it, but even so, it made him lose the opportunity to counterattack. The Kirrlutzian nobleman was filled with chills, and only one thought was going around in his mind. How fast! He never thought that this seemingly introverted and gentle maiden would make a move without saying a word. And her target was not Barbara, but him. How did she know? He anxiously looked at the sword in his hand and saw a dent on the blade.

The Kirrlutzian nobleman’s hands were shivering.

Scarlet backed off immediately after she missed and frowned slightly. She had wanted to take out the leader first by surprise, but she didn’t expect the other party to react so quickly, the Kirrlutzian soldier was indeed true to his name.

“Stop her!” Only then did someone react.

All who survived the fall in the ice had at least the strength of Gold, and even the nobleman who led the group as well as Viscount Babarn himself were Elemental Activated like X. Because they didn’t feel threatened at first, it took them seven or eight people to fight against one. Moreover, the other party was a woman, so they thought that there was no danger.

But they never expected that Scarlet was no longer a mere human. To be exact, her bloodline has long surpassed the generation of the Black Dwarfs.

The Kirrlutzian nobles roared in unison and pounced from all sides at the same time, their longswords flashing reflecting light, blocking Xi’s retreat from all directions. They weren’t only outstanding swordsmen, but also well-trained soldiers. But alas, their opponent was Scarlet – a mountain maiden with arguably the most distinguished and unique swordsmanship accompaniment in the world. Brendel was familiar with the sword arts of the Kirrluzians, the Aouines, the Farnezains, the Undead of Madara, and even the Wind elves of Sanorso. He was basically familiar with all of the most dominant sword arts of the era.

Not to mention that he had countless ways to deal with each of these sword arts.

As soon as the Kirrlutzian noble soldiers made their move, Scarlet had already reacted. She landed gently on her heels in the midst of her rapid retreat, putting all balance on one foot as she turned around and drew a semicircle with the lance in her hand, forcing the approaching Kirrlutzians on her right to step back. At the same time, the girl lowered herself, landing on the ground with another foot and pushed herself up with explosive strength that shot forward like a sharp arrow.

She chose to head in the direction of the weaker left flank, where there were only three swordsmen, one of whom was only at the early Gold.

And her target, too, happened to be this person.

That person had been long stunned. The mountain maiden’s sudden advance took everyone by surprise, she was three times faster than someone with Gold Peak. Every time Scarlet landed, a long arc of electricity-like substance would appear. She looked like a lightning bolt jumping forward to everyone present. She was a bright light, eliminating darkness wherever she was, and in just a blink of an eye, she was in the face of that Kirrlutzian nobleman.

In the man’s eyes, all that was left was the golden flame in the eyes of the girl.

“She has been hiding her capabilities!”

The Kirrlutzian nobleman could only hear a loud buzz in his mind.

“No, that’s not right, that’s not the strength of Elemental Activation. Those are two levels of existence and this little girl’s power is still in the Gold realm, but why is there such a big difference ......”

He would never have gotten the answer himself, as he would never have thought about the Dragon race. Because if Scarlet was a Dragon, she wouldn’t have been a servant for a human, nor would she waste her time and play along with them here. Unfortunately, no one would’ve figured out that Xi’s current encounter was from a conspiracy, and an unexpected spoof.

Scarlet had torn through the defense line, but was still not out of danger. She looked back and saw that the Kirrluzian nobles were still approaching, one on both sides who were the two noble soldiers she had left behind, and behind them came the guy who was taking the lead. She simply raised her left hand with her five fingers slightly closed, making a choking gesture. Everyone saw that Xi’s left arm seemed to be purely energized for a moment, turning into a blazing white gold color, with an electric arc around her arm, and then suddenly ‘zzzzst’, the electricity shot out towards the three, “Entity Elementalization!” The noble soldier on the left was terrified and rolled to the side to avoid this blow.

His companion, however, wasn’t as lucky. He got hit by the electric arrow in the chest and spat out a large mouthful of blood as he flew backwards, crashing into the crowd. The people behind him scrambled to help him up, only to find that the guy’s chest armor had been struck through. There was a large hole due to the melting of the armor, and the soft material behind had completely burnt. The man’s eyes were open wide, staring soullessly into the air, apparently having gone to see Marsha.

The leader of the nobleman struck the lightning in defense angrily as he was startled. The Lines of Law wrapped around his sword, ripped away and dissipated into countless arcs of electricity like tearing cotton wool.

Scarlet no longer stayed reserved. Her entire body was wrapped in electric arcs, as if half of it had become a blazing white lightning. Her speed in this state had exceeded the Kirrlutzian nobles’ expectations. Her speed was simply like a beam of light travelling through the darkness, unstoppable. The nobles were dumbfounded at the sight of the scene, they hadn’t seen such a skill before. It was a special skill of Elemental Lightning and Elemental Air, how could it appear in a human? Even if it was the Law of Elemental Lightning, it would only allow humans to manipulate lightning... How could it turn into real lightning? All this that was appearing in front of their eyes was simply subverting their knowledge of the Law.

That blinding lightning had drawn a beautiful arc in the darkness.

In fact, hald-elementalization was something Scarlet accidentally mastered after she Elemental Activated. According to Brendel, this ability itself couldn’t be found as it generally only existed in those close to the Elemental races, so naturally very few humans could obtain this ability. He suspected that it was the highly inclusive nature of the Dragon blood in Scarlet’s body towards magic that further catalyzed the power of Thor’s Blood and gave her part of the Elemental bloodline. It’s just that Scarlet didn’t have the same attribute panel as he did, otherwise checking the racial talent column would explain everything.

But unfortunately, half-elementalization required a certain amount of gradual time, otherwise she could have used this ability to break through the encirclement in the first place.

“Why is she turning back?” The leading nobleman looked at the long arc in the darkness in surprise.

“She’s coming to fight us again!”

“Damn it, Babarn, you’ve pissed her off and now she’s going to kill us!” The Kirrluztian noble soldiers shouted in panic, they were full of thought that they were just dealing with a small girl, not expecting that she would become a big wolf with sharp fangs in just a blink of an eye and now they’re red riding hood. The change was so drastic that it became a little too much for them to accept.

“Shut up!” Babarn had sweat all over him. He still had good feelings towards Scarlet and thus felt both startled and happy at the same time. He was startled because he didn’t know how this battle was going to turn out at the end of the day and was happy due to the increasing satisfaction he had towards the mountain maiden. But he hasn’t been able to figure out which of his words drove her anger. Although the words he said were somehow threatening, they weren’t to the extent to be called unacceptable.

How could a servant’s temper be so bad? How did that count stand her?

But Babarn got one thing right at least. Scarlet had indeed gone into complete fury, she sped forward in her lightning form, heading straight for the crowd. The girl’s sharp face had completely turned into an energy body like ‘divine Korfa’, her hair and eyebrows were like white-gold electric beams that flew in the strong wind, especially her long ponytail which looked amazingly beautiful. Scarlet frowned, and her eyes were burning with a blaze of anger. She had only one thing in mind right now, “To death all of you nasty guys!”

Since the disbanding of the Grey Wolves Mercenaries, Scarlet has put almost all her heart and soul into maintaining those few remaining companions, and since most of them joined and became Brendel’s private army, she too chose to follow the somewhat strange young nobleman in silence. The former mountain maiden, Scarlet of the Grey Wolves Mercenaries, from that moment on had been long gone. That girl no longer existed in this world. She began to become silent and either spent the whole day practicing her combat skills or daydream. No one knew what she was thinking.

Because even she herself didn’t understand what she was thinking about.

Perhaps she was just thinking about the count’s words, who was sometimes very unlike a nobleman, but sometimes more noble than all nobles.

How could one control one’s own destiny? Day after day she made herself become more and more cold-blooded, more and more adept at battling, and less-trusting, like a machine. But inside, she became increasingly fragile. Sometimes she even felt that she was walking alone in a wilderness all alone. She looked around and felt as if the world around her had collapsed.

On more than one occasion, Scarlet wept alone in the dark. All she had experienced over the ten years or so was a nightmare with an elongated shadow that she couldn’t escape.

But until that day, when the quirky Lord handed her the golden apple, telling her that he wouldn’t give up on her no matter what, it felt as if a warm brightness had entered into her dark dream. It was something that Lord Makarov, Grandmaster Fleetwood, and even everyone in the Grey Wolves Mercenaries had longed for and the Lord had handed it to her with just a simple promise.

She wasn’t good at words and didn’t know how to repay him except for following him silently. She became even more silent because of this obsession, and until this day, when the disgusting Kirrluzians were trying to destroy her only remaining hope, anger completely took over her reasoning.

These people must die.

Two screams were heard. One noble soldier’s head hit the ground, while the other hissed and squeezed his arm. The area under the wrist was already charred black, with brittle bones that could no longer withstand the weight of the longsword and was cut off by the longsword that landed on him. His hand turned into black ash and fell to the ground.

The leading nobleman, sweating profusely, turned around and shouted at Babarn, “Babarn, if you don’t do something, it will be impossible to end today!”

Aren’t we dealing with this shit now because of you? Babarn secretly regretted because he initially had nothing to do with these people’s conspiracy, but he indeed wanted to ‘invite’ the mountain maiden back to Kirrlutz as a ‘guest’. He thought that this was love at first sight and wanted her to be his. It’s just that he never had thought that things would come to this point.

He sighed and took out a folded hand crossbow from his sleeve. It was the only thing that could help him now.

He loaded the crossbow, and raised it.

The lightning bolt that Xie turned into just now passed through the crowd, and Babarn immediately turned and aimed in that direction. He didn’t take precise aim, but of course there was no point in taking precise aim considering Scarlet’s current speed. The Viscount mumbled something as the patterns on his crossbow lit up. In the Amber Sword, a magical weapon that can be activated voluntarily must be a Silver item of ancient rank or higher, but this crossbow wasn’t just that, in fact, it had a great deal more to it. If Brendel was here, he would’ve recognized the identity of this crossbow, and furthermore the identity of Babarn as well. But alas, it was Scarlet who was in front of them now and she had no idea yet.

A silver light pierced through the darkness.

The lightning wrapped around her exploded, forming dazzling sparks of light and electricity, and the mountain girl fell forward like a kite with a broken string, hitting the ice heavily. Although she immediately gritted her teeth and got up, everyone saw that the crossbow was stuck in her waist. The girl gritted her teeth and covered the injured area with one hand, and supported herself with her lance with the other hand, shivering and barely able to stand up.

The noble soldiers let out a cheer in unison.

The girl’s vision started to turn dark as she heard the cheer once again. Although the sound seemed to be coming from faraway, what made chills go down her spine was the approaching Kirrlutzian nobles. She gently gasped as she tasted a metal taste in her mouth. She subconsciously clenched her teeth and gripped the lance in her hand.

......

“Those tubes are probably here to ‘feed’ sister Korfa’s elder sister magic... We should find a way to help Lord Count and the others to cut off those tubes.” The scholar girl was lying on the edge of the ice wall as she said it while watching the battle below. But as she said it, she was somewhat concerned about the look of the Korfa beside them. This Korfa gave her a smile without saying anything. Only after receiving the approval, Shido felt relieved and asked, “Your Royal Highness, do you have any solution?”

Lenarette nodded. He glanced down, though he was still as expressionless as ever, “The level of the battle below is not something we can wade through, if we go down we’re only going to burden the teacher and Count Trentheim. The good thing is that we don’t need to go down to participate in the battle. I have a bow and Shido you are able to use spells, let’s make our move before that woman notices us.”

Upon saying this, the royal highness glanced at the Brendel below with some envy in his gaze. He was slightly older than Brendel, but the other party’s strength was something he couldn’t be in the place to be jealous of.

A 20 year-old Holy Knight. How amazing this would be for anyone to hear it. What’s good was that there were only a few of the two countries’ top brass who knew about it and the Holy Cathedral o f Fire who should be very clear about it as well wouldn’t leak the information. The man wasn’t a Kirrlutzian after all, which was the most unfortunate thing. He now slightly understood what was going on in Veronica’s mind.

But luckily, the relationship they had with Count Trentheim was decent. He was nominally Veronica’s student and his political leaning was also supported by House Paluhi. It was natural to consider Brendel and Veronica friends as they were close.

“Then what about me?” Haruz asked.

“You stay here and help us monitor the surrounding movement well,” Lenarette replied.

“Huh?”

The little prince’s jaw dropped and he hurriedly shook his head vigorously, “M-my teacher is still fighting down there, how can I stand by and watch!”

“This isn’t to stand by and watch, His Royal Highness is right. Young prince, this time you have to keep an eye on the guys and not let the All For One people mess things up behind our back.” A voice suddenly came from the back of the ice cave, “You don’t think we’re the only ones who got down here.”

Prince Haruz’s eyes lit up slightly, and he shouted back in surprise, “Mr. Char!”

Then after a moment of bewilderment, he added, “Sister Hipamila!”

It was two of the three Planeswalker Mage summoners under Brendel who walked out from the cave.

......