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Chapter 153 – Breaking Dawn (6)
writer:Fei Yan      update:2022-07-25 14:23
  A metallic scream exploded in everyone’s ears. Brendel’s longsword smashed into Kabias’s battleaxe, forcing the Skeleton Lord back several steps before it managed to shrug away the attack. In order to balance itself, the battleaxe’s pommel was thrust deeply into the ground’s stone tile, while Brendel continued his charge into the crowd—


  “What ability is that!?” The giant skeleton finally regained his balance after his body was arched backward, and roared with fury and surprise. The way how Brendel reacted to its defensive maneuver felt almost like he was seeing through everything; it was unlikely to anything else other than an ability.

  “Something that will take your life away!” Brendel also regained his footing and yelled as he rushed back with his sword to attack Kabias’s flank.

  But no matter how quick Brendel’s blade appeared to be like a flash of lightning which had descended onto earth, it was much too slow in Kabias’s eyes. It waited until the final moment when the longsword could no longer deviate from its path before Kabias’s torso slipped away. The latter’s foot landed onto the side heavily, sending dust and cracked stone fragments upward, its body rotating once with a heavy swing of its battleaxe towards Brendel’s body as a counterattack.

  The single white line from Kabias completely changed in a single moment, weaving into an inescapable net.

  “My lord!” The Elven Princess who was putting half of her attention realized the danger he was in.

  Brendel had also realized the sword’s failed attack; it was too late for him to dodge the battleaxe—


  But a miracle happened.

  A slender figure of blazing flame streaked across the ground and burned into the crowd’s eyes.

  A reverberation rattled everyone’s eardrums as metal met each other. The Spear of Lightning extended before the two fighters and cut across Kabias’s black battleaxe. The snaking fiery flame soon emerged as a girl with a red-haired ponytail trailing behind her. Her arms were trembling a little as she knocked away the enemy’s weapon, before falling into a stable stance with her hands gripping her halberd tightly.

  Scarlett’s amber eyes were steady and calm.

  Another thunderous clash rang out.

  As it time was frozen in its place, Brendel’s sword had accurately struck across Kabias’s right chest; the rush of power erupting from Power Break extending itself into the blade and seeping into the ancient armor. The whirlpool of air in the skeleton’s chest broke its weak Aura Barrier, and cracking sounds echoed repeatedly in there.

  Kabias felt three of its ribcage’s bones break before it was completely launched into the air from the impact.

  [[[Impossible!]]]

  Kabias, Scarlett and Medissa had this word in their mind when they saw this scene. The blade had clearly missed its mark because Kabias’s body slithered away, yet when the blade swung into its designated path—


  Kabias’s body was still in its original position.

  Brendel had swung with everything in his body to take advantage of Kabias’s momentary distraction. A line of white frost had followed the blade’s path and continued to assail Kabias even in mid-air, hurling it uncontrollably with countless rotations onto the ground. Meters of dust and soil were agitated as the ancient armor collided violently several times against the street’s pavement, before it finally stopped against a thick wall with a tremendous boom. A cloud of dust prevented visibility of its fate.

  Brendel’s longsword cracked into multiple fragments and dropped onto the floor. He had forgotten about going after Kabias as he looked on with slight disbelief.

  [I did not make a mistake by seeing things wrongly in this low-level ‘brawl’. I really did miss that attack, meaning there’s another reason why I managed to strike Kabias?]

  He discarded the sword hilt and randomly took another sword out from a nearby fallen soldier. The ordinary swords were unable to handle his current power. He missed the Thorn of Light. Even though it was also a low-level weapon it was still a magic artifact. He sent a signal to Scarlett who nodded and they began to run towards Kabias.

  The Skeleton Lord got up shakily from the wreckage. That attack could not be said to have given it a fatal strike, but its condition was far from optimal. Brendel had used Power Break on his attack, and there was no one in the Gold-ranked tier who could receive it directly on the chest.

  It felt the armor’s dent with its hand.

  Before the Skeleton Lord had a chance to complain about the ridiculous attack, it saw two figures approaching it; one red and one black.

  [A good strategy, but you’re too slow to make it work.]

  Kabias lightly tapped his feet forward a few steps before it leaped forward with the battleaxe rising into an uppercut to meet his opponents. The screeching metallic din pierced through the battlefield when it collided against two weapons, causing the nearby men to cover their ears subconsciously.

  [Power Break!]

  Brendel did not expect the Skeleton Lord to know this ability as well. When he reacted, Scarlett had uttered a groan and was hurled backward. The sudden shockwave reached him and he was also slightly knocked off his feet.

  The ordinary longsword, as well as Kabias’s battleaxe, turned into countless metal fragments.

  The youth immediately used both of his hands to cover his eyes. The fragments had scattered with a frightening impact that shot at both Kabias and him. Merciless pain struck him as his entire body received the shrapnel attack.

  [My strength isn’t much higher than Scarlett, so why did she get blasted off and I knocked off my feet? …… Kabias did this intentionally—!]

  The corner of his eyes glanced in front of him and indeed discovered throwing away his battleaxe. At the same time, a glittering gold sheen appeared in his skeletal claws. Short laughter gurgled in its throat, and the glitter turned out to be a short spear. Red mist accompanied the weapon as it launched forward in a bloody line with Kabias’s full strength towards his shoulders.

  [Magic weapon, shit, it’s too fast—]

  He was unable to avoid it. Kabias could almost imagine the youth’s unfortunate shrill scream of pain but—


  It did not strike true.

  The Skeleton Lord looked at the empty ground before it subconsciously raised its skull up, and saw Brendel appearing in mid-air with his right thumb pointing towards the ground. He was wearing a victory smile.

  What Brendel did was to flip his body around and use the Ring of the Wind Empress to launch himself up into the air. No matter how many times he thought about it, he found it odd that Kabias used an ordinary battleaxe as his main weapon. When he saw it taking out a spear, he reacted immediately.

  The Wind Bullet did not hurt him much, and it helped him in escaping this critical situation and even turned it around.

  Brendel took out a dagger from his boots as he spun in the air and sliced towards Kabias with the aid of gravity.

  The Skeleton Lord’s reaction was quick enough, and prepared to dodge and counterattack. However, the situation that happened earlier repeated itself.

  Kabias was completely certain it had dodged it, but the dagger cut through the air and struck accurately onto its skull.

  Impossible—


  It wanted to roar out in fury, but a loud slam forced its rage back as it was sent flying away.

  Brendel carefully landed on his feet with the aid of that attack, and pounced towards Kabias. He had no time to confirm the strange feeling and chose not to use Power Break in order not to ruin the weapon in his hands.

  Kabias was cursing with rage, trying to dodge the incoming blade and find an opportunity to counterattack. However, the same thing happened yet again. It had clearly avoided the attack but the dagger still managed to hit it.

  The battlefield had most of its men stopping their actions and looking at this unforgettable sight:

  The youth, Lord Gaston, the true hero of Fortress Riedon was using a dagger to strike at Kabias’s body, and the latter somehow seemed to have rehearsed with him a fancy dance. No matter how hard the Skeleton Lord tried to dodge the attacks, Brendel easily cut him over and over again with the dagger clanking away on his armor and bones.

  The speed of the attacks was a blurry mess, and a few started to wonder if the skeleton was truly deserving the name of Reaper. Even more thought the youth was a secret Knight from the Holy Cathedral of Flames. (TL: It has been mentioned before, but anyone who has an Element power needs to register in the Holy Cathedral and they are recognized as Knights.)

  A twenty-years old Knight?

  More and more people started to believe in that notion as the strikes kept landing on the undead general. The morale of Graudin’s men was completely gone when they saw Brendel’s ‘frightening prowess’. A Gold-tier fighter without an Element Power could still be taken down using numbers, but once they unsealed their Element power, they would become an inhuman existence.

  Nobody wanted to fight this hopeless battle, and become cannon fodder for delaying these monsters, especially when they are just soldiers who came for merely money and authority.

  Brendel’s dagger finally broke with his final attack as he watched Kabias fly into a building like a punching bag. He exhaled with relief and threw away the hilt.

  He was careful to distribute the stress to every part of the blade, but it merely lasted twenty-odd attacks before it finally broke. He finally had the time to reflect on the odd attacks. Every single one of them had supposedly missed its mark but it still somehow landed on the skeleton.

  His thoughts were interrupted as Kabias bellowed: “What kind of fucking Element power is this, you damned living creature!”


  Brendel gave a thoughtful nod as he picked up another sword as he agreed with Kabias’s words.

  volume 3 - c251

  Ina’s Explanation: The Past

  The Golden Battle Flag fluttered in the hall, its blinding radiance spread out in all directions. Not only did it dispel the darkness, it seemed like dawn had arrived and revealing the details of every runic pattern on the floor. Andrea, Ropar, The Angels, and the Wind Spirit Dragons bathed in the warm rays, the Golem’s final line of defense seemed to crumble away just as the darkness did.

  However, it was not Brendel who dealt the victory strike.

  The Golem still stood a fighting chance, summoning several level 60~70 Devils to take down Ropar and Andrea. But then, the Golem dropped to the ground, like a towering skyscraper that was wiggling and falling apart.

  Bathing under the holy light, the Golem squinted its eyes. It felt as if the world is deviating from the original timeline. And by the time it realised that he had long fallen to the ground.

  Brendel watched every moment of it.

  He soon realised that the Golem had long overexerted itself, relying just on its own stubbornness to keep going. And upon realisation that all hope was naught, it gave up, entirely.

  The Devil with the large sword went up in flames before Brendel’s army, a stalk of flames that sparked out of its center, and it turned into ash in an instant.

  Not far away, a golden circle lit up on the ground and from within it, Ina and her few summons that remained emerged. The Primordial Sin Emrakul was long gone. As she looked back, the first thing she saw was the Pendulum Golem on the ground, and it made her cast an empty gaze.

  Looking at that sight must not have felt good for her. Brendel thought.

  As it laid on the ground, the rhythmic ‘tic, toc’ that came from beneath the hood gradually became softer. The Golem was not speaking, and who knows what it was thinking. Its summons and magic spells vanished. All was just like an illusion, never before existed.

  Ina came over, her eyes red with tears as she knelt down next to the Golem. “You damned tin can! What are your intentions? I really don’t get you!”


  "I was trying……to protect……Master’s rules……" it muttered with its metallic voice that seemed to be fading off, "Every single step of Master’s strategy is necessary. If he was unable to defeat me, I would have killed him. I cannot……let down the wishes…… Such a huge burden…… We cannot handle making a mistake……”


  Ina fell silent.

  “Will you only acknowledge him when you pass? Are you satisfied now that you’re going to die?! Obviously you knew that he was the first Planeswalker to ever step in here in hundreds of years, and he would likely be the last as well. So why must you do such a meaningless act? You retard! Idiot! Fool!" She crumbled onto Pendulum Golem’s body and cried out loud.

  "Precisely…… because……he is the final one, we have to…… take extra measures. Master is long gone…… So why…… should I feel…… anything for…… this world?" His voice was cracking from the wreck of a body he had left, "Ina…… you didn’t know…… just how much I wished…… that I was a Planeswalker as well……"

  Brendel was silent by their side the entire time, with his summons lined up behind him. Even if he was victorious, it left a bad taste in his mouth and he was not in the slightest delighted about it. The victory was a fluke, an unexpected outcome that he did not see coming from the beginning.

  Instead of calling it a victory, it seemed to be closer related to a loss.

  The Golem, however, did not care about the outcome. It looked at Brendel, its face back to the emotionless one it always wore.

  "Boy……I can’t trust you. You have no idea…… what a true Planeswalker is like…… but I do wish…… you don’t disappoint my hopes……"

  It shook its head and sigh, the voice trailing off in the wide emptiness. An unknown period of time had passed, and she finally began to collect her emotions. She thought for a while before turning to look at Brendel, the frivolous and cheerful lady gone.

  "You must want to know what is actually going on, do you?" Ina said.

  Brendel first shook his head, and then nodded. It was not like he had never seen such a scene before. Vaunte’s main route was the struggle of civilization against destiny. The history was never riddled with laughter, but rather bloody sacrifices. This kind of scene, he had seen too much of it.

  He had many thoughts, but when they reached the mouth, he spoke, “You wanted to save it, didn’t you?”


  Ina was silent, and answered him half a beat later, “I’m sorry for using you.”


  "I am not blaming you," Brendel shook his head. “It’s totally fine.”


  Hearing that, Ina felt a slight warmth in her heart. She looked at the human and was glad to be understood by him. The companion she always had on their travels is now gone. Looking at his stoned face, she reminisced the adventures they had together alongside their master, memories that seemed to have happened yesterday. However, even that was slowly fading away.

  Ina choked back her sobs and remained silent. After a while, she spoke with much difficulty, “That was embarrassing……boy.”


  “Now may I know what had happened here?” Brendel nodded before asking. “And this tomb, and the underground cavern, the formation, and you guys. Are all of you Kelsie’s?”


  Ina nodded.

  "The Pendulum Golem and I were Master’s summoned from Master’s Card of Fates. He brought us along his travels across multiple worlds, starting from one called Don DeKas in a kingdom known as Hiarza. The tin can was Master’s first summon and had been by his side for far longer than I am. But I was his most important aide, as, in terms of strategic planning, I was far superior to that guy with only screws and trinkets for brains.” As she spoke from memory, she could not help but laugh.

  "Our journey was not monotonous, and we had experienced many interesting events: From battles to romance and friendship. As we moved between worlds, Master began to age and traveling through worlds isn’t as easy as it was before. But we knew Master was always searching for something, and did not care to battle enemies that got ever so stronger. But as to what he was looking for, we, his summons, had not a single clue to what it was, except that it had some connection with some fight with another powerful existence. Golem knew more about it.

  And then, we arrived here, Vaunte to witness a battle that shook even the heavens. And after the fight, Master just decided to remain in this world. He spent his time to build this Magical Formation beneath our feet right now. Took all of us ten years to complete it. The tomb outside was nothing but a facade, one to cover up the underground work we were doing down here. A noble, one very interesting human, helped us in the efforts to keep all of it a secret. And after several decades, he passed to an illness and was buried here.”


  Brendel listened attentively. He knew that the game, The Amber Sword was set in the Vaunte continent. But never did he expect the world to be so much bigger. After the second era, people began to understand that there lied other realms beyond the fog in the Dark Forest. While he was unsure whether the realms were as big as Vaunte or even if they were protected by Marsha, but Brendel was quite certain that it was only Planeswalkers who could traverse these realms.

  But they just stayed as rumors, nothing more.

  “After that?”


  "And then Master decided to slumber here for eternity. Planeswalker will not die of old age. In reality, a Planeswalker’s life is seemingly infinite. But he was gravely injured and had no choice but to rest here. Before passing, he bestowed me and the Pendulum Golem the breath of life and even gave us part of his powers: the abilities to use some of his Cards. But there were limitations as we were not actual Planeswalkers.

  He also gave us another mission, the last mission: to protect this place and not let anyone intrude it. He also added that someone with powers similar to his will arrive here one day." Ina stared deep into Brendel. “That’s you.”


  "Me?" Brendel was surprised. After all, it was coincidences that led him here.

  There must be some sort of requirement that he met for him to be here. For example, if a player from the Madara faction were to deliver the message from Amandina’s dad to her, Amandina would definitely not follow the player.

  That was because some factors decided the operations of an NPC. There were no certainties set in stone.

  "And so, what is the purpose of this hall?"

  “To be honest with you, even we have no idea. Master was just super cautious about this place. All I could manage was that, besides Master, there were two other powerhouses that sacrificed their lives for its construction.”


  "Were these two people Planeswalkers.?"

  "Nope," Ina shook her head, "I had seen one of them in action before. She was so powerful I was sure she would not lose to Master in a fight.”


  Brendel drew in a cold breath. There were individuals who could best a Planeswalker? If Kelsie was able to conjure a projection of Emrakul, his abilities were already way beyond anyone he knew. Besides, he never believed that there was someone who could rival a Planeswalker besides the Darkness Dragon since the beginning of the era. At least not in any legends he had ever heard of.

  And he was sure the Darkness Dragon was not a woman.

  Looking bask, this hall took the lives of three people at the level of Kelsie, but for what exactly? He doubted that it was so his predecessor could pass on Paradise of Adversity to him. There must be something else down here. However, looking at Ina’s expression, he doubted that she was hiding anything from him. Maybe she indeed did not know what was here.

  "Do you still remember the era when you arrived here?” Brendel asked after some thought.

  Ina was thinking about the matter meticulously. It was such a distant memory that she needed more than just a jog of memory to remember it.

  "Alright. It may not have been the same calendar as it was now, but according to the ways of locals back then, it should be the 540th Aucas year."

  Brendel drew a blank. The Kirrlutz used ‘Eras’ to measure time. The recordings began since The Azure Knights broke through the heavens in the Second Era and were widely used since then. It was said that it was the brainchild of the greatest genius of Miirna, Planeswalker Tuman. However, the recordings only reached until the War of the Holy Saints.

  "I admit, I’m unfamiliar with such a method of recording time," Brendel sighed and his shoulders fell. Upon another thought, he asked, "Were there any famous names that you could remember from back then?"

  "The woman I mentioned before was such a person, It was just that I forgot her name. The other is someone you and I know, like my master, he was a Planeswalker as well, just way stronger than both of the people mentioned…… Dude! You possess his legacy!"

  "Tuman!" Brendel nearly jumped into the air, "Tuman! Dear Marsha! You guys came when Tuman was still alive? How many years has it been? Three thousand? Four thousand years……! Wait…… Wait a minute……"

  He pressed his forehead, feeling the ache in his temples, "If I recall correctly, the Darkness Dragon Odin was still alive at the time……"

  "Odin."

  Ina looked at him, "I’ve heard of such a name."

  volume 2 - 159