Chapter 175: Act 109 – Searching the Corpse and Accidents (Second Update)
“Arrow of Magic!”
Brendel gritted his teeth and deliberately sidestepped, letting the flame brush against his chest—his skin immediately felt as if it were on fire, stinging painfully. The young man recognized that it was the pain caused by the corruption of dark elements. Nonetheless, it was at least easier to bear than having two ribs broken. He exhaled quietly, forgetting for a moment just how high the dark priest’s disguise and spellcasting skills were. Despite always being on guard against this move, he still hadn’t completely avoided it. In the previous game, this kind of move was always left to knight and adjudicator-type tanks to withstand. However, Brendel trusted his reflexes, and it truly hadn’t let him down. If he had taken that hit directly, it was probably followed by a sequence of spells; while it wouldn’t have killed him, he could definitely forget about recovering comfortably for a day or two.
Most importantly, opportunities to gain experience solo like this would likely be blocked by Husher and the others in the future.
Fortunately, things were going as expected. Since the dark priest’s ploy had failed, it was now his turn to counterattack. Brendel’s figure flickered, and he had already circled behind the guy.
Another sword strike—
The dark priest of the Church of Black Fire waved his hand backward, and the pitch-black light shield that had been blocking him immediately spun around half a circle to meet Brendel’s sword. At the same time, a ball of black fire appeared on his left hand. Brendel snorted coldly, thinking, here we go again—an entry-level dark priest’s ‘Obscuring Shield’ only had a hardness of 10, and his previous strike had at least cost it a third of its durability—but this guy seemed to genuinely believe that it would take at least three strikes for him to breach this magical defense.
He was not impatient and simply jumped back to evade the second magic arrow thrown by the opponent. At that moment, the two had only exchanged blows for the blink of an eye. Meanwhile, the lizardmen warriors on the periphery only now realized they had lost sight of Brendel. They paused for a moment, then turned around. But what they saw first was this scene:
That young man stepped back slightly to avoid a black flame, and then immediately attacked again—
His sword was aglow.
At the instant Brendel retreated, he had already accessed his attribute panel and smoothly upgraded his newly acquired skill to level five. Once ‘Breakthrough’ reached level five, the damage mitigation reduction had increased to 10, making this skill a true nemesis for all heavy-armored warriors and barrier-wielding wizards—not to mention a mere dark elementalist’s ‘Obscuring Shield’—the sword began to vibrate at high frequency, and the blade shimmered with moonlight, appearing as if it was coated in a layer of fluorescent light from a distance.
The sword surged forward.
With the burst of strength and the breakthrough technique, Brendel felt as though half of his power was unleashed with that strike.
But the results did not disappoint him— the dark priest looked almost incredulous as he watched his ‘Obscuring Shield’ shatter into a cloud of black fragments, while that seemingly unremarkable sword sliced down into his abdomen with ease. Brendel immediately released his grip on the sword and flashed behind the guy. Just as he moved, the dark priest howled—black flames gushed from his eyes, nostrils, and mouth, spewing out of the wound in front of him. This fire was far more dazzling than the magic arrow’s flame, at least tenfold; even though Brendel was standing behind the dark priest, he could feel the dark elements in the air seeping through, causing a slight sting on his skin.
Burning half of one’s life points to activate elements in an instant—it was the last line of defense for every elementalist. Only the dark priests of the Church of Black Fire would be crazy enough to cast such a spell while knowing they had already lost over half their health—hoping to take him down with them. If Brendel hadn’t experienced the same loss before, even a slight misstep might have caught him, and even if he hadn’t died, he would have suffered severely.
Nonetheless, his decent-quality plain long sword was now a loss. Unless it were a magical item, very few ordinary items could survive under such elemental upheaval—Brendel didn’t dare to determine how much of the sword could have been left as remnants; anyway, he had no plans to check.
He turned around and smiled at the lizardmen who were planning to surround him.
Brendel believed his smile was quite friendly, but to the lizardmen, it resembled that of a devil. They had just witnessed how powerful the dark priest was, yet he had been defeated in the blink of an eye by this young man—they were merely small fry, what could they do? The lizardmen warriors couldn’t help but glance at each other, then simply turned and fled; as a mob of robbers, this reaction certainly aligned with their nature.
In their view, the only thing worth being grateful for was that the young man didn’t seem inclined to chase after them.
Of course, they were unaware that Brendel was currently in a state of exhaustion. He had just used both the Burst of Power and Breakthrough techniques in that last blow—skills consumed are multiplicative rather than additive, meaning that the strike had cost him fifteen times his usual stamina in an instant. It wasn’t that he had completely drained his energy with that single sword strike, but such immense consumption leading to immediate fatigue was quite normal.
Since the battle was already nearing its end—
He first checked his experience; killing the dark priest had netted him a full 4,200 experience points. Though he had just leveled up, his experience had now reached 5,645/13,600 and was rapidly changing. He raised his head, noticing the silver elven guards had completely separated the lizardmen on both sides and were driving them toward the narrow, complex sloped terrain. After the dark priest’s d*ath, the lizardmen could hardly organize any kind of counterattack; they began to retreat, initially maintaining formation, but it gradually devolved into a mass rout.
All that seemed left was to harvest experience.
Brendel simply sat beside the dark priest’s corpse, without touching the opponent’s belongings; he knew very well the depth of his greed and thought it best to wait for the elementalist sisters to come and handle it. He took out a glowing crystal from his pocket, ignited it, and tossed it out as a signal. The mercenaries no longer needed to continue providing support through ranged attacks; they could descend now. However, this waiting time made him a bit weary, and in idle boredom, Brendel checked his attributes; his strength and constitution had both reached above 25 levels, and his agility had increased by 3 levels. He couldn’t help but clench his right hand—thinking to himself, this was the power of silver.
Though still at the lower tier.
Yet in terms of actual combat potential, he was already close to the upper tier, wasn’t he?
“Just two months, can you believe it, Brendel? You’ve transformed from a lowly militiaman into a pending knight with silver power. The town guard you once longed for seems insignificant now. Trust me, our path is still long—” Brendel couldn’t help but smile slightly, his hand pressing over his chest, thinking these thoughts to himself. He felt a sense of emotion, knowing that this feeling stemmed from his belonging to this world.
For Sophie, level twenty-five truly wasn’t impressive.
He raised his head and saw the mercenaries gradually emerging from the forest. Among them, the Gray Wolf mercenaries were clearly more excited than others, as their understanding of this lord was still quite superficial compared to Husher and the others. Although Brendel had promised to bring them victory, they truly realized just how easily they had emerged from this battle—zero casualties!
Even with over twenty golden-tier elven warriors as allies, they were still over thirty people facing off against a massive two hundred lizardmen, not to mention the cultists of Black Fire and a dark priest who had once given them nightmares.
That’s why Sanford, even when he ran to Brendel’s side, was still a bit excited. He couldn’t help but rudely ask, “My Lord, did you break through?”
Brendel nodded.
“Silver-tier strength at twenty years old,” Sanford and the other Gray Wolf mercenaries exchanged glances, unable to suppress their sighs: “What luck, we are fortunate to witness the birth of two talents.”
“Two?”
“One of them was also a former member of our team. His name is Aike.”
“So it’s him.” Brendel raised an eyebrow. However, right now he was more concerned about something else; his gaze searched the mercenaries and finally landed on the two wild elf sisters who were walking last. He waved toward them immediately, “Come on, Red-Handed Soft Sister, come help me check the corpse!”
Everyone present was taken aback.
They followed Brendel’s gaze, hesitating for a moment, and finally settled on the older sister of the elementalists. The young girl seemed slightly taken aback. She looked at the others, then somewhat hesitantly pointed to herself and asked, “Me?”
“Of course, didn’t I say so?” Brendel pointed at the dark priest’s corpse behind him, replying, “You come to check the corpse… No, I mean organize the loot.”
The wild elf young girl knitted her beautiful brows. She couldn’t help but bite her lip and glared fiercely at Brendel, saying, “My Lord, my name is Flour, not Red… Red-Handed Soft Sister!” Having spoken elven most of the time, she almost bit her tongue to get that statement out. Then she cast a cold glance at Brendel, thinking this guy was always causing her trouble.
Brendel cleared his throat and explained without changing expression, “Alright, Flour, in fact, ‘Red-Handed Soft Sister’ is a compliment in our hometown.”
But he soon noticed her face was filled with suspicion.
“My Lord, I did go to Karasu, but it seems the locals don’t have this saying…” Sanford quietly reminded from the side.
“No, that’s just jargon between wizards.” Brendel reacted quickly.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that a person is incredibly lucky, very gentle, and happens to be a girl.”
Although she didn’t understand what “very gentle” meant, the older sister of the two knew what “girl” meant. She couldn’t help but glance at her lord, secretly looking down, thinking that humans were indeed frivolous beings. However, considering her own and especially her sister’s kinship with him, Flour at least didn’t show a sour face at Brendel; she nodded and intended to comply.
But just at that moment, almost everyone heard a series of dull sounds coming from the eastern side of the valley. That sound started as a rumbling low roar, which gradually transformed into the cracking sound of something collapsing from within, the continuous booming rumble seemed to emanate from the ground, making the earth beneath them tremble.
Brendel noticed the stones on the ground seemed to come alive—or rather, as if infused with magic they danced around. He instinctively glanced at his feet. But he suddenly realized how familiar that sound was; it sounded just like the smashing crystals that had appeared during the early phases of the Second Black Rose War. To think that he hadn’t heard such a sound in the game for at least decades—it was genuinely nostalgic…
But wait!
Brendel’s face suddenly changed. He quickly turned around and indeed saw the cliff on the eastern side of the valley crumbling into rising clouds of dust.
Everyone fell into a similar stupor—
… (To be continued, for more details, please log in; there are more chapters available, support the author, support legitimate reading!)
