Chapter 782: v4c153p1 The Young Prince Who Puts His Teacher In Trouble
The ice was thicker than he'd imagined, but fortunately, the neverending glaciers were only more solid objects in Brendel's eyes. Other than having strength an infinite times stronger than normal people, he also mastered the construction of the world's most fundamental rules - Lines. So whatever was considered solid, might be different here. Brendel didn't dare to use his strength that was so much stronger than a normal person's to blast the ice, such as piercing strikes that Medissa used to kill an army with thousands of knights as it could cause a large collapse in the ice. This would more likely cause a second collapse that might bury them for real in the cold and dark underground.
So he could only chip away the ice layer by later while avoiding the structurally fragile places. As much as he didn't want to, he had to sometimes start digging in another direction all over again if he found that he was working on a fragile area. Nobody would want to gamble with their own lives. The Light Orb was an air-based tier magic that could last for half an hour and Korfa's spell went off twice in the meantime. But she was extremely well-behaved that she didn't need any reminders to make up for it immediately.
She was exactly like an educated noble lady, and not the so-called eldest daughter of Hati, the monster. Brendel could get used to this side of her much more easily than Arreck as he had heard a lot about her before then.
After all, Korfa's dark side was the nature of the eldest daughter of Hati. Nobody knew where this good-girl side of her came from.
For Brendel, chipping ice was a purely physical job that didn't require skill, it was just tiring. He dug a tunnel that was enough for one person to pass, and after digging forward for about 150 meters, of course that was after numerous detours, he was exhausted and had to rest. Arreck snorted disdainfully and took Brendel's place. Although he was in the army, he had learned systematic magic skills after joining All For One, so though he was not as powerful as Elemental Activation, it was more than enough to burn down the ice.
It must be said that a fight between a mage and a swordsman was generally nothing fancy. Considering a swordsman's speed, a mage would need to use the most robust and simple spells to end the battle, so a fight between these two often involves only the purest strength from both sides and the winner could be determined within a few rounds. But seriously speaking, in other aspects besides battling, a mage would still have a bigger advantage. It, therefore, explains why Arreck would look down on Brendel. He cast a few fire spells, melting the ice almost right away and created a pit. It was much faster than what Brendel did.
Unfortunately, the Duke started to pant after casting just a few spells, which left him in unexpected surprise. Although a Mage's physical strength hadn't always been the best, it wasn't so bad to the point where he would feel ill after casting just a few spells. The reason was the lack of air in the ice cavity. There wasn't much air in here even from the start. Adding on to the fact that Arreck cast fire spells, he was basically sabotaging himself. Therefore even though his face turned all red and embarrassed after being ridiculed by Brendel, he had no choice but to switch spells.
He then chose the Wind Blade spell, which turned out to be no different from Brendel's choice and it certainly didn't save him any embarrassment.
As he didn't progress much, the progress made was almost the same as Brendel's. He dug forward a hundred meters and came out dizzy. His strength was already far from Brendel's, not to mention that it consumes more energy for a Mage to cast spells than for a knight to swing his sword. Then two men stepped down and Korfa took their place. At first, Brendel suggested for him and Arreck to take turns while Korfa could just be responsible for the lighting, as it'd be super embarrassing and ridiculous if the two men made the lady do the hard work.
No matter how fanatical Arreck was, the fact that he was from the upper class of society couldn't be changed. With the education he had received alone, it was nothing Brendel could catch up with.
But what came to them unexpectedly was, the delicate-looking Miss Korfa had a power that took them by surprise. They didn't even manage to see what spell she cast before layers of ice gradually disappeared before their eyes. The speed was 10 times faster than Arreck's, even Brendel could only stare with his eyes widened. The two were so taken aback that they forgot they were enemies for a second and immediately asked what kind of spell that was, but Korfa shut them up with only two words.
"Divine power."
They both could only shut up. Korfa had the purest bloodline of the Twilight. Though the Twilight Dragon was from Chaos, it itself was a manifestation of the rules, so it could be said to be a god in a way. But Hati was the real ancient god, it's just that she was from a different lineage than Marsha. Hati's daughter, from Korfa to Jynhai, all of them were demigods, which was known to Brendel.
And divine power, in fact, was a real power that existed.
It was something that Brendel could only hope for, but could never achieve.
Arreck went silent for a while as he saw Korfa open up the tunnel through the ice. It was as if the Duke was thinking about something. He looked back at Brendel after a while, "Count Trentheim, what are you thinking about?"
Brendel was stunned. He was thinking about Ciel, Medissa, and Hipamila, who he had not heard from since the collapse of the Spiral Hall. He didn't even know if they were dead or that this place blocked off Psychic Connection naturally. Brendel wanted to believe in the second reason, because Medissa, Ciel and the others had decent strength, had experience, and weren't any inferior to Arreck. So if Arreck was alive, the three of them would've made it out too. So Brendel insisted that there wasn't Psychic Connection here to justify not getting any response from them.
Moreover, this was God's Eternal Sleeping Place. According to the game, this was the core BOSS' area, which was normal for it to have some special forbidden effect on certain things. After all, even outside the Spiral Hall were constant Dimensional Anchors.
He was more worried about the little prince, the little prince's own strength is not even silver, ah, if he accidentally lost the little prince here, Princess Gryphine had to tear him apart. Of course the princess might not be fit to be his opponent now, but Brendel didn't want her to hate him for life.
As he was getting more and more annoyed, he didn't expect that Arreck had come to talk to him, which was out of this world. Although they had communicated earlier, that was limited to - "You're ignorant." "Stupid." "You're burning up the oxygen here, are you planning to die with me?" and so on.
Brendel couldn't help but look at him a little strangely.
"I am a little curious," Arreck didn't wait for Brendel to answer, "with such ability, so young, and having such strength, you can achieve a career anywhere. I heard that Veronica had shown you goodwill in the Loop of Trade Winds, with someone like you who has no background and no origins, you would've been put to great use by the Empire, isn't that better than stirring up trouble in Aouine?"
"Oh," Arreck continued, "I forgot that you are the grandson of Darius. But with the relationship between Darius and the Wind Elves, you can become a real Count in Sanorso easily. And if I remembered correctly, you have a useless title as a Count now, and you even have to conquer the land by yourself. What is the difference between you and those cheap pioneer knights of the Holy Cathedral?"
This old man said all these while shaking his head, obviously confused as to why Brendel had to stay in this little Aouine and come against him. After a short time together, he was now almost certain that without Brendel, the outcome of the battle of Ampere Seale could have been much different.
Brendel looked at the guy, not expecting him to still be thinking about other things at this time. He simply couldn't understand what this guy was doing for the sake of the All For One to the world, and even hurt himself so deeply. But for Arreck's question, he really couldn't answer that himself. He stayed in Aouine for some odd reason that if he were to tell the Duke about it, the Duke might just pass out. After all, two-thirds of the reasons were actually to oppose the Duke.
And nationalism wasn't something new to players, but for this era of Aouine and the Kirrlutzians it's something a little too far ahead of its time. Aouine basically could be considered the birth of nationalism in the whole of Vaunte, which was related to the process of the kingdom's founding and history; but even so, the Aouines were willing to accept the common governance of the Holy Cathedral of Fire and were even willing to identify themselves as descendants of the Flame King. It's just about the difference in their beliefs.