The Amber Sword

v3c361

Requiem(11)

After the fireballs, hordes of Imps began to move out from the side of the portal. These monsters, which were no taller than human children and whose bodies were as crimson as fire, could not be considered an army at all, but they were already able to swarm the place through their sheer numbers. Brendel hugged Amandina while he looked up and saw a densely horrifying ocean of dark red. It was as though all the red on a painter’s palette had spilled. But this time, the red was surging up.

Countless Imps with fleshy wings stumbled as they flew dozens of meters high, and the entire battlefield elevated into the air like a sudden tsunami. The Imps were like locusts as they blocked out the sun and sky while continuing their surge forward.

The noble’s daughter was so frightened that she almost stopped breathing, her fingertips whitened as she gripped Brendel’s shoulder. In the blink of an eye, the roaming Imps swooped down like a giant wave. She was so frightened that she immediately closed her eyes and turned her head towards Brendel’s chest.

“Prepare for battle!” Brendel roared.

The knights raised their heads and prepared for the first attack. ‘Long live the kingdom!” “Long live Aouine!” Nobody knew who was the first to shout that out, but the few weak voices were drained out by the overwhelming screaming in the area.

Everyone’s heart stirred immensely.

This was a hero’s dream that everyone had. Reality had stopped the pace of the men and women, but until that moment really came, everyone could laugh, cry and shout to their heart’s content as if life and death meant nothing anymore. Worries would turn into sincere feelings that would be vented out. The knights were going to sacrifice their lives for their country; even if they had only a second to shine, it would be a moment for them to cherish for eternity.

Life and death had already been disregarded, and the only thing left in everyone’s mind was to use their swords to determine victory. The wave crashed down head-on on them and everyone subconsciously held their breath, but just then, a thunderous roar arose from behind them.

“I claim the Power of the Laws!”

The old wizard Garlock took a step forward with his five fingers spread wide open and thrust them into the void. “Back off!” he roared as a transparent aura spread out in all directions with him at its center, but upon closer inspection, it was not an aura but water instead.

As soon as the splash of water came close enough, the Imps that had been in mid-air moving forward, their wings fluttering, were swept away by an enormous invisible hand. They screamed as they flew back. Some even got swept across hundreds of meters in distance and hit their heads on the metal platform of the portal, their heads cracking open to reveal the brains inside.

It was as if a giant dragon exhaled and the entire sky instantly became peaceful.

“Charge onward!” Brendel swung his sword and charged forward with a roar to seize the opportunity. The sword he raised brought about an arc of water in the rain, and the mere pressure of the sword drained the rain to the sides, which created a bout of wind pressure that swept forward, right into the Imps’ dense formation.

The first row of Imps that bore the brunt of the attack looked as though they had been crushed by a hammer. Their advancing momentum came to a halt. Their skulls and thoracic cavities were warping at a noticeable rate. They flattened and folded backward in an uncanny matter, before they exploded like a pink mist of crushed flesh in just a moment. With a loud ‘bang’, the three rows of Imps that formed an arc in front of Brendel turned into a mist of blood at once, while more of them were blown away by the pressure from the sword.

Then, the sword pressure reached its limit and exploded. Countless invisible blades exploded in all directions like a tempest, and for a moment, countless limbs were thrown into the sky with continuous screaming accompanying them.

This sword’s strength was actually effective in a perfect circle within a thirty-meter radius. At least twenty Imps were torn into pieces by the sword and the number of broken limbs was nigh uncountable.

The knights did not have time to cheer as they immediately surged forward to occupy the open space, but right at the same moment, the entire team was surrounded by an ocean of Imps.

Dozens of Imps swarmed around a Lantonilan knight and used their claws and teeth to grab and bite the knight’s shoulder and arm armor. The knight fought back with all his might and stabbed the throat of the Imp that had tried to climb up from behind him on horseback. However, more and more Imps grabbed his arms securely, making movement even more difficult for him. At last, the knight killed three or four Imps before one Imp managed to lift the knight’s face armor and clawed his face off.

The knight let out an awful scream and toppled off his horse. In just a second, countless hands dragged him down and he was torn to shreds by the Devils on the ground. Even the poor war horse was ripped into pieces by these Imps.

Brendel could not help but feel sickened at the sight of those Imps grabbing the knight’s limbs before they turned towards him with blood all over their faces. Although it was not like he had not seen such a scene before in the game, those prior scenes were far less gruesome, unlike how the scene was displayed in all its bloody glory before him now.

However, he was experienced in battle, and the blaze of anger in his heart outweighed the feeling of being sick to his stomach. With one hand he shielded the pale Amandina. He then raised his right hand, and with a slash from his sword, three Imps that were lunging at him with their limbs and bodies were suddenly cut into seven or eight chunks of flesh.

The stench of blood blended into the rain and poured back down on the two of them. Beads of blood and flesh landed on Amandina, which disgusted her so much she nearly vomited, but she hurriedly covered her mouth with her hand.

“What’s wrong? Are you alright?” Brendel took the time to ask.

“I’m fine.” Amandina shook her head weakly. “Lord, take care of yourself.”

“I know.”

“Look over there!” someone screamed.

Brendel lifted his head and saw several huge beasts making their way through the red sea of Imps, their huge bodies simply like tightly muscled mounds of flesh. Three huge heads bobbed up and down as they galloped, and each of the heads had a scarlet tongue hanging out. These monsters rushed down from the hills not far away and crashed into the dense formation of Imps, directly knocking those low-level Devils into the air or trampling over them as if they did not even consider slowing down.

The three-headed Hellhounds.

There were more Hellhounds behind them, literally like a pack of sharks that had merged into the crimson ocean. Their towering backs that stood out among the Devils were like fins that separated their waves.

Brendel’s mind was racing. The Devils reacted a little faster than he had expected. He suddenly realized that he had underestimated these monsters, that he had measured the Devils’ combat prowess with the standards of his own time, but soon it became apparent that these Devils seemed to be a tad more powerful than in the game.

“Form a tighter line, and watch out for their spit!” Brendel shouted to remind the others. “Ciel!”

“I understand, my Lord!”

Under the protection of several knights, the young wizard held his staff in his left hand and pointed his right towards the distant Magic Triangle in front. “Dragon Strike!” With a loud ‘bang’, the web of light expanded in front of Ciel, and the blazing white center shot a beam of blue light, cutting through the rain and forming a clean line with a slight curve along the horizon.

The beam of light hit one of the three-headed Hellhounds’ heads squarely and pierced through into the cerebellum from the back, completely vaporizing part of the spine and brain. The spear of light exited straight out the other end, and the tremendous force of the spear inevitably lifted the hill-like Devil backward. Its corpse fell a great distance into a pile of Imps, crushing countless numbers of them at once.

The two lower-ranked Hellhounds were unable to dodge as well and were burned to ashes.

The unstoppable green beam of light moved forward.

Flickering, glowing green numbers appeared on Brendel’s retinas. The numbers were a little more than he had expected, but that was not a good thing; it meant that the three-headed Hellhound had a higher rank than he had expected. In truth, the players’ encounter with the Devils happened very late in the game when the three-headed Hellhound’s existence was insignificant, so he had never really thought how powerful the other was.

But now, it seemed that it had at least a mid to upper Gold level of power.

It was worthy of being a sixth-ranked soldier in this era.

Ciel changed his trajectory and let out another Dragon Strike. This time, it did not have a big effect on the Devils as they had learned their lesson, so only one three-headed Hellhound was killed. In just a duration of two spells, those huge Hellhounds had approached the crowd.

The first to bear the brunt was Brendel, who had rushed to the front. A three-headed Hellhound crashed through the Imps like a madman and jumped at him, all three bloodied giant maws biting down on his shoulder. Had Brendel been a second slower, he would have ended up with his head separated from his body.

Unfortunately for the Hellhound, before it had a chance to open its mouths, Brendel bent down nimbly, as if he had managed to dodge them before they even attacked. It was a moment of life and death; the monster did not react in time and lunged at empty air.

It bit into the air. Brendel had already crawled underneath its head. He released Amandina’s shoulder from his left hand and struck upwards, which hit the three-headed Hellhound’s neck with a blow.

Unlike the Hellhounds, the three-headed Hellhounds themselves had taken much longer to become the leader of the Hellhounds. They had experienced countless battles and were far more experienced than their lower-class counterparts. As soon as Brendel got under its belly, it immediately came back to its senses and opened its mouth to spit.

An ordinary knight would have been spat on already. Unfortunately, the one the three-headed Hellhound was facing was Brendel. The young lord knew it even better than the creature itself, and with an upward elbow strike, he suddenly sent the three-headed Hellhound’s spit back that it went back into its stomach, and the monster whImpered. The pain made the three-headed Hellhound unable to fight back at all. Brendel then took the opportunity to stand up and directly lift the huge creature upwards. At the same moment, with a slash of the Halran Gaia in his right hand, he sliced the three-headed Hellhound clean into two from its torso.