Volume 2, Chapter 27 – The Hidden Thing

The morning breeze rustled, and Fia’s black skirt fluttered gently. The white over-the-knee socks covering her slender legs reflected a dazzling white light in the sun. Although her body was small, no one would underestimate this girl who, at first glance, was always surrounded by an air of indifference.

“Alright, I’ll go with these people to cleanse the chaos. I will maintain my flight throughout the cleansing. Anastasia, if something happens, you must inform me by launching a magic spell into the air or blowing a whistle. I will come over immediately.”

Standing with about fifty soldiers and nearly a hundred strong men that Norton had gathered, Fia, with her long black hair tied into pigtails, gave Anastasia her instructions.

The reason Fia was taking the manpower from the already scarce supply in the sanctuary was to rescue the people trapped in the ruins. Two hundred thousand people was nothing more than the size of a small town in the shining era where Fia had lived. But in the World Tree Continent, a city with a population of two hundred thousand was already a city of considerable scale. There were no tall buildings here; the buildings were generally only one or two stories high. As a result, the city’s area was much larger than one might expect. To clear all the chaos in the city in three days while also rescuing people and preserving the intact buildings as much as possible was a task that Fia herself would have a hard time completing.

So Fia came up with the idea of being responsible for cleansing the chaos, and then marking the buildings that had living people with piles of food. This would allow the laborers from the sanctuary to drag the dying people out of the houses and bring them back to the sanctuary, which would save a lot of time.

Anastasia, with her golden hair shining in the sunlight, slightly bowed her head.

“Understood. I will be with Her Highness Liti at all times. Please be careful, Your Highness.”

“Mmm, I want to go with sister too.”

“Liti, just get to the Third Tier first, learn [Flight], and then we can talk.”

Facing Liti, who was pouting in dissatisfaction, Fia very seriously refused. It wasn’t that Fia couldn’t take Liti with her into battle, but with Liti there, her attention would be divided.

“Cleansing those things called chaos will also help me increase my tier. There are so many more of them than there are magical beasts.”

“No means no. You will stay with Anastasia obediently and not run off on your own.”

Since Liti looked like she was going to continue protesting, Fia simply changed the subject, not giving Liti a chance to protest. She looked at Estelle beside her. Estelle’s expression was solemn, clearly taking the cleansing of the city’s chaos very seriously.

“We’re setting off.”

“Be careful. Oro City is counting on you.”

“If it weren’t for the sake of preserving the intact houses, I could actually clear out all the chaos in a single day.”

In response to Fia’s shrug, Estelle raised her eyebrows and gave a wry smile.

“But in that case, there would be no point in cleansing the chaos, would there? The entire city would be reduced to ruins, and everything would have to start from scratch again. The difficulty would be the same as building a city in a different place.”

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“That’s true.”

Besides, there were valuable things in those houses, which were crucial for the city’s reconstruction.

“Please stay with Anastasia at all times, Your Highness, and do not act alone.”

“Mm.”

After Norton’s conversation ended, Fia’s group finally left the sanctuary under the hopeful and worried gazes of the people and began to cleanse the chaos on the streets and in the ruins.

Fia floated in the air with [Flight] magic. About a hundred meters behind her was a team of more than a hundred young laborers led by Norton. Because the sanctuary’s boundary with the chaos was defined by “Tears of Life” and there was no buffer zone, the people in the sanctuary could clearly see Fia’s group cleansing the chaos.

Fia quietly glanced at the people from the sanctuary who were following behind the team, watching from afar—at least three-quarters of the people had come over. For these people who had lost their homes and could only wait for death, she, who had been invited by Estelle, was their only hope. Most of them had never seen her incinerate chaos before, so it was only natural for their pale faces to be filled with nervousness and unease.

Ninety percent of ordinary people would be lucky to see a high-tier magic caster in their lifetime. They naturally couldn’t imagine the power that a high-tier magic caster held. To ignite their hope and to showcase the strength of the elf princess, she would use a more powerful spell here.

Thinking this, Fia used [Wind of Exploration] to scan the houses near the boundary. After confirming that there were no people alive inside and that they were all simple structures like tents that wouldn’t contain precious items, Fia set the range of her [Firestorm] to its maximum diameter of two hundred meters.

The raging flames shot up to the sky.

A deafening roar, as if the earth were cracking, sounded. Broken tiles and stones scattered everywhere, and the ground itself trembled with a dull roar.

Although it was broad daylight, people could still see a pillar of fire hundreds of meters high. The heat of the flames made their cheeks feel hot, so much so that the air they breathed in was scorching. Normally, people would have been thinking of words like “disaster” and fleeing in a panic. But at this moment, the towering pillar of fire became a symbol of hope. Although the crowd had taken a few steps back, their gazes never left the pillar of fire. When the pillar of fire gradually dissipated, a scorched, smoking crater appeared before the people’s eyes.

The black mucus that had been clinging to the rooftops and walls was nowhere to be seen. The high temperature had even made the chaos outside the fire pillar flee in a panic. They could even see groups of chaos migrating away from the sanctuary. Stone houses with corrosion marks everywhere appeared before the people one after another. There was no chaos in these houses, and the streets were clean, to the point where people could walk in immediately.

The crowd was silent for a moment. A moment later, an extremely fervent cheer erupted. Although Fia had destroyed some of the tents, the results she had achieved were extremely significant. The chaos fleeing en masse was an unprecedented miracle in the eyes of the survivors. They had already experienced enough despair in the past few days. In their eyes, nothing was more important than the disappearance of chaos.

“Those monsters are really running away! T-tonight, we can finally live in houses with roofs!”

“Lady Estelle didn’t lie to us. The elf princess really has magic that can restore the city.”

“It’s elf magic. Those monsters are afraid of Her Highness the Elf Princess! We have hope! A fire pillar that high must have sent all those monsters flying!”

“Ah, ah, ah… we don’t have to stay here and wait for death anymore.”

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Similar cheers echoed throughout the sky. People hugged each other, and a scene of them weeping with joy appeared again. Even the soldiers under Estelle showed expressions filled with motivation and hope.

Even Estelle herself was no exception. Although she had already witnessed Fia’s strength when Fia fought the Despair Demon General, the distance was too far at that time, and the impact was not as direct as it was now. Now that Fia had completely eliminated the chaos right before her eyes, the excitement in her heart was much stronger than before. Fia had not been exaggerating. If this trend continued, it was not impossible to eliminate all the chaos in three days.

The joyful cheers of the people made Fia’s nervous heart relax a little.

My goal has been achieved.

Now I just need to keep it up.

Of course, the “keep it up” here did not mean continuing with a large-scale firestorm. A two-hundred-meter-diameter firestorm had too great a destructive range and would cause huge problems for the city’s reconstruction later. The next phase of cleansing should focus on using [Telekinesis] to forcefully gather the chaos together, and then using a small-scale firestorm to burn it away.

The number of chaos was only seemingly large. Once Fia cleared out the chaos that had formed a lake near the castle, the chaos on the streets and in the ruins would only be remnants. The reason chaos gave people the impression that it was endless was that it was clinging to the walls and floors in large patches. In reality, the chaos here only had a large area, but no thickness. To be more specific, when Fia gathered all the chaos from a single house and rolled it into a ball, it was only the size of a washbasin.

With the team’s morale boosted, the rest of the work was very simple.

Fia maintained a slow pace, flying at the forefront. She used [Mana Vision] and [Wind of Exploration] alternately. If a house was only slightly damaged or had people in it, Fia would use a more delicate form of [Telekinesis] to grab the chaos from inside and burn it outside the window—the arm formed by [Telekinesis] did not need to be directly connected to Fia. As long as it was within fifty meters of Fia, Fia could make the spatial force of [Telekinesis] appear anywhere.

Just like remotely operating a drone, [Mana Vision] and [Wind of Exploration] provided Fia with a see-through-walls vision, and the spatial hand appeared through the walls, sweeping away the chaos.

And if a house was heavily damaged, Fia would not be polite. She would simply rip the roof off and brutally pull the chaos out to burn it away. This took less time and allowed for a quicker advance.

In just two hours, Fia had already achieved remarkable results.

She had cleansed a good portion of the northwest district and had also found nearly a hundred dying survivors in the ruins. The process of cleansing the chaos sounded tedious, but in practice, it was extremely fast. Fia was not gathering the chaos one by one, but was operating multiple spatial hands at the same time. Her ability to multitask made it easy for her to handle this task.

And this was with Fia being worried about the people behind her falling behind. If Fia were alone, a good portion of the northwest district would have been completely clean by now—the price being that the survivors would be lying on the streets with no one to rescue them.

It’s about time to take a break.

Looking up to check the position of the sun, Fia gradually slowed down and landed on the ground after grabbing and burning the last patch of chaos in front of them. She then turned around.

Not far behind her, she could see soldiers and young men with sweat all over their faces. While she was cleansing the chaos, they were constantly running between the sanctuary and the streets to move the dying people. Her stamina and mana were very plentiful, and she could rescue people day and night without rest. But they were not like her. Two hours of high-intensity work had already left them panting and their movements sluggish.

I’ll have to get a new group of people when we get back at noon.

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While Fia was thinking about these things, Norton, who had noticed Fia stopping, quickly ran up to her. As if he thought Fia had found something amiss, Norton’s handsome face showed a hint of nervousness, and his voice was also mysterious.

“Your Highness the Eldest Princess, did something happen ahead?”

“Nothing happened. But we should stop and rest for a while. Have your men sit down and drink some water.”

“O-oh, I see,” Fia’s words made the nervousness in Norton’s expression relax, turning into gratitude. “Understood. Thank you, Your Highness the Eldest Princess.”

After bowing to Fia, Norton ran back in a hurry, waving his arms and shouting for the soldiers and young men to rest.

From this point of view, Norton was just an ordinary noble who cared about his people. Fia couldn’t understand why Liti would have a bad feeling about him.

“Hah.”

Putting the question in her heart, Fia let out a soft breath and used flight magic to fly to a nearby rooftop. She needed to maintain a high-altitude view to prevent her vision from being blocked by the surrounding buildings if Anastasia were to send a signal. Unconsciously, she looked back at the road they had come from.

Although the street they had cleared was a scene of desolation, one could still tell that Oro City had once been prosperous. The ground was paved with square bricks, creating a stone road that would not get muddy even in the rain. The street was wide enough for four carriages to pass side by side without feeling crowded. The low stone buildings on both sides of the road made the view open and bright. There was even a white marble fountain in the square not far away.

Unfortunately, because of the chaos, the fountain and the flower beds that occasionally appeared on the sides of the road had all collapsed. The wooden houses had been reduced to ruins. Although the stone houses had been spared from collapsing, the large black and white spots left by the corrosion made them exceptionally ugly. The street was full of traces of people fleeing: burnt clothes, collapsed roof beams, and broken pots. Even under the midday sun, the street looked desolate and eerie.

Fia had not seen a single corpse along the way. In three days, the bodies had all been completely devoured by chaos—which was perhaps a good thing. It was midsummer. Two hundred thousand bodies would have attracted a lot of rats and insects, and a plague was a certainty. Chaos devouring all living things had eliminated the possibility of a plague, saving Estelle a lot of trouble in the city’s reconstruction.

After offering a prayer for the souls of the deceased, Fia slightly frowned and began to think.

According to what people said, chaos and Darkborn were not allies. Chaos was even the enemy of Darkborn. Chaos would only destroy whatever it came across, regardless of what it was. If not for this, Darkborn, like the gods, would not have had to flee the original continent and come to the World Tree Continent.

However, she had first seen the Moon Dragon Radric and chaos appear in the underground of the temple at the same time. And now, she had witnessed the Despair Demon General commanding the chaos. It was hard not to think that there was some kind of connection between Darkborn and chaos.

Thinking of the divine oracle that the Goddess of Life had given to the Milcandis Holy Kingdom several years ago, which was that the apocalypse was coming, could it be that the so-called apocalypse was the Darkborn and chaos joining forces? In that case, wouldn’t the Darkborn only need to get the chaos to crawl onto the World Tree Continent to rule the entire world?

The matter was complicated, and there were too few clues. It was difficult to figure out for now.

The next second.

A gust of wind blew past.

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It was mixed with a chaotic airflow.

A hint of danger shot through her heart. Fia turned slightly, her gaze focused on the bottom right. Something with a white glow was flying towards her at high speed.

[Bee Shield]

The hexagonal, beehive-structured force field instantly deployed. Immediately after, with a light “clink,” the sense of danger instantly vanished.

It was a surprise attack from a street in the distance.

Fia immediately looked in the direction from which the white light had come, but there was nothing there but the black chaos all over the ground. After using [Mana Vision] and [Wind of Exploration] to no avail, Fia’s gaze focused on the object that had fallen to the ground after hitting the [Bee Shield] force field. She squatted down and picked up the object.

A diamond-shaped flying knife that was reflecting a silver sheen in the sun.

“A man-made object… The attack strength doesn’t match the Despair Demon General’s.”

A flying knife of this level could at most be considered a First-Tier magic. If it had been the Despair Demon General, the force would have been at least that of a Fourth or Fifth-Tier magic.

Am I being targeted? But the attack strength is too weak.

Looking back at the street full of chaos in the distance, Fia, holding the flying knife in her hand, frowned.

Should I go after him… No, that would mean separating myself from the people who are resting. If this is a feint, and the chaos were to counterattack in the meantime, that would be bad.

However, at this moment, Norton’s voice came from below. Norton was waving his hands, shouting excitedly.

“Your Highness the Eldest Princess! Lady Estelle has sent a new group of people over. We can continue our advance!”

“Understood. Let’s begin.”

Although the attack strength was weak enough to be ignored, it was better to be cautious.

Putting the flying knife in her backpack, Fia, with an expression as if nothing had happened, once again took to the sky with flight magic. However, she did not choose to continue advancing towards the center of the city. Instead, she moved horizontally in the direction the attack had come from.