Volume 6, Chapter 59 – A Feint

In less than two breaths, Fia and Claire caught up with the black dot speeding ahead. To their surprise, both felt a hint of familiarity with this black dot.

Especially Fia, with her better eyesight, could already clearly glimpse the other party’s deep purple hair. The World Tree Continent had diverse races. Even within the same race, individuals might have different hair colors due to their aptitude for different magic. For example, most members of the Fire Cat Tribe Nola belonged to had red hair because they were good at fire magic, while Grass Cats and Water Cats corresponded to green and blue hair respectively.

Regarding the dark purple long hair she saw now, only one person in Fia’s memory fit the description, and that was Helian, subordinate of The Sovereign. After Claire’s battle with Helian and learning Helian’s name, Fia went to the Knowledge-Seeking Demon General to ask about her. Even in The Sovereign’s faction known for secretive movements, Helian was quite famous. It wasn’t wrong to say she was The Sovereign’s spokesperson. Powerful and having lived for a long time, even the Demon General of Despair, who had the longest lifespan among the Seven Demon Generals, couldn’t match Helian in age.

On this basis, Fia also learned more information about The Sovereign and even the gods. First, chronologically, gods were the first life forms born. They possessed staggeringly huge magic powers. Although they had the defect of needing a long time to recover after consuming magic power and being unable to produce offspring, the longer they lived, the more magic power they accumulated. There was no bottleneck in raising their rank. Plus, being born earliest, they were also the strongest.

Darkborn, humans, elves, and other lives were all born after the gods. Among them, humans, elves, and beastmen were born quite a long time after the Darkborn. Therefore, Darkborn had great differences in body structure compared to humans. Darkborn couldn’t intermarry with humans, elves, and other races, and didn’t have the extremely fast reproduction and magic recovery speed of humans and elves. In this aspect, Darkborn were existences between humans and gods.

As for The Sovereign and Absolute Evil, the time of their birth could no longer be traced. The Knowledge-Seeking Demon General only knew there was a gap in individual strength between these two demons. In terms of individual power alone, Absolute Evil stood almost at the apex of Darkborn, unrivaled. But The Sovereign emphasized strategy more than Absolute Evil and could use any means to achieve goals. So if one had to choose an enemy, The Sovereign was more frightening than Absolute Evil.

Among them, Helian was one of the most powerful combat forces around The Sovereign. In her prime, Helian had ninth-rank strength. Because The Sovereign was defeated in the war with the gods and his soul was nearly obliterated, Helian had been leading the remnants to work on resurrecting The Sovereign all these years. The specific process was unclear to the Knowledge-Seeking Demon General, only that Helian’s strength fluctuated, seemingly restricted by something preventing her from using her full power.

Of course, as the leader of the Twilight Flower, Fia knew the process of Helian resurrecting The Sovereign without the Knowledge-Seeking Demon General’s explanation. Resurrecting The Sovereign required collecting his remnant souls from all over the World Tree Continent. Precisely because of this, the Eldest Princess had the opportunity to defeat them one by one. What the Eldest Princess and Erin Slate had been doing in the past was preventing The Sovereign’s resurrection.

Since the Eldest Princess went to the Holy Kingdom of Milcandis, the Twilight Flower hadn’t carried out operations to stop The Sovereign’s resurrection. According to Erin Slate’s report, The Sovereign’s subordinates seemed to have withdrawn from the Silvar Kingdom. No signs of their activities could be found; they seemed to have achieved their goal.

Don’t know if The Sovereign has been resurrected or not.

“That person is… Helian?”

Claire narrowed her eyes slightly, trying to see more clearly. However, as if discovering Fia and Claire chasing her, Helian accelerated again, like a fleeing rat.

Realizing you were being discovered by me, so got a guilty conscience?

Whether demons or dragon species, their eyesight is excellent. As a Great Demon of dragon species combining both, it’s natural she could discover me while I discovered her.

“It is Helian. I let her escape twice before; I can’t let her go this time. At least pry The Sovereign’s location out of her mouth.”

“Okay!”

Simple communication ended. Fia and Claire released their held hands, accelerating to chase Helian. Strangely, both Fia and Claire clearly felt Helian’s strength wasn’t as good as before. Her flight speed wasn’t like a ninth-rank powerhouse, not even eighth-rank. It was just that the distance between the two sides still exceeded ten kilometers, beyond the magic limit of Fia’s [Wind of Exploration], so Fia had no way of knowing the specific reason.

A strong wind howled against their cheeks. Under high-speed flight, invisible air brought huge resistance like a wall. A poof-poof sound threatening to burst eardrums rang in their ears. Helian in Fia’s vision grew larger and larger, leaving only the rust-colored earth and sky unchanged.

Until only one kilometer remained between the two sides, and Fia could clearly glimpse the huge dragon wings on Helian’s back, Fia’s [Wind of Exploration] finally caught Helian.

Sixth rank.

Although the Knowledge-Seeking Demon General said Helian’s strength would fluctuate for some reason, being as weak as sixth rank is too exaggerated. The gap between ninth rank and sixth rank far exceeds the gap between sixth rank and third rank. No matter how weak Helian is, she couldn’t possibly decline to only sixth rank.

A bad premonition surfaced in Fia’s heart. She quietly used [See Through] to check if the Helian in front of her was an illusion. The result was Helian was indeed Helian; she didn’t use illusion techniques. Flying at a speed matching Claire, Fia said in a deep voice.

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“Her strength is much worse than when we met before. There might be something fishy. Does Claire have wide-range detection magic? This might be a clone; the main body is hiding elsewhere.”

“My magic can only be used for offense and defense. Auxiliary magic like detection magic isn’t within my grasp.”

“Ah.”

If Claire could use wide-range detection magic similar to radar, she would definitely have used it long ago. Fia took a deep breath.

“I’ll go catch up with her first.”

The implication was she wouldn’t match Claire’s speed anymore. Claire’s [High-Speed Flight] was slower than her [Flight] under Hyper-computation. If not for accommodating Claire, Fia would have caught up with Helian using the combination of [Wind Blessing] and [Flight] long ago.

Claire responded to Fia with a serious tone.

“Mm, I’ll go from the left to prevent her from jumping into the abyss.”

As her voice fell, Claire’s body accelerated again. Impressive black horns grew on her silver hair emitting a faint glow, and a demon tail appeared behind her. In the blink of an eye, she left Fia behind.

So the speed just now wasn’t Claire’s limit.

Turns out I was accommodating Claire, and Claire was also accommodating me, so I always felt the speed was slow.

Must communicate properly next time.

[Wind Blessing]

Faint green light shrouded Fia’s whole body. Immediately after, a white sonic boom cloud exceeding the speed of sound appeared in front of Fia. Accompanied by a series of explosive sounds from the air, Fia caught up with Helian fleeing at full speed in an instant.

Enlarging together in her vision was Helian’s terrified expression looking back as if seeing a ghost. Helian opened her mouth wide, seeming to want to say something, but Fia had already raised her hand and grabbed the back of Helian’s neck like grabbing a chick.

“We are truly fated, Miss Helian.”

“Monster!”

Cursing resentfully, Helian’s body surface suddenly flashed with dangerous bright red light. But Fia showed no fear. Applying force with her hand, she smashed Helian toward the earth. Helian, with only sixth-rank strength, could only be slaughtered by Fia. Before her magic could erupt, her whole person was smashed diagonally into the soil by Fia’s immense strength.

Boom!

The earth erupted with a dull roar. Even the sand and stones on the edge of the cliff were kicked up. At this moment, the bright red light on Helian exploded. With her as the center, accompanied by a large amount of raised sand and a deafening explosion sound, a deep pit with a diameter exceeding thirty meters appeared in Fia’s eyes.

Completely a suicidal self-destruction magic.

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Surely not self-destruction? Or is there really such magic as self-destruction?

Fia searched for Helian’s trace with [Wind of Exploration]. However, the feedback result stunned her. The magic power on Helian was disappearing at an extremely terrifying speed, and her body was torn apart in the explosion.

In just two or three seconds, Helian, who appeared yellow-green in [Wind of Exploration], turned completely black. At first, Fia thought this was just Helian’s diversion. But when she blew away the sand and dust with [Air Manipulation], revealing the scene inside the pit, she couldn’t help frowning deeply, hesitating.

Helian’s body parts were everywhere in the pit. Every part of her body was twisted and deformed. The cross-sections of limbs and internal organs were charred black. The air even drifted with the burnt smell of cooked flesh.

A Great Demon of dragon species possessing ninth-rank strength in her prime died just like this?

Fia’s heart was full of disbelief. Although historically there were not a few generals who died in absurd ways, when such a thing happened before her eyes, Fia still felt a lack of reality.

However, the fact was that Fia’s [Wind of Exploration] and [Mana Vision] saw clearly just now. Helian neither teleported away nor disguised herself with illusion magic. The corpse in front of her also showed that Helian didn’t turn into flying ash and slip away like last time; she indeed died.

Bringing the corpse back might be useful for recycling.

Thinking of this, Fia slowly flew toward the pit. At the same time, Claire also flanked from the side. She landed beside Fia, looking hesitantly at the deep pit emitting thick smoke below.

“She died?”

“Don’t know, but I don’t believe she would die so easily. In the first place, why did she come to this side of the light screen? There must be something fishy.”

The problem was what to do next.

Fia quickly realized where the problem lay. Helian’s appearance in the Weeping Mountains was definitely not accidental. Associating it with the Fog Demon’s connection to Chaos in the morning, possibly the Chaos on the Fog Demon was given by Helian. Maybe there was a facility for resurrecting The Sovereign here, or a Darkborn stronghold.

Thinking this way, things made sense.

Fia scooped up Helian’s body parts with [Telekinesis]. When she carefully observed the cross-section of the arm left by Helian, her expression changed, and she clicked her tongue heavily.

“Tch.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Traces of magic circuits are everywhere in the arm, no different from the familiars made by Laplace. What we chased was either a familiar or a living golem. Whether Helian’s main body is here or not, there must be a stronghold of The Sovereign here. Continue searching. They must have noticed someone entering the light screen long ago. To buy time to escape, they released this golem to attract our attention. We have to speed up.”

“Then I’ll search from the way we came; Little Fia continues forward.”

“No, we both go back. They released the golem to attract attention, definitely to lead us in the opposite direction. Go back at max speed!”

“Mm!”

To prevent Helian from playing tricks again, Fia completely incinerated Helian’s body parts with [Flame Wheel] before leaving. Then she returned the way she came with Claire—of course, at the fastest speed.

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…

Damn it!

While speeding through the air, Helian cursed hatefully. Although her main body had long slipped away upon hearing Fia and Claire were in the Weeping Mountains, and she was now merely a second familiar, she still couldn’t help being full of anger.

The process of creating a familiar that could communicate with her mind—simply put, without delay—was extremely complex. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say it was as difficult as ascending to heaven. Losing any familiar was a huge, unbearable loss for her.

And just now, to salvage Galil’s experimental results, she had to give away a familiar to Fia for free. Originally, she would have let it go at that, thinking the familiar sent out could delay Fia for quite a while. The fact, however, was that the familiar was annihilated in less than a minute. The image of Fia grabbing at her neck from behind lingered in her brain like a ghost, making her scalp tingle with horror and goosebumps rise all over her body. She couldn’t help feeling she would have nightmares for quite a while in the future.

The only thing worth rejoicing now was that her main body had left the Weeping Mountains, so she didn’t need to worry about being completely eliminated; otherwise, all would be lost. Thanks to that fire cat arriving in time, giving her time to leave and send a familiar to pick up Galil. Otherwise, that familiar annihilated just now would have been her end.

Galil should also have sensed someone breaking into the light screen.

The silver light screen in the Weeping Mountains didn’t originally exist there but was a barrier set up by Helian’s group. First, to prevent Chaos from expanding unrestrictedly. Second, if someone broke in, they could sense it in advance. A total of three people entered the light screen just now. Two were Fia and Claire, and the remaining one appeared in Galil’s direction. Helian didn’t know how things were on Galil’s side now—her main body fled on the spot upon hearing of Fia’s existence without returning to notify Galil, so Galil didn’t know her whereabouts, and she didn’t know Galil’s situation.

Regardless, there was only one thing to do next: bring Galil or Galil’s research results back.

Finally, the palace complex located on the open land appeared in her vision. Helian breathed a sigh of relief. Then, she glimpsed the fire cat with fiery red long hair standing by the cliff with Galil.

In other words, the third person entering the light screen was the fire cat deceived by me?

The reason Galil is standing calmly with the fire cat is probably that he wants to trick this fire cat into being a sample, letting her merge with Chaos.

Helian could more or less guess Galil’s thoughts, but they didn’t have that time now. The magic power stored in the familiar was limited. Being able to take Galil away was already pushing the limit, or maybe even exceeding it. She could only guarantee Galil could leave the Weeping Mountains alive. As for where exactly he would be teleported, it purely depended on Galil’s luck.

No, things don’t seem that simple.

Helian frowned. In her vision, the fire cat she thought highly of was raising the Flame Greatsword against Galil’s chest. With Galil’s strength, if the fire cat wanted to kill him, he absolutely had no way to survive.

I must catch up quickly.

She flapped her wings with all her might, watching helplessly as Galil was lifted by Nola with one hand and thrown into the air. It seemed Galil would be cut in half at the waist in the next second. Fortunately, she arrived in time, blocking this blow for Galil with the sword in her hand in the nick of time.

Clang!

The heavy blow sent Helian, the familiar, flying. However, the shock Helian brought to Nola was even stronger. Nola forgot to pursue, just staring blankly at Helian.

Probably overwhelmed by the deception of me, this “Goddess”. Helian knew what Nola was thinking. If possible, she didn’t want the fire cat she thought highly of to be sad. However, she couldn’t help herself; at this moment, she didn’t have that much mind to care for outsiders.

Using the inertia of being knocked flying, Helian flew into the air, grabbed Galil, and activated long-distance unstable teleportation magic. Immediately after, a blue teleportation gate fluctuating wildly, as if about to collapse at any time, appeared beside her. Without thinking, she threw Galil into the teleportation gate.

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Unaware of the situation, Galil struggled desperately, his eyes even turning red from anger.

“Helian, are you crazy! Capture her quickly!”

“You should thank me for willing to use a familiar to save you. Those two mad dogs are behind. If you want to live, go with my familiar!”

The teleportation gate was close at hand. Helian could already smell the burnt scent coming from within the gate. This was a symbol of magic nearing its limit, unable to bear so many people. If the teleportation magic collapsed midway, the people inside would be teleported to unknown locations. But she couldn’t care about that much. Teleporting elsewhere at least offered a chance; staying here meant only a dead end.

But just as half of Helian and Galil’s bodies had entered the teleportation gate, a cold voice full of mockery suddenly sounded in their ears.

“Mad dogs? Calling me names, at most I’ll just teach you a lesson. But including Claire too… today is your death date.”

While this voice, like the whisper of a Reaper, was ongoing, the air around Helian seemed to freeze into ice, hindering her and Galil’s advance. What made her eyes split with rage even more was that the originally unstably flashing teleportation gate stopped fluctuating at this moment, as if time was frozen in this instant. Even her thinking became sluggish.

She opened her mouth wide, looking at Galil, then found Galil also looking at her. Even though the demon rushing from afar was fast, her and Galil’s movements seemed to be slowed down dozens of times, slow to a heinous degree.

Her long lifespan made her realize the true nature of this magic. Not only that, but Galil also showed shock and fear. A woman he had never seen used a vicious curse he couldn’t escape on him right off the bat. Even teleportation magic couldn’t save him and Helian. Or rather, this magic naturally countered all escapees.

“[Forbidden Spell: Spatial Confinement].”

The moment the indifferent voice fell, Helian and Galil in the air froze. Even the red light symbolizing self-destruction on Helian stopped together. The two were like mosquitoes in amber, frozen in mid-air.

You can’t escape now.

Fia released Claire, whom she was holding. She intended to breathe a light sigh of relief, but after glimpsing the dazed Nola below from the corner of her eye, her expression became nervous again. She didn’t know the reason for Nola coming here, but Nola now seemed to have lost her soul, her eyes full of sorrow and self-mockery, indicating things might be running in the worst direction.

“Claire, leave the demons in the distance to me. You go find Nola—”

“No, better I go deal with the demons. The current Little Fia understands Nola better than I do… Please take care of Nola.”

Claire bit her lip lightly, a pleading look revealing in her eyes. It was the emotion of begging Fia to comfort her kin.

Leaving it to me precisely…

But the fact was indeed as Claire said; she was the most suitable candidate. Although Claire had lived with Nola for a long time, due to the recent distancing, Claire didn’t understand the current Nola as well as she did.

I hope it hasn’t turned into the worst situation yet. Or even if it has turned into the worst situation, there is still room to salvage things.

Thinking this in her heart, Fia landed beside Nola, who was covering her mouth, revealing an expression that was neither smiling nor crying.