“Without that apprentice, I’m sure Goldspink has what it takes to win the war. And if not, we’ll just accept our defeat like real fighters.”
When hearing her words, Angor quite admired this princess who threw herself to the front line soon after bearing a child. Even so, he didn’t agree to help because of this. He promised to deal with the unknown apprentice in exchange for something he was interested in, which was Tavier’s sword.
How did the mortal weapon contain fire elements on it? As an alchemist, Angor would like to find the answer.
Normally, it was extremely difficult to gather magical elements at the Old Earth, where such elements were slow and stagnant. He wondered if, by finding the secret held by the strange sword, he could also learn something about what caused the particular lack of elements on this land.
For this reason, he was fully willing to spend two days away from Padt Manor.
“Now that I offered my help.” He looked at Tavier, who was almost jumping in delight. “Will you tell me the second treasure you mentioned?”
Tavier looked worried. She feared that Angor was tricking her into spilling the information before changing his mind and leaving.
“I have more than one way to find out, and you won’t even notice,” Angor added. “But I didn’t do so. Since I’m negotiating with you, I meant to stick to my part of the job.”
Tavier nodded. In her view, it was so easy for wizards to read people’s minds.
She then explained what helped her sword contain magical elements briefly. There wasn’t much she could say because even the owner of the treasure didn’t know much about it.
“Stalactite water?” Angor was rather surprised to hear the “treasure”. Previously, he thought the Shannon Clan had something that stole all the elements in the environment. But according to Tavier, it was a strange stalactite hanging on the ceiling of the palace basement that granted her sword the special property.
Every 30 years, the object dropped a single drop of liquid. An item that received this liquid would be added with magical elements. The authorities always put weapons under the stalactite since the elements worked well with arms for combat. Each time such a chance came, they would find the best weapon they could get for this purpose.
“So... the liquid is used for giving weapons fire elements?” asked Angor.
Tavier nodded, then shook her head. “It’s not necessarily fire. We have a plate in our treasure vault with water element lingering on it. Amazingly, the plate gets filled with water on its own no matter how dry it is.”
She then described more items passed down by her family during the past centuries, including a dagger that easily cut through steel, a blade that froze anything it hit, a wand that arose mini sandstorms when wielded...
The clan gave these weapons nice-looking names such as the “Bayonet of Heaven” and “Gaze of the Winter Goddess”. Tavier’s sword had a similar name too—Mulahill’s Fury. It was named after a legendary deity worshiped by certain people in the Old Earth.
Angor wasn’t interested in these awkward names. He just wanted to know what kind of stalactite produced different elements so conveniently.
For now, he assumed that the “stalactite liquid” was a type of stable aggregate that contained a large amount of elements inside, which was why it could grant the elements to other objects.
Yet he couldn’t understand why opposite elements, such as fire and water, could exist in the same thing without causing magical reactions. As an alchemist, he knew it was impossible to blend conflicting elements onto the same item.
Unless... the said stalactite was a Mystery item?
If this was the case, the stalactite would show its Mystery power when powering up other items, by which time wizards could easily detect the energy and find it. It wouldn’t be staying with the Shannon Clan for such a long time.
Angor decided to finish his job first before going to the capital to check the strange treasure himself.
...
The Moonwater City was a large coastal city that had the biggest harbor in the Goldspink Empire—Vichy Harbor. Several years ago, Angor boarded The Redbud from here. He was not a stranger to this place.
It was dusk when they arrived. They jumped off Gondola and headed to a military camp located outside the city.
Everyone who saw Tavier saluted her politely. However, Angor could see that all the soldiers looked rather glum.
Apart from showing Tavier the respect she deserved, the soldiers would also give her sympathetic glances for some reason.
Occasionally, there were people who wished to speak to Tavier, but they would then walk away instead.
“I’m sorry for letting you see our people in such a bad shape,” said Tavier when they arrived at a large tent, which seemed to be the command center.
“With such terrible morale, I doubt they can defeat Heylan invaders even if I remove the apprentice from the fight,” said Angor.
“They are acting like this because of the Heart Gorger, sir. Without that monster, my men will return to their best condition in no time.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Angor wasn’t planning to go and look for the apprentice at all. Since the enemy always sent the Heart Gorger to attack people in command, Tavier, as the leader of the newly arrived army, as well as the princess of Goldspink, she would definitely become the most obvious target.
There were probably spies watching over the camp right now. As long as Angor and Tavier walked through the main door in the open, the monster would come sooner or later.
This was the reason why the other soldiers in the camp were looking at Tavier like that—they thought their princess was as good as dead now.
“If nothing goes wrong, the monster will attack me tonight.” Tavier found a comfortable chair in the tent and sat down.
Angor moved to the window to look outside. There was only one man in golden armor guarding the tent, while everyone else had left.
“I told them to stay away,” said Tavier, “so they don’t die as cannon fodder later. The man you’re looking at is General Aaron from the Morn Family. He asked to accompany me to Yamei and won’t leave until he gets revenge for his kins.”
“He’s either overconfident or downright stupid,” Angor scoffed.
There were only several hours until midnight. Instead of waiting idly, Angor chose to go over Freud’s notes and continue studying Dream Walk using only his memory.
He opened his eyes when the moon was high.
The entire camp was now quiet and still except for wavering candle lights. By using his spirit feelers, Angor noticed that most of the soldiers were still awake while looking at their tent warily, hoping that the monster wouldn’t attack tonight.
“By the way, the apprentice wrote a letter to you asking for your treasure. Where did he learn about it in the first place?”
“It’s our fault.” Tavier sighed in distress. “We always keep the presence of the treasure as our top secret. After getting that letter, father believed we had a spy or betrayer among us. After some investigation, we noticed that the third consort was missing. We found remains of burnt letters in her room. Letters from Heylan Imperial.
“That was when we discovered that she’s from Heylan. She was being too friendly to my brother probably because she wanted to get her hands on our confidential information. Somehow, she found the stalactite and sent the info to Heylan, which in turn drew the apprentice to us.”
Tavier suddenly began to sob. “After carelessly revealing the secret, my brother wanted to amend his crime by offering himself as a tribute. That was how we fended off the Heart Gorger from the palace.”
Angor saw Tavier almost crying and decided not to ask about their secret weapon that used people’s lives to work.
He might as well go and take a look at the capital.