Chapter 40: 240 Points

Chapter 40: Chapter 40: 240 Points

Aegon slid the warm blade of the Flame Sword back into its crimson scabbard beneath his cloak.

Meeting her inquisitive look, he replied:

?"Every runic smith leaves a signature in their ventilation work, Lady Everlight. Grandmaster Gorden favors heavy chest plating, which means the heat from the core has to escape near the collar. You only need to know where to look."

?Hearing it, she smiled beautifully.

"Incredible! I doubt even the senior mechanics of the Ministry of War rarely spot that flaw in the middle of live combat. It seems the Noiré family’s library in the outer regions is far more impressive than the capital rumors suggest. Is it not?"

?"Ah, books are only useful if one bothers to read them," Aegon said mildly, glancing up as the silver mist above the glade began to thin from the shockwave of the two detonated cores.

"Anyway, Tthe commotion here will draw both the proctors’ eyes and the scavenging teams soon. I still have three cousins to track down before sunset, so I will take my leave first."

?Aria did not stop him. Resting her slender silver wand against her palm, she offered a polite, almost playful nod.

"Until the top of the leaderboard then, Aegon Noiré. Try not to let that feral boy in the western ravine catch up to us."

?Without another word, Aegon turned on his heel. With a single light step, his small figure melted back into the dense wall of ferns and vanished among the towering ironwood trunks.

?Watching the empty shadow where he had stood a second ago, Aria looked down at the shifting constellations on her Grimoire cover and let out a quiet sigh.

?"Not a single ripple of fate..." she whispered to herself before turning toward the deeper northern gorge.

?Over the next half hour, Aegon changed his trajectory, curving back toward the border between the inner and middle zones of the canyon.

?Because he had spawned deep within the northern sector, he knew his cousins were likely struggling somewhere in the outer perimeter.

So he headed there. He didn’t take their rude behaviour from the start of the journey at heart. In his perspective they were still kids.

Along the way, he encountered another roaming Giant Puppet guarding a stone bridge, and dispatched it in less than four seconds with a single, clean thrust through its collar vent, pushing his personal tally to 200 Points.

?As he crossed the ridge leading down into the middle forest, the sharp clanging of chipped iron and a familiar shout suddenly echoed through the trees ahead.

?CLANG! CRACK!

?"Zane, watch your left flank! Their halberds are trying to pin us against the roots!"

?"I know Clara, I’m trying! My wind blades can’t even push their shields back in this damned suppression field!"

?Leaping silently onto a thick branch twenty feet above the forest floor, Aegon looked down into a sunken hollow.

?Below him, Clara and Zane stood back-to-back inside a ring of trampled bushes. Both of them looked ragged.

Zane’s standard-issue iron broadsword was covered in deep notches, blood seeping from a shallow cut across his cheek, while Clara’s usually neat blue dress was smeared with mud and ash as she struggled to maintain a thin layer of frost around her boots.

?Surrounding them were four ordinary Seventh-Generation Combat Puppets.

They moved with cold, human-like coordination, and struck theur iron shields to crush Zane’s guard, while the other two circled silently behind Clara, raising their broadswords for a synchronized decapitation strike.

?Clara’s face went pale as she sensed the cold steel descending behind her neck. Her mana reserves were nearly dry from fighting the 70% suppression array, and she could not raise an ice wall in time.

?"Clara!"

Zane roared, trying to throw himself in front of her, only to have his boots locked in place by a puppet’s sweeping halberd.

?Just as the two iron broadswords came within three inches of Clara’s shoulders, a crimson shadow dropped from the canopy like a falling meteor.

?SHING!

?A scorching wave of heat swept across the hollow, instantly evaporating the damp mist.

?Before Clara or Zane could even blink, Aegon landed squarely between the two ambushing puppets. With [ Ring of the Focused Mind ] guiding his wrist and 38 points of raw Strength behind his arm, his crimson-wrapped blade flashed in a horizontal figure-eight.

?SLASH—BOOM!

?The two puppets behind Clara did not even manage to complete their downward swings.

Sliced cleanly through their unarmored left shoulder conduits, both automatons erupted into showers of burning splinters and crashed into the dirt at Clara’s feet.

?Without pausing for half a breath, Aegon kicked off the ground, appearing right beside Zane’s shoulder.

As the remaining two shield-bearing puppets tried to raise their iron guards, Aegon’s blade pierced straight through the center of the first shield like hot iron through butter, shattering the puppet’s sternum core before spinning a backhand slash that took the last doll’s head clean off its neck.

?Ding!

?[ Four Ordinary Combat Puppets Destroyed. +40 Points Acquired. ]

?Silence returned to the hollow, broken only by the crackling of embers on the severed wooden limbs and the heavy, ragged panting of Zane and Clara.

?For three full seconds, Zane stared blankly at the four smoking piles of scrap iron that had nearly killed them moments ago, then slowly shifted his gaze to the boy calmly wiping his sword before sliding it back beneath his cloak.

Clara was half relieved, half in disbelief.

?"Aegon, thank god you’re here...But you... How did you cut through Grandmaster Gorden’s alchemical steel in a single swing? Zane and I spent fifteen minutes hacking at just one of those things earlier, and we barely cracked its chest plate!"

Aegon shrugged.

?"Their joints and conduits have gaps if you strike at the right angle Clara. But are you two alright? Where is Marcus?"

?Zane looked utterly defeated.

"We don’t know where Marcus. The teleportation array scattered everyone completely at random. I only bumped into Clara about twenty minutes ago near the southern creek, and we haven’t seen a single trace of Marcus since we entered the forest."

?"With his hot temper and the seventy-percent mana suppression, I just hope he found a safe place to hide instead of charging at a puppet head-on. This final test is a complete nightmare. Because of the suppression field, most examinees can barely defeat two or three puppets on their own."

?Zane nodded grimly, tapping the glowing registration badge pinned to his chest.

?[ Zane Noiré: 20 Points ]

?"Clara and I pooled our strength for over an hour just to take down five ordinary dolls between us. Now she has 30 points, and I have 20. According to the examinees we passed earlier, the cutoff for the top one thousand is probably going to be around 40 or 50 points by sunset. How many points have you managed to gather on your own, Aegon? If you’re still at zero, we can help you hunt a few lone puppets before our stamina runs out."

?Clara also nodded in agreement. Despite Aegon’s terrifying sword strike just now, she assumed he had used a secret, high-consumption trump card from his Blood Berserker Grimoire to save them.

Hunting alone in this forest without a squad was notoriously slow.

?"You two don’t need to worry about my score. Focus on recovering your stamina first. I already have enough to pass." Argon replied.

?"Enough to pass? Wait, don’t tell me you already hunted four or five puppets by yourself?!"

?Instead of answering with words, Aegon simply tapped a finger against the brass registration badge pinned to his tunic, allowing the runic projection to float into the air for his cousins to see.

?The moment the glowing golden numbers materialized between them, both Clara and Zane froze like statues.

?[ Aegon Noiré: 240 Points ]

?

Them: "....."