Throne of Magical Arcana

“How?” Asked Natasha. Although she was an expert in anti-tracking, she knew that everything was different in this dimension where everyone’s spiritual power and willpower were both restrained, so she asked for Lucien’s advice.

Sorcerers were known for their multiple spells serving different and specific purposes. This was another advantage that they had over knights and clergies.

Lucien took out his monocle and covered his left eye with it. Images and scenes flashed through his left pupil. Meanwhile, electromagnetic waves spread out from his eye and his body to every direction, then providing feedback to him from time to time.

Using the fifth-circle spell Eye of Thunder and Lightning, Lucien was now like a radar in human shape.

“The feedback from over three hundred meters is weak and chaotic somehow… Is this the special suppression of this world? It feels like magnetic pollution.” Lucien said to Natasha through the telepathic bond between them. “But don’t worry. Let’s keep moving forward. You keep pretending that you’re still seeking around but have found nothing so that we can lure it closer to us. We gotta hurry up, there isn’t much time left for us.”

“Alright.” Natasha agreed.

Clenching onto Pale Justice, she walked deeper into the forest with Lucien.

Lucien then cast True Seeing on Natasha and himself, pretending that they were still on great alert but could find nothing.

After a minute, Lucien and Natasha quickly exchanged a look and suddenly accelerated. Like two flashes of shadow, they sprinted towards the end of the path, ready to turn left.

At this time, Lucien stopped without any signs and cast Move Earth, a sixth-circle spell!

The ground within a hundred meters started shaking fiercely. Invisible waves spread out, and trees fell one by one.

From the thick crown of an old tree, a black figure lost its balance and fell onto the ground.

The blackness of the figure could absorb in most electromagnetic waves including visible light, thus generating an alternative sense of invisibility. Without True Seeing, Lucien and Natasha would not be able to see it or sense it at all.

Natasha dashed forward and wielded Pale Justice downward in great momentum.

The black figure turned out to be a human-shaped monster with the head of a white tiger. The aura of death surrounding it was extremely dense. Its power should be able to directly manipulate low-rank and middle-rank specters.

Fast and agile, it dodged to the side in midair and avoided Natasha’s blade. Then the black claws came for Natasha like sharp blades. Meanwhile, its power waves spread out — it was going to use its ability to cast magic-like spells!

However, the tiger-head monster suddenly lost its strength and fell right onto the blade of Natasha’s sword.

Pale Justice was a legendary-level sword when facing evil creatures. Without much effort, the sword penetrated through the monster’s body. Black miasma came out, and the body started rotting very fast.

“It’s a senior-rank evil beast, good at tracking and assassination,” said Natasha to Lucien through the telepathic bond. “Did you create this spell on your own? I’ve never heard such a powerful senior-rank spell that can interfere with gravity to such a degree.”

“Yes, I did. It’s called ‘Gravity Chaos’, a spell of the field of Astrology,” said Lucien. He accidentally came up with the spell during the derivation of the Special Theory of Relativity.

Natasha was simply being curious, so she didn’t ask further. “We gotta hurry up and leave — Watch out!”

Before she finished her words, a huge rock twice the size of the previous one that destroyed the mud hut rushed out of the woods towards them fiercely, stirring up a very strong blow.

Natasha stepped forward and swang Pale Justice at the huge rock. This one single strike slowed down the rock a little bit and slightly changed its direction. Lucien made the best use of the time and shot out a ray of green light at the rock.

The ray was so thin compared to the size of the rock, like a toothpick on a desk. However, the huge rock instantly broke down into tiny green light dots and scattered to the ground.

Something in the woods burst out in an extremely bitter howl. The howling was so sharp and miserable that one’s mind could very easily be disturbed.

Natasha held Pale Justice in front of Lucien and herself. As soon as the evil howling touched the sword, it split into two halves from the middle just like a rushing flood around a small isolated island, thus Natasha and Lucien were not affected at all. However, the wild beasts nearby were all panicking under the great evilness.

Stamping on the tree trunks, a giant over five meters tall cut its own way through the woods and walked out.

The giant’s skin was nearly black, and it had a pair of eerie orange eyes, pointy ears, but no hair. Its dirty nails were also orange. The most disturbing thing was that it was surrounded by a cluster of spirits forming a cloud. The horrible howl that they just heard actually came from the spirits.

“A Dead Gaint! At least level seven!” Lucien immediately recognized it. “There are two kinds of spirits surrounding it. One is those that came from the enemies it killed before, and they can be easily killed by Pale Justice. But the others came from the Dead Giants themselves and are passed down the generations as guardians. These spirits are not evil, so Pale Justice won’t work well. We have to kill the giant to destroy the spirits!”

“Be careful with its Unholy Blight and Flame Strike.”

Through the telepathic bond, Lucien told Natasha the basic information about the enemy.

Natasha grabbed the sword and said, “help me so I can approach the giant. Let’s finish it as soon as possible.”

With many years of hard training and a powerful weapon, Natasha was not afraid of the giant at all. All she wanted was to save more time.

“I’ll use Exorcist Halo to suppress the spirits,” said Lucien. Although he had many options, he believed that Sun’s Corona would definitely be most effective in this situation.

Natasha was ready. She bent her knees and was ready to strike.

However, at this time, a layer of concrete black, white and grey suddenly covered Lucien. He had totally lost his ability to move.

“Damn!” Natasha could not hold back the swearing. She knew that she had to stop the giant first.

Yet the Death Giant had already made its move when the colors first appeared and had now arrived right in front of Natasha.

Spirits howled and cried. Natasha, who was not yet fully prepared, was knocked off into the air by the giant. Meanwhile, although the eerie shadows surrounding it had dimmed, the giant still launched its second attack.

Pale Justice kept colliding with the evil spirits, yet much of its power was restrained due to the guardian spirits.

When Natasha was defending herself, the Death Giant found the opportunity and rushed at Lucien, who was completely incapable of fighting.

Natasha’s silver-purple eyes became cold. She turned back a somersault and came back to Lucien. Then using all her strength, she sprang up and swang the sword at the Dead Giant’s chest.

The Dead Giant had to stop its attack to defend itself from the fatal attack. The spirits formed a black shadow that blocked Pale Justice, and its sharp orange nails came straight to Natasha.

Natasha, however, had given up defense. She let the nails sink into her rerebrace, and meanwhile, pulled the sword and slashed across the neck of the Dead Giant.

The giant grabbed its own neck with its hands, trying to stop the black blood from bursting out.

Natasha would leave it no more chance. Stepping on the ground, she was ready to leap up again and launch her second round of attack.

At this time, a beam of holy light came from the sky and encased the giant within.

The giant lost all of its life force. The surrounding spirits were finally released and slowly disappeared in the light beam.

“Are you alright?” Lucien flew to Natasha and asked concernedly.

Natasha coughed and pointed at her left shoulder. “You gotta fix this for me later.”

There was a deep crack in her violet rerebrace. Her left upper arm was injured, and traces of black blood came out from the wound.

Lucien hurriedly stopped the bleeding and said to Natasha, frowning, “there’s death curse in a Dead Giant’s nails, and there’s also toxins. Although as a radiant knight and with your top blood power, you won’t die like the others. But your power will be reduced to below senior-rank. The best solution is the seventh-circle spell, Pure Blessing. A fourth-circle spell called Remove Curse shall also work, but it must be supported by some potions.”

Natasha smiled. “So… you do not have the materiels to brew the potions now, right? — Wait, are you also injured?”

Lucien did not look good. His face now looked abnormally dark. Obviously, he had been affected by Unholy Blight — When struck by the colors of black, white and grey, he was not able to defend himself at all.

Lucien did not realize it until Natasha pointed out. He hurried cast a spell on himself to prevent the situation from getting worse. “I didn’t notice it. This also can only be completely removed using the corresponding spell and the potion called Heart of Sun.”

Natasha grinned. “You didn’t even notice that your own injury. You do care about me a lot, don’t you?”

Honest and straightforward as usual, she did not feel shy at all.

Lucien, on the other hand, felt a bit shy, so he switched the topic. “I do have most of the materials of the potions. But there’s one missing called Bloody Family. It’s a kind of red flower that is everywhere in the main material world. So I don’t have them with me.”

“Let’s go then. This world resembles the main material world, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find the flower. We can also ask people living in the nearby small town.” Natasha stood up.

Lucien nodded and cast the spells to take away the giant’s heart, nails, and the piece of skin on its chest. In the future, he would use these materials to make the senior-rank magic items Dead Giant Belt and Curse Dagger.

Luckily, Demigod-lich had not caught them up yet.

…

It was a small town in the mountains where residents relied on hunting and logging.

Lucien, whose face was still abnormally dark, found nothing about the red flowers after asking the passers-by. By now, Natasha was already having difficulty lifting her left arm.

Lucien walked to a very old man and asked, “Sir, may I ask you something?”

“What?” The old man pointed at his ear.

Lucien took out a couple of copper coins used by the locals and tossed them. “Sir, I’d like to know if you know someone good at telling plants nearby.”

The old man’s eyes lit up. “There is one.”

Lucien smiled and handed him the coins. “More specific?”

“Sir, if you just need a guide, you don’t have to go to Nika the Lunatic. He’s filthy and cruel, obsessed with cutting plants, animals, and beasts into small pieces every day. He says he’s looking for the secret of gods. He’s gone nuts…” When mentioning Nika, the old man was obviously full of disgust.

“The secret of gods?” Lucien and Natasha asked at the same time. Their left eyebrow lifted at the same angle.

The old man nodded hard, “Yes, he keeps telling people that the blessed power comes from the strange patterns on the horrible monsters. He wants to understand the patterns! Trust me, he’s gone nuts. He’s been acting weird since he was a kid. Things around him were always on fire or got broken. He must have been possessed by a demon!”

Lucien was very interested, “Where is he?”

“You’d better think twice…” said the old man, but when he saw the shiny silver coin in Lucien’s hand, he hurriedly added. “… Well, people did not like him, so he had moved deep into that mountain. Follow the path and you’ll find him.”