"Are you an evil cultivator? I don’t sense your malicious aura... but your gaze leaves no doubt," said the elf, with a soft voice.
The whale narrowed its eyes and replied, "Who are you, and why did you make them attack me?"
The elf just lazily sighed. "What a tiresome job. Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll read your memories and leave this miserable place."
Quickly, his superior cultivation covered the hall. Winds stirred, and bloody blades formed everywhere. They were natural wind laws that didn’t even need runes to be activated.
Alm and Bruno felt his QI; he was definitely not a cultivator from an ascending planet. He was on a higher tier... but the laws weren’t exactly at the level of the divine world, which intrigued them. But he wasn’t trash like the cultivators they normally encountered. If it were anyone else, even being five levels above them, they would only break a sweat, but this elf was really putting pressure on them.
"Great, that saves me time. I’ll know everything directly from your soul," replied the whale, rising from the throne.
The elf chuckled lightly, and his eyes soon fell on the young human next to the whale. Suddenly, his eyes and body petrified... the whale, seeing that, sighed. The divine elven fabric combined with her natural beauty was completely poisonous to elves... especially the young ones.
The elf smiled gently at Ruri. "Human, I didn’t expect to find something as beautiful as a forest fairy. I am Young Master Finon... I’ll take you with me to my home, just wait a moment."
The whale laughed, a young master who doesn’t even ask for her opinion, just likes her and is going to take her; great, it makes things easier. They held Ruri’s hand, then transferred everything to their hero rune in a second. She just looked dryly, stepped away from the whale, and closed her eyes.
The elf smiled even more excited and full of energy, as if he had found an invaluable treasure. He would have fun while completing the mission given to him! Soon, he felt the air distorting and looked ahead. The whale shot forward with piercing eyes.
"Come, let’s end this..." He began to speak, and felt a deadly pressure cutting through.
The whale suddenly smiled, and their physical cultivation exploded forward, multiplying their speed. The elf drew his weapon, visibly startled, but a greenish axe appeared in the whale’s hand, and in the same second, it exploded forward.
The elf, with quick thinking, moved all the air around him and created infinite blades; in less than a second, they came together, blocking the axe. An explosion shook the castle, but it was at that moment that he suddenly sensed a golden power covering the world and a cutting aura approaching. Startled, he turned to the side.
Slash
His cultivated vision captured a golden fairy floating with a sword in hand, watching him with a disdainful look. "Only he can look at me like this," her lips moved with inaudible words.
The elf’s head then fell backward... and in the same second, it was seized by the whale.
The power of the hero, combined with the sharpening seal and the shadow space, represented an undefendable combination. Although it was below the Eternal Bond on a grand scale, the power of the hero could nullify the opponent’s QI and laws, breaking their defenses in a unique way. As soon as the elf focused entirely on the whale and ignored Ruri, it was the moment of his end. Ruri became exactly what Alm had wished for: a lethal assassin who could not be ignored.
Ruri turned gently and stared at the dwarf king. He, in turn, was paralyzed, his brain unable to reason; in a second, did that divine elven being simply die?
She snorted coldly, and the golden power condensed in the rune on her forehead. Suddenly, she sheathed the sword and raised her hand in the air. In the same second, it was when the dwarf woke up, feeling a palpable danger. While the dwarf king activated his cultivation, an immaterial sacred sword appeared in Ruri’s delicate hands.
"Hold this!" Ruri roared and slashed.
All the golden power was accumulated in that blade and exploded in front of the dwarf king. It had nothing to do with cultivation; the golden power belonged to a hero, and the sacred sword was the manifestation of dominating power. All the QI in the dwarf’s body refused to move, and he received the sword in his chest.
CRACK!!
He flew, crashing against a wall that was almost destroyed by the impact. A massive wound appeared on his chest, not deep, yet blood gushed out. All the golden power disappeared, and Ruri breathed heavily. The dwarf fell from the wall, feeling only a few broken bones in his body.
Unlike the elf, the dwarf focused on her and defended himself. In the end, despite the hero’s power being used to the fullest, the difference in cultivation was crucial. That power was like having an invincible sword and only using its weight to crush, not cut.
The dwarf looked at the human, frightened. He felt that if she were a little stronger, he would have died. But she just smiled sinisterly in his direction. Soon, the dwarf felt his chest pulsating with blood... the wound was open and refused to close, seeming to get deeper with each moment, spewing more blood.
It was a cruel technique of the hero, learned by Ruri with the rewards of the celestial realm: the hero’s curse. She might not have the power to kill him immediately, but the dwarf king would definitely die later. Evil should never escape the hero and her sacred sword.
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In this moment of the dwarf’s desperation, the whale opened his eyes. In just ten seconds, they read the elf’s last days to understand a little. Seeing the desperate dwarf king, the whale snorted and said:
"You deserve to die. You sold the honor of your race and allowed the future husband of your daughter to be beaten without saying a word."
He turned to the whale, feeling his life draining away through the blood. Ruri attacked to release her anger and buy time for her master to read the memories.
"Vuard understood my actions well; I did everything to protect my race," he said, feeling death approaching and accepting it. "Unfortunately, your description matched exactly what the elf was looking for. I didn’t intend to give him up, but..."
Then, he turned his eyes to the whale and spoke seriously, "I’m sorry, I know you’re not what he was looking for. But I saw that Vuard was clearly under your enchantment. He only spoke about a divine being that brought infinite and secret blessings for us to discuss alone; that he was a disciple of the god of the forge, invincible, taking care of all races, even hybrids... obviously, everything his imagination could create about divinity was unleashed."
The whale froze, and the dwarf continued, with a giant pool of blood around him that only grew: "Clearly, you did something wrong to him. I couldn’t see him acting this way; I wanted to spare you for ultimately saving so many dwarf women, but I would certainly investigate this..."
"YOU BASTARD! Master is not a fraud; it seems I must cut off your head!" Ruri roared, drawing her sword with bloodshot eyes.
The dwarf sighed and quickly made a motion, throwing a ring towards the whale. "I could die, and you would never have this, but I’m giving you the key to the treasure; take everything. But free the dwarves from your enchantment. We’re not so useful beyond mining and forging, but we have many weapons and treasures, you can take them!"
The whale remained with petrified eyes. ’I said that this worship was exaggerated and strange. Anyone from outside would suspect this, and now this was one of the reasons for all this trouble,’ Alm said dryly.
Bruno didn’t know what to say. ’Vuard in front of us wasn’t so strange... maybe... behind our backs, everyone turns into fanatical and crazy worshippers...’
"Master saved all those women out of pure and genuine kindness! He even promised to take care of their children if they wanted to stay here, you ungrateful trash! How can you..." Ruri’s face was red, and she trembled, seeming to explode in anger at any moment.
"Calm down!" the whale spoke, and Ruri seemed upset. That reaction only made everything worse.
"I can prove my innocence," they said, waving their hands desperately.
They simply took out the diagram and opened the scroll. Soon, a dense bloodline power of the dwarves covered the entire hall, and the dwarf king rose from his blood puddle as if all the energies of his body had returned.
"The bloodline of the high dwarves!" he spoke, trembling.
The whale smiled. "Not only that, Vuard said he had the entire inheritance. That secret blessing was it. But he... just wasn’t very clear and exaggerated too much..."
The dwarf king knelt on the ground and looked at the whale seriously. "Lord... I didn’t know the elf would do that to Vuard. But, since I didn’t kill him, I sent my daughter to take care of him, and I would reward him by letting them be together."
The whale nodded in understanding; a young master was unpredictable and got violent for no reason. Then, they said, "Don’t worry. I will..."
They stopped their words, feeling Ruri’s angry gaze on them. "It was just a misunderstanding. He didn’t do that to..."
"He doubted master’s purity and kindness!" Ruri spoke dryly.
Alm and Bruno froze... they really didn’t do it out of kindness and purity... but they couldn’t say that at all. "Calm down, I can’t care about small things."
Ruri just huffed as the whale continued to talk. "The dwarf king is knowledgeable; he will help me create a new katana for you... he’s not a bad person and knows how to apologize..." They continued speaking calmly, trying to appease the girl.
The dwarf king watched that in shock, and the whale continued to speak calmly while Ruri retorted. It reminded him of his daughter or his late wife... him desperately trying to convince her of something she didn’t accept. To end up...
"Hey! Apologize properly, help me here!" The whale spoke in a desperate tone to the stunned dwarf.
He woke up and smiled slightly, turning and bowing. "Sorry for doubting your kindness. Thank you for saving my people. Forgive me, little lady." He spoke sincerely. Someone who cared for others like that couldn’t bring harm to anyone.
Those were his last words, and he closed his eyes without energy and blood. Ruri jumped in fright and activated her rune, quickly removing the curse. At that moment, the wound stopped; it was something so thin and ridiculous that, with the dwarf’s cultivation, it closed instantly. Soon, his life stabilized at the brink of the end.
The whale huffed. It was a close call.
"Send Runula to call the others," they said, turning to the throne and sitting down, closing their eyes. They had to finish reading the elf’s memories calmly.
***
Hours passed, and Alm and Bruno huffed dryly. There were only recent memories, exact four months ago until now. Everything else was blocked by a seal with strange laws they didn’t know.
During this period, they saw the elf invade the abyss... then, they saw the demon surrounded in a black sea. His condition was as terrible as they remembered, and the elf tried to extract information from the demon. Alm and Bruno were slightly surprised by his words. He went to investigate what happened with the seal that was broken.
A seal in the abyss; obviously the one they broke to complete the side quest. The demon wasn’t in a condition to respond, and the elf used his soul to extract information. In the end, he only saw a blurry image... of a round figure amidst a sea of destructive thunders.
Given the annihilating power in the abyss, it was obvious that’s where everything happened. And to be in the abyss, it was either a human or a demon. The demons were indirect slaves and couldn’t do that, so the culprit was a wicked cultivator. Maybe an ogre? Or a round sea beast? He briefly thought.
The demon’s soul and body were completely shattered, and he was on the brink of death. He would have only that and nothing more; soon, the elf said that in ten years, more of his people would come to check on what happened.
But he couldn’t return like this, so he searched everywhere for any clues. He didn’t bother searching in the desert because he felt no life there; inside the city, everything was sealed out, which kept him away. So he went south to the realm of the dwarves.
There, he contacted the king and went to the central region to do the same. That’s when the message arrived from the dwarf king, and he activated the spatial teleportation he left below the castle, and everything happened.
’We were narrowly covered. But we have only 10 years, and we’ll eventually get caught.’ Bruno said lightly.
’There’s a lot of missing information. If we had arrived a week earlier, we would have his memories from a week ago and know where he came from. Our goodwill screwed us.’ Alm replied dryly.
Bruno didn’t respond and just opened the eyes of the whale. Then, he felt Ruri sitting on his lap on the throne and saw her radiant smile. So, they looked down and saw kneeling... the king, Vuard, the king’s daughter, the general... there were a few hundred dwarves, and the hall was crowded.
Alm huffed coldly, and Bruno accepted the outcome. In the end, it all worked out. Then, they started asking about the most important thing. The moonlight crystals.
And to their surprise, the king responded promptly. "Below the castle, there is a secret tunnel. The entire dwarf kingdom was built here because of that discovery millennia ago. There is where you can find it... but we have never been able to extract easily; it took a hundred years of hard work to get something a few centimeters in size."