Chapter 251: Mid-level world, Gade
[If I was really hostile, then I’m sorry to say but you two wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it.]
The Great water spirit, Undine spoke as she rested her chin on Nicole’s head, throwing a slight smile at Number One who was gazing at her with narrowed eyes.
"Do not overestimate yourself, spirit.
What you see isn’t always the reality."
He went back to his tea right after, with an awkward silence descending onto the area until Esna spoke up to break it.
"Have you guys discovered where Arthur got yeeted to?"
"Somewhere in the galaxy next over. The Crown Prince stated that he would go over when the Princess woke up."
"Woke up? From what?"
"I’m not sure, but if I had to make a guess based on the princess’ personality; then she was probably about to kill some of the Academy’s higher-ups and the Prince had to knock her out to prevent her from doing so."
Number one made a frighteningly accurate guess as he finished his tea and dropped the cup down, turning to the academy officials on the floor and releasing them from their seven days of suffering.
"How do you plan to go from here, My lady?"
"Hmm? I say we deal with the situation here before going back to the Academy’s outpost.
What do you guys think?"
"Fine with me."
Esna gave her approval while Nicole and Edward concurred with her decision."
"I guess, that’s what we’re going with then."
Layla concluded before looking past Number one’s shoulder and speaking to the director who was finally getting to his feet after being on his knees for seven days.
"The four of us would be here till further notice.
When we’re done with what we’re dealing with here, we’d go back over to the Academy outpost."
However, the director didn’t seem to be on board with that decision as he hurriedly attempted to persuade her to change her mind.
"b-but th-!"
"Did I stutter?"
"..."
"We’re staying here until further notice. Period."
After saying her piece to the unfortunate director, she went back to her parfait, asking the maid to have a few more blueberries added to it.
ꕥ ꕥ ꕥ
Fast-forward to a few hours later, after the poor academy officers returned to Kreiz and Number one returned back to Conrad’s side, Layla and the gang were interrogating a bunch of armoured men and women who were all heavily injured.
"So, what you guys are telling us is that a portal of some sort suddenly opened up in the centre of your empire’s capital city, with powerful people beginning to go missing one after the other while an ominous presence could be felt within the portal?"
"...y-yes."
The man wearing slightly more decorated armour replied to Layla’s question while inwardly questioning where the young devil came from.
When ranked, the planet that they were on, Gade was one that would be considered a lesser middle-level world.
Its energy concentrations were just a bit over the limit of a lower world’s energy levels, but not high enough to be considered a fully-fledged middle-level world.
The strength of the existences living on it was also fairly low, at least when compared to planets Aeturn or Kreiz where the quartet came from.
Grandmaster-level existences that could be randomly found here and there on the streets of Aeturn, were apparently one of the most powerful existences on Gade, with the highest recorded realm being the Epic realm.
There were beliefs that realms above those existed, but to the people of Gade, those were the realms of the gods.
As such, the surprise of the grey-haired Armoured knight who was a ’distinguished’ inferior stage grandmaster level existence could be understood as he stared at the four teenagers who were young enough to be his grandchildren.
’They’re all Grandmasters!’
He could not understand how children so young could all be powerful grandmaster realm existences, with the ’weakest’ of them being Esna who was in the intermediate stage of the realm.
As for the other three, he could not even sense their stage, allowing him to infer that they were at least superior stages.
Before his thoughts could go any further, he heard a weird screeching sound that made him reflexively attempt to pick up his sword, only to find out that it was broken.
"Esna?! Why are you trying to experiment with that thing?! Just kill it already."
Layla turned to the side and screamed out at Esna who was jumping across multiple footholds in the air while dodging long black fleshy tentacles that threatened to wrap around her body and pull her to the ground.
"I just want to know how resistant it is to certain types of magic."
The young godslayer girl calmly replied as she accessed her memory palace, searching for a suitable light magic spell among the thousands of light magic spells that Arthur let her read about from the Restricted library in Galaxy B-67.
"Tier 3 Magic: Orb of Piercing Light."
The words flowed out of her lips as a giant orb of golden light appeared behind her, with three large rings of light spinning around it in orbit.
Flicking her fingers, the orb released a giant ray of light that shot towards the creature that spawned the tentacles she was dodging.
**BOOOMM!!!!
"Hmm? So light magic is more effective, huh?"
Esna calmly remarked as she jumped back to the ground before turning around and starting to walk back to where Layla was.
However, from the giant cloud of dust and smoke behind her, a large dark shadow could be seen writhing about in pain, before charging out of the smoke and towards the existence who had caused it its pain.
The creature was a weird mish-mash of decaying beast parts that seemed to have been strung together haphazardly.
From the part of the creature that could be called its ’chest’, one could see a grey-coloured parasite of some sort writhing around.
It shot out its unusually long arms and tentacles towards Esna’s ’defenceless’ back, forming bestial claws from its rotting flesh and trying to divide her body in two.
"Behind you!!!"
Esna continued walking forward while writing something on a small notepad as if she didn’t sense the presence of the creature behind her or didn’t hear the warning of the armoured knight on the floor.
The girl only used a simple levitating spell to keep her notepad and pen afloat as she used her hands to tie her hair up into a ponytail.
Just when the man was about to shout at Layla and the rest to ’help’ her, Esna cancelled the levitating spell and spoke three words as the notepad and pen fell into her hands.
"Rain of light."
At that exact same instant, a giant three-ringed magic circle of golden light appeared above the creature’s body.
Next, a sphere of light emerged from the magic circle, expanding rapidly before flattening out and shaping into hundreds of blades of light.
The second it was complete, the blades of light all simultaneously rained down on the creature below it, shredding every single bit of its flesh and bones to pieces.
"KRRIIAAAAAA!!!!"
The creature let out one last weird screech as it succumbed to death, while its killer calmly walked up to Layla and tossed the notepad over to her.
"I analysed the creature’s weaknesses and strengths."
