Chapter 1100: River of Fire
Master Bennett was famous again. This time, it was due to a rumor that a legendary wizard came to apologize to him with a group of law-defying wizards. No one else was supposed to know about it, but Wizard Laking told his men to make the news open. He wanted to make sure that he gave Master Bennett enough credit for the way Wizard Durmond handled the golden castle.
Meanwhile, Wizard Joseph was expelled from the law enforcement department manager position for not dealing with Wizard Durmond swiftly enough. Master Bennett was too important of a figure. This was even more the case after everyone knew what happened. His status was equivalent to that of a legendary wizard or somewhere just slightly below.
For now, the golden castle that was closed was about to be opened again. This time, every challenger or, say, visitor decided to act more cautiously. None of them tried to do something extreme.
Abel was back into his shutdown training. The days pa.s.sed slowly, and in one particular night of about two months later, Abel brought his battle team to go on a quest in the midst of the Fire River within the dark world. By this point, his combat team became so ma.s.sive that there were eleven spiritual guardian knights and eleven spiritual guardian wizards. Unlike before, he was switching the spells of all the spiritual guardian wizards to “lightning chains.”
There was a reason for this, obviously. Now, within his combat team, there was Knight Bruce, an extra member that could switch on the “faith” spiritual qi light ring whenever h.e.l.l creatures appeared. This particular light ring could reduce an enemy’s defensive capability and resistance towards elements, which made it so that the spiritual guardian wizards could really try to have a chance at dealing damage effectively. When in need, Bruce could even switch on another spiritual qi light ring, “specialty,” so the spiritual guardian knights could increase their physical attack capabilities by five.
Bruce was much more effective in the combat team. Not only did he boost the overall strength of the team by many, many times, but Abel had also started to enjoy what it felt like to bring his own summoned creatures to sweep through everything in his path. He also got a grey bear to guard him at all times, so even if the fight took him a few days, he never really ran into any true danger.
There was a major issue with this, though. Bruce couldn’t be used on the central continent. Abel’s only enemy there would be the Nation of G.o.d, and if they were to send in any of their key members, there was just no way he could defend himself with his own mad knight.
Abel looked around him to see what’s going on. The ground beneath him was dark red. The ground was hot. The side was a river of lava. They could feel the heat from even about ten meters away. This was not the best environment to be in, but he felt good since he was a grandmaster blacksmith.
It would be a great idea to set up a workshop here. The temperature was just right for bringing out the inferno flame. Still, he thought that there would be a workshop here already. It was called the inferno furnace, and that was the place he needed to destroy his Mephistopheles’s soul stone.
With that in mind, he took out a frozen water spirit fruit juice from his portal bag. He poured one for himself, and as he was watching the cup of juice in his hand, he could realize that cold qi was constantly fizzing out of it. So he took some to his throat, and a streak of ice made him feel a thrill that he never received before.
Abel poured another one to Bruce, “You have one as well, Bruce.”
Bruce was still learning how to speak. Since his intelligence was still fairly low, he just took the juice over and put it in his mouth. As for Frankenstein, Abel wasn’t giving any juice to a steel puppet. The juice was supposed to cool them down, and there was no point giving it to a robot made of hard metal. As for the summoned creatures, apart from the grey bear, which was a real creature, the spiritual guardian knights and the spiritual guardian wizards were non-living, so it wouldn’t matter what the temperature was doing to them.
Instead of feeding his juice to the grey bear, Abel took out a few freezing element intermediate gemstones to the grey bear. What these summon creatures needed were energy items. Watching as the combat team was fixed, Abel waved his hand once more and marched forward.
Cutting through to the corner and before anything else, he realized that there was a small path in front of them. Several tall, green Udal beasts were standing tall like green giants blocking any way through. Abel was hesitant when he saw this. His power of Will searched, but he didn’t feel comfortable making his way forward with an “instantaneous movement.” He searched the ground, but the lava river’s range was so wide that he might just be hurt by fire whenever he tried to do something.
This way, when he was using the “instantaneous movement” to reach a specific location, it would be very likely for him to be discovered by anyone flying above the lava river. More specifically, it would be the stranglers. This was why he’d constantly been trying to keep the fight within a range that he could see with his own eyes. He wanted to make sure he was doing everything he could do to keep himself safe.
The few Udal beasts just saw Abel’s combat team. Without waiting for the Udal beasts to do something, Bruce first switched to the “sacred freezing” spiritual qi light ring. The Udal beasts were rus.h.i.+ng right towards the combat team. Very quickly, their bodies became covered by the ice frost, their green flesh quickly slowed down after pausing for a bit.
Abel, Frankenstein, and the elven spiritual guardian knights were all casting spells at the same time. Ten streaks of “lightning chain” and “blizzard” were all cast onto the Udal beasts. The spiritual guardian knights quickly appeared next to the Udal beasts. At the same time, Bruce was already switching into his “specialty” light ring.
Under the bonus effect of the steel sword, even the Udal beast’s hard skins were sliced right open. Wounds were cut open immediately, and once the round of attack was over, Bruce switched over again to “sacred freezing.” The Udal beasts flashed another blue light once more to cover them with blue frosts. Following that, Bruce switched over to “faith” and increased the spell’s power even more. To end it, he switched to another two rounds of the spiritual qi light rings and defeated the Udal beasts right then and there.
This was a perfect combination. The Udal beasts were constantly slowed down and immobilized by the light spell zapping effects. There was not a single time that they could return any attack. Abel was more than satisfied. He gave Bruce a support position, and although Bruce was a mad knight, it was too risky to go for a melee encounter in this kind of environment. The whole fight persisted over a distance, and most of it was done without exposing him or any of his minions to the threat of being hit.
Abel switched gears for all eleven spiritual guardian knights to boost the overall fighting power of the team. Soon they were all equipping the “spirit” sword and s.h.i.+eld, meanwhile had the “knowledge” rune hat on their heads. Unfortunately, for one of the runes, there was a 21# pul that was just too hard for him to get in the short term. So he needed eleven of them in total to increase his cloaks by two levels.
Basically, the lightning chain level was only 25, but even that was enough to match most level 20 advanced wizards. After having the help of Bruce’s “faith” spiritual qi light ring, the powers of the spiritual guardian wizard’s “lightning chain” were almost the same as the law-defying wizards.
After walking for a while more, Abel started to see an inferno flame in the middle of the path. He was surprised. There had to be a high-level h.e.l.l creature not so far ahead. When he saw it, he suddenly realized that a blue Udal beast was charging straight towards him. It was so fast. he wasn’t even sure he could see its body without switching on his world stone fragment.
This was a dark golden quality Udal beast. At the rear, a group of Udal beasts slowed down a bit more, but they also were charging over in the same direction. Bruce retaliated by switching on the “sacred freezing.” In a mist of blue, all the Udal beasts except the dark golden ones were immobilized, while the dark golden continued to get closer to Abel after slowing down for just a bit.
This blue Udal beast was smart. It could identify Abel as the most important enemy. However, the first target the Udal beast had to face was a grey bear, so it crashed its body at the grey bear, hoping there to be some damage.
“d.a.m.n!” Abel screamed. His power of Will was sensing another patch of h.e.l.l creatures reaching towards him. He could also sense a green-looking, dark golden-level h.e.l.l creature. The name was Hephastos, the manager of the inferno furnace. It was just standing right in front of the offering altar.
Abel understood that his objective was right in front of him. He found the place he was looking for, but there were just too many h.e.l.l creatures here. They were also too quick. With this distance, the h.e.l.l creatures could all realize his combat team. Right now, though, the most important thing was to kill the blue Udal beast before the other h.e.l.l creatures could meet with it.
A spell rune began to appear in Abel’s hands. From his druid spirit, he channeled a thread of death qi and activated the spell rune. A bone wall appeared behind the Udal beast and blocked the road. One wall was not enough, so he added ten more to separate the blue Udal beast and the other ones still a bit further away.
The road was not so wide, though. The h.e.l.l creatures wanted to clear through all the bone walls. There was still some time needed. Bruce was switching the spiritual qi light ring to “fatih,” and a green light ring appeared beneath him and the blue Udal beast.
The eleven spiritual guardian knights and the grey bear were fixed towards the middle, where the blue Udal beast was stuck. Very quickly, the giant claws and the bear and the “steel sword” of the spiritual guardian knights continued to launch their attacks onto the blue Udal beast’s body. The elven spiritual guardian wizards also switched on battle mode. “Lightning chain” continued to be cast towards the Udal beasts.
Abel and Frankenstein just demonstrated the fighting capabilities of the law-defying wizards. At the same time, lightning, freezing, and fire spells were shot out of their hands non-stop. Bruce was doing a consecutive attack, with fire first, freezing second and lightning third. He was doing his “vengeance” attack streak, which lowered the level of the blue Udal beasts.
Abel’s power of the Will continued to focus on the bone wall that was on the path. The h.e.l.l creatures fought as hard as they could, while more than half the bone walls were shattered already. He had no choice but to reach out his hand to fill the wall. But, even with that being the case, not much longer, the h.e.l.l creatures would break the path away open once more.
Not the blue Udal beast, so it seemed. It was a dark golden creature, but it wasn’t like it could be killed within a short amount of time. Abel was starting to miss Doff here. If he could get it to use the screaming ability, he could scare the h.e.l.l creatures away and stall a bit longer. The only problem seemed to be height. After looking at the underground world, he realized that Doff would have many problems to fight, no, move around because the whole place was only this tall.
Seeking an alternative, Abel went ahead to use the “aging” curse. Apart from “giant dragon transformation,” he had brought out all his powers. Unfortunately, the s.p.a.ce was just so small that the transformation couldn’t be cast simultaneously.