Tale of Discovery

Chapter 134: Battle ; Trouble ; Familiar Person

I check the building we're in, only to find out that we're in one of the many rooms of a castle.

What's even more surprising is that Albion turns out to be the gigantic floating city that I had seen earlier.

Anyway, I proceed to check the state of the castle and its surroundings before invoking,

"Codification."

Checking my energy, I see that it's at 96%.

As I'm about to order Aruru and Gabriel to initiate an assault with me, the white-bearded man pulls out a wand and points it at me.

He then murmurs a chant before electric currents form at the wand's tip before moving in my direction.

Unfazed, I form a reflective barrier using Vector Manipulation which 'sucks' the attack in before striking him back.

It seems like the man didn't make use of a strong spell as he just grumbles before getting down on one knee.

The rest of the men that were sitting at the round table, which I assume are nobles, are surprised by the turn of events as they hastily pull out their wands and order the armored soldiers to attack me.

What happens next surprises me and the nobles, as three of the armored soldiers suddenly slash at those closest to themselves, effectively killing eight men.

"Traitors!" the blonde-haired man exclaims.

"No, YOU are the traitors!" one of the three deserters exclaims, "Glory to the prince!"

"Glory to the prince!" the other exclaim before stepping back and forming a three-man wall in front of me.

"Young Lord, support is going to arrive soon, so please stand back for the moment."

How cute. So, this is what it's like to have loyal subordinates

"Don't worry," I say while walking forward while Aruru and Gabriel follow along, "These fools have no power."

"Young Lord!", the same guy yells with anxiety apparent in his voice.

"I'm your patriot, right?" I say, "Then, watch the powers of the one you wish to serve under."

Before the men can react to my words, I slowly float up before creating numerous ordinary swords in the air.

Then, I wave my hand in front of me as I hurl the swords at the armored soldiers.

"What?" one of 'my' followers mutters disbelievingly, while the other two are left speechless.

"Kill him!" the blonde-haired man bellows.

The men seem to be fired up by his voice as they prepare to rush at me, but, the blonde-haired man's voice resounds once again, this time as an agonized scream.

Looking over at him, I find Aruru standing behind him, holding two arms that have been ripped off from his body.

Aruru then exclaims,

"Enhance!"

After that, she swings both arms and directly strikes the man's neck.

Meanwhile, Longueville has decided to escape the area as she makes her way to the door.

However, as soon as she reaches it, several armored soldiers appear.

Relief becomes apparent on Longueville's face, but that doesn't last long as one of the soldiers pierces her guts with a spear.

Blood slowly flows out of her mouth as she falls onto her knees before collapsing.

"Glory to the prince!" one of the new arrivals exclaims while raising his sword.

The others repeat after him before they all charge into the fray while shouting at the top of their lungs.

"Madmen!" exclaims one of the nobles before firing a spell at them.

The spell is a palm-sized a fireball that moves at a moderate speed.

As soon as it contacts one of the soldier's armor, it disperses harmlessly.

"Impossible!" he exclaims disbelievingly before he gets run through by a sword a moment later.

Alright, it's about time that I put an end to this.

Raising my arm, I utilize Holy Slash and throw an attack to split every non-friendly armored soldier horizontally in half.

I keep the holy energy materialized through Light Manipulation before using it to finish off every noble left, which happens to be only two.

A distance away, I find Aruru giggling while surrounded by amputated bodies.

Hm I need to bathe her later, as she's covered in the blood of these swine.

"Amazing," I hear a mutter before everyone begins to sing their praises for my power and our success.

I run a quick scan of our surroundings, only to find a legion of soldiers making their way over to the castle while pulling along numerous siege weaponry.

These guys don't seem to be on my side...

"Did you call for the support of a few thousand men," I inquire while facing one of 'my' followers.

"No, my lord. This is everything that we can manage."

"I see," I respond before turning to face Gabriel and saying,

"More enemy soldiers are going to arrive soon. Wipe half of them out."

"Understood," she replies before gracefully walking out of the room.

Those who are present, apart from Aruru, are all beginning to get anxious.

"Um, young lord," one of them nervously voices, "Did Your Grace just say that there are more of them coming, and they number more than three thousand?"

"That's right," I nonchalantly reply.

"We have to get out of here!" he immediately exclaims.

"There is no problem," I say dismissively, "These soldiers amount to nothing when compared to the battle prowess of these girls."

Of course, the soldiers find my words hard to believe as some of them turn to look at Aruru who is slowly walking over to me with a gleeful look on her face.

"Ugh," I hear a groan a few meters away.

Looking over, I find Longueville on the ground clutching her wound.

I wait for Aruru to reach me before lifting her and walk over with her in my arms.

Once I'm beside Longueville, I examine the state she's in before granting her regeneration.

As her wound begins to close up, Longueville realizes something unusual happening.

She slowly moves her hand toward the shoe the dagger is in.

"I suggest that you stop what you're planning to do," I say.

The next moment, Longueville speedily takes out the dagger, unsheathes it, and stabs my foot.

However, as soon as the blade makes contact with my body, it breaks off.

"What the" Longueville mutters a moment before I knock her out by kicking her head.

I create a rope and throw it over to one of the soldiers before saying,

"Tie her up."

The man takes off his helmet, which starts a chain reaction as the rest do so as well.

"Roger," he replies before walking over.

"Aruru," I say, "Let's go enjoy ourselves shall we?"

The soldiers seem to want to say something, but before they can do so, I use Godspeed to quickly make my outside.

As soon as I leave the castle, I set my eyes on a beautiful sight.

A few hundred meters away from me, soldiers are running around madly as giant spears made of light fall on them.

Feeling a sudden burst of adrenaline coursing through my veins, I place Aruru down before dashing into the center of the battlefield.

I impatiently pull out Excalibur from within my ring and swing it in front of myself.

This results in a shock wave to form, killing off dozens of men at once.

The men seem to realize my presence as they shift their focus to me, while completely ignoring the light spears falling around us.

It seems like even Excalibur is in a weakened state here, as such a slash would've been much more destructive in the Rift.

"Tiamat, showtime," I say.

[[Finally.]]

---3rd POV---

"Sir, the soldiers we've sent out are currently under heavy fire," a man wearing a red cloak with a golden symbol says.

"What?! Didn't you say that the enemy is in a weakened state?!", exclaims a burly man.

"That's right, but we didn't expect them to have such powerful reinforcements," responds the red-cloaked man.

"We have no other choice. Send the little monsters out," the other man says before sighing.

"A-a-are you sure about that, sir?" comes a nervous response.

The burly man nods his head as confirmation, resulting in the other man to swallow his spit once before turning around and shouting,

"Release the Children of Heathens!"

After a few minutes have passed, some soldiers walk over to where they are, and alongside them are multiple teenagers in ragged clothes.

On their hands and legs are iron shackles with red glowing runes engraved on them.

"Kill everyone near the castle," orders the red-cloaked man before the teenagers' eyes begin to change from ordinary colors to an unusual gray.

Seeing this, the soldiers take off the shackles binding them.

The next moment, all five of them disappear from the spot they were previously in.

---1st POV---

{WARNING: Multiple Binary Factors approaching. Threat level: 2}

As I cut down the last remaining soldier who is missing both of his legs thanks to Aruru, AI's voice resounds within my head.

Suddenly, a loud crashing noise reaches my ears as Tiamat lands on the ground that she had incinerated along with the soldiers.

"We've got more enemies approaching," I relay the information while looking into the distance.

Soon, I find five figures running toward us expressionlessly at an extreme pace.

Once they're close enough, two of them dash toward Tiamat, while the other three all run toward me.

As soon as they're a few meters away from me, I channel Destruction into my arms.

The next moment, one of them gets struck by a light spear as Aruru dashes past me and materializes a sword out of light.

What happens next surprises me a little, as the one that was struck raises his arm which results in the plants under him to suddenly move up and form a barricade.

Naturally, something like this won't be enough to stop Aruru as she simply cuts it down before closing in on the teenaged girl.

However, the plants she cut down suddenly reconnect as thrones extend from them toward her.

Fortunately, Aruru notices this early as she turns mid-air to them before moving away from the teenaged girl.

That turns out to be a good move, as numerous protrude from the ground and surround the girl.

Leaving them aside, the other two Binary Factors, a male and female, are almost a meter away from me.

As I prepare to cut them down with Excalibur, I sense some suspicious movement within the ground behind me, so I form a reflective barrier just in case.

The next moment, several vines protrude within the ground and attempt to run me through, however, that's prevented by the barrier.

It seems like all of them have nature manipulation abilities Could it be that the one that has 'powered' them can only provide abilities related to nature?

Anyway, these guys don't seem to be aware of what they're doing.

Their eyes and movements indicate that they're most likely being controlled by some external force.

Focusing my eyes on their bodies, I can see a yellowish-gray glow at the center of their chests.

This confirms it. All I need to now is find a way to dispel it.

My best way of fighting right now would be using Pyrokinesis to burn the plants down then use Destruction to destroy whatever it is that's controlling these guys.

As I channel Destruction into my left arm and summon flames on my other one, AI's voice resounds within my head.

{Discovered: Flames of Devastation.}

Curious about it, I stop using Pyrokinesis and switch to that.

As the red flame on my arm goes away, it gets replaced by blue flames that seem to be 'calm'.

I curiously wave my arm, resulting in the flames to spread out.

Once the flame makes contact with one of the vines, it doesn't take a split-second to burn the whole thing down to ashes.

Using my new ability, I burn down everything obstacle the Binary Factors form and send a punch covered in Destruction at each of their chests.

My energy invades their body, resulting in a complete halt in their movements.

{Discovered: Paralyze.}

Two abilities in such a short time? Great. Paralyze is pretty self-explanatory, but I'm not so sure about the other one yet.

{Analysis: Perceived Unknown energy within targets.}

Terminate it.

{Understood.}

The next moment, I feel a weird sensation as my powers seem to cut off a link of sorts.

This is followed by the bodies of both teenagers limply falling to the ground.

What's interesting is that their face, hair, and ears begin to change.

They become significantly more attractive, as their ears become longer and their hair becomes blonde.

Elves?

Ignoring these two, I look over to where Aruru is at, only to find her about to chop her limbless opponent's head off.

"Halt!" I bellow, which causes her to freeze in place before looking over at me with a somewhat muddled expression.

I walk over and cast immortality on the girl.

Once her limbs have completely regenerated, I perform what I did with the other two and cut the 'link'.

The exact same changes that happened to the other two happen to this one as well.

Now that these three are dealt with, I wonder how Tiamat is doing

I shift my focus to where I last saw her, only to find one of the Binary Factors struggling under Tiamat's leg.

As for the last one, she's currently being tied up by ropes made of light.

Fortunately, Gabriel and Tiamat didn't kill them outright.

---

Seriously? These guys are still Binary Factors, despite the energy being wiped out?

{Affirmative.}

Now, this is weird.

Looking at the two males and three females that are laid down on the ground before me, I reckon what could be still powering them.

Anyway, this is going to be problematic, so I need to deal with this soon.

"Young Lord!" I suddenly hear someone behind me yell.

Aruru, Gabriel, and I all turn around to look at the source of the voice.

There, I see a dozen armored soldiers running toward us.

Upon reaching us, the one that seems to be the one that called me out scans the dead bodies lying all over the place before gulping and asking,

"Is this all Your Grace's doing?"

Nodding my head, I reply,

"My and my subordinates' to be precise."

I expect him to say something else, but he surprisingly doesn't and just moves to the side.

The other soldiers do the same thing, revealing four maids behind them and a familiar-looking person - A blonde-haired woman that seems to be in her late thirties.

Her body is lean and her breasts are comparable to Akeno's.

The woman is dressed in an exquisite blue and white dress that's adorned with many seemingly expensive gems.

Her face is a milky white, while her eyes are sapphire blue.

She seems to be giving off an aura of extreme joy as tears well up in her eyes.

"Wales!" she exclaims before hastily walking over to me and embracing me.

I smell a pleasant fragrance as I sense two soft knockers pressing against my chest.