Tale of Discovery

Chapter 136: Guivre ; Plants

"General!" several men salute at once as a burly man walks past them.

As if not seeing or hearing them, the man continues to walk with an impassive look on his face.

After several minutes, the burly man finally reaches his destination.

Standing before a brown door, the man frowns for a split-second before opening the door and entering the room.

Upon his entry, several men that were sitting at a table rise from their seats and respectfully exclaim,

"General!"

This time, the man raises his hand in front of him and says,

"We don't have much time. That damned Lost Prince is back and has taken back the castle."

Upon hearing the man utter the words 'Lost Prince' several of the men present frown.

"This is all happening due to Wardes's negligence," one of them says.

"He had the sole job of killing him, yet failed miserably despite those with him having caught off all escape routes," another one adds.

"Stop," an annoyed voice escapes the burly man's mouth, "Wardes is most likely dead now. There is no point in blaming him for what's happening."

He then shakes his head before walking over to the table and taking a seat.

The rest take a seat as well, before looking toward the burly man.

"Before I got here, I received a letter from Sheffield, which stated that for the plan to work, we need to have Albion under control at all costs."

Seeing that he is done speaking, one of the men voices,

"But, how are we supposed to do that? Even the Children of Heathens couldn't do much."

As the man's voice fades off, silence fills the room as each person present in the room begins to deliberate on something.

"There is something that we have yet to use," the burly man suddenly says.

Confusion becomes apparent on the faces of those present until one of them all of a sudden says with a shocked expression,

"Don't tell me General, are you planning to use the Guivre?"

Hearing his words, everyone present, apart from the one referred to as general, have all kinds of reactions shock, excitement, worry, and fear.

---1st POV---

"Lizette, aren't you a little too close?" I question while looking at the blond woman who's tightly holding my right arm close to herself.

"Not at all," she replies while smiling, "I had never gotten the chance to spend time with my son due to all troublesome matters of the castle."

Now that she finally has a chance to so, she makes full use of it, huh.

Well, apart from the soft sensation on my arm, I don't have much else to comment on.

However, a certain cute snake doesn't seem to enjoy this as she wriggles around under my sleeve.

Using my free arm, I move the sleeve away to let Aurora out, which she gleefully does by slithering onto my free arm.

"Is that a snake?!" Lizette exclaims, a little shocked.

"It's my familiar," I explain, "I summoned her not too long ago."

This seems to shock Lizette even more, as her eyes widen, and she says,

"You were able to summon a familiar?"

Her reaction is too abnormal. Could it be, Wales Tudor wasn't able to summon a familiar?

My thoughts seem to align with reality perfectly as Lizette begins tearing up as she happily hugs me and yells,

"You finally did it!"

After a dozen or so seconds, Lizette finally lets go of me as she steps back and says,

"It had always bothered you that you weren't able to summon a familiar. I wonder how you would've reacted if you had your memories."

Shrugging my shoulders, I question,

"Was there a reason for 'him' not being able to summon one?"

"I don't know," she responds, "You never told me anything regarding that matter."

It seems like Wales suffered from this quite a bit.

As I'm about to share my thoughts regarding Wales's actions, the ground beneath us shakes as the loud sound of an explosion resounds in my ears.

Lizette loses her balance and is about to fall, but I prevent that from happening by pulling her close to myself.

Then, I use Clairvoyance to check out what has happened, only to find a giant crater in the ground surrounded by flames.

Checking the surroundings, I find no one who could've caused this, leading to the conclusion that this was the result of a ranged attack.

Shifting my focus back to reality, I find numerous hurried footsteps as a platoon of soldiers runs toward us.

"Madame, Young Lord!" the one that seems to be leading them exclaims.

I sense two figures making their here as well.

"You two, I will be outside the castle," I mutter before turning my attention to the incoming soldiers.

"There has been an enemy attack outside the castle," I say once the platoon of soldiers is close enough.

"Take care of her. I will go out to see where the attack came from."

Before they can respond to my words, I break into a dash and phase through the castle's wall.

Once I've crossed to the other side, I directly use Flight to soar into the sky and get a clear view of everything.

What I see is the shocking sight of multiple locations where smoke is rising, with the majority being in or near a town.

Seeing that someone is wreaking havoc in my soon-to-be territory, rage begins to build up within me as I look toward the source of all this.

Upon doing so, I find a gigantic metallic machine that's thrice the size of the castle and shaped like a dragon with its mouth open quite a distance away from here.

Observing its mouth, I can tell that there a dozen or so magicians that are continuously chanting their magic spells.

At the center of the mouth, there is a huge ball of soil just floating.

The next moment, a part of the magicians are done chanting their spell, followed by the giant ball getting covered in flames.

After that, the last batch of magicians stops chanting as the combusted ball of soil abruptly launches out of the dragon's mouth and flies right toward the castle.

I can't let that strike the castle. Also, I could use this opportunity to end this troublesome battle early.

So, I fly in the direction that the flaming ball is coming from.

Shortly, the flaming ball of soil reaches me. Right at that moment, I use Vector Manipulation to reverse all the ball's vectors, which results in it getting deflected back to where it came from.

However, gravity affects the ball, leading to its altitude getting lower by the second to the point of it completely missing the machine.

Even so, the ball crashes into the ground below the machine, resulting in a ridiculous explosion.

Huh? Something interesting just happened.

The stability of the floating machine just got compromised as soon as the wave caused by the explosion reached it.

Anyway, I need to take this thing down quickly before it causes any more damage while being careful of any 'surprises' that might be packed in it.

However, it seems like that won't be working out so well, as there is already another combusted ball of soil inside the dragon's mouth prepared for launch.

This is extremely abnormal. The magicians of this world shouldn't be this capable.

Simply put, they're most likely using artificial means to power themselves up and increase the efficiency of their magic.

Is it because they're working together or something else? So far, I have yet to see anything suspicious but, that's only because I'm looking at the outside.

Focusing my vision on the dragon, I find countless gems and rocks similar to those in the cottage Matilda was in, except that these are much larger.

It seems like they're using those to power themselves up. So, they can't keep this going forever.

Checking on the state of the magicians, I find out that they're almost done with their chant.

As I prepare myself for the upcoming attack, something unexpected occurs.

I sense a great deal of energy in the ground below us as all of Albion begins to shake.

The next moment, three ridiculously large vine-like plants emerge from within the ground around the machine.

These vine-like plants strike the machine, on all sides, destabilizing it and changing the trajectory of the huge fireball.

The fireball flies past everything here and falls right into the sea beneath Albion.

That's not the end of it, as the plants begin to crush certain parts of the gigantic machine.

Unfortunately, that doesn't last long, as, all of a sudden, energy begins building up within the machine before an energy pulse is released from all sides.

This results in the plants to get pushed away and combust.

I don't know where these things came from, but they're seemingly on my side. These vine-like plants could be extremely helpful by stalling that thing while I destroy it. So, I have to prevent them from burning down.

Deactivating flight, I begin to fall normally.

Once I'm near the ground, I circulate my Holy Essence and utilize Godspeed before directly dashing toward the vines.

Soon, I reach the vines which are still burning and begin 'climbing' one of them.

As soon as I'm near the flames, I use Pyrokinesis to 'suck' them all into my palms before flying over to another one and doing the same.

After I've done that, I fly over to the last one, while those two begin attacking the machine once again.

Once the final flame has been 'sucked in', I move beneath the gigantic machine to the front where the head is and kill the enemies there.

Just when I'm about to reach it, I sense two winged figures flying toward me at a terrific speed and come to an abrupt halt in front of me.

"Father!" Gabriel says with a serious expression.

As for Aruru who's beside her, excitement is seething out of her as she curiously examines the machine on top of us.

"Let's bring this thing down," I simply state.