Chapter 1088: Testing

Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales

Knight Ando had a very painful look on his face. He was trying not to scream after having his power of the Will cut off. He had his shield in front of him as he tried to back away. No, he didn’t care about regular ballista arrows. The problem was the special runes drawn on the arrows. The dwarves developed these to target high-ranking class holders, and as expensive as it was to make, they worked extraordinarily well, even for someone like Knight Ando.

On the topmost platform of the golden castle, everyone had their eyes locked onto Wizard Hutton. They had no clue that the dwarves were actually this prepared against sacred knights. Wizard Hutton, of course, had a very proud look on his face to see that he was getting the recognition he wanted. He knew that the rune arrows would sell much, much better in the future. Wizard Hume, for instance, was already considering spending more of the Wizard Union’s defense budget on purchasing those. He was planning to have them placed at all the important bases.

So basically, everyone was watching Knight Ando confirm how strong these ballistas were. It was a rare and brilliant opportunity to test a weapon. Also, this was a rare chance to see a legendary sacred knight fighting at full strength. Most people who got to see one would die before making any use of the information, so everyone tried their best to make the most out of this situation.

Knight Ando was reverting to his defensive position. He was at the edge of his rage. The targets were right in his sight, but he couldn’t get to them. After he backed away for a bit, the small-sized war puppets stopped attacking, but the war machines continued to lock onto him. Nevertheless, Knight Ando’s ability to guard and fly around made it very difficult to deal any damage to him.

This was where Abel made a bold decision: he could try to end this fight safely, but he decided to test the fighting capability of a legendary sacred knight to his best ability. He didn’t need to use it with his circles. No, it was much easier if he was letting his Beamon giant beast do the job.

He commanded Doff, “Go, Doff!”

Doff just started moving. Grabbing its ancient totem with both hands, it raised its head and howled towards Knight Ando. It knew how powerful the enemy was, but its aggressive nature was already ingrained into its genetics. After letting off that howl, it disappeared where it was at and teleported right on top of Knight Ando’s head. It was readying to slam the ancient totem into his skull.

Knight Ando didn’t expect someone to go up to him like that. He raised his shield very quickly, and while he realized that Doff was more powerful than most Beamon giant beast, it was nowhere near to match a legendary figure like him. He could neutralize it with his aura without actually moving at all. With that in mind, he raised the shield to cover his own head and unleashed his suppressive pressure onto Doff.

Lorraine could sense this danger, “Doff is in danger, Bennett! Hurry up and call it back!”

Able smiled in response, “Don’t worry about it.”

Nobody knew. Unless Doff was killed with one hit, the druid spirit inside its soul would open up a bottle of “full recovery vitality potion.” It’d be more than difficult for even a legendary figure to try killing it with one strike.

By this point, the legendary pressure was already lashed onto Doff’s flesh. This was also when a thin golden light thread swirled around its hair. Doff would’ve been immobilized before it got hold of its ancient totem, but after constantly receiving divine powers from its followers, it underwent a transformation. Although there wasn’t any major change within a short period of time, it wasn’t hard to protect itself from the influence of outsider pressure of, say, the aura of a legendary figure.

When Knight Ando was rushing towards Doff, he activated the divine power inside of Doff and began protecting him. Knight Ando was surprised, of course. He didn’t expect Doff to withstand the pressure, let alone have no effect on it. The ancient totem slammed onto him without even slowing down.

Doff was much stronger than when it was back on the central continent. The shield it was wearing, the hat on its head, the +3 spell rank, and the +2 level buff of his ancient totem made everything a lot easier.

So now, the long weapon in its hands was level 25. That was a total of 148% increase in attacking power, and the ancient totem just added another 200% physical attack buff on that. The attack was no ordinary attack, either, but a heavy attack targeted especially to barbarians. A rank 25 “heavy hit” would deal a 170% attacking power. Since the enemy was so menacing, Doff managed to activate a 30% rate critical hit that was supposed to multiply the physical damage again.

Basically, the attack was eight times to Doff’s original attacking ability. This was coming from the very first Beamon giant beast that received multiple promotions throughout the central continent’s entire history. That was eight times the attacking power. When the attack collided with Knight Ando’s shield, Knight Ando felt a terrifying force that came crashing like an earthquake. His fighting instinct told him to back away and neglect this force. Meanwhile, he activated “sacred freezing” to set things still enough for extra time to reposition.

After the attack, Doff disappeared and appeared at the topmost platform. It used the golden castle’s defense to block “sacred freezing.” Knight Ando’s sacred freezing reached further than where Abel expected. If it weren’t for the defensive circle, Doff’s teleportation would not even make it out of the attack range.

Instead of advancing for another attack on the topmost platform, Doff added a buff to its “scream” to reinforce its defense. Also, it used a “combat system” to increase its life force and durability. When the sacred freezing shock wave ended, it teleported on top of him. Instead of slamming onto him this time, it shook the ancient totem and stabbed it towards Knight Ando. Knight Ando reacted more seriously this time. Knowing that he couldn’t block the hit, he tried to rely more on technique than brute force.

Again, Doff couldn’t fly. With just one hit, it had to teleport itself back to the middle of the defensive circle. This was its weakness. Knight Ando knew that, of course. He used the pull spell with his knight’s long sword to get Doff towards him to take advantage of that. At the same time, Doff’s weapon pushed its “totem” control power to the extreme. With that in mind, although the power was being pulled apart, it swept itself and stabilized its own body. That was an extra movement, though. After losing tempo, the freezing element shock wave came sweeping towards it once more.

Doff had its speed reduced in midair. The freezing damage was clearly making it lose balance in midair. This was not good. Its giant body was falling straight down towards the golden castle. Knight Ando was not going to let go of that. The sword in his hand was heating up like his blood. He activated a “sacrifice” with his lifeforce in exchange. At the same time, he rushed towards Doff with a charge.

When he was about to make contact, a golden light flashed across Doff’s body. The bottle of the “melting potion” instantly removed the slowing and freezing effects that were on its body. Since Knight Ando was getting close to the golden castle, again, he was within range of the small-sized war puppets. The circle spirit and research spirit were constantly trying to calculate a way to attack him effectively.

When Knight Ando was about to cut through Doff’s waist, his instincts sensed something dangerous and forced him to pull back. He quickly stopped attacking and had his shield in front of him. He changed course from rushing forward with his rush to backward.

Doff was about to recover its motion now. After activating its “teleportation,” a white light flashed across its body, and it returned to the topmost platform. Everyone was looking at this. As short as this lasted, it was a good showdown between two powerful figures. Although Doff was at a disadvantage for a while, the fact that it held on for so long just showed that its ability had far exceeded that of a fanatic knight. The two law-defying wizards from the Wizard Union took extra notice of this. They’ve been observing Doff ever since they were on the frontline. They assumed that Doff was already at rank 25 by now. That’s only a level before reaching legendary rank.

Abel laughed out loudly to Doff, “Good job, Doff!”

Doff was not happy with that. It had trouble fighting with its powers. Fighting like this was not comfortable at all. Still, hearing a compliment from its master felt good. With the ancient totem in one hand and the other hammering onto its own chest, it started howling towards Knight Ando in a taunting manner.

Knight Ando felt terrible. He’s been in a bad mood as soon as he saw the golden castle. He thought that Master Bennett built all this to humiliate the Nation of God. The gold that it was built upon must’ve come from the portal bag. There would’ve been an endless amount of resources only on the frontline, but usually, the Wizard Union would’ve never allowed the Nation of God to gain any access to it. What Bennett was doing here, Knight Ando assumed, was ridiculing the Nation of God for not having the resources it wanted.

It was a good thing Knight Ando hadn’t seen what’s inside the golden castle. Gold was not the only thing that was used on this castle. To withstand a legendary attack like this, one had to assume that the materials used must’ve matched the howling castle on the frontline. At this point, Knight Ando figured that he must’ve made some miscalculations. It was just not possible for the golden castle to match Howling Castle, something that the Wizard Union spent everything they could on. The golden castle was a gift from the dwarves to thank Abel for his constant help.

Still, there was more than what could be seen on the surface. The octagonal hybrid circle, for instance. It was constructed with ten battle forts, which made both places’ defensive capability about the same. Also, since Abel had his own top-level gemstones, the golden castle just became much sturdier than Howling Castle.

Eventually, a sense of hopelessness rose out of Knight Ando. He was losing sight of what he could’ve done to the golden castle. It was like a tortoise shell that was never going to break.