The Amber Sword

Now, right at this moment.

A ball of flesh was running between the food, and if one looked more closely, it could be seen that it was carrying the goods one by one deeper into the hole. It was a ball of flesh with a pair of wings – wings that remind people of a roast turkey at a New Year’s festival, and a pair of fat paws. The pair of claws were short and small, but at least they could grab the boxes and drag them backward. The thick hind limbs, obviously a little overdeveloped, made it wiggle as it walked. Every step this ball of flesh took, the bucket-thick tail wiggled a little, while making puffing noises.

If it was not covered with dense, considerable beautiful pale scales, and had two pairs of horns, the average person might have thought it was a hippopotamus, instead of a Dragon.

Even though Shitah was a real Dragon, a very rare young Frost Dragon even in the Dragon clan, of course, he was driven back during childhood by the Dragon clan because Shitah was keen of collecting food instead of hoarding wealth. Shitah’s parents considered it a disgrace, and then on the first day after he was able to live independently, they kicked him out. It was this experience that created Shitah’s timid character. But he was satisfied with his personality and his life, as the humans always ‘sent’ him a lot of good food, and this place was also very comfortable to live in. Of course, except for one thing. After all, Shitah was still a Dragon, he felt that it was simply an insult to his intelligence for those humans to actually think that he did not notice them. In fact, whether it was Veronica or Arreck, since the first moment they entered this glacier, Shitah had found out about them. If a person’s intelligence was proportional to the capacity of the brain, then Shitah’s intelligence would be hidden in all his fat.

Shitah scratched his gills as he started to think and suddenly remembered that he had tasks to finish- he was getting ready to move since two weeks ago, as the humans did not seem to have good intentions, and Shitah had never cared to fight with these insignificant creatures. Although the Dragons all thought that he was a cowardly Dragon and a disgrace to the Dragon race, but Shitah thought otherwise. Why fight? What good is there to fight? It only consumes energy. He had collected so many delicious things to feed himself, he found it unnecessary to go and deal with those poor and cheap adventurers. The Nine Phoenix had an old saying which Shitah had always held as a motto: The barefooted would be afraid of those who wear shoes. He felt like he was the party that possessed everything, how could he get involved with the beggars?

All in all, it took about two weeks for the Frost Dragon to move all the things that would have taken about two days to empty; he even used magic in the meantime to make up for the time he wasted by falling asleep. The magic of Shitah was also unique, he called it the magic of Wisdom, which specific principle was: Anything that was troublesome, lengthy, required casting actions, and tiring were unwanted.

And what was left was exclusive to Lord Shitah.

After the cave was emptied, it also became spacious, except for one place, which was the center of the cave. A frosty pillar stood between the dark blue ground and the roof of the cave. This pillar was not like those ice prisms frozen by water, it looked more like a trapezoidal ice wall from a distance, and in the front of the wall, it was inlaid with a ‘sun ‘. To be precise, it was a source of light and heat to the outside world, with four silver rings around this ball of light, slowly rotating in four directions. A little further away from the ball of light, some small, mercury-shaped spheres also followed the same track of rotation. If one counted carefully, there was a total of thirty-six groups of large and small mercury spheres around the ball of light.

This was the energy of Eternity. The witches gave it a name- Heart of the Dragon, because the legend said that it was a magical object brought out from the ancient relics of the Dragon King Bahamut. Such a thing had a total of twelve in Vaunte, but three were destroyed in the fire, and the remaining six was with the Dragons, leaving three unknown. Obviously, this was one of the three missing Heart of the Dragons. Shitah looked at this thing, hesitated, and then squirmed his meatball body as he climbed up the pillar to grab the silver ring to remove this thing from the icicle. Then he looked at an empty recess left on the icicle, thought about it, and took out another gray gem the size of a washbasin and set it in, which, it must be said, was just the right size.

The meaty Dragon then nodded in satisfaction and went deep into the cave,, holding the Heart of the Dragon.

……

“My lord, this is the place.” The mage looked at a narrow crack between two glaciers not far away, turned back, bowed respectfully to Duke Arreck, and replied. Arreck was hunched over at the moment, as if even a deerskin coat was enough to weigh him down. He was like a man of old age, but as he stood in front of everyone, the mere aura he had made the others look at him with nothing else but fear and respect.

He looked at the crack, which led to a few hundreds of meters down thick ice. Inward was a plain sight of dark blue, which extended endlessly until it was shrouded by the darkness. Before Arreck said anything, his men had already lit a torch. Although magic was widely used to illuminate the world of Vaunte, it was an unstable presence in most unknown areas – it can both be noticed by unknown beings and cause unpleasant trouble, especially in the Black Forest.

The fire soon lit up the cavern, a long, narrow chasm that seemed to stretch into the underworld, and naturally, Arreck would not take the risk himself. He had one troop of knights to enter first, and the inside was better than imagined, the knights came back out quickly and reported that it was safe.

“The Dragon is really gone, my lord,” the accompanying magician immediately replied flatteringly, “The Dragon is very proud, and would usually not set any traps in their own lair, in that case, we might as well go in immediately to find the Heart of the Dragon, my lord.”

“What about the two hunters?” Devard suddenly asked.

Arreck looked back at him impatiently. Since the battle of Ampere Seale, this guy had lost to that young man and seemed to be greatly frustrated. His ability to do things had greatly decreased, which dissatisfied Arreck a lot.

Devard felt a chill down his spine and immediately understood what Arreck meant, he turned around with a gloomy face and gestured to the knights behind himself.

“Kill them.”

When the hunter maiden who was hiding on the ice field saw this scene, she almost immediately wanted to rush forward, but her hands sank tightly into the snow to hold herself back. Brund looked back at the other party’s frozen red knuckles and could not help but ask comfortingly, “Is your brother in there?”

Peya froze and slowly shook her head.

“Even if he’s in there, we can’t save him. Do you see those knights?” Brund pointed to the black knights guarding the periphery of the cave, and he himself could not help but narrow his eyes, “Those should be the Order of the Dead Knights of All for One; Arreck is not of low status in this organization.”

“Brund, do you know something?” Veronica who was lying on the other side, also frowned and stared at those black knights. However, unlike Brund’s, she could not help feel scared in secret. She found out that those black knights actually had vague fluctuations of elements on each of them, which meant that these knights were at the very least at a Peak Golden or Elemental Activation level. But the point was that she knew that she was actually conservatively estimating because she found that some of those knights have already appeared the signs of Elemental Activation. She narrowed her eyes. The Lines of Laws of those who just entered the Elemental stage was hard to hide.

There was more than a hundred black knights, Veronica suddenly realized that she had never heard about these black knights’ history. In fact, she suddenly noticed that even All for One was not clearly understood by mortals. The four Holy Cathedrals and All for One were cults, but the world, including the nobility in general, knew very little about the inner workings of the organization.

Brund heard Veronica’s question. He smiled slightly, “It’s very normal for you to not know, Lord Veronica. We often hear about the cultists and how the world abhorred, but when it comes to how many people really understand them is unknown, after all, the ban of the Holy Cathedral of Fire is there. Who would dare to go to the depths of understanding these cultists. Even for the Kirrlutz nobles, I’m afraid it’s about the same.”

“From what you said, you seem to know them well, little one?” Veronica asked with some interest as she turned back to him.

“Mages naturally know more; the four most famous branches among the cultists, the Silver Sky Serpent, the Sheepheads, the All for One, and the Tree Shepherds, of which the Sheepheads are partisans of the demons, reeking of sulfur but not really worth mentioning. Silver Sky Serpents believe in their agnosticism, that the exploration of knowledge and order of the mortals, is contrary to the majesty of the mystery of the world itself. They are mainly aimed at mages, and the general population has little to do with it. The main enemies of the four Holy Cathedrals, in fact, is All for One and the Tree Shepherds.”

Brund paused for a moment before continuing to answer, “But there is actually a big difference between the two, the Tree Shepherds…… Tree Shepherds are said to have once belonged to the Druids’ Loop of Skies, after the fall of Ebabel, one of the fallen ones drew lines with the original Druids. This tribe later followed the Darkness Dragon, which is the terrifying Tree Shepherds, and this is how they got their name.”

“Tree…Tree Shepherds,” Veronica murmured.

Brund nodded, “But the Darkness Dragon was defeated by the Four Wise Men, and the Tree Shepherds fled in all directions, not knowing where they were. When they reappeared, they were already as crazy as they are now, but unlike All for One, who are keen on subverting the order of civilization, the Shepherds have been obsessed with stealing the ‘bloodline of the gods’.”

“Stealing the bloodline of the gods?” When the scholar maiden heard this, she finally voiced out.

Brund, however, looked back at Scarlet. This mountain maiden was once a victim of the Tree Shepherds, and he himself also suffered from it. But even he did not know what the root cause of the Shepherds’ madness was, and it was an unsolved mystery that the players had been searching for. He shook his head and said, “That’s a question that no one knows for sure, and it’s not something we want to discuss right now. What we need to know is that these enemies at the moment, All for One.”

He interrupted Shido and continued, “The Tree Shepherds is only a loose organization, although there are twelve patriarchs, in fact, each of them is working on their own. The Black Fire cultists, who are dependent on them, are a typical example, and it is well known that the Black Fires split off from the former Sheepshead, while All for One is a completely different organization. ” Merging and leaving the other three major Holy Cathedrals, they rarely showed initiative during the War of the Holy Saints. This country was a mystery to most people throughout Vaunte.

“It is not even an exaggeration to say that half, or even a large part, of the wars and intrigues on the continent of Vaunte, are associated with All for One. But it is such a huge organization, and inextricably linked to the nobles. It seems to be an invisible monster, everyone knows it, but everyone can not fully comprehend it.” Brund frowned. In the last life, he had worked to find out the organization behind All for One, but his hard work was in vain. He finally came to the Gretius, and found that the All for One had a network all over the world as if they were undefeatable.

“All nations?” Shido seemed taken aback by this statement.

But Brund hesitated for a moment and replied, “Perhaps with one exception.”

“Where?” Veronica looked back at him, she hoped it was Kirrlutz, but she also knew it was unlikely, as the Holy Cathedral of Fire alone was heavily infiltrated by All for One, not to mention the Empire itself. It was a fact that could not be changed not to mention the fact that most of the nobles also thought that the All for One was a relatively mild cult.

All for One preached that all things are one, and this doctrine had in fact confused many people. Only Brund was clear that this one, in fact, is not the truth itself, but the twilight.

“Eleranta……,” Brund replied, “the kingdom where the only sage still exists in the human world.”

“Ah!” Shido could not help but let out a shout. Nature’s favor Eleranta, the only kingdom that was completely neutral from the world and not involved in the affairs of the continent, the Sanctuary of Nature.

“I should have thought of that.” She murmured.

“After all you’ve said, you still haven’t talked about where these knights came from, Brund,” Veronica asked so instead.

“When you eat rice, you have to eat one bite at a time, don’t you?” Brund smiled faintly.

He looked at the black knights.

……