Chapter 528: Barbatos
The arrow carried such a fierce wind that it easily gave the illusion that “the arrow was the storm.”
Fisher’s expression grew increasingly serious, but his legs were as stiff as steel pins, remaining rooted in place as his tattered Holy Realm white robe was blown around wildly.
In the next moment, he suddenly reached back with his hand, pulling Ingrid—who was initially in his grip—around to stand behind him, like a collaborative ballet dancer, except that if you ignored the pained expression of anguish on Ingrid’s face.
“Ah, it hurts, hurts, hurts! My bones, my bones are broken!”
She cried out in pain, her face pale, but Fisher did not have the time to care about her condition.
The lethal arrow was almost upon them. He just turned his head to look at the sky and said to Ingrid, “You have at least one or two spells to protect yourself, right?”
“Eh? Indeed, but… ahh, it hurts.”
“That’s good.”
Fisher didn’t know which of her bones was broken, but it must have been serious. Her rank was low; she could only be considered an ordinary human. Just now, if he hadn’t reached out to save her, she would have been blown away by the wind’s residual force and might have died.
It was even more so now; her voice trembled when she spoke, and intense pain could interrupt all human thoughts and actions, stripping away any chance of response.
Fisher knew this well. Looking at Ingrid, who was frozen in fear as if she had been stunned by the storm before them, he took a deep breath.
In the next second, as countless “∞” symbols flashed through his eyes, his entire demeanor began to grow increasingly incongruous with his surroundings.
Like a tumor unbound by rules.
He faced the arrow that was about to descend upon him, and with his left hand seemingly locked on automatically, he pressed down on Ingrid’s abdomen. Before she could react, Fisher had accurately located and opened the magical structure sealed within her abdomen, revealing the spells contained inside one by one.
“Stand behind me.”
As Fisher spoke, about seven or eight rings of protective magic suddenly rose from her abdomen, wrapping her tightly inside.
And Fisher swiftly released the magic from her abdomen and, facing the oncoming arrow, suddenly reached out his hand.
“Boom!”
With an extremely piercing explosion, a windstorm surged almost a hundred meters from Fisher’s side. Behind him, Ingrid half-squatted on the ground, hugging the camera in her arms, closing her eyes while covering her ears and trembling.
She was likely truly afraid that she would suddenly turn to ash.
The wild wind streaming out from beside Fisher grazed across the magical barrier surrounding her like rapidly passing steel knives, producing extremely sharp scraping sounds. But the man, standing unfazed before the majority of the storm, seemed as if his body had completely transcended the concept of flesh and blood.
This man surely was not human, right?
Had she known, she wouldn’t have gone to that damn factory!
But in front of her, where she couldn’t see, Fisher’s hand was firmly gripping the hovering arrow in front of him. The arrow, propelled by relentless power, pushed forward but was firmly stopped by a hand flashing with “∞” symbols.
In the next moment, as he suddenly exerted force with the hand gripping the arrow, the raging winds beside it burst apart, spreading out in all directions.
The ground instantly appeared ravaged as if plowed countless times by the storm, and Ingrid’s trembling became more pronounced.
“Hoo.”
The surrounding sound of wind gradually ceased, and Fisher furrowed his brow, looking at the arrow in his hand, which had completely calmed down. After a moment of silence, he raised the arrow again and forcefully hurled it back toward where it had come from.
“Boom!”
With a thunderous explosion, following a tremor of the ground, the arrow quickly disappeared into the sky, returning to where it belonged.
Ingrid behind him trembled even more fiercely, and in her arms, Emhart curiously poked his head out and looked at Fisher, saying,
“Wait, wait, Fisher. I’m starting to doubt that we went the wrong way. When we were leaving, we didn’t encounter any beings of mythical rank like this! Is it possible that that damned Baemon threw us into another place?!”
“It shouldn’t be. This is the world we originally inhabited; it’s just that a bit has changed. But we’ve only been gone for four and a half years, and it’s impossible for anyone in Nali or among all of humanity to reach mythical rank after birth; even breaking away from extraordinary rank is difficult. Otherwise, Erwind wouldn’t have gone through so much to seek a base from Nali to the Northern Region.”
“But we really encountered one just as we returned; is it really that coincidental? Oh, are you saying that the one who attacked us was probably not human but a mythical being? But that doesn’t seem right. At this time, the Holy Spawn and that group of elves should have all perished; could there still be anyone alive? The stars haven’t invaded the Spirit Realm for a long time, and the demons are sealed beneath the ground… who can it be?”
Fisher didn’t answer, but simply looked to the south and murmured,
“Coincidences are based on our perspective, but the place we returned to is the Southern Continent, which has nothing to do with the Storm Sea; more specifically, it’s the northern end of the Southern Continent, just near this factory. If my earlier mistake in the Tree Continent caused a displacement in time and space for our return, that would indeed be quite a coincidence. However, if our return was influenced by someone else, then the mechanism factory and the mythical being guarding it would be intentional.”
“It must be Baemon!?”
Emhart said with certainty, gritting his teeth, wishing he could drag Baemon out and give her a good beating.
Fisher finally realized this guy would blame Baemon for everything, even tripping over his own feet.
But he, too, wasn’t sure, as he recalled what Hela had said to him before leaving: “See you in the future.” Just at that moment, the mark he held had uncontrollably exploded, nearly blowing off his kidney.
So he also wasn’t sure if this matter had anything to do with Hela.
“I need to set out for the southern part of the Southern Continent quickly. If Raphael is facing such an enemy, her situation is indeed very dangerous.”
“Well, what about her?”
“Her?”
Fisher turned back with a resigned look at Ingrid, who had shrunk into a ball behind him.
Her face was ashen, her entire body trembling uncontrollably. The impact of everything that had just happened had been too great for her, leaving her momentarily stunned and disoriented.
Time had passed too long; previously, Fisher had been climbing the ranks for certain purposes, so for a long period, he had seen only beings of similar or greater power. At this moment, when a human stood right in front of him, the thought that suddenly came to his mind was:
So humans are actually that fragile.
Just the residual waves from a mythical being a hundred meters away could shatter many of her bones; just the incredibly terrifying sounds could scare her to the point of losing her senses…
He had been human in the past, but had never felt this way. Only now did he realize how far he had strayed from the concept of “human,” just as Erwind had said.
Fisher glanced at the ever-wriggling “∞” symbol and flesh in his hand, slowly transforming them back to their original human form. He then bent down to look at Ingrid before him,
“Are you okay?”
“I… I’m fine.”
Ingrid forced herself to lift her head; the magic barrier around her was already covered in cracks, and in the next moment, it was about to shatter completely.
“If you’re fine then…”
“Thud!”
But just as Fisher sighed in relief and prepared to place her somewhere safe to treat her, intending to leave immediately to join Raphael, she suddenly white-eyed and collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
“…”
Humans are indeed too fragile.
In the distance, from within the factory, all the soldiers were looking from afar at the general standing still in the factory, gazing at the sky. Ever since the general had shot that arrow, he seemed like a statue waiting for something, yet there had been no further movement.
The general was indeed a peculiar person.
He was quite young but had proven himself to be the most suitable person for warfare in the Southern Continent with remarkable military achievements. Therefore, in less than four years, he had climbed from a lowly adjutant to the general commanding the human and Dragon Court allied forces in the Southern Continent.
Of course, there were dissenters. After all, in Nali’s army, there were few cases where ranks were bypassed, but it was said that anyone who had personally participated in a war with this general would no longer have any dissent. They would become his most loyal supporters and soldiers.
But as the soldiers behind looked up at the general’s back, the general, who was holding the bow and arrow, seemed to sense something. He turned back to the soldiers with an expressionless face and said,
“All of you step back, far away, and close the door.”
“Yes!”
All the soldiers, though confused, obediently followed the command and stepped back a few meters, firmly closing the storeroom doors.
However, evidently, the distance they retreated and the distance the general had commanded them to step back were still quite different.
For the next moment, from far in the sky, a tremendously intense sound of an explosion echoed, as if to carve a clear boundary through the clouds above, returning with terrifying destructive power.
When they realized that the object seemed to be an arrow, it was evidently already too late to retreat even further.
“Quick, retreat!!”
As all the soldiers shouted anxiously, the sky filled with the sound of rushing winds, when the arrow suddenly plummeted into the storeroom holding the mechanism.
With an exaggerated explosion, the storeroom was suddenly shaken as if from the earth itself.
The soldiers were all knocked off balance by the tremor, flying uncontrollably into the air and crashing heavily onto the ground. In an instant, dust and debris filled the air outside the factory, and soldiers lay scattered on the ground, moaning in pain.
“Crack.”
After a brief pause, the storeroom doors opened again. At that moment, it was hard to tell if it was due to the overwhelming shock, but all the soldiers experienced a hallucination.
Amidst the rising dust, they vaguely saw through the opened doors what appeared not to be a person’s figure but a towering and extremely fiery pillar of flame, as if it intended to burn the souls and desires of everyone present.
However, that sense of discomfort, or rather, the hallucination, lasted less than a second before stopping, replaced by the general, draped in a gray robe, holding a bow and arrow with an expressionless face.
“General, are you… are you alright?”
The leading officer struggled to climb up from the ground and hurried over to the general, just in time to check the condition of the storeroom behind.
He saw that the storeroom, which had been filled with mechanism parts, was now a total wreck, with a huge circular pit in the ground symbolizing some earlier power struggle, causing him momentarily not to dare look at the young general before him.
He involuntarily swallowed, with only one simple thought in his mind,
“Our general, is he really human?”
But the general before him did not heed his thoughts. He glanced at the arrow in his hand, as if something was writhing on it, returning to his body, seemingly a form of chaos that didn’t conform to rules.
“Chaos of Myth.”
He didn’t speak, but the breeze passing by silently conveyed the message.
The returning winds not only carried this sentence but also brought back a name,
“Fisher.”
The general remained silent for a moment, then crushed the arrow in his hand into powder. He then turned to the officer, who bowed his head in fear and did not dare to move.
“Don’t leak anything about this; treat it as if nothing happened.”
“But the cargo inside is the quota for the past half month, what if the lords of the Golden Palace come asking…”
“I will speak with the Golden Palace.”
“Yes.”
Since the general had said this, what could the officer do but comply entirely?
But just then, a series of urgent hoofbeats echoed from the wilderness beyond the factory wall, and another Nali soldier arrived.
However, unlike the soldiers stationed at this factory, the soldier riding the horse wore more precious and diverse armor and weapons.
Before he even entered the factory, his voice became clear,
“General Barbatos! General Barbatos! News has arrived from the Golden Palace!!”
The general known as Barbatos showed no visible reaction; he simply slung the bow he held over his back again and walked toward the soldier.
“Perfect timing; I also have something to report to the Golden Palace.”
