Chapter 276 : Chapter 276
Chapter 276. Goddess of the Currents
The moment Heather saw Fulan step out of that purple door, her eyes lit up. She showed off to her companion as if she had just won something.
Valerie held her forehead and said helplessly, “All right, Your Highness, you win.”
Heather then pointed at Fulan excitedly and said, “Then you’re not going to stop me from fighting her now, right?”
“Your Highness, I have always kept my word. Since you won the bet, I have no reason to stop you.”
Valerie looked at Fulan, her eyes filled with curiosity. What amazed her was that someone had actually dared to come here and steal something.
And she had not even stolen much. She had only taken a few weapons and pieces of equipment, and the best thing she took was actually that purple short sword. Valerie truly could not make sense of the girl’s thought process.
If someone was really going to rob this place, shouldn’t they have gone straight for the treasury of the Emerald Market? That place was full of Spirit Crystals.
If they grabbed a few tons of those, they probably would not have to worry about money for the rest of their life.
But Valerie had never expected the other party to steal so little, and from the looks of it, she was already preparing to leave.
Setting aside Fulan’s baffling behavior for the moment, Valerie looked at Heather. Earlier, Heather had bet with her that a thief would definitely come out from here.
At the time, Valerie had mocked her and said,
“How could anyone possibly come here? Sure, the stone statues cracked open, but I think that was probably caused by some large-scale attack.”
“How could anyone specifically come here just to steal those auction items?”
And now, she had seen it with her own eyes.
As for the reward Heather won from that bet, it was permission to fight this possible thief. Heather had said it like this:
“That hateful thief definitely stole my short sword. I’m taking it back, and you are not allowed to stop me.”
That was of no consequence to Valerie. Everyone knew that even if someone died in the Spirit Realm, it would not truly harm their body in the Material Realm. That was why she felt safe letting Heather act.
“Hey, give me that purple short sword, and I’ll let you go. How about it?” Heather proposed.
Fulan was never going to agree. The whole reason she had risked coming here was to take back her weapon. If she did not want this weapon, she could have left long ago. Why would she have come here at all?
Ignoring what Heather and the others were thinking, she directly activated her trait [Mental Power], added it to her Physique, pushed off hard with her rear foot, and ran.
Heather only heard a burst of rapid footsteps, followed by a cloud of dust. By the time she was ready to fight, the footsteps were already growing farther and farther away.
“Don’t run!!”
Fulan could not be bothered to respond. The Lord of Radiance had told her that it would be best if she got out within ten minutes.
Five minutes had already passed, so of course she was not going to stop.
She glanced at the distance between herself and the barrier. If she kept running at this speed for another minute, she would reach it. But some people had no intention of letting her get her way.
A pale-blue ray of light shot past Fulan’s side. Even though it did not hit her, she still kicked off with all her strength to the right.
A violent explosion erupted where the beam landed, and the aftermath barely reached Fulan even outside the blast radius.
The force of the explosion threw her off balance, but relying on her Elven Swordsmanship, she quickly recovered and landed steadily on both feet.
Just as she decided not to bother with the attacks from those two and wanted to keep running toward the barrier, she suddenly noticed something that shocked her.
The two of them had appeared right in front of her.
She looked at the woman beside Heather. That woman was carrying Heather and had burst forward at a speed far faster than Fulan’s, reaching her in an instant.
Only then did Fulan realize that she had misjudged the situation. She had assumed that, since the woman wore a bishop’s robe like Bishop Gillian, she was also a priest.
No matter what, a second-tier priest could never catch up in raw physical ability to Fulan, whose Physique had already risen past twenty with the enhancement of [Mental Power]. That was why her initial strategy had simply been to run.
But she had never expected that the woman was not a priest at all, but something more like a Church Knight. That meant Fulan no longer held the advantage in Physique.
Which meant her strategy had to change.
There was no way she could escape from under the other woman’s hands. So she had to return to the domain a mage excelled at and use spells to drive them back directly.
Fulan took a deep breath and immediately began guiding [Elemental Radiance] in her palm. She set several of the weapons she was carrying down on the ground so they would not hinder her in the coming fight.
None of her spell rings had been processed for the Spirit Realm, so she was currently not carrying a single spell ring.
Otherwise, she could have simply used Shield Spell and charged straight for the barrier without caring about anything else.
When Heather saw Fulan assume a fighting stance, she immediately became excited. She shook off the hand that had been holding her and began guiding a divine spell.
Because Fulan had started guiding first, she finished preparing her second-tier spell [Elemental Radiance] first.
But that spell was a support spell.
So even though Fulan completed her spell first, Heather was still the one who attacked first.
A pale-blue glow appeared over Heather’s hand. Once the guidance was complete, that glow spread directly across her entire body, draping her in a veil of blue-silver light.
But Heather did not stop moving. After her divine spell was fully guided, she pressed her right palm against the side of her left hand, aimed at Fulan, and then slid her right hand forward along the direction of her fingers.
A blue beam burst from Heather’s palm, cutting through the air with a WHOOSH as it shot toward Fulan.
The moment Fulan saw that familiar pale-blue beam, she remembered the explosion that had nearly hit her just moments ago.
Heather’s strength was clearly not something a normal first-tier professional should possess. She was far stronger than an ordinary one.
And when that earlier beam had exploded after landing, Fulan had already figured out why Heather was stronger than a normal first-tier professional.
That was because those pale-blue rays carried a certain fluctuation Fulan found deeply familiar.
It was the same sort of fluctuation as the radiance the Lord of Radiance had once placed in her hands during the Spirit Realm Trial.
Those lights had emitted a very similar presence.
Which meant Heather’s identity was all but obvious.
Either she was some kind of divine emissary like Fulan, or she held some special position within the Goddess of the Currents’ church.
Either way, her status was definitely far from ordinary.
What Fulan was curious about now was whether there were any limits on this kind of attack. Although it was not as powerful as the strike she had once used against the wyvern, Heather still seemed to throw these attacks out carelessly, as if there were no restrictions at all, whether they hit or not.
Is it because the Goddess of the Currents’ influence in the Material Realm is so overwhelming that she can use this kind of power without limit?
That was the guess that arose in Fulan’s mind.
Facing the incoming beam, Fulan tilted her head sharply to the side and dodged it directly.
But she knew that this beam would explode.
A crafty look appeared on Heather’s face. She curled her finger, and the beam that had flown behind Fulan exploded on command.
That was right—Heather could directly control when the beam detonated.
In her past battles, even when her opponents understood that mechanism, they had still been helpless, because she could fling out three beams at once, leaving them with nowhere to dodge.
When everyone at the first tier lacked mobility, Heather’s divine spell set was simply far too powerful.
But Fulan was not afraid in the slightest.
After the [Hard Scale Rock] behind her shattered until only a thin layer remained, the force of the explosion blasted her forward.
Fulan gripped the purple short sword directly. She did not use the runes on it. Instead, she used Sunflame.
A red glow spread over the amethyst, without entirely concealing that trace of purple beneath it. At the same time, Fulan, still airborne, slammed straight toward Heather at a speed Heather could not react to at all.
The element Fulan had converted with [Elemental Radiance] just now was not fire, but wind.
Because at any moment, she had to be ready to run.
If those two managed to keep her trapped here, it would not matter much for her body in the Material Realm, but she would probably lose everything she was carrying.
She also possessed a skill called [Gale Swordsmanship]. After coating the short sword in Sunflame, she directly used Swift Wind Slash.
With the surrounding wind elements already highly active, combined with Fulan’s [Windwalker] trait, this combat technique erupted with a speed even greater than the speed Fulan had used to flee just moments ago.
That kind of speed was beyond not only Heather, but even the woman beside her. They could do nothing but watch as a streak of red light smashed straight toward Heather.
Just as Fulan was about to reach Heather, she swung the short sword.
“Hm? Why does this feel like this?”
Fulan immediately sensed that something was wrong.
The familiar sensation of Sunflame slicing through things like tofu did not appear. After her strike landed on Heather’s arm and severed it, and the blade cut into her side, Heather moved.
Heather leapt backward and looked at the smooth cross-section of her severed arm. A layer of pale-blue radiance still protected it.
“You can actually break through my divine protection.”
Heather was deeply shocked. This was the first time she had ever seen an attack that could break her defense so quickly. Even the companion beside her could not easily do that.
“Sunflame was actually blocked.”
Fulan felt deeply frustrated. This was the first time she had ever used Sunflame and only achieved this much.
Even back at the battle of the Northern Border Pass, although she had failed to cut through Connor’s body with Sunflame, the scorching alone had been enough to inflict internal injuries.
But now Heather looked completely fine. Sunflame had failed to break through her protection.
“Just you wait!!”
After having her arm severed by Fulan, Heather seemed to feel that she had lost this exchange. Her face was full of anger.
Then Heather directly formed a hand seal Fulan could not understand. She placed her remaining hand in front of her chest, and a flash of blue light suddenly burst from there.
At that moment, Fulan felt something extremely familiar.
It was like facing the stars themselves.
It was the same sensation she felt when she used Astrology.
“What is going on?!”
The scene before Fulan’s eyes darkened, then brightened again.
And when she could see clearly once more, what appeared before her was a boundless ocean, and above that sea...
The Goddess of the Currents!!!