Elden: Ring of Calamity

Chapter 531 Barrier
In an instant, Lucia understood the key point and asked in surprise, "You found them?"

“They came to me,” Katpela shook her head. “The person on the other side is Yuno, the former third archbishop of the Flame Sanctuary. My disguise can fool those giants whose minds are full of magma, but in time, it will not escape the eyes of those who are interested.”

She lightly raised her lotus foot and stomped the ground, saying, "Look, you can see it too. These are old objects passed down from the Golden Dynasty over a hundred years ago. Back then, my Tibia Dynasty was the legitimate one, while Marika was a heretic leader who led a group of believers around bewitching people. Since we couldn't win on the front lines, I made all these crooked little gadgets."

Lucia walked to her side, waved his hand and cast a detection spell to sense the structure of the spell beneath her feet. As the rune circuits reappeared in his mind one by one, a look of understanding appeared on his face.

"As expected, it is a dual composite structure of divine and magical arrays. The caster even specially drew out two circuits to create the illusion of mutual interference between divine and magical frequencies on the outside. No wonder the accompanying sorcerers on both sides could not find anything."

“The idea isn’t difficult; the challenge lies in implementation,” Katpera said, standing to the side with her arms crossed. “Once spatial portal technology became widespread, this kind of composite spatial barrier array became obsolete. Plus, its structure is extremely complex and its cost is exceptionally high, so it’s been almost entirely lost. Even if you include all the mage organizations from the three great dynasties and those with a little reputation in the general populace, the existing blueprints would be less than a handful. I wonder how much effort it took for that kid Yuno to be able to replicate one in this godforsaken ice field.”

What were his terms?

“When we divide the ley lines, we’ll give him a share, and when Chareleus comes after us, we’ll save his life—of course, if our Dragon King is willing to take him in, he’ll also be willing to offer you his ‘supreme loyalty,’ hehe.”

Lucia ignored Katpela's last joke, frowned, and said, "That's all?"

"unreasonable?"

“No, it’s just too reasonable,” Lucia shook her head. “I’ve gotten so used to seeing ambitious people who die without even knowing how they died lately that I’m a little unaccustomed to occasionally encountering someone with a clear head.”

He pondered for a moment, then asked, "What do you think?"

“It’s just a mutually beneficial arrangement,” Katpela shrugged. “Yuno was able to find out that my identity as Ophelia was a disguise because he had harbored ulterior motives since he first arrived in the North twenty years ago. He’s been taking advantage of the Flame Sanctuary for so long that he even managed to find out about the Forge Leylands before I did. It’s not surprising that he traced my fake identity. In the end, this guy just wants a rune that will allow him to advance further. With the current rune reserves in the Forge Leylands, giving him one is more than enough.”

Lucia gazed at the shimmering rune circuits beneath her feet, and said cautiously, "Since this barrier has been activated before our very eyes, even without his help, tracing the power fluctuations would be easy. In any case, it's still too dangerous for your identity to be exposed."

"Oh, this doesn't sound like something you'd say," Katepera said, looking Lucia up and down. "What, are you going to go against your usual ways and kill an innocent person to help me keep the news under wraps for my safety?"

Lucia didn't meet her gaze, but instead looked towards the vast, desolate snowfield in the distance, ravaged by war, and sneered, "Slovens, Klange, Milan, Kurros. Wasn't he the one colluding with the giants to fuel the chaos in the North? What kind of innocent person is such a piece of trash?"

Katpera understood that Lucia was indeed speaking his mind. Given his temperament, even if he let Yuno go this time, it would only mean keeping that head on his neck for a while, and he would eventually have to kill him when he had the chance.

But he didn't give her a direct answer to her question.

She didn't press the matter further. A smile unconsciously crept onto her rosy lips, and her alluring eyes narrowed slightly, like a cat basking in the sunlight. She chuckled, "I know, I know. No one in this world can escape the judgment of His Majesty Lucia Sanx. This time, just give me, your ally, a little face and let him live a few more days. Once this is over, you can hunt him down however you like, okay?"

Time was running out for them. The Northern Expeditionary Army and the Fourth Army Corps had clearly noticed the unusual fluctuations here, and dozens of rapidly approaching auras had already appeared at the edge of their mental vision.

Lucia withdrew her gaze, sighed, and said, "Let's go." Both of them were experts in spatial magic and could understand how to traverse between the two sides of the barrier without any guidance. At this moment, they relaxed their minds and made their divine power and magic power operate at a frequency close to that of the magic circle, and instantly transformed into two streams of light that disappeared into it.

On the other side, the layers upon layers of rune circuits on the ground also completely disappeared before the scouts of both armies arrived.

A series of blurry, illusory lights flashed before my eyes, and the feeling of weightlessness and dizziness lasted for a full half minute before I suddenly felt solid support under my feet.

Lucia looked up and saw only dark rock walls all around. There was only a path leading to a cliff, where a figure with his hands in his sleeves was facing this way, bowing and waiting respectfully.

"That person is Yuno?"

"Yes, he gave me the location of the barrier array and the key to activate it, and asked me to lead you in."

Lucia quickened his pace, subtly blocking Katpera half a step behind him, and strode toward the cliff, without deliberately suppressing his abyssal dragon might.

When he was five steps away from Yuno, the man in front of him seemed to be under immense pressure. Sweat covered his lowered face, and after struggling for a long time, he managed to squeeze out a respectful smile, bowed and said, "Your subject Yuno pays respects to His Majesty Lucia Sanx!"

A cold glint flashed in Lucia's icy blue eyes as she said indifferently, "If one were to pay homage to the King of the Ancient Dragons with the proper etiquette of a foreign subject, one should kneel in obeisance. What, am I not worthy of your kneeling?"

Yuno was secretly alarmed by the fact that the pressure emanating from Lucia was even more terrifying than that of the Queen of Death, which completely contradicted the rumors from the royal court that he was "severely injured and his essence was destroyed."

Yet he remained outwardly calm, merely suppressing the unbearable pressure that nearly made him vomit blood, and said neither humbly nor arrogantly, "I have already betrayed the Golden Dynasty and am about to be rejected by the Giant Dynasty. I have no motherland to support me, so I dare not call myself a foreign subject. Similarly, I committed a grave crime in the Northern Border, and fortunately I am now under Your Majesty's protection. Even if I wish to submit, I dare not kneel before Your Majesty as a subject until Your Majesty grants me forgiveness."

Lucia gave him a deep look and said, "On the eve of the chaos in the North, someone impersonated a Samir knight and burned and killed human villages and towns. Then, he incited humans to use wolf-hunting knights to massacre the Milan and Kurros Samir clans. Did you do these things?"

"Your Majesty, it was indeed I who conspired with the remnants of the giants to plan this."

"You orchestrated the 'accidental' fall of the Giants' Forbidden Prayer Book into the hands of the Flame Sanctuary, using some of the Flame Monks to experiment with the 'Fire Seed.' Archbishop Pirac noticed something amiss and was also murdered. His body was then faked to appear as someone obsessed with forbidden power, failing to evolve, suffering a backlash, and ultimately committing suicide—was this also your doing?"

Yuno paused for a moment, his Adam's apple bobbed, and he said in a slightly deep voice, "I didn't expect Your Majesty to be able to find out even this. This matter was indeed planned by me."

"Then what you did next, disrupting the alliance between the Garrison, the Sanctuary, and the Samir Clan, blocking the news from the outside world, stirring up unrest internally, and colluding with the giants to massacre a million soldiers and civilians in the North, leaving the 30,000-mile ice plains littered with corpses and nine out of ten houses empty? That must have been your doing, right?"

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Then I'd like to hear what reason you can give me for not killing you here and now?"

(End of this chapter)