Chapter 177: Anpaes Temple “The entrance is here.”
Sebe opened a hidden trapdoor in the floor that led to a long staircase; it wasn’t possible to see the end from the trapdoor.
“Thank you, Sebe. Although I doubt we will be tracked by the guards in the city from now on, we need to remain careful because the temple is also connected to the palace and we can’t discard that the eldest prince had sent some guards there.”
Everyone nodded, they knew that everything could be more dangerous once they were inside, but it would be easier to hide from the enemies inside the temple or the palace than in the outside.
After all, Yale’s objective was to rescue Aiwai, so if he could do it avoiding battles, it would be the best outcome. Sebe wanted to check the situation inside and rescue his servants, he never thought of battling against those guards.
While their group started to descend the stairs, a figure was alone in the midst of the sky outside the city. That person was the Mysterious Expert who had appeared in front of the king and acted as Yale’s background.
“I am sorry, but no one will enter or exit this city. I know your plans, you planned to use that possessed prince to poison the king, but that poison isn’t deadly, it will just leave the king without strength turning him a perfect target to posses. You are just a bunch of vengeful spirits that want to take over this country by possessing the important figures while controlling the other people turning them into living puppets.”
In front of him, there were some vengeful spirits; they were the souls of the invaders sealed in the forbidden ruins by Anpaes in the great war. After the eldest prince freed them and fused with their leader, they had planned the whole attack in order to take over the kingdom and use it to start the invasion of the continent again.
As for the eldest prince, he had bad intentions when he freed the spirits and merged with the leader, but in the end, although the eldest prince wasn’t conscious of it, he had also lost his own will and was just acting as the leader of the spirits wanted.
“You are just an incarnation; you can’t stop us.”
The vengeful spirits were enraged because the Mysterious Expert had blocked their path.
They had been souls without a body for a too long time and had degenerated in vengeful spirits, except their leader who had mastered the Death Law and could remain clear-minded even after turning into a vengeful spirit, the others had turned into irrational and violent beings. They just acted like the leader’s pawns because they were unable to think too much by themselves.
“An incarnation is more than enough to deal with you. I have already broken the space-time connection with the city. Unless you have mastered the laws of space and time, you won’t be able to enter or exit.”
Some of the spirits had mastered laws when they were alive, but as they turned vengeful spirits they forgot about it, so although they were strong, due to their lack of wisdom, even someone like the king who was just Rank 9 would be able to wipe out all of them easily.
The vengeful spirits attacked the Mysterious Expert hoping that killing him would break that barrier, but they just disappeared before reaching the Mysterious Expert.
“Sadly, for weak and unstable existences like you, just nearing me is enough to disappear completely.”
Vengeful spirits aren’t supposed to exist in the world, and unless they controlled the Death Law, the world itself would try to wipe them out, since they lost the connection with their leader due to the space-time isolation barrier from the Mysterious Expert, their existences were far too weak.
Previously they had only managed to exist thanks to the leader’s Death Law that protected all of them, losing that protection was a deadly blow for them. They wouldn’t be in that situation if they had remained together with their leader, but if those irrational spirits had entered the capital together with the eldest prince’s group, they would have been detected, and the plan would have failed.
“This is all the help I will offer. I wonder how Yale will resolve the situation inside the city.”
After walking for some time, Yale’s group finally reached the Anpaes Temple and saw the king unconscious and lying on a pool of blood.
“Father!”
Sebe ran towards the king after seeing him; he couldn’t believe that his father got stabbed.
“Stop Sebe!”
Sebe was about to use Light Healing, but he stopped after hearing Yale’s words.
“The injury is profound, but for your father’s healing, it should be easy to heal with his power. If he can’t heal himself, he is probably affected by some kind of poison, but Light Healing is also extremely effective towards poison; it doesn’t make sense. Maybe is a type of poison that would have a bad reaction towards Light Healing.”
Yale had a lot of experience as a healer, so it was easy for him noticing that the king’s situation wasn’t normal and trying to heal him rashly was dangerous.
“Sebe, you are here… Your friend is right, don’t use Light Healing on me, this poison will just turn stronger after that.”
Although the king had his eyes closed and seemed unconscious when they saw him, he was still conscious; he had been weakened, but not enough to faint.
Sebe didn’t dare to heal his father after hearing that; he looked at Yale being glad to have made friends with him; the normal reaction in that situation was to use a healing spell, so having someone who could stop rash acts and think with calm was very important in emergencies.
“Let me check him.”
A commoner asking to check the king’s body would be considered a huge offense in any other situation, but Yale’s words had just saved the king, and there wasn’t anyone else who could help, so there was no complaint.
“He wasn’t poisoned long ago, but this poison is extremely aggressive, there is no way that Light Healing or Water Healing worked. However, it seems a weakening poison, the king won’t die with this poison, but if the poison isn’t healed, he will turn weaker than someone at the Mortal Rank.”
The poison could be healed easily with the antidote as long as it had passed less than a day from the poisoning, but Yale didn’t have an antidote for that poison.
He knew how to make it because he had read about it before, that antidote was useful for a lot of poisons, but that antidote needed three days to be completed and was difficult to craft, so it would be difficult finding one to buy. In case there were some, Yale was sure that the eldest prince had already bought them or destroyed them.
Although Yale guessed that the eldest prince should have conserved at least one, there was no way to steal it from him.
“Yale, do you have a way to help my father?”
Sebe didn’t have huge hopes, but since Yale identified well the poison, maybe he had a solution.
“If you believe in me, I have a method to heal him. However, you can’t distract me until I ended.”
It wasn’t a surprise that Yale could use healing spells since Aiwai could and Sebe understood that in a difficult process of healing distracting the healer could be fatal.
The king didn’t know what to do; he knew that Yale was just five years old although he looked older by some skill. However, he also knew that Yale had a background, so it wasn’t impossible that he had some special method to heal him.
Yale saw the hesitation in the king’s face. If the king were crippled, Yale wouldn’t lose anything, but the king was still someone who had met him in his past life, and the Anpaes Kingdom would be in danger if the king were crippled due to the poison.
Yale knew a way that would dissipate any hesitation from the king, but in exchange, it would show his identity.
Yale didn’t hesitate to take out his Space-time Judgment Sword and stabbed it in the floor.
“Open your eyes and don’t say anything, you will understand.”
Yale spoke with Spiritual Sense to the king, he decided to reveal his identity to the king, but he didn’t plan to reveal it to Sebe and Shirk.
The king opened his eyes and saw the Space-time Judgment Sword; he had seen that sword once and knew very well that it was a soul-bound object that only his father’s master could use.
At that moment he remembered the words his father had said to him.
“That man you met yesterday is my master and the strongest person in the world. He asked me to turn you into the crown prince and thus my successor. However, you need to remember that you must never offend him; even if he seems extremely weak, you mustn’t offend him. His appearance shouldn’t deceive you; he is an expert in changing his aspect and aura, he can appear disguised as anyone. The only way to identify him is the Space-time Judgment Sword, that is a soul-bound weapon that only he can use.”
He took those words seriously, but he had never expected that his father’s master would appear with the aspect of a kid in the Novice Rank.