“So, are we going to go through the palace, shredding them one by one?”
“What about Shiro-chan? How will we know she’s been saved?”
Just as the question was asked, Ibuki sniffed the entire area, then nodded.
“She’s been rescued and Senku is heading south.”
They all looked at her, still weirded out by her “different” appearance. She shrugged, understanding fully well why they were weirded out.
“Wheew! Senku’s real fast.”
“That means we can simply destroy this place from head to toe?”
“What about the emperor?”
“To hell with the emperor. He’s just a brat. No one will be surprised if he died during this incident.”
Yoshitatsu who had never been a fan of letting a child be her master was an advocate for leaving the emperor to die. Mori sighed as she was finally showing her true self outside of when she was drunk.
Again, Ibuki sniffed the air.
“He too is not in the area. I can only smell something ominous from this palace. My instincts are telling me to raze this palace to the ground.”
“Calm down, baby lizard. Dragons have a tendency to destroy want to destroy human towers.”
Akihiko teased her and poked her horn. She snapped at his finger, but he managed to withdraw before getting bit.
“Trust me, I’m in control. I think we should go with Mori’s planning of destroying the entire palace.”
She agreed that it was a relatively good idea in the moment.
“What about the geezer?”
Mori asked about the sage.
“Don’t worry. The Sotomura laboratory is in Larm. Specifically, the North side, close to the Demise Mountains. We have a teleport pad leading directly to it back in the Tatsumaki hold.”
Again, they looked at her with a look of disbelief.
“What? I had a lot of secrets to keep, ok?”
She shamelessly defended herself.
“Well either way, I don’t have the energy to destroy this palace. What about you guys?”
Yoshitatsu who previously displayed a great deal of power admitted to having used it up in her earlier attack. Mori shook his head with a solemn expression.
All eyes fell on Akihiko who scratched the back of his head.
“None of my attacks will be strong enough to destroy this palace. Especially from the top with all its layers of anti-magic defence.”
The royal palace was layered with all forms of defence against magic attacks. It was even impossible to teleport into the imperial palace as that was considered a form of magic attack. If one attempted, they’re teleportation path would be redirected to a far-off location filled with nothing but water and dangerous Imperial Rank beasts.
In truth, the only way to attack the imperial palace was either through raw physical power or aura attacks. Of which the former was nigh impossible given the structure and limitations of humans and other beings. That was why they all looked to Yoshitatsu and Mori first, the duo being the only ones to use aura.
“I can do it.”
The one to speak was Ibuki with a grim expression.
“You are by far the physically weakest person I’ve met in my life. You c-ow!”
She grabbed Akihiko’s finger and applied a decent amount of pressure, making the giant wince in pain.
“In case you’ve forgotten, I’m stronger now.”
She let go of his finger, making sure not to break it.
“Besides. Anti-magic is weak to dragon magic. As absurd as it sounds, nothing in this world can stop dragon magic. You can even call it the ultimate form of magic.”
All three of them had heard of Draconic magic before. How could they never have heard of it? It was the magic Ascension dragons used. Ascension dragons being dragons so powerful they weren’t allowed to live in this realm, one could understand the sort of danger their magic would pose to this realm. Still, there was only one specific group of people in the realm that used this form of magic.
The Tatsumaki Clan. Of course, this limited group referred to the Clan head and previous clan heads. No one was allowed to learn this magic till they inherited the clan head position. It was one of the reasons the Tatsumaki reigned as the leaders of the Elder Clans.
Still, they had to admit that they hadn’t seen the full extent of Draconic magic for themselves. Merely a wisp of it as proof that the current clan head possessed it. However, stories from times of war and times when Ascension dragons lived alongside humans were their way of estimating the devastation Draconic magic could cause.
“Well, at least Shiro doesn’t have to learn this from me.”
She said with a satisfied smile.
“You make it sound like we’re going to die.”
Ignoring their words, wings erupted from her back.
“Shall we begin our counterattack?”
With that, she jumped out of the castle.
“…Does she know how to fly?”
The question flew out of Yoshitatsu’s mouth as she looked at the falling Ibuki with visible concern.
“Well, she’s had those wings for over a decade now… she should definitely have flown at least once… right?”
Mori retorted to her question.
“What are you two doing? Let’s get to the top quickly.”
Akihiko shouted from the seventh floor. He was climbing through the broken portion, jumping from ledge to ledge, ignoring the incoming enemies.
From behind, Yoshitatsu and Mori could hear footsteps. A water arrow was shot at high speed towards them, but Mori blocked with his gauntlets.
“Get to the 7th floor with Akihiko. I’ll run up since I can’t climb.”
Yoshitatsu nodded, then jumped on Mori’s palm, then got flung up above Yoshitatsu who scaled the palace like an inhuman beast.
Mori then activated his skill [Steam Roller], proceeding to crush everything in sight.
Yoshitatsu landed a floor above Akihiko, winked at him and scaled the wall faster than he could. Angered, Akihiko sped up his pace.
Beneath him, Ibuki flew up towards the top of the palace at super sonic speed, causing a loud boom and creating a force strong enough to push back some encroaching enemies.
Upon seeing that he was dead last in the race to the top, he clicked his tongue and activated his [Lightning God Armour] skill to increase his physical stats by 3 times.
“Ain’t no way in hell I’m going to be last.”
***
“Cardinal Six! Cardinal Five has summoned for you!”
Six looked up from his query and rushed towards Five’s location. He was in the middle of his brainwashing attempts, but was disturbed by the eruption of magic power from beneath. It felt like insanely strong beasts were at the bottom of the palace, but he ignored it, thinking Cardinal Five could handle the issue.
During his mission, he found something interesting. The girl they had was not Shiro Tatsumaki. He removed her illusion and found out she looked completely unlike their original target. He didn’t want to bother Five till he had more information, so he was interrogating her as of this moment.
In truth, it wasn’t working. Her mind was like diamond and his interrogation tactics were like paper. Nothing was going to work on her. So, he ended up spending the day playing with her mind instead. A different way to interrogate. He could feel he was making some progress, but just then, this happened.
He rushed quickly to the 59th floor which was the emperor’s throne room, but on his way he caught sight of something odd.
There was a massive hole in the side of the palace. He walked to it and was shocked to see that a quarter of the palace was on the ground. Debris fell from above, followed by screaming bodies. He looked up and saw three creatures racing to the top.
One of them was flying, but the other two were scaling the tower. One of the creatures looked down and their electric blue eyes met his, causing him to frown.
Clicking his tongue, he jumped and started to scale the palace himself. From his waist, he took his whip. He lashed at the creature just above him, grabbing his leg.
The creature seemed to find this annoying and tried kicking him off. Six who was not as physically strong as the creature found himself being lifted off from his footing, but he wouldn’t let go of his leverage.
The beast kicked him so high up, he was flung right above the beast and to the same level as the other one. He flipped through the air, kicked the beast into the building and found himself landing on the 35th floor, right above the beast. From there, he pulled with all his might, drawing the other beast into the same floor.
Both creatures grunted once they recovered from the fall. Six heaved a heavy sigh.
Normally, Cardinals were giving numbers according to their level of strength. There were two cardinals who didn’t strictly follow this rule and received numbers unbecoming of their strength due to past actions.
Cardinal Six was originally the bearer of Seat Three, but got demoted for his sometimes “crude” ways of information extraction and the sort of state he left his opponents in after battle. That was why as he faced down two beasts of great power, he didn’t even bat an eyelash.
The fight begun when both beasts attacked. The one behind him held a sword – a katana – and the other thrusted their spear at him.
He lashed the spearman’s wrist and placed his dagger behind him to block the incoming slash. The spearman didn’t let go of his spear, but its course was changed, giving Six enough leeway to avoid the attack.
When both beasts were close to him, he jumped up and delivered double jump kicks to both of them, throwing them back. They grunted as they fell on the floor, but Six wasted no time.
He started to work his whip. The whip latched onto the spear man’s leg, allowing Six to throw his body around into the next room of the floor.
The swordsman had already recovered and was charging at him again. Six’s instincts warned him not to get closer to the swordsman, so he threw his dagger at her. She easily blocked his attack, but got a horde of fanged rabbits coming towards her face instead.
“[Sword of the Crescent Moon – Fifth Form: Meteor Shower]”
She muttered under her breath and in an instant, all the bunnies were cut up into tiny pieces. Six was surprised by her swift cutting, but didn’t think too much about it.
Those weren’t actual rabbits either way. With mere movement of his fingers, the puppet bunnies came back together to form one large bunny head that bit down on the swordsman.
From behind a spear came flying. In just the nick of time, Six moved out of the way, but his ear got torn off by the spear. Fortunately, he had the [Pain Resistance] and [Iron Will] skills, making it close to impossible for him to overreact in any situation.
Rather, he ducked and spun around to throw three daggers towards the spearman. All he got were his daggers being shot back at him, though he flipped back to dodge them.
Just then, he felt something lurking behind him. He looked back, but all he saw was a wall. A hand reached out from behind the wall, grabbing his neck and lifting him up.
Another beast had appeared.
In such a situation, no one would blame him for getting a bit serious, right?
<A/N: I'll have to admit, it's gotten hard to keep chapters under 2k words ever since we left Atlantis. So much I want to type, but... ah.>
