City of Sin (Yanyu Jiangnan)

Death Of Ambition

“Silvermoon Palace?” The old man had never heard of such a place. Richard even noticed his momentary daze; the wound had dealt a heavy blow to him both physically and mentally. He already believed that Moonlight was such a powerful weapon that any legend would be cut apart by it, and that made him consider just what kind of background Richard himself possessed.

Richard had no plans to give him time to recuperate; the best way to deal with stealthers was to end them quickly. His left hand started to spark as a fireball formed within, going from red to blue before it was shot out like a bolt of lightning.

“The Star of Destruction… You actually…” Before the old man could even express his shock, the fireball was already upon him. He had to gather as much energy as he could to jump away, not bothering with stealth at all as he instead fled as fast as possible. The tracking fireball made a sharp turn to follow him before suddenly exploding, blue flames raining down on him from above. Not daring to even be touched by this fire, he weaved between it all and sped up straight towards Richard.

The shortsword in the man’s hand seemed to turn into dust as it swarmed around Richard’s body, stabbing a hundred times. Richard knitted his brows as he evaded and deflected the attacks, but by the end of it all he still sustained a dozen cuts.

However, he quickly relaxed his brows and smirked at the old man who had already opened up some distance. The assassin looked shock as he looked over his now-dim blade, the weapon completely ruined. Moonlight’s combination with Lyos’s legacy was strong enough to destroy it. Even though Richard’s laws couldn’t completely contort the weapon, they could still drain away at its powers until Moonlight’s attacks started going through.

The assassin now had a wound on his upper left arm, blue flames still burning away the grey fog that tried to heal it. The entire limb was drooping down lifelessly, making it clear that he had lost all ability to battle. Thoroughly frustrated, he glared at Richard, “You’re wounded yourself!”

Richard just smiled, a green moon forming above his head and bathing him in its glow. The energy burnt away at the grey fog covering the wounds, stemming the bleeding before the cuts started to close up. By the end of it all, he was back to full fighting form. On the other hand, the blue flames continued to burn on the old man’s body; if he didn’t manage to get them under control soon, they would burn off his entire arm.

The man’s face was ashen as he stared at the green moon; all he could see was a mass of law energy that clearly did not belong in Faelor at all. In a short span of time, Richard had displayed the laws of metals, destruction, and life; had he not experienced it all personally, he would have thought it a joke.

This youth wasn’t even legendary yet!

He threw the shortsword away, taking out a legendary dagger from a storage ring while confused as to whether he should charge in or increase the distance. Richard was clearly a mage, but still held the upper hand even in a melee. No matter where he went, there was no victory to be had. His legendary ability involved creating illusions, and that combined with his profession as an assassin to make him a powerful figure in his generation. However, his illusions were now broken and that dropped his ability drastically.

Richard didn’t allow him the time to rest, moving fifty metres with a single lunge to appear right in front. Moonlight slashed out with a dozen energy blades, all the power of the Ring of Fate focused in one direction. The startled assassin did all he could to evade, but the skill was just far too wide in scale and struck him once more.

He didn’t hesitate to retreat any more, but with his heavy injuries his movements were constrained. Richard shot out a stream of faint blue fireballs to tail him, the blue moon forming over his head to work in conjunction with the well of stars. There seemed to be no dearth of moonforce at all as he shot out fireball after fireball with no visible signs of fatigue.

Blue explosions blossomed in the sky like beautiful fireworks, but few could see the grey shadow bouncing between them desperately. Layer upon layer of attack culminated in a pained scream as the old man fell from the sky, his legs almost completely burnt off before he even reached the earth below.

Richard felt a little surprised. He had been preparing to chase after to finish off the assassin physically, but the fireballs alone had done the trick. He flashed over and cast a featherfall spell just in time, stopping the assassin from falling to his death. With just a thought, the blue flames were extinguished.

Landing gently next to the clear pond, the legendary assassin stared at the sky as the last dregs of his life were burnt away. Richard landed next to him and watched in silence, the blue flames had already started burning into the soul and guaranteed destruction. Even Zendrall would be unable to save the old man, perhaps only Nyra being up to the task.

The old man didn’t even seem to notice Richard anymore, just staring at the sky and mumbling, “Ambition… It was all ambition… If not for…”

Richard stretched out his hands as the last light in the man’s eyes dimmed, but he was unable to place them down. After a moment of hesitation, he finally sighed and pressed down, activating the Field of Truth to capture a tiny consciousness that was still wandering about. The feeling was so obvious he couldn’t even lie to himself if he wanted; shaking off the hesitation, he started to capture the runaway soul fragment.

With extensive experience in general and the recent encounter with Lyos’s soul, it didn’t take long for this legend to be captured. It only a few minutes the consciousness had been absorbed into Richard’s body, the secondary minds tasked with analysing the laws it embodied.

Surprisingly, the old man’s laws were an offshoot of the nature laws that Richard already had some experience with. His specific version was focused on assimilating into the surroundings to hide himself, at the same time summoning illusions to confuse his enemies. The illusions had an almost-physical presence to them, even pushing away air as they moved, but unfortunately Richard with Insight and Field of Truth was the complete antithesis of this ability.

Richard sensed a strange aura of death after he collected the remaining law fragments, but as much as he tried he couldn’t figure out what it was. Knitting his brows, he stood up and wandered aimlessly into the old man’s secluded home to do some research.

The courtyard was enormous, its walls engraved with spell formations that could adjust the climate within. It contained a garden and water spring, alongside rows of huge trees that split it into separate biomes. These magic arrays were also the foundation of a larger formation that functioned as a simple barrier and visual illusion.

Standing by the yard wall, Richard closely inspected all of the formations. A master in the field himself, it only took him a cursory glance to realise the function of most of these arrays. While Faelor’s magic was far less robust than that of Norland, they still had a few things they did well. Some parts of this construct were new and surprisingly clever, especially the illusion of emptiness.

As he was studying the arrays, he suddenly drew out Moonlight and swept it behind him, causing two soft schlicks followed by dull thuds as corpses fell to the ground. Both were women with voluptuous figures and pretty faces, absolutely naked with rudimentary rune-like patterns on their bodies that bestowed invisibility. Blood started leaking from their necks once they fell, but Richard just returned to the formations and continued to scan through them.

A short while later, once he was done with the key sections of the formation, Richard turned around and flipped the corpses over to look at them. The patterns themselves were utterly uninteresting to him, but he discovered that their souls were badly damaged to the point of not even having independent thought. They were almost humanoid puppets; the old man had clearly kept them around for lust more than anything else.

Once he was done with the yard, Richard entered the main building itself. He killed a few more beautiful puppets along the way as he scanned through room after room, eventually finding the old man’s journal in the upper level. Sitting down in front of the open window, he flipped open the thick leather tome to read through it.