Fantastic Beasts of Records: Lecherous Prince Of The Sea

Immediately, Annabelle nodded her head and slowed down her thoughts. Edna was right. Her eyes trailed towards Prince Wyatt's unconscious form again.

And so, Annabelle began to connect the dots.

He was the first to sense the presence of the beast and react. Just as the beast relentlessly pursued them, he suddenly collapsed, and a rat appeared by his side, only to dive towards the dreaded beast and engage it in combat, going head to head with it.

Prince Wyatt was a beast tamer, which meant that the mutated ice rat was his tamed beast. Moreover, it was possible that Ag'na's chase and attack on their group was not a mistake but a deliberate move aimed at Prince Wyatt.

As she pondered this, the illogicality of the situation became increasingly apparent. However, her concern was not only about the lack of sense behind the attack but also about her ignorance of what her captain had done to provoke the beast's fury.

Again. For the last time, he has sent her mind reeling back in a mess.

Her captain.... This prince.... is beyond logic!

............

Only two kinds of ascendants existed.

Yes, even though they choose not to admit it, there are those who, after receiving their path from the gods, choose to remain dependent on their path's abilities or 'perks' if they choose to follow its technicality. They remain the same, not choosing to rear the knowledge that those before them had crafted because it is so easy to ignore, to push to the back of one's mind that the strength not gained through one's might is a power that can be taken away by another.

Another -'gods'.

And then, there are those who almost never faced this conundrum. They believe in no one other than the abundance of their own strengths, rather than the abilities that their 'gods' had claimed to gift them.

Hence, they have a far greater reason to ascend rather than just advancing towards the next circle, the next rank - they have something much more to gain, an ultimate goal that they wish to attain, and would do so no matter the cost, no matter the obstacle. They would willingly embrace it and overcome whichever one that comes to their fullest. Because from the moment they decide to ascend, their ultimate goal is to become gods.

As such, even if they had no choice but to accept the gifts of such divine beings, they couldn't --they wouldn't willingly choose to cling unto it.

Nina Aswyth unfortunately belonged to the former. She knew that she didn't aim to possess the might and abilities to rival a god, and neither did she ever aim to ever become a god.

Yet, what kind of ascendants are these?

"BOOOOM!" The foundations of Miracle Mountain shook. The mad king, King Bor, who drew her ire and bloodlust, stood with pride on a bloody crimson platform in the sky, while he wielded thousands of bloody carved weapons of war, both known and unknown, forged from the dead bodies of his opponents' soldiers.

His opponent, with a hideously scary furious expression, stood unfazed by the countless numbers of blood-carved weapons that shot towards him with a momentum capable enough to pierce a giant. He watched as they were destroyed before they even touched his clothes, while his whole being was covered by a literal lightning cage held by several numbered bolts of lightning that hung beneath the clouds.

They had taken their battle to the sky after they noticed that the mountain was about to collapse under the sheer might of their devastating power. By going skywards, they knew that they would be left to settle their grudge and finish their fight uninterrupted.

Nina knew that they were holding back against each other. Truthfully, she knew from the moment they clashed mid-air high up into the clouds, and the shockwaves struck the mountain like a piercing heartbeat. She knew, and that was why she took to her heels and ran out of the ensuing chaos with her life tightly held within her hands, realizing that her will to live was greater than her determination for revenge.

As a trickster, fleeing was easy for her. She could take the form of the Slywoth Kingdom's assassins and use it to divert their relentless attacks while she escaped back to the brothel, and hoped that everything would be fine after this.

She had hoped it would be so. Hoped that her 50-second planned escape would be successful. But it wasn't.

Oh, by the gods, it wasn't!

The mad king flicked his hand upwards, and at his command, a few more people erupted in a gory mess. Their blood was squeezed out of their flesh until the only thing that remained was a dried-up husk of empty remains. And then he flicked his hands forward, and their blood transformed into different arrays of swords and spears that shot towards the lightning-clad King Ameal.

"BOOOOMM!" The shockwaves of their attacks reverberated like a deafening heartbeat through the mountain's foundations, as Nina raised her magical energy to its limit to shield herself from the brutal onslaught of two higher-ranked ascendants. Despite her best efforts, remnants of their destructive power bypassed her defences, wreaking havoc within her body.

"ARRRGGGGG!" A piercing scream rang from the heavens and invaded her ears.

Nina looked skyward and gritted her teeth at the scene. The Mad King's armoury of weapons had finally pierced through King Ameal's lightning-fortified cage, tearing off his left hand. A trail of blood followed as Nina watched in a daze, the detached hand falling off somewhere in the distance. She shifted her attention towards the Mad King--

Only for her instincts to scream and her body to become frozen stiff.

Her heart stopped.

A sudden teary scream sounded behind her, "DIE!!"

"SWWISSSH" A deadly gust of wind blew behind her. Nina turned her head, no longer feeling the icy cold touch she had felt before.

"Thud" "Bam" In front of her was a beheaded citizen of the Azulioth kingdom, falling to his death without the peace and comfort that one would be forced to accept at the end of their life.

Then, she turned her head towards the other presence that had appeared beside her.

The Slywoth assassin said. 'There are only 60 to 70 more people to go, so be careful" And looked at her stomach before he walked towards the shadow of a dead man's corpse, which was brightly illuminated due to the morning sky. "And if you can, kill them slowly so that King Bor can make an example out of them". He added before sinking into the shadow and possibly reappearing behind the shadow of another unfortunate soul to reap another life.

Nina listened and nodded her head in a daze before bringing her hands up to touch the itching spot on the side of her stomach.

To her apprehension, she brought her hand to her vision and saw --

Blood!

She looked down and saw that her stomach was bleeding. Her body had been pierced with a spear. Thankfully, this was something that she could survive, as she could use her magical energy to slowly heal her injuries.

But the fact that she felt that the man was aiming at her heart frightened her.

Nina gulped. She had almost died. Almost been beheaded. Her identity as a trickster was almost revealed if the assassin had taken the chance to look closer at her body.

Almost mindlessly running, all for the sake of revenge, she had finally received a reminder that more than anything else in this world, the only thing she feared the most was death.

She was not ready to die, and yet, here she was...

"CRAAACCKK" "BOOOOMM".

The sky flashed purple. An ambient wave of mana surged through the air, the sky flickered with a pulsating purple light that seemed to electrify the very air around her. The sheer power behind the flash of light knocked her to her knees, forcing her to struggle to regain her balance on the frozen ground.

Through the haze, she could just barely make out the sound of an irate voice berating someone for their foolish use of a technique. As the words grew clearer, she realized with a start that it was the Mad King himself who was being chastised.

"DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT YOU CAN KEEP ON FIGHTING WITH ME IF YOU KEEP ON MINDLESSLY USING THAT TECHNIQUE... MIND YOU, MAD KING, THERE ARE REASONS WHY WARRIORS ONLY USE SACRED ARTS DURING A BATTLE, AND YOU BEING A KING DOESN'T CHANGE THAT F--"

But before the voice could finish its sentence, several more voices suddenly materialized out of thin air beside her.

"Wait a minute--"

"What? One of our colleagues is down. Help--"

"I said wait a minute--"

They were the Sloywoth assassins.

No! No! No! No! No!

She screamed internally. Her disguise was probably falling off due to her injury and the fact that she had temporarily lost control of herself. Yet, she refused to give up and immediately surged her magical energy.

But even as she fought to maintain her guise, she felt a sickening sensation in her back and heard the dull thud of something solid connecting with her spin

"Bam!" The force was strong enough to almost render her unconscious and break a few of her bones.

And so, she just laid there, helpless.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING--"

"Shhhh... Look closer. This is not one of our own".

She would have run away instead of impersonating the Sloywoth's assassins if they had not barricaded their way out, trapping them in order to fish them out little by little.

She felt her body returning back to its normal appearance.

"You are right".

After a minute of being visually impaired, she opened her eyes to see the mess she was in.

"BOOM!"

Another shattering thunderclap rang in her ear.

As she struggled to regain her senses, she looked up and saw a breathtaking sight: King Ameal stood proudly, wielding a giant lance made of pure lightning, while his enemy, King Bor, was impaled upon it, both of them hurtling towards the ground in a terrifying descent.

Another sound rang in her ears.

"Bamm" This time, she winced in pain as the force was directed at her and the impact mercilessly threw her body into disarray.

Nina coughed out the taste of copper that invaded her taste buds.

"Round her up along with the others. King Bor has already given us instructions on what to do next".

"Will the other kings allow this?"

"Humph! Don't worry about them! They are too selfish to even try to worry about another kingdom that is not theirs."

COLD.

The voices of the assassins faded away, leaving her alone in a world that was growing colder by the second.

Cold. Very, very cold!

Suddenly, she was aware of how cold it was getting--so cold that it felt like her very soul was freezing over.

But, why --Why was she feeling cold all of a sudden?

As an ascendant, the cold was the least of her problems, even when she had a spear run through her stomach. She wasn't supposed to feel cold, unless--

Her eyes, weary opened to identify the source of the coldness --

"GROWWLL!!".

A ground-breaking roar pierced through the air and echoed throughout Miracle Mountain if not also sounding across the entire Vrymath Kingdom.

A chilling, cold aura invaded her body, and a strange, foreign pressure settled upon her shoulders.

In the distance, a pillar of densely packed, thick, white mist shot into the sky with a radiant glow.

"MY GOD!".

Nina whispered, even though she didn't want to admit it. Fear began to overrun her heart as she realized what the pillar of mist represented.

She knew about it because she had gone out of her way to document such a phenomenon in the past. The last time a pillar of mist had erupted, the whole region had been covered in ice and snow.

But this time, its second appearance should be ---

Nina felt grief. She felt sorrow.... The people of the Vrymath citizen. Her home --

Were gone.

She closed her eyes, accepting her fate, and allowing all things within her to come to rest.

At long last, the only kingdom to stand against the Moonlight's ice had fallen, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

Just before the darkness took over her light, a word escaped her lips.

"Vrymath kingdom has.... fallen".