Chapter 230: The Second Prince Enjoys Listening to Dogs Bark
The air froze solid.
The only sounds left were the thick, sticky drip of fluid falling from the wound in the Illusion Spider’s corpse in the distance, and the uneven, ragged breathing of the others.
Ryan lowered his gaze, glanced at his right hand, which was still trembling slightly, then at the shattered fragments of his dagger scattered across the ground.
Inside him, the twin Seals of Enlightenment were operating with unprecedented efficiency. His exhausted Mana pool was being refilled at startling speed, almost to the point of overflowing. As that warm, pure current coursed through him, even the fatigue in his body and the pain in his right arm were rapidly easing.
But this newborn power needed time to settle.
More importantly, it needed the right moment to strike by surprise.
He slowly lifted his eyes.
His gray-blue gaze rested on Randall in complete stillness, and for just an instant, the smile on Randall’s face stiffened.
“We’ll withdraw.”
Ryan’s voice rang out.
And as he spoke, he really did shift half a step to the side, moving out of the direct path to the stone doorway.
“Damn it!” Rex roared. His eyes were red enough to spit fire. He looked at Ryan, then fixed his gaze on the dagger pressed against Lillian’s throat. His teeth ground audibly together, but he did not dare move forward even a single step.
Vera’s gray-green eyes flicked rapidly between Ryan, Randall, and the stone doorway, as though she were calculating something. In the end, she said nothing. She only took half a step back, faintly forming a pincer angle with Ryan while still yielding the main route.
Ilyss’s violet eyes were cold. Behind her back, the faint magical fluctuation at her fingertips dispersed completely.
She looked at Ryan’s profile, then at Lillian’s deathly pale face and the terror and desperate plea in her eyes.
A strange sense of responsibility warred with something deeper in her heart.
In the end, she chose to trust Ryan’s judgment in this moment and silently stepped back.
“Smart,” Randall said, the corner of his mouth lifting with satisfaction. He was clearly enjoying the sensation of having the entire situation under his control. Holding Lillian hostage, he began moving slowly and cautiously toward the stone doorway. His eyes never left Ryan and the others, especially Ryan.
“Don’t try anything funny. I know you still have some strength left,” Randall said as he walked, his tone leisurely. “Especially you, Ryan Velt. Since you managed to kill that Illusion Spider, you clearly have some ability. But now you don’t even have a knife anymore, and that right hand of yours is useless too, isn’t it? How much of a threat can you still be?”
Ryan did not answer.
He merely watched him approach in silence.
And when Randall reached a point about five steps from the stone doorway, almost level with Ryan and the others, the situation exploded.
The apparently rigid, terrified Lillian suddenly flashed with determination in her eyes.
Her body, still bound by those dark-red magical shackles, abruptly dropped downward, as though her center of gravity had given way beneath her.
The move was completely beyond Randall’s expectations.
He had assumed a hostage would do nothing but tremble in fear. Because Lillian suddenly dropped, the dagger at her neck slid upward with the motion. Though it remained tight against her skin, it missed the fatal artery and only tore a longer cut along the side of her throat.
“You’re asking to die!” Randall shouted in shock and fury. Instinctively, he tried to press harder and finish cutting her throat open.
But in that fraction of a second of hesitation—
“Rex!”
Ryan’s roar cracked through the air like thunder.
Rex, who had already been coiled to spring like an enraged bull, hardly needed the command at all. The instant Lillian’s body dropped, he was already charging forward with a roar.
He rushed toward the open ground between Randall’s flank and Lillian, then poured every ounce of his Mana into the greatsword in his hands and brought it crashing down on the ground ahead of him.
“Earthsplit Slash!”
BOOM!
Earth-yellow Mana surged into the floor with the sword’s impact. The solid ground rippled and bulged as though it had turned into water.
A visible shockwave spread outward in a fan shape and erupted directly beneath Randall’s feet.
Caught completely off guard, Randall stumbled as the ground beneath him reared upward and cracked open. His arm holding Lillian loosened by the slightest fraction.
And that fraction was enough.
Ryan, who had seemed calm and yielding until then, stepped forward.
He raised his right hand, fingers crooked like a claw, and made a grasping motion through empty air toward Randall’s wrist—the wrist holding the dagger.
“Wind Bind.”
Highly condensed currents of air, almost invisible, wrapped around Randall’s wrist like the toughest steel wire and suddenly tightened and jerked inward.
A burst of pain shot through Randall’s wrist as though it had been caught in iron tongs, and the dagger’s path skewed once more.
And almost at the exact instant Ryan moved, Vera flicked up one hand. A gentle yet powerful whirlwind sprang into being out of nowhere, precisely catching Lillian as the shaking ground and the bound wrist caused Randall’s grip to falter.
“Come here!”
Lillian’s small body was swept up by the whirlwind and hurled backward just in time, landing directly in Rex’s outstretched arms.
“My lady!”
Rex caught her in one sweep. The force drove him back two steps, but he held her tight. His Mana burst outward instantly, forming a thin protective barrier behind which he placed her. His greatsword came up before him, and his bloodshot eyes glared at Randall.
Everything had happened in a flash.
From Lillian deliberately dropping to bait the opening, to Rex disrupting Randall with Earthsplit Slash, to Ryan binding the dagger hand, to Vera pulling Lillian free with the whirlwind, to Rex catching and shielding her—it had all taken no more than two or three breaths.
Their coordination was so seamless it felt as though they had rehearsed it a thousand times before.
Randall staggered, then regained his footing.
The invisible force of Wind Bind around his wrist had already vanished, but his right hand, the one that had held the dagger, was empty.
Lillian was gone.
The smug smile vanished entirely from his face, replaced by the fury of someone who had just been thoroughly made a fool of.
“Good. Very good.” Randall slowly straightened and brushed at dust that did not exist on his clothes. His dark gaze swept over Ryan, then Vera, and finally landed on Lillian, who was now protected behind Rex. A cold curve tugged at his mouth. “I didn’t expect the Velt brat to have this sort of cunning and coordination. I underestimated you.”
He rolled the wrist that had just been left with red marks by the binding wind. Green wind and silver lightning began to coil and snap once more at his fingertips, far livelier and more dangerous than before.
“But rescuing one burden changes nothing.” Randall’s gaze locked back onto Ryan, and the killing intent in it was no longer concealed. “You just finished a fight with the Illusion Spider. How much strength do you have left? Vera Lind, little prodigy of the Gale Duke’s house—your Mana is nearly dry too, isn’t it? And as for you, Ilyss, Princess Cecilia’s loyal hound, have you completed your mission yet? Or do you really have the leisure to stay here and die with them?”
Ilyss’s violet eyes turned cold.
She did not answer.
She simply let both hands fall naturally to her sides, while faint arcs of lightning began to breed once more at her fingertips.
Ryan remained calm.
He took half a step forward, subtly shielding the clearly weakened Vera and the still-distracted Ilyss behind him.
The trembling in his right arm had already stopped.
The wound was rapidly healing under the nourishment of the surging Mana in his body. It still ached faintly, but no longer enough to affect his strength.
More importantly, the immense reserves of Mana and the recovery speed granted by the Seals of Enlightenment—far beyond his current level—gave him the confidence to face Randall head-on.
“You sure do talk a lot,” Ryan said. “Does your master usually enjoy listening to dogs bark?”
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