Chapter 815: Duriel's Room (Three in One)

The banquet ended up being quite boring. Abel’s status was too high, so even if all the ladies presented wanted to talk to him, they wouldn’t be able to come close to him. There were simply too many people of noble status that were talking to him at once.

There was something rather odd that Abel noticed. Nobody from the St. Ellis Royal Family was here. They would usually be here if he was attending, but it was just royal families from the other two human empires for today. This was rather special, in any case.

The rules of a banquet were quite simple: no serious matters should be discussed. Because of this, Abel, Duke Chesterton, and Emperor Aldous were all talking about trivial matters the whole time. The other two were sipping on fine red wine, while Abel drank water spirit juice as they talked about various topics.

Abel toasted Emperor Aldous before he took the drink. This way, he was showing respect to the man despite how little this gesture might be. Speaking of which, it’s been a while since he touched any sort of alcohol. He wasn’t really allowed to since he became a wizard. His body might be strong enough to negate the alcohol, but even the slightest influence could be a matter of life or death in combat.

Anyways, juice was Abel’s go-to option if he wanted a drink. This had especially been the case ever since he went back from the elves. His favorite was the water spirit fruit juice. The elves knew it, so they would also send a lot of supply to him through the teleportation circle. Abel would then send over “rabbit potion” dishes in return. This was more of a symbol of friendship rather than equivalent exchange.

Emperor Aldous said with a smile, “Glad to see you like the juice, Grandmaster Abel. I’ve known about your preference after hearing from Lansi.”

There was a lot that was implied in that sentence. For instance, the elven water spirit fruit was not so easy to come by. Every piece was costly, even if it was not at a drastic time such as this. One cup of juice would symbolize a lot of value underneath. On the political stage, this became a way of demonstrating the resourcefulness of the Kingdom of St. Anwall.

The cup of juice was worth about a hundred intermediate magic gemstones, by the way. It was a price that Emperor Aldous was willing to pay if it would win him Abel’s favor.

Abel sipped his juice and smiled, “If I may ask a favor, Emperor Aldous, I have a request I must ask from you. It’s about a family under the name of Giesing. There’s a lot I don’t like about them.”

The Giesing Family, again, was the family that Wizard Kilmer belonged to. Since Wizard Kilmer had threatened Abel’s family and duchy before, even though he was already dead, Abel must be sure that he’s had his revenge on the man’s family.

Emperor Aldous seemed to remember, “You mean the one with the Viscount Giesing family crest?”

“Yes, exactly,” Abel nodded.

A crested family with a viscount as its head. If this was a few years back, Emperor Aldous would have a lot of trouble if he wanted to do much to cause this magnitude. However, now there was a great drought in place, no one would really catch attention if he was to meddle with it for a bit.

Emperor Aldous cheered and took a sip, “That’s going to take a few years at least, Grandmaster, but you got it. I’ll make sure to make this family disappear slowly.”

And there. A deal was made between two leaders of their own state. Abel promised a favor in exchange for Emperor Aldous to get rid of a crest family.

Duke Chesterton said earnestly, “There’s something I must ask from you, Grandmaster Abel. Now that the duchy of Carmel has become so powerful with a leader like you in place, I, on behalf of the Kingdom of St. Pierrt, would be very interested in forming a contract of peace with you.”

Emperor Aldous joined, “Add the Kingdom of St. Anwall to that contract, if possible. It’d be of my greatest pleasure if the duchy of Carmel can continue to have a lasting friendship with us.”

Upon until now, this contract of peace was signed only between the three kingdoms. It was the kind of bond that could signify the true strength and reputation of each kingdom. Unlike ones on planet Earth, these tended to have a little more lasting effect on them. They were associated with all sorts of virtues such as humility, honor, sacrifice, bravery, sympathy, spirit, honesty, and fairness. Rectifying these contracts would be the equivalent of challenging the basis on which a nation existed.

Abel nodded his head and replied, “If it’s with the both of you at the same time, sure.”

This statement made a flash of spark appear in both Duke Chesterton and Emperor Aldous’s eyes. What Abel was implying was quite clear. There was a problem between the Kingdom of St. Ellis and the duchy of Carmel. Something must’ve happened. It was probably something major. Otherwise, Abel would’ve never taken such a dramatic decision. And no, they weren’t all that worried that Abel was going to come at them at the same time. Since he was trying to sign a contract of peace with them, that was saying a lot about how little his expansionist desires were.

As for why, Abel was a wizard, to begin with. Wizards took a lot of time and energy to spend in meditation training. This fact was clear from the information that the intelligence forces collected. Unless the duchy of Carmel was in trouble, Abel would rarely come out to organize his very own duchy. He was never a fan of power, to begin with. While leaving most of the political stuff to his administrators, he would usually place most of his attention on striking back at enemies that challenged him.

Now that the two human empires were recognizing Abel as their equal, the Holy Continent’s political situation became very different.

“For peace!” Duke Chesterton raised his cup.

“For peace!” Emperor Aldous smiled as well.

“For peace!” Abel raised his juice cup.

The toast was just the beginning. For the rest of the time, there would be officials of various ranks getting in contact with each other. The three leaders would still make the final stage. While coming together, they would all sign their names on the same piece of paper that had a contract that was formed.

This was something that King Ambrose never expected, by the way. He never expected such a significant contract to be made at the wedding banquet of a local prince. He should’ve been more careful. If there was at least one member from the St. Ellis royal family that came here, there would be no way that it was this easy to form a contract of peace.

Once the banquet was finished, Prince Lansi helped Abel on his way to the teleportation. It was the least he could do, really, to show his respect to the guest that made this special day even more special for him.

Prince Lansi bowed and thanked, “Thank you so much, Abel!”

Abel took out a passive defensive magic item, “Here’s what you want, Lansi. Think of it as your wedding gift.”

Abel was considerate not to give the gift at the banquet. One, his identity was already so special that he didn’t have to do much to capture any attention, and two, he wanted to make sure that no one became jealous of the pricey gift that he was offering. Actually, if he didn’t manage to trade so much passive defensive magic item with his alchemy business, he would’ve never had the idea of giving one out.

Throughout the entire Holy Continent, only the dwarves were capable of producing alchemists that specialized in forging gold. Abel was an exception to that. He was a grandmaster blacksmith. He could trade with anyone given the quality of the product that he could produce.

Prince Lansi said jokingly, “It’s a bit old, but it’s my favorite.”

Abel couldn’t but frown at that comment, “Well, give it back, then.”

“No, no, no, no!” Prince Lansi quickly put the item into his own portal bag, “It’s a wedding gift from you, isn’t it? How can I just deny it?”

Abel waved his hand, “Right, I’ll see you later.”

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“Yeah. See you later, friend!”

Prince Lansi waved as he watched Abel leave. He was a bit sad to see this. They were pretty close friends, but he wasn’t sure when they would next see each other.

…

Inside the ancient tomb of Ta Rasha, Abel was finally getting to see the place that he wanted to find. It was a large tomb. There was a platform in the center with eight patterns around it. There was an empty slot at the middle position.

Inside this tomb, there were gory beasts with enlarged red bodies, a ghoul king wearing a black robe and holding a magic staff, and a few unrotting ghouls that were walking around. The gory beasts were excellent at dealing physical damage that would faint their target, whereas the ghoul king could launch fireball and firewall spells at long distances. The two made up for each other’s weaknesses. The difficult part was not killing. That didn’t take much effort. The difficulty was that when they died, their bodies would explode and unleash a bunch of poisonous mist that would damage all the surrounding living beings.

Abel was a wizard, though. The hundreds of gory beasts could scream all they wanted, but no matter how shocking it sounded, he would simply continue making his moves. Of course, he wasn’t just going to stay and wait for them to go. With one “instantaneous movement,” he brought eight spiritual guardian knights and the “claystone guards” with him and appeared right in the middle of the ghoul kings.

Then the eight spiritual guardian knights started moving freely to find their targets. The stone clay guard did the same, despite the fact that it seldom did so. Because the stone clay guard’s attacks were were, the ghoul king that it picked on didn’t take a lot of damage. In the same way, though, the stone clay guard also didn’t receive a lot of damage from the ghoul king’s bashings.

When the gory beasts realized that their target was gone, Abel moved towards their backs before they even noticed. They turned around, but both of his hands had already thrown a “firewall” right at the ghoul king’s feet. After that, he continued to dodge more fireballs and firewalls with his “instantaneous movement” spell. He would respond with his own “firewall,” which was several times stronger than the firewall that the ghoul king released. One would continue to burn for a very long time, while the “lightning chain” could kill multiple ghoul kings at once.

After his ten-something kill, one gory beast rushed towards Abel’s front. Abel wasn’t going to get too close to this melee type hell creature, though. As strong as he was, the fainting effect could still be very troublesome to him. Under such conditions, he didn’t feel comfortable placing his life entirely on his own defense.

Which left him with the choice of performing “instantaneous movement” on his own. By drawing himself away from the gory beasts, they shifted their targets to the eight spiritual guardian knights and the claystone guards. That was exactly what he needed. He didn’t have a lot of defense to begin with, so he needed to keep moving while exerting his specialty, which was the fact that he had a lot of output in his attacks. He would continue casting the “firewalls” at the feet of the hell creatures, meanwhile observing the changes in the life force of his summon creatures with his druid spirit. While doing all of that, his “lightning chain” would also be launched and stun whatever target that he was hitting. This way, the chance of his summon creatures being attacked was greatly reduced.

The battle ended really quickly. With his firewall and lightning chain, about a hundred gory beasts and ghouls died one after another. When the last one, the ghoul king, died, the ten-something unrotting ghouls started coming in. They were faced with the same attacks. The eight spiritual guardian knights and the claystone guard were put aside, so they didn’t take part in this fight.

One after another, the unrotting ghouls continued to explode from their insides. As the poisonous mist continued to spread in the air, this was when he picked up the corpses of the hell creature and put them into his personal storage box. The corpses of the hell creatures were not something that was acknowledged by the dark world, so even if he was putting a hundred of them in, the total would only take up to two slots in his personal storage box. Still, the ten slots he prepared for the upcoming battle were already filled with the things he prepared.

The corpses were casting the “resurrection of skeletons,” of course. The corpses needed to have a slight bit of vitality inside of them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t suffice as materials for the conjuring procedure. Thankfully, time remained stationary inside the personal storage box, which meant that as Abel put in the corpses that he had just slain, he would have a lot of ammunition for casting the spells.

Next up, his target was Duriel, a hell demon that was similar to Andariel. Come to think of it, the fight with Andariel still left him somewhat scared of what was to come. Anyways, he had to first focus on opening the passageway into Duriel’s room. To do that, he had to focus on the eight symbolic runes that were on the ground. He already had the key when he was synthesizing it with his Horadric Cube.

Abel took out the “Horadric staff” from his portal bracelet to activate the eight symbolic runes. He jammed it into the slot, and the eight symbols were immediately activated. A dim blue light started flashing, and the eight symbols lifted from the ground about ten centimeters. They started flashing brighter and brighter…so bright that he had problems staring straight into them.

At the same time, the floating symbols were starting to flash at the dim blue light towards the “Horadric staff” at the center. This way, when all eight streaks of light were received, a collected stream of energy would produce energy from the Horadric staff’s tip. It struck at the wall inside the tomb room. He could feel the entire tomb shake, and dust continued to fall from that very wall.

Boom.

When the energy pierced through the wall, a hole, big enough for a person to pass through, opened. Abel stared into the wall. He knew that the upcoming fight wasn’t going to be easy, so he channeled his power of the Will into his portal bracelet and put bottles of the “full recovery potions” into the belt portal bags.

Next, he took out the crows from his portal beast ring, something that he hadn’t used for a long time. Concerned about his powerful enemies, he decided to go with everything that he had at his disposal. Then, he took out his oak tree, which could greatly enhance his abilities and all his summon creatures. To protect himself, he added a layer of “shattered ice armor” buff and the “combat qi armor” buff on himself.

Lastly, he took out a hell creature’s corpse from his personal storage box. With another “resurrection of skeletons,” the ninth skeleton crawled out from the exploded corpse he took out. His maximum spell capacity was eight, but by wearing the snake’s magician skin, the +1 level effect was enough for him to gain an extra skeleton.

Instead of training this new skeleton to become a spiritual guardian knight, he was planning to use it as a sacrifice, something that would be sent purely for the purpose of testing what sort of attacks the enemies had. Once he readied everything, he began to bring all his summon creatures into the hole that was on the wall. The next thing that appeared in front of him was a giant tomb room. The room was pretty damaged. Apart from the wall painting, most of the art and decorations were buried in dirt and ruins.

Abel stepped on mud. It made him feel uncomfortable. When he was checking in on the tomb, he heard a terrifying scream. This was when he started to feel a change to the ground. The mud was starting to solidify. The air was getting cold. When he looked towards the direction where the sound was coming from, a giant insect with ten feet started rushing towards him.

As the insect continued to move, blue frost started to emerge in the air around it. There was something that Abel could see in its eyes. It felt the same as when he was fighting Andariel. The eyes were empty. It’s almost like the thing was dead. Rather, the lack of life in it just showed how little it cared for all that was alive.

As planned, Abel instructed the new skeleton and five crows to go in the front. He didn’t have to care for the crows that had the undead abilities. He was more concerned with how many attacks the skeleton could take from Duriel because that was going to indicate just how difficult the real fight was going to be.

As he thought hard about what was coming next, the skeleton already blocked Duriel’s frontal rush. The skeleton froze when a piece of blue frost appeared on it. Abel could feel a slight intrusion to his power of the Will, but his mental strength was strong enough to feel it as nothing more than a slight vibration.

“Sacred frost!”

He’s guessed that Duriel already possessed this ability, but seeing it still made him feel quite surprised. The skeleton he saw just then was summoned from a level 21 “resurrection of the skeleton” and a level 21 “command skeleton.” Even something of this caliber was killed in one hit. If he took the hit, he didn’t think that he would do very well.

Anyways, the easier way was to attack from a long distance. That much was clear. He shouldn’t get close to Duriel. The crows were the best example of that. When they landed on Duriel’s head, their bodies were immediately frozen and shattered. Some of the ones that were still flying fell, and as Duriel made a slight movement with its head, it hit the two and slammed them into the wall painting. This all happened very quickly, and that’s the worst part of it for Abel.

There must be a world stone fragment inside Duriel’s body. Abel had the same thing as well, so he knew how bad things could get from having one. The one he had given him acute visibility and digitizing visual ability, which made him perceive fast-moving objects as ones that were moving slowly. Everything he could see could be turned into numbers, and that made precision for everything to be a lot easier.

Without stopping what he was doing, Abel continued to think of more strategies. He picked up another corpse from his personal storage box, threw it on the ground, and another skeleton crawled out of the corpse. He produced another “firewall” spell rune in his one hand, then threw the firewall on Duriel’s feet. It was enough to make all ten of them slip for a bit, but Duriel was agile enough to dodge the actual hit.

Next up, the “sacred freezing” was cast again. Skeletons that came over were slowed once more. Duriel seemed to have no interest in them as it was only coming straight at Abel. The skeletons that were slowed down wanted to keep attacking, but the “sacred freezing” took them all down. Abel could see it clearly now. With the help of the world stone fragment, Duriel would have no fear for spells that were slightly slower.

Then, he took out another corpse from his personal storage box. Another skeleton was summoned, and when it blocked Duriel, he decided to hit with a “lightning” attack. It was too fast to be defended at all. Duriel was big and not that fast, so lightning was the easiest way of hitting it.

Still, just when Abel thought that the lightning would do something to Duriel, a layer of ice frost flashed across its body for defense. The lightning struck at the freezing frost, leaving countless small lightning arcs that continued to crawl onto Duriel but did no damage to it.

Abel was quite amazed by what he was seeing. He repeatedly took out corpses from the hell creatures, and when Duriel killed the newly spawned ones, more would come to help. At the same time, he would command his eight spiritual guardian knights and have them change into the “harmonious wind” rune bows.

Soon, eight arrows and one lightning streak flew towards where Duriel. The blue freezing frost emerged again. Since the tip of the arrows were laced with ice crystals, they became slow enough that Duriel could easily sweep it away with its front claws. And because of the ice crystals, the “harmonious wind” arrows had to be fired before their lightning could be activated.

So Abel’s own lightning spells were neutralized by the “sacred freezing.” When he realized that the “sacred freezing” was activated at the exact same timing as the “lightning” attacks, this could only mean one thing, and that was that the “sacred freezing” would only be able to neutralize the lightning as soon as the lightning was activated.

From there, a great sense of failure started to rise from Abel’s mind. There was a giant goal that’s right in front of him. It was not moving very fast, and even though he tried with his fastest spell, the “lightning” spell, and eight spiritual guardian knights that were wielding the “harmonious wind” bows, they didn’t really do much at all to Duriel whatsoever.

Duriel’s front claws continued to crush the skeletons in front of it. It was just close enough to Abel to make him feel threatened. Without a second thought, Abel used his “instantaneous movement’ and disappeared to the corner of the tomb room with his summon creatures. From there, he teleported again to the corner that was on the opposite side.