The Amber Sword volume 2 - Chapter 49

Chapter 49 – Fishing in troubled waters (1)
The gleaming white skeletons stopped at the same time and raised their bows, the steely bows uttering a groaning sound, before the strings were released.
The adventurers and mercenaries below finally realized the situation was a grave one, but the attacking Zombie Outlanders were forcing them back.
Brendel checked Romaine and Amandina’s position again, only to find they were missing. His heart raced quickly, and he smashed the chairs around him. The splinters flew over to the nearby Zombie Outlander who was fighting with Batum.
It was momentarily distract and Batum took the chance to cleave it into two. There was a thunderous clang as the Zombie Outlander’s armor was destroyed together with the body, and numerous silver light flew into Brendel’s body.
At the same time, Roen and Ciel managed to make the other Zombie Outlander retreat. Brendel shouted to them and they turned back.
“DId you see Romaine?”
“We’re here!” Romaine stood up with one hand waving at Brendel fearlessly, while the other hand was still being grabbed by Amandina.
“Stay down!” Brendel shouted, then he ordered Ciel next: “Ciel, Wall!”
Ciel understood the simple instruction and immediately raised a ruby up. Countless lines spread out from the ruby and extended everywhere. Ciel put his willpower into it and created a wall that extended fifty meters, covering both Amandina and Romaine.
Thousands of lines that formed glowed brightly and disappeared, and an Aerial Wall was formed.
The skeleton archers’ bows continuous firing sounded like there was a chaotic song of string instruments. The first barrage of arrows struck onto the nearest people, and they fell to the ground lifelessly, while the next barrage continued to fire onto the second and third row of people, causing them to slump over.
But Ciel saved even more people. Every time the arrows struck the wall, white light would glow from the area. The frequency of the glowing light increased as the arrows continued to pour onto it.
This wall finally seemed to wake the confused crowd. There were many wizard acolytes and low level Elementalists, and there were even mid-level wizards amongst them. They did not understand what happened earlier, but they finally understood they were under attack from the undead. They stood up and activated their rings and even chanted openly.
With the combined forces, light beams poured out from the windows and doors from the auction site. Then a series of explosions could be heard. Shockwaves carried bone fragments, dust and wooden splinters everywhere, and a few skull heads even reached Brendel’s feet, rolling near him.
Dust spread everywhere in the auction site, and he coughed twice. His sounds were drowned out by the constant yells around him. He pushed away a few stumbling mercenearies and shouted to the area above him.
“Ciel, Romaine, come down to my side!”
Brendel was worried that his voice did not reach the people above him, but Batum was holding onto to Roen who had lost consciousness, and he walked towards him from the smoke. Ciel, Amandina and Romaine was behind Batum. They were covered in dust, and Romaine looked like a painted fox with a thick layer of dust on her nose.
She stuck her tongue out.
“I thought I wouldn’t get affected if I was behind Ciel’s wall. I shouldn’t have stood up. Sorry about that, Brendel.” She acted like she learned from her lesson, but her face said otherwise.
Brendel smacked her head in exasperation. He looked at Amandina and replied.
“You should thank Miss Amandina later, but now is not the time. Here, take my hand, we’re leaving this place.”
The noble lady coughed and replied. “There’s no need for that.”
The girl raised her chin slightly up with a little pride. As nobility, she had more or less inherited the pride of Aouine’s old nobles. She had not told anyone yet, but her family’s crest was a vivid lily on top of a shield. This lily was the same as the Royal Family’s lily, and this meant that her family was a side branch of the royal family. Even though she was a fallen noble, but her blood still carried the royal blood.
It was also from the belongings of that ancient heritage, that she was able to design Magicite. Otherwise, she would not be able to think of the design based on her talent that was not prominent enough.
Amandina had never thought of admitting defeat, the worse her situation was, the more she wanted to bring back her family name. She was different from her father, and she was a determined girl ever since she was young.
Batum’s loud voice stopped her thoughts.
“Where should we leave, my lord? We don’t know how many of these undead are out there and where they came from. This idiot cripple even said that this place would be well protected, what a bunch of fucking horse shit—”
“We should leave from the back door.” Brendel surveyed the surroundings.
[Madara’s goals are probably Bruglas’s top nobles, so their targets should probably be the Boxes above us. At the same time… That three Zombie Outlanders clearly came for me. I don’t understand what I did to draw their attention. Perhaps the news that I led the refugees were leaked out? Ebdon was a mid level commander back then when I killed him, was it necessary to come after me?]
Brendel felt that his presence had started to affect the original history of The Amber Sword.
[ The numbers of the undead here are impressive enough to think that this had been planned for quite some time. If Incirsta actually predicted that I would come to the auction, that is impressive as hell. I can only hope that I’m just a bonus target that came here by accident. If I don’t move faster, then my advantages will gradually be lost.]
“I want to grab some of the items in the auction’s center stage.” Brendel said.
Ciel agreed with Brendel, and he actually analyzed some of the equipment and talked about some of the more important stuff to take. The stacked items that were left behind were like a treasure trove.
If Freya was here, she would have thrown a temper because of her righteousness. Unfortunately, she was still waiting at the Silver-Winged Cavalry headquarters to receive her rewards.
Even though Amandina was from a noble family, their qualities in this era were similar to a bandit, and she was also a very pragmatic person. When she heard of Ciel’s suggestions in picking up the items, she did not stop him at all, and immediately added in her own input to make sure that the plan was successful.
Batum did not care, and the underground auction was an illegal place anyway.
Romaine had only adventure in her mind, and as a ‘family advisor’ she would not object to Brendel’s actions.
Roen was only all too glad to participate in this plan. The more infamy he had, the better business would be in the Black Pepper Street.
Brendel looked at his ‘subordinates’ who was interested in earning a profit first before anything else. Under such a dangerous situation, he did not know whether this was a good or bad thing.
[Their actions remind me of my old nickname… ‘Sophie (Su Fei) the greedy’. Because I’m constantly out of money, I started to…… Well, after Aouine disappeared and I joined the Church as a knight, that nickname finally left me.]
(TL: Brendel’s original Chinese transliterated name is Su Fei. There’s a reason why I had to use Sophie right from the early chapters, still a pretty long way ahead for that reason to appear in the story, but in case readers get the shudders when remembering this old name, I added it in to make you feel better.)
But the fondness for danger lied deeply within his blood. Regardless of him being Sophie or Brendel in this life here, they were natural gamblers.
And because of his personality, he more or less had affected his party members. The only exception was Amandina, because she was actually similar to him.
The plan was quickly decided and they rushed straight to the center stage. They quickly found out that many people had the same idea like him, but the Zombie Outlanders were preventing them from approaching the stage.
Because Brendel had another fifteen Wind Spider Spirits, they were the first to break through the assassins and come onto the stage.
He first saw the dead auctioneer and his assistant lying in a pool of blood. The Fire Seed was already gone. This made him frown.
[Two possibilities. First, it’s the undead that took it. Second……]
He exchanged a glance with Ciel, and they both saw they had their own suspicions on this matter.
The Fire Seed was an unimaginable priceless item to most living sentient creatures, but it was not to the undead. Madara used the Soul Fire and the Soul Tower to expand their territory, and the Fire Seed had almost no value to them. This particular information was not known to the commoners, but Brendel and Ciel knew otherwise.
“Something is wrong.” Brendel immediately brought his sword up in a stance, and warned his allies behind him.
Ciel was also read to cast spells.
“What’s wrong?” Batum asked.
Just as he was asking, a huge object that was red in color descended from above and landed onto the ground. There was a loud crash as that object actually broke the wooden floor of the stage, and there was dust that flew up and cover the entire area.