Chapter 535: Eiji: Light of Saber!
"So many monsters!"
An exclamation burst from one of the adventurers.
Before anyone realized, a massive horde of monsters had surrounded Aqua—far more than those encircling the rest of the group.
Upon closer inspection, it seemed every single monster was chasing after Aqua, as if the undead were particularly drawn to her.
"Miss Aqua's divine aura is too intense. Undead instinctively seeking release naturally gravitate toward her, hoping she'll purify them," Wiz quietly explained to Eiji.
"I see."
Eiji finally understood.
"Absolute disaster!"
After grasping the situation, his belief that this goddess was nothing but trouble instantly doubled.
"Stay away from me!"
Kazuma Satou paled in horror as Aqua came charging toward them with an army of monsters in tow.
"How cruel! How could you say such a thing, Kazuma? Aren't we comrades fighting together to defeat the Demon King?" Aqua flared up in anger.
Eiji: "..."
"Last time you called me just a servant to defeat the Demon King and send you home! Now suddenly we're comrades?" Kazuma roared back, equally furious.
Eiji: "..."
"Fine! I don't need trash like Kazuma anyway!"
Aqua dashed into the formation at lightning speed, leaving the priests at the front lines—now facing hordes of undead monsters—with expressions of utter despair, and made her way straight to the center.
"O devout follower of Axis! Before you stands none other than the great leader of the Axis Cult, the goddess Aqua herself! I am currently in peril. If you protect me, I shall grant you divine blessings afterward, ensuring you drink only the purest water every day!"
She stopped right in front of Eiji, clasping her hands together in prayer.
For a moment, the overwhelming divine aura radiating from her genuinely made people mistake her for an actual goddess. Several adventurers stared at her in awe.
Thwack!
Eiji punched her.
With a crisp crack, the blue-haired goddess collapsed to the ground, a massive lump swelling on the back of her head as she instantly lost consciousness.
"Ah, satisfaction!"
Eiji exhaled in relief.
I've wanted to punch her for so long!
"L-Lady Aqua?! Are you alright?!" Wiz gasped in shock, immediately crouching down to cast healing magic on her.
"Why bother saving an idiot like her? Just let her sleep it off."
"How could you say that? That's blasphemy against a goddess!"
Eiji shook his head.
You're a lich. What's the point of respecting gods?
"That guy's amazing! He knocked out Aqua without hesitation!" Megumin exclaimed in astonishment. "Sometimes I want to punch her too, but she always dodges at the last second. I can never land a hit!"
"Aqua's stats have long been maxed out. There's no room left for growth," Darkness remarked, shaking her head before raising her sword and charging forward eagerly.
"Alright! I'll hold off the Death Knights!"
"Dammit! Why won't any of you listen to me?!" Kazuma groaned, once again failing to stop them, and could only watch Darkness's retreating figure in despair.
"Thank goodness, Megumin is behaving well this time!"
He glanced at the little red-haired girl still standing beside him. Seeing that she hadn't made any strange moves for quite some time, he finally sighed in relief.
"How's it going back there? We can't hold on much longer!"
The priest at the front had a face as pale as death.
It seemed like every monster in the castle had swarmed here. The pressure was so immense that two or three priests alone couldn't withstand it.
"Mr. Eiji, please take action! Use your magic to repel these monsters!"
The adventurer gripping a short sword looked at Wiz, who was casting healing spells on Aqua, then anxiously turned to Eiji for help.
"Very well."
Eiji raised his staff with a solemn expression.
After murmuring some incantations under his breath, he suddenly shouted:
"Light of Saber!"
A golden beam of light shot from his staff, resembling an advanced floating cannon, piercing through the undead monsters one by one. In mere seconds, it cleared out an entire area.
"Wow! That's amazing!"
"I remember this is an advanced light-attribute attack spell—incredibly powerful!"
The adventurers were greatly encouraged.
"This doesn't seem like the Light of Saber I know..."
Wiz stood up from the ground, a hint of confusion on her face.
"Magic varies based on personal understanding. Some differences are normal."
"No, not like this. If you misunderstand, you can't even learn it in the first place."
Wiz, a high-level archmage, stated with certainty.
Magic skills were different from other skills.
For ordinary skills, as long as you spent skill points to learn them, you naturally acquired them.
But magic skills were different.
Basic spells were easy—just one skill point to learn, and you could use them immediately. However, these were limited to spells like Create Water or Create Fire, which had almost no combat power and were only useful in daily life, so few people bothered learning them.
Intermediate spells already had decent power—earth magic could create stone golems, wind magic could form blades, and so on. These cost 10 skill points to learn, but again, you just needed to spend the points.
Advanced spells were different.
To learn an advanced spell, you first had to memorize its incantation, understand the flow of magical energy, and accumulate enough knowledge about that element.
Only after meeting these conditions would the advanced spell appear in your learnable skills list, requiring 30 skill points to master.
In other words, only by learning advanced spells could one truly be called an archmage.
Intermediate and basic spells were just skills at best. Only advanced spells reflected one's magical prowess—the deeper your understanding, the more advanced spells you could master, and the greater their power.
As Wiz had said, if your understanding of the spell was off, you couldn't even learn it.
"I say there are differences."
"Uh... alright, maybe there really are differences."
The moment she saw his cold, humorless expression, Wiz lost the will to argue.
It felt like he might demand "two billion" at any moment.
"Disaster! A horde of death knights is charging—dozens of them!"
"This is bad! Anyone below level 20, stay back!"
Looking up, I saw knights clad in rusted armor encasing snow-white skeletons converging from all directions. Those monsters exuded an intense aura of undeath, far more powerful than mere ghosts.
The priests at the front quickly retreated, replaced by high-ranking adventurers wielding weapons.
"Those are undead knights—subordinates of the Headless Knight! Novice adventurers stand no chance against them!" Wiz urgently shouted.
But it was already too late.
The undead knights charged into the corridor right behind the ghosts, reaching the front of the party before anyone could react. The monsters swiftly shattered the frontline defenses, scattering the formation into disarray.