Your Majesty's money, why don't you engrave my name on it?

Angelita pursed her lips, her entire right arm hanging unnaturally at her side, blood trickling down her sleeve, from her fingertips to the ground. This was the solution from a certain elven knight in the epic poem of the Guardian. It must be said that the most perfect swordsmanship of Corazonde was indeed the pinnacle. Even the elf's optimal solution required sacrificing his shoulder blade, and Angelita, even with the blessing of the epic poem, still couldn't reach that level, and would have to lose her entire arm as the price.

But in any case, this sword strike was not perfect!

Chapter 675 The Sword Saint's Formula

Rodrigo's sword drew a black right angle in the air, but this cunning trajectory failed to work because Shouzhi's long poem had turned into a shield, and he could only turn to deal with the Sea Song Blade coming from another angle.

If he were twenty years younger, no, even ten years younger, the Sword Saint was confident he could easily kill these two young opponents. But now he was over eighty, and that perfect sword strike had consumed a great deal of his energy; breaking through again wouldn't be easy. Moreover, the girl who had just joined the group possessed an astonishing number of tricks up her sleeve.

"Bang!" Swift Sword parried, precisely slicing a bullet fired from a pistol in half. However, a streak of emerald green flame immediately struck from Rodrigo's left. As the pistol was thrown aside, another arc of electricity appeared on his right. And just as the swordsman was about to counterattack after the emerald flame sword shot failed, a shield was erected in front of Angrita.

It was as if he was fighting a whole team of adventurers, while the opponent was clearly just one person!

Wait, just one person?

Rodrigo suddenly realized the significance of these dazzling but almost useless attacks. He hurriedly pulled away and lunged to the other side. However, as his front foot landed, Mary, who had been waiting for a long time, suddenly opened her eyes and moved one foot back to a position she had calculated beforehand.

This position is not unfamiliar to Rodriguez!

"Wait, that's not how it is!" The old swordsman instinctively called out a reminder, but his sword was faster than his voice, intercepting what he considered to be the "misaligned" point. In his view, Mary's current stance had a fatal flaw.

But Mary seemed to have anticipated this. As the two swords clashed, the tip of the Swift Sword pierced the hilt of the Rapier, and Mary used this opportunity to press down and entangle it. At the same time, she moved to the outside of Rodriguez. As the stronger part of the Sea Song Blade, closer to the hilt, pressed down on the weaker part of Rodriguez's blade, the old swordsman, eager to gain the upper hand, finally realized that he had made a fatal mistake.

"This is a trap!"

He hurriedly tried to withdraw his sword, but Mary moved even faster with each step. No matter how he changed his tactics, Mary always managed to bring the blade back close. Rodriguez watched her dazzling footsteps. It seemed that she wasn't following a single circle, but rather a more complex nested geometric pattern. This kind of regularity would obviously increase the burden on his mind, but correspondingly, it also trapped him in an even more inescapable web!

"I need to think about that sword strike again..." Mary's tone was quick and light, as unpredictable as the rapier in her hand, but in Rodrigo's eyes, countless curves and lines emanated from where Mary's heel landed, completely blocking about 70% of his possible responses.

Seventy percent, Rodriguez couldn't help but smile bitterly. Reaching this level was roughly equivalent to converting the number of minutes the other party had experienced into years.

However, the remaining 30% is crucial. If this single strike fails to completely seal off all possibilities, and the opponent perceives the turning point, then from a purely results-oriented perspective, this so-called 70% is practically zero. To perfect that remaining part, he transformed from a sword saint into an old sword saint, finally reaching the perfect 100%...

Ninety-nine percent, roughly.

Angrita's solution had greatly shocked Rodriguez. He could hardly imagine how the elf who created this solution had found this way out—the cost of injury was merely to pry open a small crack in the deadlock, while to truly break the deadlock, one had to make changes that would be difficult to do even under normal circumstances while injured.

However, he probably won't need to use this trick yet. As the saying goes, "an old dog can't learn a new trick," and at his age, learning on the spot is already extremely difficult. Besides, with only 70% success, he probably won't need it...

The old swordsman's pupils suddenly contracted. He realized that those complex curves and straight lines seemed to contain more than just a single circle.

This is a trap, a huge trap. This little girl not only tricked herself into it, but even the tangent circle under her feet was tricked into it at the same time, becoming part of all her calculations!

She plans to double the computational load in the same amount of time to improve accuracy?!

Rodriguez was stunned once again, but not by its ingenuity—quite the opposite, it was utterly absurd! It was no less than the early mathematicians and philosophers trying to find the circumference and area by infinitely dividing a circle! No less than adding countless 2s to find its hundredth power!

Are you really going to calculate it rigidly?!

“Only in this way can we obtain that constant…” Unlike the Sword Saint’s heightened sense of urgency, Mary seemed to be in a daze, as if immersed in her own world. But it was precisely because of this that she was able to surpass Rodriguez in both action and intellect. Although this series of calculations sounded extremely complex, in reality, it was only a matter of a flash. With two crisp sounds of blades clashing, the two figures approached and then separated.

The outcome is already decided.

Mary swayed, and the next moment her body slumped into Angelita's arms. Dark blood seeped from her mouth and nose, and even her ears were affected. The condition of her right hand, which was holding the Blade of the Sea Song, was even more dire. None of her five fingers could bend or turn in the normal direction; they twitched and trembled in some strange way, like a fish struggling to die on the shore.

"Mary! Mary!" Angelita hurriedly tried to wake her friend, who still seemed lost in thought, but all she got were incomprehensible murmurs of numbers like "36.2" and "0.43". Although the result was better than Rodri's perfect sword strike, the corresponding physical and mental burden was unbearable.

The "clumsy method" can always be used, but the difference between being usable and being effective is like an insurmountable chasm. If everyone who uses the Corazonde sword technique were like Mary, it wouldn't be long before this art could be displayed in a museum for future generations to admire as a lost art.

“Daisy, come quick, Daisy—” Instinctively, Angelita wanted to call for the bards’ help, but when she looked around, she found that they were still standing in the tomb, and Daisy was nowhere to be seen above or around.

“No need for that,” Rodrigo said, still standing there like a victor, though his voice was muffled and hoarse, as if he had a lump of phlegm stuck in his throat. “Your friend… won’t survive—but you should be able to.”

He slowly crouched down against the wall behind him, brushing the dust in front of him with his fingers. His trembling figure made him seem like an ordinary eighty-year-old man, or perhaps he had aged eighty years again. Angelita didn't dare to act rashly, fearing that he might have some other tricks up his sleeve.

But it seemed not; Rodriguez simply wrote a few lines of equations on the ground in front of him before losing all his strength.

He spread his legs apart, and as his fingers drew a final line on the ground, he sat there motionless.

A drop of red fell from his face, gradually gathering into a thin stream, and fell into the furrow he had finally drawn, precisely bypassing the equations he had left behind, without polluting them in the slightest.

Chapter 676 Daisy's Solution

"Little cutie, do you hear that? It sounds like someone is calling you outside—come out quickly, let me give you a quick death."

Meanwhile, on the other side, a skeleton carrying a magic wand sauntered across the palace corridor, which was now almost in ruins.

Chargigi's face, devoid of any flesh, revealed no expression, but if he could, his seemingly gentle persuasion would certainly be the complete opposite.

How could a great magician who had lived for countless years be deceived by the illusion of a bard? He even crawled through a dog hole for half a day!

Based on this alone, he had ample reason to kill her!

The only question now is, where exactly is Daisy hiding?

Behind a door concealed by collapsed ruins, the poet's trembling hands still attempt to mend the broken strings. But the force that caused them to snap is not a common physical factor, and now even if he wanted to mend them, it would take a great deal of time—even if he had to settle for abandoning the magic of the matte itself.

Zhengling's illusory figure stood opposite her, turning her gaze away from the battle outside the crumbling wall.

“Your situation is not good,” the devil said without lying. “The sword saint is dead, but it will be difficult for either Mary or Angelita to join the fight. Although you have stalled Chargigi long enough, if he loses interest in you and joins the melee, you don’t have much of a chance of winning.”

A "messenger" golem, dozens of meters away, thundered past the building, its movements punctuated by Raslaw's shouts. Destroying a colossal golem formed from an entire road was no easy feat; Daisy and Raslaw had witnessed firsthand just how long a road and how many lives were required to create such a golem.

But now only Raslaufer is facing them, and what is she doing here?

“That’ll do,” Daisy gritted her teeth, and in a fit of despair, she simply tied all the broken strings together in a knot. “As long as it makes a sound…”

It's pointless, the poet certainly understands. If tying a knot would make it work, she wouldn't have let it break until today. But now, clearly, there's no more time; she can't waste any more time here with that skeleton.

Her fingertips plucked the strings, producing two loud, grating sounds like a knife cutting through cowhide. But before Daisy could step out to face her opponent, a commotion erupted as countless rubble and debris were moved outside the door. The next moment, the acacia wand, like a heavy hammer, smashed a hole in the broken door, big enough to accommodate the skull.

"Hey hey, found you!"

"I've kept you occupied long enough!" Daisy swung her mattress and smashed it down, thunder roaring through the palace. At the same time, everything around seemed to freeze, becoming sluggish and slow.

This is a sign of insufficient control over magic; otherwise, the Slow spell would never have affected everything around it indiscriminately. However, even so, in this area where the flow of time has been slowed down by almost half, even though Daisy herself was affected, there were still beings who could move freely within it.

"boom--"

An explosion shattered the abnormal flow of time into fragments like bubbles, and Daisy, who was caught in the blast, was not spared. Her body flew out like a broken butterfly, falling from the upper floor of the palace building and crashing into the ruins below.

“Tsk, this thing is a bit too restrictive for me,” Chargigi said, still pointing at the wand, which was still emitting wisps of smoke. “But it’s fine, if I didn’t have this medium, I would have torn this skeleton apart by myself.”

Although he currently appears to be an undead creature from any angle, compared to ordinary skeletons, Chargigi's existence is even more fragile. Compared to his terrifying magical power, the negative energy connecting his various body parts is only a negligible fraction. Unless he absolutely needs to strengthen his resilience at this time, a better solution would be to use arcane magic to improve it in the future.

"Hey, you little dragon cub over there!" Chargiji shouted from upstairs towards the red dragon hatchling, "Go and dig that little guy out for me, I can't dig it myself!"

Hearing this ordering and shooing, the young dragon's eyes instantly turned fierce. It spewed thick black smoke from its mouth and nose at Chargigi in the distance, venting its dissatisfaction. In its heart, it had already secretly decided that once it grew a little bigger, it would burn this skeleton to ashes. However, what goodwill did the demon have towards it? Even the most magnanimous plan was to turn this young dragon into its servant or even slave.

Dragons reigning supreme again? Ha, only a fool would think that. Dragons are just incredibly useful henchmen.

Despite his reluctance, the red dragon was not a white dragon. Even as a cub, it knew how to assess the situation. The young dragon gave a wink to the two fire lizards beside it, and they immediately stepped forward and walked towards the pile of rubble where Daisy had been buried.

“Daisy…Daisy…”

Daisy listened in a daze. She seemed to want to open her eyes, but another part of her consciousness seemed to be preventing her from doing so.

Perhaps, just continuing to sleep like this isn't such a bad idea...?

The rubble was like a blanket, and the earth like a soft bed...

"Xu Zixuan! What time is it?!"

"Oh my god!" the poet almost screamed, instinctively looking up only to bump her head on the marble ceiling of the narrow triangular space. "Mom? What the hell are you doing?!"

When she came to her senses, she looked around. There were no blankets, no bed, and no family members. There was only a demon hovering in front of her, its dark eyes fixed on her.

“I think this will definitely work,” Zheng Ling said, before Daisy could say anything more. “There’s not much time left for you to remain unconscious, Daisy. They’re coming for you. You need to pull yourself together.”

"Cheer up?" Daisy coughed twice, and when she touched her face, her hand was covered in blood. "How can I cheer up? That old zombie is so much stronger than me! I don't even have a harp! Praying for the gods of Paradise Mountain to descend to earth is probably more useful than hoping for me to suddenly become powerful... Zhengling, look at me, I don't have the protagonist's halo!"

The devil watched her calmly, and even Daisy quieted down after her initial outburst. The two stared at each other, until the outermost layer of rubble was covered in rubble, where the sound of salamander claws striking stones grew louder and louder.

Actually, she could have had it, but after a certain point, Zheng Ling never mentioned it again.

“Alright, on the bright side, it’s all about casting spells with charm,” Daisy finally sighed, patting her cheeks with her blood-stained and pebbly hands. “Get me paper and pen, Zhengling. You’ll become a real devil.”

Chapter 677 The Shadow of Moy

The salamander's hot, sharp claws slicing through the rock once again produced a sizzling sound.

However, even as the rocks above were cut open, Daisy was still nowhere to be seen below.

"Hurry up, you big, clumsy fireball," Chargiji shouted, one foot on the edge of the upstairs opening, looking down. "Come on, you dragon cub, is this the speed of your minions? It's heartbreaking."

"what--"

The red dragon threateningly breathed fire at Chargigi, then urged the two fire lizards in Firefowl, asking them why they hadn't found the human woman by now.

Even the young dragon itself was puzzled: Chargiji hadn't buried her several kilometers underground all at once, so why was the digging so slow? Even if the human had escaped, it should have been discovered quickly—at least discovering that she was missing shouldn't have been difficult, right?

However, the salamander's response only added to the young dragon's confusion.

Below this is either peridot or obsidian, which requires a very high temperature to cut.

What does that mean? The young dragon looked at the not-so-luxurious palace building in front of him: like most buildings of the same type, its main building material should be marble.

Where exactly did Chargigi bury that human? Under the ruins of a building, or inside a volcano?

"Wait, something's not right!" Suddenly, Chargigi leaped down, landing as lightly as a feather between the two fire lizards, tilting his head back as if to take a deep breath—even though his nose was no longer on his face—"I smell sulfur—"

“That’s obvious—” the red dragon retorted, as these fire elemental creatures naturally had a sulfurous smell. However, the next second, Chargigi didn’t allow him to say anything more and suddenly plunged the golden Enlightenment Wand in his hand into the obsidian layer below, which had not even a sliver of a gap.

"Get out here!"

A deafening boom erupted from all sides around Chargigi, even sending the two fire lizards flying. The stone layer below was not spared either, easily pulverized into countless specks of dust that dissipated in the wind. The figure below was thus revealed—it was Daisy.

?

The flames in Chargigi's eyes contracted and flickered. The instant he sensed the anomaly, he leaped into the air, hovering several tens of meters above the ground. The commotion even attracted Dragonfinger Fidel, who temporarily set aside his work to come and investigate.

Under the watchful eyes of the two of them and the red dragon cub, a pair of enormous, dark red bat wings slowly unfurled beneath the shattered rock. As the defensive magic behind them dissipated, a breathtakingly beautiful face turned around, revealing a mocking smile to them.

That face once captivated a monarch from another world, but now, two truly jagged horns have sprouted above her brow bone. The facial details, so different from her mortal days and even from not long ago, such as the few scales and bone plates half-buried under her skin, and her eyes burning with real flames, proclaim her uniqueness.

"Devil!" Dragon Finger Fidel looked half astonished and half furious. "I made an agreement with you. You can't interfere with our business! Damn it, no matter which level of hell you came from, you couldn't possibly not know that!"

“I know that contract,” Zheng Ling laughed coldly and cunningly. “Indeed, it stipulates that the devil cannot interfere, but when I interfere, I have not yet truly become a devil, so the terms you claim do not apply to me.”

“But you are now,” Chargigi said coldly, his previous nonchalant tone gone. “The terms should bind you now.”

The devil's involvement is definitely not a good sign, especially for Chargigi himself.

Zheng Ling spread her arms wide and bowed exaggeratedly upwards, but without a trace of respect: "That's true. So, I have no intention of interfering—I'll leave now."

Having said that, she didn't linger at all and vanished into thin air in an instant, leaving without the slightest hesitation!

The devil has always had his tricks up his sleeve, but her departure still brought a slight sigh of relief to everyone, until they saw Daisy, who was now exposed to their view because of Zhengling's departure.

She appeared no different from before, except for the addition of a floating ancient zither in front of her. However, as the two powerful mages in mid-air viewed her from the perspective of spiritual light, they were astonished to discover that the dark magic around Daisy was almost tangible, transforming into a continuous range of obsidian mountains around her!

"She's made a pact with that devil!" Fidel shouted. "I'll take your patriarch to the court of hell—"

"Quiet!"

Daisy's fingers plucked each string in turn, producing a tremendous sound that was in no way inferior to the magic Chargigi had just cast: "From now on, only I can speak!"

Her voice was filled with immense magic, so much so that even the red dragon hatchling whimpered and prostrated itself on the ground under its pressure. Needless to say, the other creatures around were even less affected. Among all the beings around, only the two spellcasters in mid-air remained unharmed.

Fidel stared at Daisy with a grim expression, while Chargigi made his move directly. Seven beams of starlight descended upon his head like a crown, and as his wand pointed, they immediately fell, heading straight for Daisy.

If it were the Daisy of the past, she would never have been able to resist this power, but at this moment she only responded with contempt. As the music flowed like water, the shadow of the flames enveloped her entire body in an instant. The brilliant starlight fell into it, just like a needle and thread falling into the deep sea, silently and without causing the slightest ripple.

"How could this be—" This time, it was Chargigi's turn to be shocked: even if she had obtained powerful strength from the devil out of thin air, it would be impossible for her to control it immediately and without any hindrance, let alone how she could so easily determine the power attribute of her spell and make such an accurate defense?!

She had never even come into contact with this level of power before! Even if Chargigi didn't know the details of the shadow-concealing spell, she could still recognize that this protection would prevent the power of light from working on Daisy as normally.

How did she "guess" that he, as an undead, would choose to use light magic?!

“No need to be so surprised,” Daisy gave him an unsettling smile, her eyes now as deep as two black holes. “Even if you haven’t eaten pork, you’ve seen a pig running group, right? The Crown of the Stars of the Seventh Ring, and the Shadow of Moy, though only a Fourth Ring, is enough to create resistance.”

"—Now, even if I go first and get 1, it's my turn, isn't it? Let's try a slow movement—let me plunge straight into nightmares!"

A prison that existed only in Chargigi's field of vision instantly imprisoned his body and soul within it!

Chapter 678 The Next Question

What kind of hellish "prison" is this?!

As an arcane spellcaster, Chargigi's mental strength was extremely powerful, and he would not be deceived by a ridiculous illusion. However, this time, even he couldn't help but wonder if it was not entirely due to his mental strength—what kind of prison were these ridiculous pink stars and yellow squares around him!