The story of the black silk female knight

Valensa's smile deepened, and she quickly took Loloa's hand to help her up.

"Come on, I'll go with you to the lounge to shower, then you can change into some new clothes, and we'll continue... Don't worry about the wear and tear on the clothes, whether it's nun's clothes from the church or other clothes, I'll make sure you have enough."

...So you're planning to use that trick again to rip my clothes off, huh?

Loloa gritted her teeth. If it weren't for actual combat, she definitely wouldn't be able to beat Valensa. Right now, she really wanted to punch that pretty face.

Don't think I don't know you're a lesbian! You're taking advantage of me! I prefer strong, healthy men, so stay away from me, you lesbian!

Despite her inner turmoil, Loloa still agreed to Valensa's training request.

Firstly, her status made it difficult for her to refuse Valensa… In the Church of the Sun, Valensa was undoubtedly her superior. However, within the Nora Merchant Guild's duelist ranks, she was a salaried employee, while Valensa was her boss's friend; she was still of lower status.

Secondly, Roloa is also a woman, and she's petty. Valensa bullied her like that, so of course she wanted to get revenge. But she wasn't as strong or as high-ranking as Valensa, so all she could do was crush Valensa in the match to get revenge.

Loloa was still very confident in herself. She thought that Valensa was only able to win because she was caught off guard by those shameless and underhanded tricks. Once she was on guard, she would definitely not lose again!

So the training match resumed and lasted all afternoon.

But things didn't go as smoothly as Roloa had imagined.

After she became more prepared, she was no longer easily defeated by Valensa's magic combo, but she still lost many games to Valensa, with the number of wins and losses being roughly equal... Even when she won, it was a narrow victory.

In a training match a few days ago, Roloa was able to completely crush Valensa 10-0.

Valencia's significant improvement in performance can be attributed entirely to those four magic tricks.

[Slippery feet], [Mysterious bulge], [Updraft], and [Dress ripped].

These are all tricks that Friggia used to flirt with her maids when she was a goddess, and you can tell from the names that they are quite improper.

While the destructive power of these tricks is negligible, the threshold for mastering them is definitely not low. In particular, those tricks that can be activated simply by locking onto the target with one's gaze, without any incantations or magical energy, require a special bloodline or exceptionally strong magical talent.

The "Slippery Feet" and "Mysterious Protrusion" are a magic trick combination, with the same effect as what Valensa used on Roloa. Simply put, it's about making a cute girl slip and then taking the opportunity to create small stones on the ground to poke her in her groin, in order to achieve the purpose of bullying her... It's absolutely wicked.

However, after trying them herself, Valensa felt that the two tricks were quite effective when used alone. The main purpose was to affect the opponent's footing, causing them to lose their balance by sliding or tripping.

The two tricks, [Updraft] and [Dress Burst], must be used as part of a combo and only work on girls wearing skirts.

Just like [Slippery Foot] and [Mysterious Protrusion] are essentially very weak but very flexible water and earth spells, [Updraft] and [Dress Burst] are essentially wind spells.

However, while this wind-based spell is incredibly flexible, its power is far too weak... The [Updraft] can barely lift anything except a woman's skirt, and it can't even affect the balance of an opponent in mid-air.

The "dress bursting" effect requires a successful hit from an "updraft" to detonate the air blown into the target clothing through the skirt, thus achieving the effect of the clothing bursting.

The effect of this combination move is quite obvious. As long as the opponent is a woman with some sense of shame, she will inevitably panic when her clothes are torn off on the field, and that will be Valensa's chance to win.

If this tactic were used in a proper duel, it would definitely be met with angry criticism for being unsportsmanlike.

But in commercial competitions where the goal is to please the audience and get them to spend money... the audience and the organizers will definitely love this tactic and let Valencia use it on the female duelists a few more times.

Being defeated by the combination of [Updraft] and [Dress Rupture] was undoubtedly very humiliating, and Roloa paid attention to guarding against this move in the following training sessions.

But the ability of Tricks to lock onto targets with their gaze and to be cast instantly without warning means that even if you are on guard, you can't necessarily defend against it... In the following ten or so training matches, Valensa destroyed two more of Roloa's outfits.

Even if one could actually defend against those tricks, doing so would require a great deal of concentration, which would significantly reduce the deterrent effect of a direct confrontation, allowing Valensa to defeat one of them with proper dueling techniques.

Chapter 16 Big News at the Royal Palace Banquet

Great ability.

This is Serant's assessment of Valensa's magic tricks, given by Serant, a former top-eight duelist and current coach.

[Updraft] and [Dress Rupture] need no further explanation; if they hit an opponent with a sense of shame, it's almost an instant kill.

[Slippery Foot] and [Mysterious Protrusion] are both favored by Serant. These tricks are difficult to prevent because they are launched without any warning, and they do not affect Valensa's normal fighting rhythm.

Since a magic trick only requires a glance and a thought, Valencia can coordinate her hand and foot movements with the magic trick, seizing the moment when her opponent loses balance to expand her advantage or defeat her opponent directly.

This is an excellent ability that is difficult for opponents to counter even if they have prior knowledge of the information.

Of course, the combination of [Updraft] and [Dress Burst] can be countered, and it's quite easy to counter... just don't wear a skirt.

In a serious duel, duelists who know Valenza has these skills would definitely choose to wear tights when facing her.

However, America's dueling competitions are commercial events; everything is for entertainment, for making money from the audience, and for promoting the various chambers of commerce participating in the events.

Just like the idol girls in Valensa's previous life who almost always wore miniskirts when performing on stage, the beautiful girl contestants in the dueling are also dressed in a hot and daring style, or like Valensa's black stockings and silver armor paladin outfit, which has a special allure brought by her status.

Simply put, the beautiful girls participating in the dueling competitions almost always have to wear short skirts... Even if they don't want to wear them, the business associations that sponsor their competitions will force them to.

In short, the tricks that Friggia used to flirt with her maids were perfect for Valensa to use in America's dueling tournaments.

. . . . .

The royal banquet on New Year's Eve this year was largely the same as last year.

The biggest difference is that after Valensa became the Duchess of the Sunflower, she could no longer mingle with Tia among the noble families in the side hall to attend the banquet. She had to stay in the main hall, dine with His Majesty the King along with other ministers of the kingdom, and listen to His Majesty talk at length about France's development plans for the new year.

The title of duchess is almost the lowest among the nobles who can attend the royal banquet.

However, no other nobles dared to cause trouble for Valensa... Valensa and Tia were publicly engaged, and with the Britannia family and the strategist as her backers, most minor nobles felt they couldn't afford to offend Valensa.

The family's influence was not afraid of the great nobles of Britannia, and they all knew more or less about Valensa's identity as a Knight of the Inner Temple... This identity was even more significant, and no one wanted to invite trouble.

So Valensa's first royal banquet in the main hall went quite smoothly. She gained a lot of knowledge and also took the opportunity to become acquainted with many of the kingdom's ministers.

During this royal banquet, in addition to outlining the kingdom's development plans for the new year as they do every year, His Majesty the King and His Highness the Crown Prince also announced a major event.

Princess Elses Fran will lead a delegation to America after the New Year to enhance friendship between the two countries and discuss further cooperation.

Of course, this is the high-sounding explanation, but the subtext is clear to everyone—because Her Highness was too dissolute and had a terrible reputation in the past, all the young noblemen in the country disliked her, so Her Highness, having failed in her arranged marriages, had no choice but to go to America to find someone to marry.

This kind of thing is not new in Franzian history. Marrying into friendly countries is one of the duties of royal princesses. There have been quite a few Franzian princesses who married into the Four Islands Alliance and America in the past, so it is normal for Elses to be added to the list now.

Of course, Valensa was well aware that Elsers's blind date with America was just an excuse; her real goal was to participate in the hunt for the Netherworld Clan in order to obtain enough Netherworld spinal cord to forge a sword that could control the undead.

The Netherworld race lives on the polar ice plains north of America, and together with the Wild Beasts and the Mist Demons, they are known as the Three Calamities of the Frenoia continent.

The Wild Beasts are called natural disasters because they are difficult to eradicate and have an extremely high reproductive capacity. Every year, millions of them are wiped out by the Fran, and they can still launch wars of the same scale the following autumn.

The autumn war in France now seems relatively easy because the two sides have been fighting for over a thousand years, and the French military has a wealth of experience and an almost impenetrable fortress defense.

Before the fortified defenses in the north were established, every autumn was an eternity for Fran, and they almost lost their northern territories several times... In the end, it was only with the support of the Church of the Sun from the continent of God's Blessing that the wild beasts were driven back to the desolate lands.

The name "natural disaster" bestowed upon the wild beasts is absolutely well-deserved.

Needless to say, the fog demons from the sea have been ravaging the Four Islands Alliance and human coastal towns for thousands of years. Yet, humans don't even know what the fog demons are, where they come from, or what their purpose is. They can only be on high alert and passively defend themselves during every foggy day.

In many towns near the coast, especially those in the Four Islands Alliance, many people are terrified when they hear that fog is coming... not just children, but adults too!

As a race comparable to wild beasts and mist demons, the Netherworld Ghost Clan is naturally not weak... Although the individual numbers of the Netherworld Ghost Clan are not large, and they spend more than eight months of the year in hibernation, their threat is by no means inferior.

Although Friggia's research now indicates that the Netherworld race is actually a living species, before this, people had always regarded the Netherworld race as high-level undead... the kind of perfect undead that are not afraid of holy light or other undead weaknesses.

This misconception is naturally related to the abilities of the Netherworld Clan.

Just as dragonblood sorcerers are born with the ability to cast dragon breath spells using spell-like abilities, the Netherworld race is born with the ability to use various necromancy spells, creating and controlling the undead almost without limit.

Somewhat like the Hive Zombies in Valencia's previous bio-apocalyptic works, even the most ordinary individual among the Netherworld Clan has the potential to destroy an entire human town.

Even the Undead Plague of the Netherworld Clan is more terrifying than the zombie virus... The zombie virus requires zombies to bite or scratch humans to infect them, while the Undead Plague of the Netherworld Clan is similar to an aura effect in a game. As long as humans enter the affected area, they will be transformed into undead if their resistance is not strong enough!

The Netherworld race is also intelligent, and some of the more wicked Netherworld race members love to infiltrate a populous human town, spread undead plagues, and destroy human civilization!

Chapter 17 From the Depths of the Ice Plains

For a considerable period of time, America suffered greatly at the hands of the Hades.

Not only were many towns destroyed by the rampage of the Netherworld Clan, but many more Americas died at the hands of humans themselves.

Just like the witch hunt in Valencia's previous life, during that time the American people were terrified of the Netherworld race. They believed in the principle of "better to kill the innocent than let the guilty go free" and killed and burned anyone suspected of being a Netherworld race. As a result, almost no Netherworld race were actually killed, but countless wronged souls were created instead.

There's nothing we can do about it... Apart from having whiter skin, the Netherworld Ghosts are indistinguishable from humans in appearance, somewhat like vampires, but without the vampires' weaknesses.

Even the paladins and priests of the Church of the Sun had no reliable means to distinguish between the Netherworld race and humans.

It wasn't until the Council of Sages made initial breakthroughs in their research on the bodies of the Netherworld race that a special potion capable of identifying them was invented. This significantly curbed the Netherworld race's favorite practice of infiltrating human towns and spreading undead plague.

However, even with the availability of potions that can identify the Netherworld Clan, the risk of them infiltrating towns and spreading the undead plague still exists and cannot be ignored.

Therefore, in order to minimize the disasters caused by the Netherworld Clan, hundreds of years ago, America not only strictly guarded the entrances and exits of the town, but also took the initiative to hunt the Netherworld Clan.

For some reason that remains unexplained, the Netherworld race spends more than eight months of the year in a state of hibernation in their lair.

This is the best hunting opportunity for humans... Every year during the hibernation period of the Netherworld Clan, America would send out a large number of hunting teams or even regular troops to hunt on the outskirts of the polar ice fields, to find and eliminate the Netherworld Clan members hibernating in their nests.

Unfortunately, just as Fran was unable to eradicate the Wild Beasts, America was unable to completely eliminate the Netherworld Clan no matter how hard she hunted.

Because the outer perimeter of the polar ice field is like a remote rural area for humans, their true settlement is in the interior and central area of ​​the polar ice field... There are even legends that deep within the ice field, there exists a huge Netherworld city entirely made of ice and snow.

But it's just a legend; no one has ever seen it with their own eyes... or rather, those who might have seen that city of the Netherworld Ghosts never managed to leave the polar ice field.

Inside and in the central region of the polar ice cap, temperatures consistently remain below -100 degrees Celsius. Even a powerful expert at the Shining Rank would experience a significant reduction in combat effectiveness in such an environment. Lighthouses and Pearls would be as fragile as ordinary people, while those below the Pearl would have absolutely no chance of survival.

Therefore, the humans of America can only hunt on the outskirts of the polar ice fields to minimize the harm caused by the Netherworld Clan.

When Elseris goes on her mission to America, she will bring a Farran army to participate in the hunt against the Hades, as a gesture of friendship and goodwill as fellow human nations.

Of course, their real target was the marrow of the Netherworld race, which they used to forge weapons that could control the undead.

According to Friggia, the special substance in the spinal cord of the Netherworld race is actually a technological achievement of the peak period of the Eve civilization.

That was also one of the methods used by the Eve civilization to combat the cataclysm. It was a combination of biotechnology, alchemy, and necromancy, with the aim of transforming living beings into self-aware undead.

The Eve civilization's initial motivation for doing this was actually quite simple... They believed that since the essence of the catastrophe was energy depletion, they should be able to survive the catastrophe by turning people into undead who could live without food.

As it turned out, that wouldn't work... While undead creatures do not need food, they still require energy to maintain their activity. In that cataclysmic event of universal energy depletion, even the undead, who theoretically do not need rest, would cease activity due to energy loss.

How Eve's failed undead project evolved into the Ghost Clan of today is unclear to Friedia. However, after obtaining the corpses of the Ghost Clan members, Friedia has fully deciphered the secret of how the Ghost Clan controls the undead.

The necromancer's control of the undead is essentially a puppet show with magic as its threads... When the threads break, the puppet stops moving, and the same goes for when the puppeteer is killed.

The Netherworld race is different; the undead they create all possess self-awareness... Even those undead that are too low-level to form self-awareness will have survival instincts, such as eating and evolving.

Objectively speaking, such undead creatures can also be considered as a kind of living entity.

The method by which the Netherworld race controls these undead creatures is not as brutal as a necromancer directly taking over the body with mental power, but rather through a kind of biological information that governs emotions.

The undead controlled by the Netherworld Clan are, objectively speaking, actually free.

However, these undead have a very special and strong feeling towards the Netherworld race.

It's like a shy young boy who is completely obedient to the girl he has a crush on.

It's like a fanatical fan who loses all reason and blindly obeys their idol.

It's like a devout believer having unwavering faith in God's will when facing a clergyman.

It is by using special biological information to control emotions that the Netherworld Clan is able to control those undead who are theoretically free.

The organ through which the Netherworld race can generate this biological information is their spinal cord.

Therefore, theoretically speaking, if a weapon could be forged from the spinal cord of the Netherworld race, one could rule over the undead just like the Netherworld race.

For example, if Elsers's plan goes smoothly, an undead army will become her crazy simps, mindless fans, and devout believers, thus being completely dominated by her.

In this way, Elsers will no longer be troubled by the forced marriage, Valensa and Tia will have another reliable ally in the royal family, and the plan to exterminate the wild beasts can proceed smoothly. It can be said that everyone is happy.

Therefore, Valensa took America's hunting expedition against the Hades very seriously.

Acquiring the Rainbow Giant Chicken, hunting the Netherworld Clan, and searching for Savat Landon were Valensa and Tia's three most important objectives in going to America.

Of course, if we were to rank these three goals, the most important one would be to acquire the Extreme Color Giant Chicken.

Because an army of Farran was also involved in the hunt for the Netherworld Clan, and the main force searching for Savat Landon was the Church of the Sun and the Sage's Tower, even if Valensa and Tia did not participate, there was still a high probability of success.

Obtaining the Brilliant Giant Chicken from that collector was something Valensa and Tia had to figure out on their own.

After obtaining information about the Rainbow Giant Chicken, Valensa and Tia had been trying to find out more about the collector.

Unfortunately, they were merely the inner paladins of Fran and the heirs of Fran's Britannia, and all intelligence channels were not very effective in America... Several days had passed, and they had not obtained any valuable information.

Chapter 18 Preparations for Departure

The Church of the Sun has detailed information about that collector in its database, and Valensa can access it with her own access privileges.

But how should I put it... like Valencia's personal file from her previous life, this kind of information mainly records a person's resume and family relationships. As for personal privacy and hobbies, the information is quite limited.

Valensa could only find out about the collector's identity, status, and approximate strength through the Sun Church's database; she knew very little about his preferences and personality.

Valensa is determined to get the Rainbow Giant Chicken, but she doesn't want to resort to force unless she has no other choice. Acquiring it through a trade would be the best option.