Chapter 249 - Meeting With Ans
249 Meeting With Ans
Although he made the declaration, the Priest could only sigh helplessly when everybody looked at him eagerly.
After all, nobody in the team was capable of Dispel except him.
Putting down his skewers, the Priest waved his hands again and again. After his every performance, the light on Roland would grow dimmer. Everybody counted the tries.
After ten times, the Priest stopped.
But the magic light on Roland was still quite bright.
At this point, Hawk shouted, "Go on! We'd like to see how many times it requires to remove the buff. You'd better finish what you started! Are you out of magic power?"
Everybody else nodded in agreement.
The Priest lowered his head gloomily. "I have magic power, but I'm out of my spellcasting quota."
Then, everybody finally remembered that the Priests and the Warlocks could only cast their spells limited times in a day.
When their levels were higher, their quota would be increased, and they could pick up new spells. However, when their levels were still low, they were often caught in the awkward situation where they used up their quota.
For example, the level-five Priest could only cast Dispel ten times a day.
Everybody sighed in disappointment.
The Priest was even more disappointed.
Supposedly, the Priests were a player-friendly class. They could obtain EXP by praying to the goddess's statue every day. The divine skills they learned were random but highly practical. Most importantly, the Priests were also good with melee abilities and could put on armor, shields, etc.
However, it did not seem as impressive as this Mage.
As Deputy Chairman of his guild, Hawk wouldn't let his companion be embarrassed for long. He stood up and said, "Roland, cast it on me and let me try it."
Hawk was enshrouded in a white light. Two seconds later, he felt extremely weird. Then, he roared like a chimpanzee and jumped off from the third floor.
Everybody ran to the edge of the roof and looked down.
In the moonlight, Hawk, who looked like a gigantic chimpanzee, had embraced a short tree around thirty centimeters in diameter and was exerting his strength.
All over his body, his muscles were protruding and twisting like hard rocks.
Dull cracks spread in the soil as the roots of the tree were torn up.
Eventually, the tree was completely plucked from the ground.
"Damn it. You are a living Lu Zhishen[1]!" Betta exclaimed.
"WThe willows are generally no more than twenty centimeters in diameter. This is much more impressive." Link's eyes were full of delight.
Margret snorted in disdain.
However strong a human being was, they could never compare to a dragon.
Everybody thought that Hawk was done after he showed his strength by plucking the tree, but then he began to spin the tree.
Wind was roaring, pebbles were flying, and all the smaller trees were breaking. From where Hawk was standing, explosive sounds burst out amidst shattered branches and leaves.
A lot of the pebbles scattered toward the players even though they were on the third floor.
"Shoot. This Whirlwind Slash is rather powerful." Schuck clicked his tongue in amazement.
The disdain on Margret's face was gone.
If Hawk were holding a giant sword, she would've been hurt if she were hit by such a Whirlwind Slash in her dragon form.
After reducing the environment into a complete mess, Hawk was finally somewhat exhausted. He threw the tree, whose crown was already bare, to the ground and ran back to the roof. While catching his breath, he shouted, "It's really satisfying!"
Though it was Hawk who gave the performance, everybody focused their eyes on Roland, because Hawk couldn't have done it without Roland's spell.
Noticing their excitement, Roland shrugged and cast Body Fortification on every one of them.
For a whole night, those people sabotaged the wood and played freely.
Not only were they plucking and spinning trees, some of them even broke trees with their bare hands.
Hawk even did frog jumps while holding two boulders weighing more than fifty kilograms.
They were truly hilarious.
By morning, they'd finally had enough fun, and they resumed the journey after breakfast.
The drivers did not look great, as they barely slept last night while the players were horsing around.
However, they dared not complain at all. What could they say to a bunch of professionals who plucked trees for fun and paid them money?
On the rest of the journey, Roland began to study Dimensional Anchor.
Then, he realized that it was more difficult than Long-Distance Teleportation.
The main problem was that the connection in the model seemed wrong. He failed every time he cast the spell according to the node connection in the model.
Thankfully, Dimensional Anchor was not an offensive spell, and there was no danger even if he failed.
Nevertheless, his research on Dimensional Anchor was stymied.
Since it was rather difficult to stay concentrated in a shaking carriage, Roland abandoned his magic studies and turned to the forum.
A journey was only a journey when you had things to do.
Time flew. In the blink of an eye, they had spent a fortnight eating, drinking, laughing, and playing, and they reached the edge of the Elf Forest.
Roland played an irreplaceable role on the way.
The temporary houses built with Mud to Stone could keep them safe from rain and storms. Only the seasoned travelers knew how comfortable it felt to have a roof above their head.
When they passed Urganda, Roland's Unhindered Communication proved useful again.
Naturally, the language of Urganda was different from Hollevin's.
Although Betta was capable of Language Proficiency, he could only cast it five times in a day, and its duration was shorter than Roland's.
After Roland cast the spell once, it would be effective for most of the day.
More importantly, Unhindered Communication allowed them to read too.
So luckily, they did not turn dumb and deaf in Urganda.
One other thing made all the members of the team feel that it was really the right decision to have Roland in their team.
Three days earlier, they had to pass a river when they crossed the border of Urganda. Unfortunately, due to a storm a few days before, the river had surged and collapsed the bridge. Though the river was no longer as turbulent as before, it was still impossible for the players to pass without a bridge.
Also, there were only four days to go before the deadline.
They couldn't afford wasting their time here.
Hawk suggested that Margret carry the team across the river one by one, but then Margret burst into fury, changed into her dragon form, and whipped Hawk with her tail.
Hawk was flung a dozen meters away. Thankfully, he was sturdy enough and not badly hurt.
Margret would've kept beating him if Schuck hadn't stopped and appeased her. Finally, she changed back to her human form.
A dragon would only let her knight ride her. Nobody else could be on her back. It was a matter of principle.
Hawk hadn't been clear about it before. After Schuck explained it to him, he apologized to Margret and Schuck.
When nobody knew what to do, Roland stood out.
Using up all his magic power, he created a bridge of ice above the river with a span of more than a hundred meters.
Because the current was still quite rapid, the ice bridge had to be tough, which was even more exhausting.
Thankfully, Roland made it in the end.
The players reached the other side of the river, followed by a few particularly bold convoys.
After crossing the border of Urganda, the players arrived at the Elf Forest.
It took them two days before they found the rendezvous they agreed upon.
In front of them was a dense forest. The air here was damp, warm, and comforting.
This place was a boundary between the prairie and the forest. Their feet were buried in the green grasses, and unknown flowers bloomed around them.
Emitting a faint fragrance, the white and red flowers attracted colorful butterflies to them.
They waited for a long time, but nobody came. When they were puzzled, they noticed a black spot drawing near from above.
The stranger landed before them about three minutes later.
It was a male elf, who had a green ponytail, watery eyes, and crescent-shaped eyebrows.
Those were the features of a pretty girl, but the stranger was a male elf.
All the humans lightly gasped.
This male elf could be described as gorgeous from every perspective.
In Roland's eyes, this elf was even more beautiful than Antis. He was almost on par with the queen in moonlight in terms of appearance and aura.
The elf was rather cold. He eyed everybody as if they owed him three hundred gold coins, but it did not affect his attractiveness at all.
"You're the Golden Sons who are willing to take my mission?" The elf looked around and then fixed his eyes on Betta. "Mr. Human, would you like to introduce yourselves?"
Betta was slightly surprised, and so were the rest. Why would the elf think that Betta, instead of Hawk, was their "leader"?
Roland thought for a moment and realized that it must be because of the characteristics of the Divine Noble.
In the eyes of the NPCs, Betta was a noble, and as his level increased, he would become more and more like one.
Betta remembered his class features too. He smiled and said, "Who we are doesn't matter as long as we can complete your mission. You must be Ans, right?"
Ans nodded.
Betta asked again, "Can we know the details of your mission, so that we can make pertinent preparations?"
"Not a problem." Ans looked at everybody with his hands behind him, before he nodded and said, "You should prepare. Please follow me."
He led the way, and everybody found that wherever Ans went, the grasses would split apart in advance, as if they were making way for him.
Elves were indeed the children of nature.
Ans took the team into the forest. After a few minutes, they reached a lodge next to a lake surrounded by dense trees.
The lodge looked small from the outside, but when they got in, they found that it was rather spacious.
It was furnished with wood, emitting the aroma of trees.
Ans asked everybody to take a seat. He closed his eyes for a while, then opened them and said, "Actually, I'm not a conservative. I belong to Nature's Wrath, an organization of the radicals."
[1] a fictional character who plucked a willow to demonstrate his strength.