The Trial Game of Life – Chapter 162

Table of Contents | Character Guide

Chapter 162: Sword of Judgment (9)

Tang Cuo, a professional at shooting fireballs, relied on his powerful soul strength that was far better than that of ordinary people. He commanded the surrounding fire elements to gather together with an attitude of borderline arrogance, then fiercely compressed them.

To the fire elements, he was acting like a cruel tyrant, and the affinity between the two of them shrank as a result. But Tang Cuo didn’t care. He only needed this fireball to exist for one second.

“Go.” Done with the compression, Tang Cuo immediately threw the fireball. Due to the lack of bonding between the fire elements, the fireball showed signs of collapse, but one second was enough for it to hit the target.

“Bang!” A large hole was blown out of the wall opposite him. Although it wasn’t as powerful as Roger Reeds’, it was pretty impressive regardless.

Roger Reeds’ eyebrows twitched slightly. Achieving such immense power within such a short period of time indeed proved that he had a massive talent. But such a simple and crude approach could easily lead to backlash and hurt his mind power. He turned around — Tang Cuo’s expression remained as usual.

Well, this descendant of the White Knight family surely carried the potential to cause lots of chaos later, but then, he was also a student of Roger Reeds.

Thinking of this, Roger Reeds turned serious again: “The compression is still too slow.”

Rubbing his wrists which had turned a tad numb, Tang Cuo nodded obediently. His fireball carried a mix of colours, with orange and red interlacing each other, which was a sign of instability. If it was too unstable, it would prolong the time of his compression. And they hadn’t even touched the aspect of ‘instant release’. If he wanted to overcome this problem, he could only practice it over and over again.

But Tang Cuo was in a hurry.

“Teacher, is there a faster way?” Tang Cuo asked.

“It’s never advisable to take shortcuts.” Roger Reeds frowned.

“I promised Lancelot I would come to his performance. Keeping promises is also the fundamental quality of a knight.”

“……”

Roger Reeds had that strange feeling again. That something between his student and the young bard. They were somehow always in the same room.

Never mind.

Today was the last day of the trial. The goal was to familiarise Theodore with The Rose’s fighting methods and hone his will to fight. It wouldn’t be too late to do basic training later.

“I have a magic stone here that can enhance elemental affinity. If you hold onto it, your spell-casting speed will be faster.” Roger Reed took out a stone and handed it over.

Tang Cuo was silent.

Roger Reeds: “What’s wrong?”

Tang Cuo: “Nothing. Thank you, teacher.”

Wasn’t this stone the one he and Jin Cheng once bought from the Infinite Market of Dreams? There was an identical stone lying in his Inventory Bar.

Tang Cuo took the stone and glanced at the Inventory Bar — well, Roger Reeds’ stone was a little stronger than the one he bought from the Infinite Market of Dreams. This stone had the words ‘enhanced edition’ behind its title.

With the stone’s blessings, Tang Cuo’s casting speed indeed increased, and the compressed fireball became more stable than before.

Fifteen minutes later, Roger Reeds’ final lesson finally came to an end. Looking at his student, whose expression had remained unchanged from beginning to the end and who only silently and efficiently demonstrated his talent, Roger Reeds couldn’t tell whether he was pleased, or whether it was something else.

Eventually, after a moment of hesitation, he reached out and patted Tang Cuo’s shoulder rather stiffly. Such an intimate act wasn’t something The Watchman was used to.

“Theodore, the challenges ahead aren’t that scary.” His voice was solemn: “What your brother and I want to see most is your heart that never retreats in the face of darkness, and your courage to move forward.”

“Go ahead and defeat him. I’ll be waiting for you here.”

Tang Cuo thus embarked on his journey.

Under a remarkably bright moon, a figure as dexterous as a cat quickly advanced through the night. From a low wall to a high roof, six days of continuous fighting had familiarise Tang Cuo with every corner here.

He didn’t go directly to Louis XIV. Louis XIV was too strong and he needed some support to help him exhaust the opponent’s strength.

So Tang Cuo used the cover of the terrain to successfully cross half of the battlefield and found the small house where the rebels’ leader was located.

The rebels were well hidden, and they even built underground tunnels, but it would be no use, because Louis XIV was never inside the king’s tent at all. He was leading a team of elites here to kill them all.

In terms of strength, there was no way they could compare to Louis XIV.

In terms of strategy, they were no match either.

Had everyone not been so determined to die and ready to use their flesh and blood to fill the gap at any cost, they wouldn’t have seen the dawn of victory.

Even so, they only managed to give Louis XIV a severe wound. They failed to take his life.

In the flickering fire, the brutal battle continued. Tang Cuo took out the parchment which carried a message that had been written in advance, wrapped it around a stone, and threw it into the room.

A short while later, a commotion erupted in the house. Tang Cuo listened to the sound, glanced at the window for the last time, and walked away.

He was going to save people.

Ten minutes later, there would be a great knight on the side of the rebels who would be sieged and killed inside the mass grave.

It wasn’t far ahead.

Tang Cuo quickened his pace, using both ‘Sprint’ and ‘Air Walk’ at the same time, with a speed so fast that his figure blurred into an afterimage. The night sheltered him under its wings, and only the invisible wind could catch his whereabouts.

The swords carved out flowers of blood on the ground. As the wind blew, the people amidst the swaying flowers looked up but saw nothing.

Only dark clouds were looming above them.

The horn of a mass attack reverberated in the distance, its sound so thunderous that all the souls on the ground trembled.

It didn’t matter if they were kicking or taking their last breath, or they might’ve died and their souls hadn’t yet left their bodies; everyone shivered all the same. Hot blood began to boil and burn their skin as it streamed through their limbs and their bones. Screams ruptured and stirred up the entire night sky.

“For freedom!!!”

We pick up the sword.

“For justice!!!”

We will die bravely.

“Must win!!!”

We vow to never look back.

As the rumbling screams swept across the night sky, the dark clouds were shaken away, revealing a bright moon.

The moon was incredibly bright. A black, agile figure passed over that teardrop of the sky, holding a sword in both hands and descending like a meteor.

[Meteor], a jump-and-kill skill. It could trigger 200% of normal energy to achieve the biggest critical hit.

“Bang —” The glowing longsword slashed down, and a heavy-armoured warrior who claimed to be invincible was split in half with one strike.

The two halves of his corpse fell in two directions, and it took half a second before blood spurted out and splashed onto another warrior behind. The warrior’s eyes widened in shock, and he paused before looking down at the cut on his chest.

The next second, he fell backwards and slumped to the ground.

Double kill.

Tang Cuo, with his usual calm expression, shook the sword and turned back.

The injured knight knelt down on one knee with his sword in hand. He tried hard to lift his head and looked at Tang Cuo with a hint of joy in his eyes: “You… are you Nightingale?!”

Nightingale.

Tang Cuo subconsciously glanced at the ring on his hand and was sure that the knight was calling out to him, but ‘Nightingale’ sounded like a female name.

Neither Edwin nor Roger Reeds told him that the ancestor who once held the Sword of Judgment was a female knight.

But now wasn’t the time to think about that.

The mass grave, as the name suggested, was a large pit where the bodies of tens of thousands of people were buried. The only difference was that these people had just died. Throughout these graves, there was almost nowhere to even put one’s foot on. Most of them were rebels, consisting of even civilians with minimal ability to fight.

At this juncture, the only people standing in the mass grave were Tang Cuo and that knight, as well as a circle of dark gold-armoured knights who were eagerly watching them.

Tang Cuo immediately threw out the card ‘Meteor Rain’, then took out a bottle of healing potion and threw it to the knight: “Follow me and kill them all!”

“Got it!” The great knight was equally serious. At this thin line between life and death, he suddenly received treatment and got back his fighting power, so how could he give up here? Placing the heavy sword on his shoulder, he took one step and immediately rushed in front of Tang Cuo. Like a cannonball, he smashed into the encirclement before them, instantly killing the enemies until they were all slumping left and right.

Tang Cuo followed closely behind. At this moment, an archer was knocked away by the heavy sword and was flying towards Tang Cuo. Tang Cuo dodged sideways, raised his hand and briskly slammed his sword down.

He had absolute confidence. Not even checking whether the enemy was dead, he simply pulled his sword back and left.

“See you at the bell tower!”

He yelled to the great knight. As his hand holding the sword glowed with magic light, the sword tip pierced the ground at once. The ground below him bummed up, and a huge ice snake that was as wide as 1 meter and as long as 30 meters broke out from the ground, carrying Tang Cuo towards the bell tower.

The bell tower was Tang Cuo’s chosen location for the final battle. The reason why he sent that information to the rebel leader and rescued the knight was to keep the rebels’ spirits, such that they could fight back before Louis XIV gained an absolute advantage.

The night wind was as sharp as a blade. Tang Cuo stood on top of the ice snake and looked up at the moon.

The moon tonight was remarkably large and round, beaming brightly and beautifully. One should forgive him for not possessing a vocabulary that was rich enough to compose a song of praise. But Tang Cuo truly loved the moon. It was cold and solitary, just like a poet.

“Swoosh!” Several arrows suddenly pierced through the wind.

Tang Cuo ducked them with a somersault, but because of this small delay, he fell from the snake’s head to its tail. Archers, the thought came as he creased his eyebrows. If he wanted to kill Louis XIV, these soldiers would certainly cause him trouble.

But it didn’t matter. After several days of practice, Tang Cuo had found a solution, and this was exactly why he chose the bell tower.

“Dong —”

“West, fifteen!”

The ancient bell and the hoarse shouts reverberated almost at the same time, and a faint blue light gathered at the top of the bell tower in the distance. In an instant, the light broke out into many rays that seemed as sharp as blades.

“Boom!!!” In the distance, an unknown man was shot down from the air.

The only magic crossbow left in the city was inside the bell tower. This was one of the few areas that the rebels still had under their control. Given Louis XIV’s arrogance, he wouldn’t take a detour from the clock tower just because of this.

Not to mention…

“Over there!”

“Stop them!”

From the hidden tunnels, under the haystacks and among the ruins, figures emerged one after another, taking the enemy away at the right opportunity.

An archer was standing atop the wall of the courtyard, drawing his bow as he aimed at Tang Cuo. Suddenly, a hand stretched out from behind and covered his mouth. At the same time, the other hand produced a dagger and aimed it at his waist.

“Argh!” Just like his figure, the cry he let out vanished from the courtyard in a heartbeat, as quietly as a tiny drop of water falling into the vast ocean.

A group of stray rebels was hiding here, digging tunnels and drilling holes. There was nothing they couldn’t do.

The ice snake had a limited lifetime, so Tang Cuo instructed it to crash into a house ahead. The roof and the walls collapsed, exposing several of Louis XIV’s scouts that were hiding inside.

Immediately, the broken ice snake froze the unsuspecting people into ice balls. With its high-level magic, of course, the ice snake wasn’t just for Tang Cuo to use as a vehicle.

In front of the bell tower, the leader of the rebels — the magician — had successfully intercepted Louis XIV with his men. Like an ocean of colours, the lights of magic submerged half of the bell tower.

Tang Cuo raised his sword and joined the battle.

At the same time, in the Spring Square of the Kingdom of Hundred Flowers, the most brilliant part of the performance was about to be performed.

On a high platform covered with flowers, Jin Cheng held the small harp in his arms and looked at the crowds of people around him with a smile. The aristocratic ladies sitting in the carriage at the intersection raised the curtains and looked at him, the adventurers and bounty hunters leaning on the street with bottles of liquor in hand looked at him, the gardeners from all corners of the Kingdom of Hundred Flowers looked at him, and the innocent children in the choir with candles in their hands also looked at him —

He raised one hand in salute: “Now, please enjoy this song for the heroes: [From The Continent of Sicilit].”