Erna’s POV

In a dark damp place, deep underground there was a young and beautiful girl with golden hair and sky blue eyes shackled to the wall by chains. Her clothes were shredded and torn with obvious signs that she had been fiercely fighting before being brought here.

There were many wounds littered across her body, most of them were left in accordance to the tears in her clothes, indicating that they were done by bladed or piercing weapons. However there were also some fresh wounds that appear to be quite new and unlike the rest, which were inflicted by fighting, these seemed to be done to inflict pain and not any serious damage.

Most people would think that she was half dead if they saw her horrible appearance, but even with all these injuries that made her look so miserable her eyes still held clear will and determination in them, seemingly to defy the person who wanted to break her.

The person in question was currently standing right in front of her. He had brown hair and green eyes with a medium build and a face which could be considered handsome, but right now was ruined by a sadistic grin spread across it. In his hand he held numerous tool used for beating people, showing that he was responsible for the previously mentioned wounds.

Erna, the girl chained to the wall, raised her head to look at the man, and spoke with a shaking voice. “Why are you doing this? Our family has never crossed your path, so why must it come to this.” The man, otherwise known as duke Revor of the Hevorin family, laughed as he replied. “You are correct, there is no bad blood between us, but the world of nobles is always cruel and everyone moves for their own interest, I am the same.”

While still not understanding, Erna just kept looking at Revor with strong will visible in her eyes. The duke found it amusing and continued. “Is it so hard to understand? As you probably already know, I have the trashiest talent among the dukes. Even after so many years I am barely at the early stage of the master rank, a complete disgrace to our family.”

There was obvious anger and frustration in his voice, but Revor carried on with his words without pause. “Almost every duke would at least reach the late stage by my age, but I am different and although the other dukes might be courteous in front of me, behind my back they always speak ill of me. I myself know that I will probably not improve much anymore, so the only way for me to gain respect of others is by advancing in ranks. Now that your family has only you as an heir, it is the only perfect time I will ever get to advance or I will forever live as a failure.”

Hearing his speech, Erna could barely believe he was doing this for such a petty reason and shouted back in anger. “Do you think it will go so easily!? There is no way you will be able to hide all of this under the rug!” The duke laughed out again as he spoke. “If I was on my own it might be so, but I have the backing of the church. Its power cannot be comprehended and it has roots everywhere, for a small price of cooperation they can easily help me out in this matter.”

She didn’t know what was the church Revor was talking about, however if he wasn’t sure to succeed he definitely wouldn’t be doing such dangerous actions. Thinking about this made her despair, while Revor appeared to enjoy this look of hers.

The next moment a voice called out form the back. “Father let’s continued, I want to see her scream.” The one who spoke was Vern standing behind Revor and was the only other person inside the room. Hearing his sons words Revor nodded while he spoke. “Don’t worry. There are plenty of secrets that out dear Erna still has to tell us about.”

As he spoke he took one of the tools he hasn’t used yet and prepared to continue the interrogation, but at that moment, the reinforced door of the room was blown apart, and a handsome youth with a cold look appeared from behind it.

Ariel’s POV

Running down the stairs he found and rushing through the corridor, Ariel could see that he was getting closer towards the three sources of Mana he had seen before. One had to be Erna while the other two, he speculated to be the duke and someone else.

When he reached the distance of a couple meters from the door, he had already prepared all of his crucial defences and without hesitation blew apart the door with a frost bolt. Entering the room, Ariel at first saw Vern who surprisingly hasn’t been hidden by the duke, but kept by his side.

The next thing he noticed was Erna with her haggard appearance chained to the wall and the duke with an atrocious thing in his hand standing in front of her. Rage overcame him as he saw this scene and immediately shot several ice spears towards the duke with no hesitation.

Revor seemed to be in a state of shock from his sudden entrance, but he wasn’t a master rank for nothing. Seeing the spears closing in on him he dodged to the side, making some distance between them.

Ariel didn’t feel disappointed by this since his main goal was to get him away from Erna. Now that there was no one to threaten her, he quickly jumped in front of her to shield her from any harm. After shaking herself out of the daze, Erna quickly called out with her soar throat while tears were threatening to spill out from her eyes. “Ariel, you’re here. It is really you.”

Ariel didn’t turn around and just nodded as he spoke. “You can be at ease, no one will hurt you anymore.” While speaking he didn’t take his eyes off Revor and kept up his vigilance for any move he could make.

In the mean while, the duke managed to gather up his composure, after seeing who had come, and spoke in a lot calmer voice. “So it is the young duke, and here I thought someone troubling came.” From his words it was obvious that he didn’t hold Ariel in a high regard and was looking down on him.

Listening to Revor’s words Ariel didn’t express any anger and only calmly spoke. “I don’t care about what you are trying to accomplish, but you should have never dared to mess with those important to me. Now I will show you what is the price of your actions.”

He instantly held out his and with no warning and shot several frost bolts, expecting this Revor countered it using a short chant to create a wall of flames in front of him. Usually this wouldn’t be able to stop Ariel’s magic so easily, but the gap between late elite rank and a master is very large, letting such events to happen. “So I guess there will be not talking.” He spoke.

In response to Ariel’s previous attack, Revor started chanting his own attack spell and after several seconds of loud chanting, a giant flame ball appeared heading towards him. Unfortunately Ariel understood that he couldn’t move from his spot, or Erna behind him would be an easy target, so while concentrating all his Mana, he created several ice walls in front of him.

Against most attacks this would suffice, but the fire ball instantly annihilated Ariel’s newly created defence. The difference between the two was quite obvious, but he had to continue and although Revor is stronger than him, Ariel had taken a large number of Mana potions from the mages before, making it almost impossible for him to run out of Mana.

Drinking one of them, he created a ridiculous amount of ice walls to surround Erna understanding that he can’t leave her undefended and then quickly charged out. He understood from the previous exchange that he had to get closer so the duke would have a bit more difficulty in firing his larger shots.

Revor noticed Ariel’s plan and just let out a mocking grin as he watched him com closer. While staying calm he once more began to chant. Ariel in the mean time didn’t even try to dodge the upcoming attack and just kept to a straight line.

The spell Revor used this time was a fire bolt, and although each one of these fire bolts was weaker than a fire ball, after you reach a certain level instead of increasing in power, you can shoot several of them at the same time. This was exactly Revor’s idea, when he finished his chanting, five fire bolts flew out in rapid succession.

Knowing that there is little he could do about them, Ariel simply gathered the three ice shields of his and prepared to block the attack. Unfortunately it was like hitting glass with a hammer and each fire bolt shattered one of the shields each.

Three fire bolts were stopped like that, but at such a rate the other two would hit him, the only thing which came to his mind to do at this time was to use the ice spear he held in his had to deflect one of them. Thankfully he was fast enough and the fire bolt heading for his chest was stopped at the cost of his weapon.

Unfortunately he didn’t have any way to avoid the last one and it hit him directly in his left shoulder. Smell of burning flesh appeared in the room, making the look on the distant Revor’s face become even crueler, but soon it changed to one of shock when he saw that Ariel didn’t slow down at all and continued heading towards him at the same speed.

Ariel rapidly closed in on him and when the distance was already only a couple meters in between, he did a hand motion towards Revor while casting ice slice. The duke tried to manipulate his flames to melt the ice mid air, but there was too little time and the attack got trough, managing to cut his lower hard down to its very bone.

The pain made Revor go into frenzy as the look in his eyes stopped being one of playing around and became the look of someone wanting to murder. Holding out his hand towards Ariel, a massive fire ball appeared, catching Ariel off guard.

Due to reading many book he understood that this was not some simple fire ball, but a fire blast, a spell several times stronger than the previously mentioned ones. However what he was shocked about was how, did the duke complete it without chanting.

Moving absentmindedly he created as many ice shields one after another to defend himself while jumping as far away as possible, but Revor wasn’t about to let him get away so easily and threw the fire blast directly towards him.

It was too fast and Ariel didn’t even notice when it arrived, before it exploded in contact with his defences. A large tremor shook the room and only Erna’s distant shouts could be heard behind the wall, while the spot Ariel has been at just now, was currently furiously smoking.

After a short while the smoke disappeared and revealed the heavily injured Ariel. He was a mess and had kneeled at the spot due to his heavy injuries as he panted for air. From the outside, the only notable damage were the two completely charred hands, however the blood dripping down from his mouth indicated that he had some serious internal bleeding.

Enjoying this scene, the duke let out another horrific laugh as if seeing the funniest thing in the world, while his son was watching the scene with gratification. Ariel felt completely powerless seeing this, he never would have thought that Revor could use magic without chanting, and that was his biggest miscalculation.

As if reading his mind the duke spoke. “You didn’t expect that I can use magic without chants just like you, right. Actually, maybe this could be attributed to my bad talent at cultivation. Due to me being unable to progress in strength directly, I continued pouring work into developing other aspects that would make me stronger, and this was the outcome.”

There was obvious pride in his words and it is not undeserved. Even those grandmaster mages not always manage to learn to use magic without chants. This can only be done having a brilliant and perceptive mind, a talent of a completely different line.

Unfortunately this was not the time to be admiring other people’s talent, especially when they are about to be burned to death by the person in question. Right on queue, Revor held out his held out his hand into the air as he continued speaking. “Due to your enormous talent I will try to finish you off quickly, I hope you will appreciate my thoughtfulness.”

Finishing his words he began chanting, meaning that it was a high level spell that he was unable to cast without any chants. In the mean time, Ariel could only watch powerlessly, he drank another Mana potion and with all his effort tried preparing by summoning a couple of ice shields and ice wall in hopes that he will manage to survive.

The time was slowly running out, and finally there was only a single verse left to finish before casting the spell, at this the father and son duo each let out their smirks and hurried on with the spell. Due to it being a powerful spell, the flames have already began gathering before it even finished and Ariel could only watch in despair at the display of power, which was much stronger than the last one.

However, just when he was about to resign to fate, out of nowhere an attack come flying at the duke, catching him off guard. He could barely react and even though he retreated he still got his leg pierced by an icicle.

Everyone was dumbfounded by this and looked towards the place the attack came from, even the duke’s pain was numbed by his surprise. What they saw after a moment of searching was a strange blue coloured form that slightly resembled a man.

The duke pair still couldn’t comprehend what happened and only Ariel felt unexplainable joy seeing the creature. No matter what form it takes, Ariel can feel that it is the same ice spirit he had made a contract with.

Now that he thought about it, a couple of days ago something happened to it and it wouldn’t come out when summoned. Ariel didn’t know what to do and left it to fate, but now he understood that the small ice spirit must have been evolving, and just now, it finished the final stages of its evolution.

From what he has read, the form that the ice spirit has taken should be that of an ice shade and although it was still nothing that amazing, just and elite rank, it had decent fire power and gave a sudden, small hope for survival.

Ariel looked towards Revor while being lost in thought. He comprehended that the only path left for him is to go all out and hope for the best. Feeling a the small chance to strive for, Ariel felt much better and began to move, while keeping his eyes on the still shocked duke.

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If you want to read further, visit https://verathragna.wordpress.com/ I will always have an extra chapter there