Chapter 66: The final wave.

"Is this a magic core?" I suddenly said in shock while observing the gray marble I found on the creatures chest.

*spurt* As Michael sprayed out small amount of purple liquid from his mouth upon hearing me mentioned about a magic core.

"WHAT?" he asked in shocked as he quickly turn his head to look at the gray marble core on my hands.

"But how?" Michael said in alarm since this is the first time he saw a magic core of this color.

"I've never seen a gray magic core before they aren't even supposed to exist." Michael exclaimed in puzzlement.

"But I think you shouldn't touched that young master, that magic core might have been corrupted long ago, we don't know what would it do to you if ever you try to absorb the energy inside of it." Michael added as he warns me to be careful on handling this unknown core.

"I know , I know I'm not gonna be impulsive this time but this creature is really unique it's much stronger than the others." I said as I put the gray magic core in a small metal sealed container to prevent any leakage of mana.

I'm planning to collect all of this gray magic core in the city for safe keeping and for future research as this might cause harm to people if we would allow it to circulate in the public.

"Magic cores are supposed to be divided on 5 colors only starting from copper, silver, gold, white and finally a black magic core that symbolizes the strongest magic beasts known to man and also the most sought after by people but this is the first time I've seen a gray magic core that doesn't exist in any of this category." I mumbled as I take a look around our surroundings and seeing the damages caused by the on going battle cause me to realize that this is my fault.

I was immediately saddened by this sight as I saw the grim look of our territory. This is not what I had in mind when I first decided to create that skill, all I wanted to do is to strengthen myself in order to defend my life and the city from any harm but endangering the entire Florentine city is not what I expect to happen at all.

"If I hadn't tested that experimental skill of mine then this is not going to happen to us." I said out loud while looking at the direction of the city center that is now covered in smoke and fire.

"You can't say that." Michael said as he put his hands on my shoulder.

"There's no guarantee that all this creatures would remain hidden inside the fog even if you don't attack them, just think of it as a blessing in disguise if you're skill hadn't accidentally hit them then they would remain unknown to us. They might even pose the greatest danger to our city than the fog, because they would have all the time they need to gather more mutated creatures and strengthen theirselves which would not be a good thing, as even our strongest knights are already having a hard time on killing some of them." Michael solemnly said to calm my mind.

Without the incident of my accidental misfire of my experimental skill then all of the mutated creatures hidden inside the fog around the city would remain unknown to them, that would put the entire city of Florentine into a great danger as even now there's already a thousand of them with several creatures that can even survive from a frontal attack of a transcendent knights.

If the mutated creatures were given enough time then even with my father's power it would not be enough to deter them all, we might even need to sacrifice huge number of population just in order to stall for more time, but one thing is for sure ordinary people have no chance to survive from this attack, and only transcendent human like knights and wizards have the chance to escape from this ordeal.

But even transcendent human doesn't have a 100% chance of escaping from this place as they would still need to travel for a long time before they can escape from the influence of this poisoning fog. 

"Thank you Michael that kinda helps me calm my mind. Although we can't still deny that a part of this destruction is my fault. I Just hope that there won't be any death among us, but I also know that it sounds impossible with this kind of battle, death is something hard to avoid." I said to him as I take one last glance to the city before going back in inspecting the corpse of this mutated creatures.

"Did you find out something interesting Young master?" Michael ask as he approached me after killing some of the mutated creatures that tried to get near us.

"Well, I didn't find anything useful that could help us  resolved the issue regarding the invasion of mutated creatures but I do managed to identify all the 3 heads of this monster." I said in disappointment as I've been observing them for a while but I still haven't found a way to stop them.

"Based on the corpse of this creature the middle head is from a fungus deer while on the left is the head of an iron bull and on the right is from a long tongue frog, none of them have any relationship towards each other and yet they all share the same body such a weird combination should be impossible to exist in nature. It seems like whatever made them like this doesn't seem to have any professional knowledge and just randomly combined them all together."   It's no used no matter how many times I inspect all the carcass of this creatures I can't find anything useful at all. It seems like we could only rely on our knights to kill all the powerful creature among this monster wave.

"But young master, you gotta admit that even sir Daniel have a hard time on defeating this foe, even I got injured from a simple poke of it's tongue. It's hard to believe that such a powerful creature is just created randomly by an unknown monster hidden somewhere inside of this fog." Michael said in a solemn voice while staring at the fog that trapped us inside this walls.

[Sigh~].

"Indeed, life is always full of surprises. I mean who would have thought that my supposed to be normal outing outside the city would result to this kind of madness, I didn't even think that it would only took me 1 accidental attack to trigger this mayhem." I said in a tired voice while massaging my temple to relax myself when I suddenly remembered something important.

"By the way." I said as I quickly turn to faced  our soldiers that curiously dissecting the mutilated corpses of other mutated creatures.

"If you guys see any magic cores inside their bodies make sure to collect it first and put it inside of this box, but don't carelessly touch it okay? There's something weird about this gray cores so we can't let it spread in the city or it might put us into a greater danger. I know that I'm asking you to do, too many things at once but It's much better to be safe than sorry, because carelessness is something... that we can't afford with our current predicament." I deeply said to all of them as I warn them regarding the possible effect of their decision if they treat this risk lightly.

"I hope that all of you understand the importance of this matter. We can't ignore anything that might endanger our city especially now that this is the only place that hasn't been invaded by the parasitic fog." I sternly said to them as I reminded them that this land is the only remaining safe place we have to avoid the corruption brought by the hidden parasites in the fog.

"Yes, Young master We understand." they all said uniformly as an acknowledgement of my decision, as they quickly saluted to me before going back to their work. I guess the standard military training that I compulsively implemented have already show it's usefulness.

But still our situation doesn't look good, with the unending waves of attacks from the mutated creatures our soldiers would immediately get tired from it, and currently all the knights of Florentine city is engaged in fighting with this wave of mutated creatures. If this situation continues to persist we might fail to hold this wall, if it happens then I will have no choice but to activate the barrier.

However, once I do that nothing can exit or enter the city anymore, including all the knights that is currently fighting outside of this wall such as my father and Sir Hugo and that is something I don't want to happen as it would leave them vulnerable to the parasites and from the mutated creatures.

"Michael can you still fight?" I ask with utmost seriousness.

"Of course, I've already recovered a little thanks to the potion you gave to me but I fear that I can't do well in an intense battle." Worriedly said by Michael as he exert more force on his limbs.

"The potions that we have aren't that powerful to completely heal your injury. You might need to undergone a surgery to fix all the broken bones on your body. The only potion I know that could heal you completely in the quickest way possible is the potion that Callisto have bring over from their treasury but it's so precious that even father hesitates to used it or even ask for a drop of it." I'm pertaining to the legendary potion that Callisto have used to cure Evan from his critical state of being mummified, the potion known as the Gods tears.

With just a drop of its golden liquid Evan managed to immediately recover from his injury at an incredible speed and even the misaligned bones on his body have rearrange by themselves the only problem is that there's only a few drops left of this liquid and we doesn't own it. At the same time, using this precious potion just to heal the broken bones of Michael is an over kill, it's much better to save that potion for a future used especially for someone who is on the brink of death.

But of course usage of this potion would still depends on Callisto's decision since he was the head of the Stratnan family which is the sole owner of this precious treasure. I just wish that we have a lot of supply of this potion so that we wont have to fear this wave of mutated creatures, just imagine everytime you got injured all you have to take is a drop of this liquid and you're good to go.

However, I know that this is Impossible to happen as potion like that are almost impossible to make and very rare to find. We can even see the direct evidence of this on the bottle itself, as Gods tears potion was only put on a very small bottle that even a young child can gulped it down in one try. Such a potion is consumed not by bottle but by each drop of its liquid.

"I still have a broken bone on my chest and I think it also crack my bones on my left arm so intense movement is quite difficult for me." Michael added breaking me from my trance, before he swang his broken sword on air testing the limits of his injured body.

"Michael do you still remember what we have found on that cave?" I suddenly asked out of nowhere.

"of course I remember everything about that place, but why are you suddenly asking me about that?" confusingly ask by Michael while giving me a weird look.

"This is just a hunch but what if, the missing creature inside of that broken glass tank is the main culprit of this mutation? I meant a bizarre event like this only happens when there's something we don't know was suddenly added in the enchanted forest. We've been living here for 800 years and this is the first time we experience this unusual phenomenon, maybe what ever is that thing, that those people from the church of Agatha have release is the reason why the enchanted forest have suddenly change in just one night?" I said in alarm.

"And what makes you think that it's the main reason for the mutation of those creatures inside the Forest?" Michael ask insistently.

"Have you not seen the creatures inside of those tanks they kinda similar to this monster right? there's a great resemblance between the two, except for this black gooey substance. Besides the changes in the enchanted forest is very quick and it happen just this year. There can not be so many coincidences in this world, so I highly suspect that it was the main culprit of everything." I seriously explain to him that quickly got his attention.

"You're right, they are indeed quite similar. The things we saw on those tanks and this monsters both of them have those characteristics of a being that was a result of combination of multiple creatures resulting into this kind of abominations." Michael said while frowning.

"So I'm thinking maybe we could find a solution to solve this issue if we could go back to that cave."  

"Although your thoughts sounds reasonable, I'm not sure if your father would allow us to explore that place. The risk is too high, and far too dangerous to explore the unknown, and the most important thing we haven't even seen the main culprit of this madness and we don't even know what it looks like."  Michael said in disapproval.

"The main reason for the creatures mutation is the parasites in the fog right? So we can already confirmed that one of it's ability is to create parasites to convert other creatures into its own army." Michael suddenly ask.

"Well based on the research we have conducted, Yes, it is the root cause of mutation but why are you asking me this, are you trying to change our topic?" 

"Of course not, I just want to confirm something thats why I ask this question, because if the parasites in the fog is the main cause of mutation, then what makes them like this?" Michael ask while pointing the 3 head creature that was killed by sir Daniel.

"I meant how did they end up on this state? Mutation should only makes them a monster but it shouldn't be able to combine them together right?" Michael said asking for a confirmation.

Now that he asked me this question I suddenly think that I'm missing something because I didn't even thought about this issue before. Since everytime we encountered them inside the fog, they have already mutated beyond recognition and our soldiers would immediately pounced to kill them before we can even observe them as they might caused damages if they were not subdued on time. 

But as far as I know there hasn't been a case of a mutated creatures that resulted into a combination of monsters. So this is the first time we've seen something like this, and they only revealed themselves when they decided to invade the city.

Tsk, How cunning. I thought we were just dealing with a brainless monster but it seems like all of it was just a ploy to hide it's true intention. 

It's trying to conceal all of this abomination to strengthen itself and defeat us for good. 

The only thing that I don't understand is that why it doesn't attack us directly and why would it even need to create an army of monsters just to deal with us? 

What ever is that creature, it managed to slay an entire team of templar knights and priest from the church of Agatha, and that is something we can not guarantee to achieved even if we used all of our force.

Although none of them are on the same level of strength as my father, but they still have this equipment known as shield of obedience. If they used this shield to fight against us, even my father would need to concede defeat. Because no matter what kind of attack he throws at them as long as they have a capability to supply power at this shield then they would remain unaffected by our attack.

Based on this alone, we can already conclude that our enemy is not that simple because even if they possessed this legendary shield they still died on its claws. 

I don't know how it managed to fool them but whatever it did, it works. That creature managed to kill them all with ease, as there's not even a mark of a fight on that place, As if they all died instantly.

Sadly we don't have enough clue to identify the creature that kills them, but only a hunch that it was the culprit of their death. Not that it matters, because I'm sure that even if we saw it in person, we also won't be able to identify it, unless we personally saw it killed everyone on that room. 

I was about to continue thinking but I was distracted by the commotion caused by our soldiers due to the sudden arrival of a new wave of monster.

"Sir Michael, Young master look! over there." The young rookie said in alarm as he pointed his figure towards the new incoming wave of mutated creatures.

"We've been killing them for a while now is there no end to this?" Ask by the rookie soldier who's name is Jamie that I just found out earlier when someone calls his name.

"Don't be afraid! I'm not seeing any powerful one among them, you guys can deal with them as long as you cooperated with one another as a team." Michael shouted as he tries to encourage them.

"Can we really do it?"

"We won't know if we won't try."

"They're far too many for us to deal with." 

This are just a few of the sentences that our soldier whispered around us as they started to engage them on a fight. Although none of this creatures are powerful enough to pose danger against normal soldiers there numbers are still far too many if we won't do something then our defense line would collapse after a while.

"Michael can you still used your main skill?" 

"I'm injured but not incapacitated besides I haven't used any skill that consumes a lot of aura so Yes I can still used them." Michael boast as his entire body was covered in a fiery light of bronze aura.

"My sword might be broken but my will as a knight remains strong. You who have invaded our land should have a taste of my might." Michael recites as his broken sword shows it complete corporeal form although half of its blades remains illusory as it's only made out of his own aura.

Why does he have to say those lines anyway? I didn't even say anything when I used my experimental skill. Should I also create my own script for it? But my main skill mainly uses pure aura energy it doesn't even rely on using my own sword. It seems like I have greatly deviate from the main line of a knight I created that skill mainly because I want to have a long range attack but that is mainly the line of wizards. 

" Watch my blade young master, this is how a proper sword skill should look like." Michael said to me before he took his stance and place his sword away from him.

 

As he quickly swang it horizontally while he heroically roar the name of the skill he used.

"The first move of Scattered Sword Art Dominions Blade!" Michael shouted in a loud voice as his broken sword brightly shines in a crimson light and swiftly releases a torrential wave of aura in a fan like shape killing every monsters that touches this blade.

But of course, no matter how lethal this energy blade may look, the farther it travels the weaker it becomes. So it wasn't surprising that Michael's attack only managed to kill those monster in front, as the power contains on this blade greatly diminishes on killing those mutated creatures, and as a junior knight Michael doesn't have a lot of energy reserve's to begin with so he can't maintain this  aura blade for a long time.