Chapter 2752 Black-Faced Sheep’s Tap Dance <TOC> Chapter 2754 Strange Sheep
Translator: SumTLMan
Facing Shepherd’s attack, Kael was on full alert at the start. But soon he realized that, rather than attacking, Shepherd was probing and obstructing.
Shepherd’s probing differed from the others before; he was mostly trying to confirm whether Kael controlled the wind energy.
Countless cyan blossoms surfaced in midair. These rose-like flowers spun and fluttered as they drifted to Kael’s side.
As they flew, the flowers began to tremble, as if heralding what was about to occur. The closer they came to Kael, the more they shook, as though surging energy within longed to be released.
At last, beside Kael, many of the flowers reached a peak of trembling. With a thunderous rumble, they all exploded…… or rather, disintegrated.
Their disintegration yielded a myriad of petals that, like blades, battered Kael in a high-frequency barrage.
This attack wasn’t powerful, but it was extremely vexing, like mosquitoes ceaselessly circling your ear: not devastating, but enough to frazzle your nerves.
The best way to handle such an attack was, in truth, to ignore it. But Shepherd apparently had some grounding in sonics: he amplified the hiss as petals sliced the air and, by modulating frequency, kept plucking at Kael’s taut heartstrings, intensifying the irritation.
At this point, if he kept ignoring it, his subsequent performance would suffer.
How to deal with the petals became Kael’s immediate problem.
Kael grasped Shepherd’s meaning: the harassment, rather than a direct strike, was meant to test whether he truly commanded the wind energy.
As Shepherd himself had said earlier: since Kael wouldn’t answer, he would probe on his own.
If Kael did wield wind energy, the simplest method would be what the alchemy puppet had done before: use a strong wind to convert away the weak wind.
So long as Kael set a layer of strong wind around himself, he could easily convert away the weak Petal Wind lacking force.
Arranging a ring of wind around oneself wouldn’t even count as a cantrip for a wind school apprentice, merely a basic application of wind energy.
Therefore, if Kael chose any other method to break this Petal Wind, it would basically expose that he couldn’t use wind energy.
Shepherd’s complexity was solely to establish that conclusion.
Though Kael understood the intent, he truly couldn’t fathom why Shepherd had to verify whether he controlled the wind energy.
In such a high-pressure fight, proving such a low-value point, wasn’t that superfluous?
Kael hesitated, considering whether to call the alchemy puppet back. After all, the one who truly possessed wind energy was Speedling hidden within the puppet.
But for some reason, when he tried to contact Speedling through the device in the alchemy puppet, there was no reply.
Puzzled, Kael looked toward the puppet and saw the four black-faced sheep had become four terrifying vortices, encircling Speedling tightly.
Speedling was trapped by those four black-faced sheep?
But wasn’t Speedling an elemental creature near the realm of a formal wizard? How could it be trapped by four black-faced sheep of unknown origin?
While Kael was still doubtful, the Petal Wind around him grew denser, and the hissing made him ever more irritable.
After a moment’s hesitation, Kael chose to fend off the Petal Wind with a space defensive spell.
Among defenses across the paths, only space defense is a third-level cantrip, because space energy is not as easy to grasp as other elements, and once it goes out of control, the consequences are unimaginable. Thus, among defenses of the same level, space defense is the sole third-level cantrip; its defensive strength isn’t necessarily the highest, but its casting difficulty is unquestionably the greatest.
Kael’s use of space defense at this moment felt entirely like slaughtering a chicken with a butcher’s blade.
However, this was deliberate on Kael’s part.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t use other schools’ defenses; choosing the hardest, space defense, was purely a bluff.
Since any other defensive school would lead Shepherd to deem he lacked wind energy anyway, he might as well use the most difficult space defense.
It was a purposeful contrariness: I see through your aim, and I’ll refuse to act by your script.
Whether Shepherd would be blinded by such a bluff, Kael didn’t know, but it was a response strategy all the same. And even if Shepherd saw through it, so be it.
At worst it declared he couldn’t use wind energy, hardly a big deal.
Earlier he had hesitated to answer purely out of embarrassment. A『formal wizard-level alchemy puppet』is not something an apprentice could possibly command; once exposed, it would be clear it was a means bestowed by a formal wizard.
Even if everyone had out-of-bounds means, Ghost Shadow or Pink Jasmine on the other side had help still within the apprentice scope. Bringing a formal-wizard-level out-of-bounds measure to an apprentices’ duel was indeed a bit excessive.
Hence he hadn’t answered Shepherd’s question before.
But since the alchemy puppet was allowed onto the arena, it meant the Sovereign of Wisdom tacitly approved it as compliant with duel rules. Thus, even if exposed, it would be fine.
Kael’s going against the grain did, in fact, leave Shepherd momentarily stunned.
Soon, though, Shepherd came to, shook his head inwardly, and looked at Kael with faint amusement, as if to say he had seen through these tricks.
Kael wasn’t swayed by Shepherd’s attitude; as he’d said, it wasn’t a big deal. He only took this roundabout, contrarian route to keep Shepherd from so easily reaching proof.
More than being seen through, Kael now cared about Speedling’s situation.
Why had Speedling given no feedback at all? What had those four black-faced sheep done to it?
Kael was deeply worried something had gone wrong with Speedling; he knew all too well how precious elemental creatures are in the Southern Region. If something truly happened, he couldn’t afford the compensation.
Thinking thus, Kael, shielded by space defense, flew toward Speedling.
He failed to consider that Speedling was near a formal wizard’s level; if something happened to it, Kael wouldn’t be able to help even if he arrived.
On the other side, Shepherd now knew Kael most likely couldn’t use wind energy, but he had yet to prove where the earlier wind came from, was it cast by that alchemy puppet?
The reason he cared so much was that those winds…… were very different.
Shepherd had secrets of his own, and those winds seemed in some way to resonate with them?
Therefore, until he reached a conclusion, he would naturally not let Kael disrupt the four little ones.
Shepherd quickly caught up to Kael; this time he didn’t use wind energy but blocked him at close quarters. Given wind energy’s augmentation, Shepherd’s speed was extremely fast, and he easily intercepted Kael.
They locked eyes and saw resolve in each other’s gaze.
Kael knew that this close-quarters skirmish was now inevitable.
……
At the same time, beneath the arena platform, Daus once again approached Angel.
「Do you know what I most want to do right now?」
Angel:「? ? ?」What you want to do, what’s that got to do with me?
Daus clenched his fists, glaring viciously at Shepherd on the platform:「I want to give that guy a brutal beating.」
Had it been earlier, Vai would surely have quipped at this point:「Are you admiring him, or jealous of him?」
But with no Vai to pick up the thread now, and Angel not wanting to speak, Daus could only talk to himself:「Because that guy did something utterly outrageous!」
Angel shot Daus a dubious look; Shepherd’s conduct seemed fairly by-the-book, nothing outrageous, right?
Seeing Angel finally pay him mind, Daus hurriedly said:「He actually summoned four sheep that ugly!」
Those four black-faced sheep? Angel looked them over carefully. To his aesthetic, they weren’t ugly. They looked very like sheep overall, wool fluffy and naturally curled, pure white and immaculate, with only the face dusky.
Even with darkened faces, they didn’t appear ugly; the coloration actually masked the protruding ovine nose, making the face seem flat, fuzzy and quite cute.
The palette also reminded Angel of a kind of Earth cat he’d seen on a holographic tablet, adding a dash of subjective filter to his judgment.
However, Angel didn’t refute Daus; everyone’s aesthetics differ. One person’s beauty may be another’s ugly. So he respected Daus’s view.
That said, wanting to pummel Shepherd just over the sheep’s looks seemed a touch value-warped, no?
As Angel was thinking this, Daus continued:「More importantly, he even gave those ugly sheep such heinous names!」
Angel thought back: it seemed Shepherd had called the four sheep by names like Black One, Black Two, Black Three, and Baby. How was that heinous?
「The names are ugly to begin with, and they’re asymmetrical! Black One, Black Two, Black Three, fine. But shouldn’t the last be Black Four? Why turn into Baby? What’s Baby got to do with the first three?」
Listening to Daus’s indictment and seeing him itching for a fight, Angel formed a suspicion:
Some with obsessive tendencies go frantic when they notice disharmony; only when everything follows a pattern do they feel at ease.
Could Daus be one of those?
But as Angel recalled, such obsessives are sticklers for order, whereas Daus himself wasn’t so orderly, more free-spirited and unruly. Didn’t seem obsessive at all?
Just then, a feeble voice came from the side:「Gold One, Gold Two, Gold Three, and Gold Four are the names of the sandworms he keeps.」
Angel turned and found it was the long-silent Vai speaking.
Vai’s expression was still woeful, his face pale, but at least his eyes had more life than before.
So long as the earlier matter wasn’t mentioned, Vai should gradually recover.
Angel:「I remember the sandworm he keeps is called Little Gold, isn’t it?」
Besides, Daus still owed Angel an offspring of Little Gold.
Vai:「Little Gold is just a nickname; its formal name is Gold Three.」
Hearing this, Angel began to get it. Daus was a non-typical compulsive: no symptoms ordinarily, but once he fixated on certain things, he couldn’t abide them.
He had no issue naming his sandworms Gold One through Gold Four, nor with nicknames. But hearing someone else’s black-faced sheep named Black One to Black Three plus Baby, he couldn’t stand it.
Even so, Angel still found it a bit absurd. They’re just names; maybe that Baby had nothing to do with Black One to Black Three and belonged to another set of its own, like「Bei-bei」or something.
Just as Angel was thinking this, Shepherd on the platform suddenly called out:「Black One, support your elder brother, don’t let that alchemy puppet break through the wind vortex!」
Angel:「……」
If ranked by the order in which Shepherd had called them earlier, Black One was the eldest and Baby the fourth. But now he told Black One to assist his「older brother」? Older brother? That would mean Baby was the eldest? Then why did you call Baby last just now?
Angel’s head was full of question marks.
He glanced at Daus beside him; Daus had already clenched his jaw.
At this moment, Angel finally understood Daus’s mood a little, his own hands were itching too……
「Angel, what’s with your Speedling?」The Black Count’s voice sounded just in time within the mental link, instantly dispelling its growing agitation.
Angel:「No idea.」
Daus turned too and interjected:「Isn’t it your elemental companion? How do even you not know?」
Angel looked silently at the now-calm Daus, hadn’t he been baying for blood just before? How did his face change so fast?
Angel shrugged:「Maybe it finds those little fellows rather cute?」
Angel knew what the Black Count and Daus meant: Speedling had been surrounded by the four black-faced sheep and never emerged, very strange indeed.
Not just them; even Angel himself was puzzled.
When Kael contacted Speedling earlier, Angel had sensed it too, yet Speedling gave Kael no response, curious as well.
At first Angel thought Speedling was in danger, but through their contract connection and his emotional perception talent, he confirmed nothing was wrong.
Why, then, if nothing was wrong, did Speedling not come out from the black-faced sheep’s encirclement…… that, Angel didn’t know.
After all, Speedling was merely his subordinate, not a true elemental companion.
Chapter 2752 Black-Faced Sheep’s Tap Dance <TOC> Chapter 2754 Strange Sheep