Tales of the Endless Empire

Chapter 456: Final Conflict

Thalion was happy to see Eric again. In his opinion, the other human Chosen could have waited outside—but be honest, this stage had already been very good, so he probably didn’t have the right to complain.Funnily enough, Thalion spotted two other figures appearing behind the Chosen party in the corridor—but when seeing what was going on inside the royal chamber, they swiftly turned around, never to be seen again.

The human party weren’t the only ones to enter. Through two small servant entries on the other end, a bunch of elves and orcs entered. One of those elves was the lovely Kaelir, who immediately started to grin frankly at the scene.

To be fair, everyone had wide grins on their faces.

Everyone besides Thalion—even the prince and the king were smiling.

“WWWAAARRR!” the massive green orc in the front roared, lifting his massive axe over his head with an absolutely wild expression on his face.

Before, the power in the room had already been a bit much for Thalion, and he was lucky that it was blood-related, which meant it didn’t impact him as much.

The strong auras of the king and the prince were already overwhelming—but now, from every person in the room, an aura exploded outward. It was even visible, with the partly red mist being pushed aside.

Thalion, of course, was the exception again and began to slowly step backward, hoping no one would notice him.

This spectacularly failed, judging by the multiple attempts that fell on him.

Now Thalion wasn’t so sure that having this many leaderboard points was actually a good idea.

The system notification that came all of a sudden also didn’t help.

The King’s Chamber has been entered

One minute after the king is killed, the treasure hunt will end

One minute after the Scarlet Continuum has been concluded, the treasure hunt will end

I hope you all enjoyed this mesmerizing hunt

Good luck and till next time

RATGUL

At least now Thalion knew why the reward for killing the king had shot up like that after the Scarlet Continuum.

Thalion would have liked to think more about what to do—but after the short pause everyone needed to read the message, everything escalated.

Kaelir, now radiating power far above what he had displayed in Thalion’s fight, waved with his two staffs, and a wall of fire roared out in a moon-like arc.

An elf with a blue glowing star on his head—which reminded Thalion a bit of the Avatar—shot into the air, firing two lightning beams. One aimed at the humans and one at the big orc leader.

The orc leader seemed to be a lot more calculating than first thought, as he expertly dodged the beam while not engaging deeper—which was smart, since it would allow others to attack his comrades or his back. The earlier roar was probably just to motivate the others.

Thalion would have to keep an eye on the orc.

The highest points below Thalion were around three hundred fifty million credits, which meant you would need to kill two other Chosen, the king after the Scarlet Continuum—or Thalion.

Since Thalion was by far the weakest in this chamber, it wasn’t difficult to guess which conclusion the orc must have come to.

So far, Thalion was lucky that no one had shot an attack his way—but he didn’t like that Ethan was charging up that arrow so much. You could clearly see the air vibrate around it.

The danger sense also wasn’t that helpful with so many threats coming from all sides.

“Haha, I shall accept your sacrifice!” the king laughed loudly before his aura exploded outward, surpassing everyone in the room.

Thalion had hoped that the guy had activated the Scarlet Continuum—but it just seemed to be some sort of boosting skill.

His armor and weapon now also began to glow with intense light as the king fueled everything with power.

Around the king, a small vortex of condensed blood appeared that condensed even further while the king was frankly laughing in the middle of the circle.

There was no timer, but the message redirected the attention of most to the king—even those who had aimed at Thalion a second before.

There was still the fire wave coming for Thalion, but this time he blocked it with multiple vines growing before him. The vines were far more durable right now, and the high fire resistance showed off as they almost absorbed the fire impacting them.

The rest of the wave continued through the room.

Around the orcs, a dark green bubble formed that seemed to block it, while the humans blocked it with some sort of translucent barrier cast by the mage.

Thalion, standing beside one of the rifts, decided that if he ever wanted to try infecting the blood below, he had to do it now. It couldn’t be much longer until he had to run for his life.

There was simply no way that he would be able to kill a Chosen if they weren’t distracted or already exhausted. The best tactic for him was to dodge and hope that the king was killed quickly—or that the Scarlet Continuum began.

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The king just tanked the fire wall like it was nothing and shot out multiple blood spears at everyone close to an entrance. The shields were shattered, and the Chosen behind them were driven back while blocking.

The sheer force poured into every skill was so far above what Thalion could conjure at the moment that it wasn’t even funny.

Ethan’s arrow flew directly at the head of the king, who just deflected it with his scepter-mace before motioning in their direction with his free hand.

Red lightning shot forth and hit Eric and the healer. Most of the healer’s midsection was incinerated, while Eric managed to bring his sword between himself and the lightning.

The king’s display of power resulted in the Chosen almost ignoring each other while attacking him.

One elf rushed forward. He was tall and muscular, with a small layer of stone covering him. Thalion guessed that it was a similar class to Jakob’s.

The big green orc also didn’t wait any longer, and the moment the king’s attention turned toward the elf, he shot forward as well.

Thalion found it quite amusing that between all the fighters in this chamber, the king—who was by far the strongest—was also the one worth the least amount of leaderboard points.

The green orc was a lot faster than Thalion had thought possible, but the king seemed to know that he was coming. Either through a blood sense or some special danger sense like Thalion’s title.

He shot at the Chosen elf, kicked him in the chest, then spun around so quickly that it almost looked like the king had four arms and two heads.

He stopped the swing of the orc with one hand before touching the orc’s chest, and a powerful lightning bolt fired the orc backward.

Right before impacting the wall, a green hand caught him. Lightning danced over the orc’s body, but besides his left arm twitching twice, he was fine.

From here on, the fight escalated further and further.

Both the humans and the elves had archers who fired their arrows at the king. The mages weren’t standing by either, and multiple skills of all kinds were flung at him.

The king stood in the middle, laughing frankly while looking at the ceiling.

Thalion was interested in what was so special about it—until he spotted a giant dark red spider clinging to the ceiling.

Thalion questioned himself.

Luckily, he didn’t seem of much interest to the spider right now, which had concealed its aura perfectly. The thing was easily twenty meters from foot to foot. The legs were relatively thin for its size, and it didn’t have any hairs—which reminded Thalion of the dryders…

Thalion’s shocked thoughts returned to the present when the king unleashed his next skill.

It seemed that he hadn’t liked that the orc leader had attacked him like that from behind.

Thalion would have thought that now everyone would go for the king—which would lead to the spider on the ceiling taking action.

Maybe it would have happened if the prince hadn’t been there.

This crazy guy seemed to be pretty mad about his duel with the king being interrupted. That was something Thalion could also agree upon. The duel had really been a satisfying one.

Instead of helping the others take down the king, the prince attacked Eric—probably because he was still a bit mad that Eric had survived his attack in the earlier stage.

Eric was more than willing to engage in battle as his aura skyrocketed when he activated the boosting skill Thalion had seen last time.

“Gravitation up,” the prince sneered while dashing forward, which to Thalion almost looked like teleportation.

This skill had basically cemented Thalion into the ground earlier—but Eric simply pulled through it, just huffing in annoyance.

And so the dance of light warrior and prince began.

Ethan and the mage Felix shot into the chamber, going after the king while leaving Eric to his fate—with only the woman in the background watching.

Thalion had thought that the Chosen wouldn’t try to kill each other before they defeated the king. That would also have been in Thalion’s interest—but sadly, that didn’t happen.

An elven archer missed the king and hit an orc in the shoulder, which totally shattered under the impact. This resulted in quite the retaliation, as a bright blue spear was flung at the elves while multiple dark green specters rose from the ground and sprinted toward them.

One of those specters jumped at Felix, which led to an all-out war between all sides.

Explosions roared through the chamber as the Chosen fought in total chaos. Even the woman behind Eric followed the other two.

Thalion had also had enough of standing on the sideline, and since all the others were going all out, he decided to do something as well.

Eric was fighting the prince on the side, very similar to the fight in the ocean stage, with Eric swinging his large sword while the prince evaded. This time Eric used light shockwaves, while the prince used his weird empowered speech to create all sorts of things.

Just standing around while the others fought felt wrong—and could also lead to an attack.

Joining Eric in killing the stupid prince was a fine idea in Thalion’s opinion. The others might also hesitate to interfere when it involved Eric and the prince. Besides, they had different problems with the powerful king and all the chaos.

Thalion waited for the right moment while letting the Heart of the Sanguis Archon thrum faster and faster—before he exploded forward with speed.

The prince somehow noticed Thalion and dodged with a fast dash to the right.

“Again, you two? This time I will finish it,” the prince growled, and his aura rose again as he pushed his boosting skill—but after a moment it dropped back to the original level.

It looked like this was the prince’s limit.

“Already exhausted? How disappointing,” Eric snorted, increasing his power once more, probably just to mess with the prince.

Against two fighters, both with weapons that could actually injure him, the prince barely had any chances to attack.

Even though Thalion and Eric hadn’t fought together before, it worked pretty flawlessly. To be fair, Eric was swinging like a maniac while Thalion listened to Saranya’s advice.

“Wait. Let the idiot do two more swings, then stab for the right leg and dive to the side afterward. Also, should you ever fight this crudely, I’m done with you!”

Thalion ignored the threat and focused on the task.

The prince and Eric were a lot faster than him, and he had to use Mist Form a few times to keep up or be in the right position.

The prince summoned multiple elemental attacks—wind blades, lightning, and flame blasts, to name a few.

The only things that worked on Thalion were Wind Prison and Gravitation Up—but it seemed the prince couldn’t maintain them while Eric was pressing him.

Saranya also had no trouble cutting Thalion free, with something like Wind Prison not offering the slightest resistance.

Then it happened.

The aura of the prince flickered.

In the following exchanges, it happened multiple times until Eric managed to cut off his right hand—followed by the left foot.

An armored punch sent the prince downward, where he connected with the ground like a rocket.

More importantly, Thalion was already waiting, his sword raised high—yet he hesitated.

This was his chance to finish the prince once and for all.

The issue was that the prince undoubtedly had one of the strongest bloodlines Thalion had ever seen. For his human form, it wouldn’t work—but for Thalion, this looked tailor-made for the Crippled Eclipsari, which had a very similar fighting style when it came to close combat.

The prince took the opportunity and crushed something in his hand.

“Oh no, you are not getting away!” Eric roared from above, also crushing a small cube, and a red circle spread out around them.

Yet the escape token of the prince still pulled through.

It didn’t teleport him but simply turned the prince into white dust that flew out the gate with increasing speed.

“What?! Why didn’t it work?!” Eric swore before his attention turned to Thalion. “EY, WHAT WAS THAT? ARE YOU SERIOUS ABOUT LETTING THIS ONE GET AWAY?!”

Thalion could understand Eric’s frustration—but there was no way he would tell him that after this trial, he planned to kill the prince and get the bloodline.

Before Thalion could answer, another presence joined the fray as two insectoids entered through the main gate.