Cthulhu Gonfalon

‘Picking Something Others Ignored’?

Seeing Snow’s “no room for negotiation” attitude and looking at the big box full of equipment, Palin hesitated for a while, and finally, he couldn’t resist the temptation to pick something and paid ten gold coins.

Then, with the boss watching him, he began to choose from the items in the box.

As a mage who had worked in caravans, Palin was quite experienced in the identification of equipment. He searched extensively and quickly found a valuable thing.

It was a piece of armor that had mostly been ruined with only about one-third of the back complete. After examining it carefully, he felt that this leather armor seemed to be made of some kind of leather from a fire-resistant demon beast. Although it was only a small piece, it could be made into things like a fireproof chest shield, and, in the worst situation, a pair of fireproof gloves.

A pair of fireproof gloves was not even a piece of equipment with enchantment, but at least it was worth more than a hundred gold coins. He would just have to pay for the labor to make them.

This discovery made him energetic. He did not hurry to finish looking, but instead picked out this broken leather armor as his ultimate selection and continued to look for other items.

However, his luck seemed to have run out, and after a while, he still had not found a second valuable thing.

Finally, Palin could not help but whisper in his heart, “Your Majesty, in your opinion… What is the most valuable thing in this box?”

Sui Xiong had long been confident and smiled, “It depends on what kind of things you want.”

“Your Majesty… What do you mean?”

“There are many valuable things in this box, but the most valuable ones are not necessarily what you really need,” Sui Xiong said. “You should first think clearly about what you want most before you ask me.”

Palin was dumbfounded for a moment, and subconsciously said, “I want to get, of course, a piece of powerful equipment.”

“‘A piece of powerful equipment’? What makes a piece of equipment powerful?” Sui Xiong asked.

Palin was lost in thought.

As Sui Xiong said, how should one define a piece of powerful equipment? It shouldn’t solely be about the price, should it?

For example, for gamers, a top-level set of mouse and keyboard was certainly a piece of powerful equipment, and it would be even more powerful if the set was a set self-designed by a computer expert and had custom hotkeys on the keyboard that could fulfill many difficult techniques by only tapping the keys once.

When Sui Xiong was studying at college, a junior fellow student of his, who was with a very good computer technology but a very humble technique of playing games, raged after being defeated more than twenty times in a row by him in a brutal way. The fellow student then made a set of powerful equipment in less than one month, the keyboard of which had almost twenty keys, more than common keyboards that corresponded to a set of highly practical techniques. With this handy device, the fellow student, whose level of e-sports was far lower than Sui Xiong’s, defeated him forty or fifty times in a row. In addition, he also defeated all his schoolmates and became known as a peerless master among non-professional players in non-electronic sports areas.

If non-professional e-sports games didn’t allow the use of such a piece of foul equipment, perhaps the junior student could really enter the professional circle relying on this handy equipment of e-sport.

Of course, equipment that was powerful enough in practical combats didn’t exist in this box. But inferior things really could be found here…

Palin thought for a long time and finally came up with an idea of what he really wanted.

“Your Majesty, are there any magic books left in this box?” He asked.

“Of course. Check the bottom of the box. There is a half of a magic book in a worn out coat made of thick cloth. The spells therein are not at a low level, and at present, it might be a bit hard for you, but it might be quite suitable for Satan.”

“But I want to remind you that the spell recorded in this magic book is… very unusual, and it may be troublesome to you.”

Palin thought for a while and eventually made up his mind. He soon found the half of a magic book that remained according to Sui’s instructions.

For a spell-caster, magic books of precedent masters were a crystallization of experience and wisdom, a symbol of heritage, and an irresistible temptation. Even if there would be trouble, he could not resist the temptation of this treasure.

Its pages, made of the skin of demon beasts, were old, but the words were written in special ink and were still very clear. Many of these words were of an ancient elven language used by mages. It was complicated and long-winded but could clearly and accurately express the meaning, and ambiguous expressions were a rare occurrence. It was regarded as one of the languages that mages must learn.

To become a mage, one needed to understand a variety of languages. In addition to the common language of the continent, mages must know the ancient elven language that could accurately record things, the Dragon language that contained magic, the dwarven runes that could be directly used and released as a spell, and special languages that were needed when communicating with creatures in heaven and hell, as well as the mysterious language that mages often used internally. If these commonly used languages that mages must understand were listed out, they would number at least ten languages.

Even though Palin was just a little mage that had just entered the profession, the compulsory ancient elven language wasn’t difficult for him, and he could understand the contents of this magic book by just glancing at it.

Satan, who was born in a southern magic country and educated in the famous magic tower, understood a total of thirty-one different languages and was a versatile walking translator.

Palin only glanced at the book, and his eyes were fixed on it as if they were welded to it. He was unable to move them away.

“This is… unexpectedly… the Dragon Slaying Spell?!”

Dragon Slaying Spell?!

Hearing this, Snow was dumbfounded for a moment, frowned and looked at the child who solicited customers. The child was also shocked. She carefully thought about something, but still looked confused.

Of course, Palin, who was completely attracted by the contents of the magic book, could not see these things. He looked intently at the magic book and could not help but say to himself, “Does the Dragon Slaying Spell really exist?”

“It depends on how you define it.” The child in charge of soliciting customers had resumed his calmness, smiled and said, “If your request is ‘a sleeping defenseless dragon lying in front of you, waiting for you to cast a spell on it for half a day and then cast a spell to kill it’, then such a spell exists.”

Saying this, he walked naturally behind Palin, and read the records in the magic book.

Palin was entertained by him. He rubbed the pages of the scrawled magic book with his finger, looked at the complex spell model, and roughly understood its principles after a while.

“From the principle of this spell, it seems that the requirements are not so strict. As long as you can hit, you can do great harm to the dragon,” he said.

“But the so-called ‘great harm’ is actually very limited for the dragon.” The child slightly frowned, but smiled and said, “The vitality of the dragon is not like that of an ordinary creature.”

Then, a grey shadow appeared behind him with a whistling wind that struck Palin’s head.

This shadow was astonishingly fast, and if it hit its target all at once, Palin’s head would definitely be smashed, and he would die. But before it hit the target, Palin’s bracelet trembled slightly, and a ghost of a transparent jellyfish appeared in the air, waving its tentacles. A sharp blade made of coldness emerged and stopped the shadow before a cold light circled Palin’s head.

Boom!

With a violent crash accompanied by a dull noise, the sharp blade collapsed, and the shadow was repelled. The child, surprised and suspicious, hurried back. Just as he walked one or two steps, his hands turned into terrible claws, and a stout long tail dragged behind him.

It was the long tail that attacked Palin.

The smiling face of the previous natural socializer had completely disappeared. This strange looking child showed not only fierce intention to kill Palin, but also alarming coercion.

That was the strong person’s intimidation of the weak. No. The intimidation naturally shown by predators at the top of the food chain in face of their prey.

If Palin had been alone, he would also have felt scared in face of the intimidation even if he had been lucky enough to escape the child’s attack, and he could only have escaped or begged for mercy. But now, not only Palin was nervous, but also his enemy.

“Where are you from!” The child, having already changed into a horrifying creature, shouted at him with surprise and anger.

Sui Xiong did not answer his question. Instead, he talked about another thing. “The magic book says that ‘Dragon Slaying’ magic is, frankly speaking, not powerful, and if the dragon is hit by it on the body, it is estimated that the dragon will only be slightly bruised. But if the dragon is silly enough to transform into a human form, it is not surprising that a spell cast could kill one’s whole family.”

“And, how dare you make a surprise attack on my follower? Are you ready for my punishment?”

He had hardly finished before the transparent body of the jellyfish suddenly burst into innumerable light points, and became several times larger than before by being integrated with the magic of ice that permeated the air. A large tentacle condensed into ice shot toward the child that had changed into a weird appearance and beat him fiercely.

A light of coldness flashed in the eyes of the child, and he pressed his two claws against these tentacles without hesitation. He had always been very confident of his own power, even demon beasts that were known for their power should not think of having an upper hand against him.

With a loud boom, the tentacles and claws fiercely hit against each other, and the giant jellyfish floating in the air trembled, while the child was knocked backward. He retreated four or five steps; his feet scratched two obvious tracks into the solid floor.

“How is it possible!” His eyes widened in surprise, and he could not believe he did not have the upper had in terms of strength.

“You will know whether it is possible or not when you are knocked on the ground!” This time, Sui Xiong waved a total of four tentacles.

He had already estimated the strength of the weird child during the brief confrontation. At best, the child was able to resist the attack of two of his tentacles. Now his attack had been doubled, so he would definitely be knocked out with one hit!

However, the four tentacles failed to hit the target and were blocked by circles of white cold light.

Snow, who was smiling before, suddenly turned angry when she saw the child was attacked secretly, so she made a strong shield beside Palin by casting magic. She stared fiercely at this self-assertive naughty boy.

She clenched her teeth and began to roll up her sleeves like an irritated parent about to take a feather duster to beat a naughty child who had caused a trouble.

However, before she started to fight against Sui Xiong, he had begun to fight against the child, and the battle was completely one-sided.

This made her very confused, not knowing what to say or do for the time being. But when she confirmed Sui Xiong’s identity, she suddenly appeared to be raging.

At the moment the child was about to be seriously injured by Sui Xiong, she hurried to rescue him. First, she stared fiercely at that child, and then she fought with all her energy to confront Sui Xiong. She chanted spells lightly which led to a force of coldness to rise from her body.

“A young god? You wanna play Frost in front of me? You found the wrong target!”