Chapter 858: Purge
'It seems the Ancient Behemoth is trying to purge the whole area and turn it into a pure monster habitat. Fortunately, we have already evacuated the whole region.' thought Jade inwardly.
Jade had already read Angus' report about a dozen pocket dimensions inside the Everwhite basin. He knows the beast and Gram could stay safely inside these pocket dimensions until the whole purge finishes.
As Jade observes the distorted misty terrain before him, he notices a large amount of fire elemental pulled into the dimension. The surrounding snowy area suddenly has a drastic temperature change.
The snowy ground turns into a scorched wasteland before completely freezing up the next moment. Such a magical scene could be seen across the whole area. Yet, Jade ignores all this and focuses on the distorted mist before him.
His sharp eyes penetrated the mist and observed the entire Everwhite Region. At the same time, a white Ancient Behemoth stood still on the cracked snowy ground. Various small space cracks erupted in his surroundings.
These tiny cracks immediately disappear as fast as they appear. Still, they cause havoc to the surroundings. Just a single small crack as powerful as a full-powered magic cannon. Now, hundreds of thousands of them appear continuously.
The Ancient Behemoth ignores the mayhem in the surroundings as if it is not his doing. Like Jade, its eyes seem to penetrate everything and meet with Jade.
However, it lacks Jade's solemn expression. Unlike Jade, Ancient Behemoth is used to meeting powerful seventh-grade-level creatures.
There are many monster overlords hidden inside the basin. Few are even stronger than him and can create their own pocket dimension.
As time passed, the shaking slowly calmed down. Jade also noticed the dimension entrance becoming smaller. Just as he thought it would be fully closed, it stopped at the size of the Royal Palace main entrance.
It is still big and tall enough to accommodate a few giants simultaneously, but it looks smaller compared to its previous size. Thick cold mist also slowly spreads around, covering the distorted dimensional entrance.
With the whole situation calmed down, Jade finally felt relieved. *ROOARR* He hears countless monsters roar and Gram from behind the dimension entrance. He knows the monster and Gram has already come out to take over the whole Everwhite region.
'For now, the whole Everwhite should be enough to hold the monster population. Still, I doubt it could hold with that countless monster number. Hmm… It seems there will be a monster wave in the next few months.' thought Jade while thinking for a moment.
Jade knows the monster and Gram will start to look for territory to stay. After that, those who couldn't find the proper territory will be forced to leave. The misty dimension entrance will be their only exit. Then, it will become a monster wave similar to the Dark Forest.
"It seems we really need to give up Everwhite." muttered Jade.
Furthermore, Jade confirmed it is entirely impossible to reclaim Everwhite. The primary reason for this is the number of monster overlords. Through his perception, he could notice more than ten monster overlords with hundreds of high-grade monsters occupying the Everwhite area.
Most overlords come from the Gram-type, which is more dangerous and challenging than ordinary monsters. Such a force makes Jade remember the Endless Battlefield dimension and his struggle to survive during his youth.
Reclaiming and fighting all these monster overlords with just Heart Kingdom's current power is impossible.
Moreover, the Heart also couldn't just ask another kingdom or world alliance for help since the Everwhite region is located near the center of the Heart kingdom. Inviting many influential people at once is the same as looking for trouble.
In the meantime, Angus and his friend continued their training after the shaking calmed down. The change in the Everwhite region didn't affect them at all. Currently, Angus is looking out for everyone's training while thinking of something.
'Hmm… Another sixth-grade. This is bad. Should I take this time to return home? But I also need to train them and prepare for the competition. Tch… troublesome.' complained Angus.
Using [Great Mana Echolocation] periodically, Angus could watch over the capital city anytime. The previous massive earthquake also helped Angus identify a person's power accurately. All strong people will naturally react to such an unforeseen accident.
Combined with his high intelligence and [Analyze], he finds more sixth-grade people arrive at the capital city. If they are just escorting the participant or watching the competition, Angus doesn't care what they will do.
It will create more trouble if they create a mess in the capital city or even try to assassinate him. Some people may use this chance to create more chaos, like in the Undermine Council.
Moreover, Angus does not believe those bounty hunters will give up easily because he is holed up inside the capital city. Ten million gold coins for killing a single person below seventh grade could always arouse someone's greed.
The knight competition will be their opportunity to launch an assassination on him. Still, it is not easy to sneak up on him. The whole capital city is covered up with massive magic runes.
This magic rune has various uses, such as detection, protection, simple restriction, and many others.
The massive magic runes actually could only be used by the Heart Kingdom's king. In fact, no one knows about these massive magic runes. Not even the princes or any other high nobles know about it.
Still, these magic runes couldn't be hidden from Angus' sharp sense. Using [Analyze] and his high intelligence, Angus creates a backdoor and uses a few of its features without King Leon's knowledge.
With the help of magic runes, he could mark people and warn them if they were nearby. He also created another function, which was to spy and record every action people did inside the capital city.
Angus leaves this spying and recording function to lessen his mental burden. Still, it is impossible to spy on everyone in the capital city. Hence, Silvi only spies on those with fifth-grade and above strength.
Certainly, such an action would breach someone's privacy. However, Angus didn't worry too much about it. Since these people agreed to come to the capital city, they also needed to agree about these terms, especially with those with powerful power.
"Hmm… Tch.. As I predicted." said Angus.
*Swossh* *Swossh* *Swossh* [4th Circle - Vulcan Shots] Hundreds of small fireballs erupted from Angus and flew towards a specific direction. Before long, these fireballs hit the moving hideous people all over the manor.
"Pavlon, please tell the guards to take care of our new guests." said Angus.
"Certainly, young master." said the head butler Pavlov from beside him.
Angus and his friends do not always stay at the Royal Palace. They often stay at the Victory Manor house. Unlike the strictly guarded Royal Palace, the Victory Manor is less impenetrable in the eyes of everyone.
In fact, Angus knows there is almost no difference between the two places regarding security. Still, most people prefer to attack Victory Manor rather than the Royal Palace.
Still, they stay at Victory Manor because of the Sur Knight and Explosion Squad. These two squads are good training partners for Ian and the others.
Sur Knights have high combat power and are practical in terms of direct confrontation. On the other hand, the Explosion squad often uses various explosion magic items or skills to enhance its fighting capabilities.
With many varieties of battle opponents, Ian and the others gain more battle experience. Now, they can also keep calm when fighting against a new opponent with unknown battle styles.
After taking out some sneaky rats, Angus continues to bully Ian and the others as living targets. Soon, another month passed and the knight competition finally began.
The preliminary phase will be held inside the special build area previously used by King Leon to beat Angus and Jayna. Currently, the area is divided into many parts to hold multiple battles simultaneously.
During the preliminary stage, there is no special event or opening. The kingdom also opens the registration process for a few days. Anyone who comes to the arena can join and participate in the competition.
To everyone's surprise, thousands of people registered as participants. Everyone wants to try their luck and win the prize.
Usually, a competition like this has the grand prize of high-level skills/spells. But, reaching the big 16 in this competition already grants high-grade skills/spells.
Other winning prizes are also something that couldn't be bought with money, such as high-quality magic items, Vigo's Power arm, and even the artifact.
Currently, Angus is sitting inside a room with multiple magic screen projections on the front. The magic screen shows the preliminary battle of the knight competition.
Besides him, some people look at the magic screen seriously. All of them are the hidden juries who decide the battle arrangement. Their current job is to mark a strong participant and prevent them from fighting another strong participant too early.
The preliminary phase has straightforward rules. The participant must defeat the other party to win within the specified boundary.
Killing is not prohibited, but it is not recommended, and the killer must take responsibility. Furthermore, the proctor in the arena also has the authority to stop the fight if it becomes threatening.