Hidden Spirit in the Fingertips

The Old Witch keenly noticed that the Lightning Curse Yveta had cast was not quite right.

The high-quality Lightning Attribute magic power flowing out of Yveta poured steadily into the ring, changing the spell's power in kind.

A rock at the top of the Dark River began to glow faintly blue, and then bolts of lightning coursed across it.

Putting aside the quantity of magic power, its quality is extremely high. It's bringing a spell that should only be at Apprentice Level close to the power of one cast by a Formal Wizard.

The Old Witch noted, My earlier guess was right.

The Charm Technique wasn't very powerful because its attribute didn't fully match Your Grace's magic power.

That's why Your Grace's magic power was rejecting the Ring of Desire. I was in too much of a hurry back then, and I couldn't find a magic item that perfectly matched Your Grace's attributes. I had to make do with what I could get.

Something isn't right.

Yveta finished reciting the incantation, but an almost instinctive feeling made him repeat it over and over.

Then, before long, new words began appearing in the incantation.

Without realizing it, Yveta added the word [Zeus] to the original spell.

A bolt of lightning flashed across the Thunder Rock. For a moment, light filled the cavern, and the shadow Yveta cast on the ground was unmistakably not his own.

Instead, it was a terrifying figure with four arms, clutching lightning in its hands.

The Old Witch's heart lurched. "The lightning magic is growing stronger rapidly as he casts this spell. The balance of energy is in danger of spiraling out of control."

"But that's not the most important thing. The shadow Your Grace cast just now was neither his human form nor that of the Six-Winged Evil Dragon."

"Could it be that whenever the forces of different attributes within Your Grace fall out of balance, he takes on a different form?"

Then the dragon from before must have been because the Dragon Attribute magic power was too strong...

No...

The Old Witch quickly realized that Yveta's transformation into the Six-Winged Evil Dragon had not been caused by the Dragon Attribute magic power alone falling out of balance. It had happened because both his Dragon Attribute and Fire Attribute magic powers had fallen out of balance at the same time.

In other words, if only his Dragon Attribute magic power fell out of balance, Yveta might turn into a different kind of dragon.

The Old Witch murmured to herself, "As expected of the mighty Demon God."

"Each attribute has its own form when it falls out of balance."

"And when multiple attributes fall out of balance, they produce a new form."

With such a commotion, the ogres had of course noticed something was wrong.

An ogre was about to gut Branton when lightning flashed. It dropped its knife at once and clapped its hands over its eyes. "It's daytime! I'm blind! It's too bright!"

"Someone go shut the windows!"

"I'm blind too! Get those dryads to close the windows for us!"

"Stop talking nonsense. We're in a cave. There aren't any windows. We're not even on the surface!"

The lightning died away, and darkness returned.

At that moment, the ogres' eyesight was surprisingly sharp. Their anger now had an outlet, and they spotted Yveta and the others hiding behind a rock.

When they realized they were humans, their anger turned to drool.

"Glug~" One ogre drooled. "Fantastic! These people aren't like those soft, squishy village women. I love eating human warriors. Their tight muscles are so chewy."

It pointed greedily at Yveta. "The little one should be steamed. Those dryads say that's the best way to bring out the flavor of the ingredients. The old woman behind him isn't worth eating. She's too old, so she'd be better braised. Braising can cover up the flaws in the meat."

The Old Witch flew into a rage. "You stupid pig, stop spouting nonsense."

"Your meat stinks the most. No human would ever want to eat an ogre!"

She hurled a ball of fire at the ogre, striking it on the head.

The ogre immediately clutched its head and howled. "A sneak attack! That was a sneak attack!"

"Get them! Kill these bad people!"

Seeing it was still alive, the Old Witch said in disgust, "Ogres' resistance to magic is revolting. I meant to take your head clean off."

But the Holy Mountain Ruins were also preventing her from using her full strength.

In an instant, all twenty-one ogres at the rest stop by the Dark River went berserk.

They snatched up the clubs on the ground and charged at them.

Black Wolf took half a step back. "Every ogre is born with a body as strong as a human Knight Attendant. These creatures..."

"How can there be so many of them here? With their appetites, they should have eaten all the nearby inhabitants by now. Something's wrong. They can't have settled here naturally."

"Who's been feeding these ogres?"

Black Wolf's experience told him that someone was helping the ogres.

Yveta was still reciting the incantation. The words in his mouth had changed completely; apart from one key section of the original, everything else had been replaced with Zeus.

The Old Witch also noticed that the spell, which had already been amplified to nearly the strength of one cast by a Formal Wizard, seemed to have surpassed the spells of ordinary Formal Wizards.

Many wizards had created new incantations through instinct and intuition.

But Yveta had never even learned the Lightning Curse. He was only using a magic item.

And yet he had still altered the incantation, raising the spell's power to another level.

The Old Witch was filled with uncertainty. She had never encountered anything like it.

A bolt of lightning suddenly fell from the Thunder Rock. In the Old Witch's eyes, it struck Yveta beside her. She jumped, wondering if the spell had backfired.

Every spell demanded a price and carried a risk.

The Old Witch hesitated, not daring to intercept the bolt for Yveta.

But the lightning landed in Yveta's hand and took on a solid shape, turning into a zigzagging Thunder Scepter.

Yveta paused. The Thunder Scepter looked remarkably like Zeus's weapon, and all he had done was instinctively add Zeus's God's Name to the incantation.

What would happen if he added the name of another god instead?

Yveta threw the Thunder Scepter. It became a speeding bolt of lightning in midair, piercing the first ogre through the belly. Then it spread, piercing the second and third ogres through the belly. It split into twenty bolts in all, striking the ogres following the first one as well.

This spell was even more powerful than one cast by a Formal Wizard, and it used up one-sixth of Yveta's magic power at once.

That was all the Lightning Attribute magic power in his body.

At the same time, the energy balance that had been on the verge of breaking was restored.

The powerful spell also badly wounded all twenty-one ogres.

Most importantly, the lightning's blinding flash had robbed them of their sight again. Black Wolf immediately hacked off the heads of the three ogres nearest him with his greatsword.

Leili also drove his sword into an ogre's heart.

The Old Witch seemed to consider magic beneath her when it came to ogres, so she summoned her Personal Carriage and took two Mithril Swords from inside. With swift, sharp dual-wielding swordwork, she killed the two ogres that had come near her.

Yveta looked at the Old Witch in surprise. He hadn't expected her swordsmanship to be so impressive.

She wielded the two swords so seamlessly that it was impossible to follow their paths.

In the blink of an eye, six of the twenty-one ogres were dead. The remaining fifteen were all seriously wounded.

The ogres finally realized that Yveta and the others were nothing like the villagers they had eaten before. They began to panic.

"We're doomed! The human army must have found us. Why else would they be so strong? We can't beat them!"

"Are these people going to eat us?"

"Don't be stupid. Didn't that old woman just say humans think our meat stinks and wouldn't eat us? That's our advantage as a species! We think human meat smells good, and humans think our meat stinks, so they won't eat us. If humans thought we smelled good, they would've eaten us all long ago."

"You're right. I once knew a tiger that liked eating people. Then people ate it."

"Stop talking! We're going to be wiped out!"

"We need the dryads to help us!"

"They're all gone. I told you they were liars. They deceived us. Hurry, use that..."

Black Wolf and the others had been about to press their advantage when five suits of armor suddenly rose beside the Dark River.

There was no one inside their bucket helmets, yet they moved on their own.

Black Wolf warned Yveta and the others, "It's an innate racial talent of the ogres: Hidden Spirit in the Fingertips."

"These are all servant wraiths created from people the ogres killed."

"Don't attack the armor. It's useless and a waste of time. Kill the ogres using this talent instead."