Six dragonhawks circled overhead of Felix, forming a circular formation. Meanwhile, thirty-six griffon knights transformed into a vast circle, enveloping the formation of sixteen dragonhawk knights at about three hundred meters above the ground. Subsequently, four mages capable of high-altitude flight with their magical arts arrived at the center of the formation.
Once the formation was set, this air force, comprising three major professional systems, began to move slowly over the Four Valleys. The low chanting of the mages resonated in the sky. With the enhancement of four court mages who had stepped into the Golden Domain, a gigantic shield enveloped the entire team!
Felix was unclear about the specifics of this formation, but he could tell it was exceptionally sharp. If his elemental sensing was correct, those four mages were dual-specialists in wind and fire elements!
In elemental magic, there's a specialization known for its explosive power and high flexibility, dubbed the 'mobile artillery' - the wind-fire specialization! Those who forsake other elemental powers, even those of the same natural element, and solely focus on wind and fire elemental magic, gain the 'Heart of Elements,' possessing terrifying destructive power.
Wind magic ensures defense and survival, while fire magic dictates its formidable explosive power. Those who choose the wind-fire specialization are essentially a flying artillery!
Without hesitation, Felix, followed by his dejected ogre battle servant, hurried towards the valley. Even if the heretics successfully summon the avatar of their god, the odds still seem to favor his side.
Nearly a Sacred Coffin Knight, four Golden Domain mages, along with thirty-six griffon knights and sixteen dragonhawk knights! Such a force could easily take down a small duchy!
The road to the Four Valleys had been cleared by the scarred knight and the middle-aged nun. Along the way, Felix saw many ghouls' bodies. Their transformation was incomplete, similar to the abominations, likely the work of necromancers during their hasty retreat.
A grey mist pervaded the forest, thick with the stench of plague. Felix, now a death knight, was immune to all forms of disease, but his ogre battle servant seemed to struggle, its despondent appearance worsening. Therefore, Felix stopped and administered a dragon's blood potion, which enhanced elemental resistance, into its mouth.
The dragon's blood left by the Light Ranger had been crafted into sixteen alchemical elixirs by Felix. After gradual consumption, he only had one potion left for magic replenishment and one battle potion to stimulate physical energy!
The ogre, revitalized by the potion, almost instantly regained its vigor. Under the influence of the alchemical elixir, it temporarily gained the powerful regenerative abilities of a drake-kind, and the wounds inflicted by the abomination began to heal slowly.
"Hoping the upcoming battle brings me some gains," Felix pondered for a moment. Gritting his teeth, he took out the last alchemical elixir from his spatial ring and drank most of it. The scarlet liquid burned like fire as it entered him, turning into pure elemental force that replenished his depleted magical power.
His only valuable loot was the pure black armor left by the death of the dark knight. Felix was yet to ascertain the value of this damaged armor. However, he had already used alchemical potions worth over ten thousand Caesar gold coins!
Felix was not ready to give up yet. Even if he didn't get anything significant, capturing a necromancer's wand would be enough to compensate for his losses.
Most importantly, with the appearance of abominations and dark knights in the previous defensive systems, what could possibly be in the Four Valleys, where the sacrificial ritual was to be held? Felix speculated there was a 70% chance of encountering a bone dragon!
A bone dragon! Even though it was no longer a living creature, the rule that every part of a dragon's body is valuable still applied. If he could find the special method used by death knights to wield the power of frost, Felix might even attempt to transform the corpse of the bone dragon into a legendary frost dragon!
The prospect of two hundred percent profit could tempt anyone to take risks. In Felix's eyes, the Four Valleys represented not only danger but also endless treasure!
To conduct such a high-level sacrificial ritual without one or two demigod-level treasures as conduits was something Felix refused to believe. Whether it was the legacy of a necromancer or the conduits for the ritual, they all equated to wealth.
Felix was in dire need of money, really in need!
The battle in the Four Valleys had already begun. As Felix just stepped out of the forest, he saw a huge figure spiraling upwards - it was a bone dragon! A bone dragon transformed from the corpse of an adult dragon!
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As the bone dragon soared, a large group of shadows, each with wings about three meters wide, also took to the sky. "Hawkeye!" The fog hindered Felix's vision, so he cast an enhancing spell, Hawkeye, on himself. Hawkeye pierced through the thick fog, and Felix finally saw what those rising shadows were - gargoyles! They were semi-undead creatures concocted from corpses and black obsidian.
Clearly, both the bone dragon and these gargoyles weren't newly made. Did this mean that the heretics had been preparing for this sacrificial ritual of living beings for a long time?
Felix's gaze pierced through the fog, focusing on the massive altar at the center of the Four Valleys. The altar, about five hundred meters in diameter, was supported at its four corners by eight necromancy amplifiers made of piled bones. Ghostly fires flickered within these amplifiers, accompanied by the eerie wails of restless souls!
The altar had three levels, occupying half of the Four Valleys. The first level at each corner housed a five-meter-tall tower of bones, a structure made of human skulls to gather the power of death - a crucial element in the highest standard of sacrificial rituals.
The second level was much smaller, transformed into an octagon. At each of the eight corners of this level was a small mountain of gold, on top of which lay human heads impaled on pure silver spears.
Felix wasn't sure what this symbolized in the ritual, but his eyes sparkled with greed at the sight of the eight piles of gold, worth at least four hundred thousand!
The third level of the altar, a mere ten meters wide, was square. At its very center stood a figure that struck fear into Felix - a lich! Yes, a lich stood at the center of the altar, above a rune-carved trench, with a cauldron in front of it. Instead of wood, human skulls and ghostly flames burned beneath the cauldron.
Felix increased the power output of his Hawkeye spell, and finally saw what was boiling in the cauldron - blood! Boiling blood! The roiling blood reflected twisted human faces, and their mournful wails and screams echoed from the cauldron, sending chills down Felix's spine, even from a distance.
Magic explosions resounded in the sky. Under the leadership of the bone dragon, the gargoyles clashed with the formation of griffon knights. The sounds of gargoyles crashing to the ground were heard intermittently. Protected by an enhanced version of the transparent gas shield, the outer griffon and dragonhawk knights suffered no casualties yet.
The battle in the sky seemed to affect the lich at the altar. Its pupils, glowing with deep purple soul fire, flickered, and it anxiously directed a cursed wizard beside it to pour the blood from the cauldron into the rune trenches.
The boiling blood surged into the troughs, quickly spreading across the entire altar. Under the stimulus of magic, a blood-red fog began to spread. Amidst the ghostly wails and howls, distorted human faces emerged from the fog.
Suddenly, four figures burst out of the woods to the edge of the altar, led by the scar-faced knight who had come to Felix's aid, a member of the Silver Hand.
The scar-faced knight, intent on leaping onto the altar to stop the lich's sacrificial ritual, found skeletal claws suddenly emerging from the ground beneath him! "Idiot! Doesn’t even know to take a detour and blunders straight into the Prison of Bones!" Felix cursed the moment he saw this.
He was beginning to doubt the intelligence of the legendary Silver Hand. Such an obvious trap as the Prison of Bones, and he had jumped in without a second thought. Couldn't he think of circling around and jumping up from the side?
Just as a skeletal hand grasped the knight's ankle, the entire chain trap, the Prison of Bones, was activated! Thirty-six bone spears shot up from the ground, encircling the Silver Hand, rapidly forming a cage under the predetermined rune magic.
Once the cage was built, wailing souls appeared at their feet, struggling fiercely but inevitably being sucked into the bones. When the Silver Hand cut off the skeletal hand grasping his ankle, the chain reaction of the Prison of Bones was already complete. The souls were forcibly absorbed into the bones, turning them into an anti-magic material that could temporarily resist any kind of elemental force.
Unless shattered with absolute brute force, the Prison of Bones could last at least fifteen minutes!
"Clang!" The Silver Hand drew his sword and struck the Prison of Bones heavily, but as Felix expected, this all-out attack only left shallow marks on the bones.
The sudden entrapment of the Silver Hand caused the middle-aged nun who charged with him to stop abruptly. Facing the skeletal hands reaching for her, she quickly summoned the power of ice to freeze the ground in front of her, taking advantage of this brief respite to retreat to her original position.
As the middle-aged nun hesitated to advance, the lich noticed their group. Under its command, two cursed wizards with the remaining six gargoyles attacked them!
Felix was now truly speechless. The blood-red fog spread, and Hawkeye began to be affected. Felix could no longer see the battle in the sky clearly. It seemed the griffon knights were in a stalemate with the bone dragon, unlikely to help those on the ground anytime soon.
Should he go out and help or wait for a change?
As Felix hesitated, the lich reached the top level of the altar and took out a golden scale, as big as a grinding plate, from its spatial ring, placing it at the center of the altar.
The blood in the rune troughs began to flow backward, rising to the third level of the altar under the control of magic. A howling wind sprang up around, and the blood from the troughs levitated, forming dark red arcs around the third level of the altar.
Felix strained his Hawkeye and finally saw the golden scale clearly. The center of the golden scale was carved with a dark red crystal in the shape of a scorpion. The left pan was empty, while the right held five small golden dishes.
Remembering what the dark red scorpion represented, a bitter smile appeared on Felix's pale face. If he wasn't mistaken, those five golden dishes held a heart, liver, stomach, lungs, and kidneys.
The Scale of Death! Felix finally understood why there was such a formidable defense here.
This lich wasn't conducting a sacrificial ritual; it was summoning a god. A true god was descending!