CHAPTER 54

  A FAMILY FEUD

  Delimira dismissed a knight student who came knocking on her doors, asking about Hans. Rudolf, as the dean of knights, was abusing his authority on full swing to hunt down Hans. “Geez! That geezer has gone senile.” Hans commented.

  Delimira turned to him. She now wore several layers so her pink pajamas weren’t visible. “You know, he is not going to cool off in the morning. So what’s the difference in hiding here? Just get beaten and get over it.”

  “There is a difference. I won’t be as helpless as right now in the day. I won’t just take it like always. Grandpa wants to beat me. He had to do his best then.” Hans was determined to struggle with everything he got.

  “Haa…” Delimira sighed and sat down on the couch, opposite to what she had offered Hans to lie down and rest. “You really don’t want this?” She asked, sipping the tea.

  “Naah! Don't you have my kind of beverage?” Hans asked back.

  “Sorry, we don’t have kids around.”

  “Haha, very funny, Winters.”

  Delimira took another sip and asked Hans at point-blank, “So, Hans, what happened there?”

  “What do you mean what happened?” Hans was perplexed.

  “You in the Deadlands adventure,” she motioned her finger in a circle, adding, “Come on! You expect me to believe you are moron enough to get lost in that place?”

  “Yes.” Hans stretched the word, doubting.

  “Really?” Delimira widened her eyes, pointing, “You are an idiot but not with a capital ‘I’. So, tell me what happened.”

  “Ha, smartass… Can’t hide anything from you, can I?” Hans sighed, realising that no matter how much he tried to circle around, Delimira would eventually dig it out from him. “Well, I need an extra pair of eyes in this weird situation too.”, so he told her firsthand, “Your Frickin’ aunt came to take my head off.”

  “You survived? That’s odd?” Delimira startled.

  “Hey! Don’t you have any faith in my abilities?” Hans rose from his seat.

  “Shut it, princess.” Delimira glared, emphasising, “You survived. What is the usual thing you’d do after that?”

  “Of course, I’ll call Arat tomorrow and tell him that I got attacked by Clandor’s queen. He’ll take care of the rest. I’ll show her how costly it was to mess with me.”

  “You should stop.” Delimira asked him to keep calm, explaining, “Queen Reina always has several contingencies prepared. I don’t know what it is, but do not react—”

  “You want me to take her attempt on my life as it never happened. Do I seem that of a pushover?”

  “No, but you have control over one thing, your reaction, and that is the reason you should not act. She expects you to explode this situation, so do not grant her this satisfaction.”

  “Tsk, now that you’ve put it this way, it seems legit. But how come she comes to kill me and leave her daughter here? Did she not fear me venting on her?”

  “She knows you, your dignity won’t allow you to harm an innocent—”

  “Screw dignity. I’m going to make her life so miserable that it will hurt her right in the heart. Just you wait.”

  Delimira knew there was no stopping him and hoped her little cousin could survive somehow. “Take a breather and sleep, Prince Parv. There is quite the show to watch tomorrow… oh wait, pft… you are the show of tomorrow.” She went to her room chuckling, and Hans covered himself with the sheet the two elves had provided.

  In the morning, Hans wasted no time and reached Dean’s quarters, “Grandpa, your prodigal grandson has returned.” He shouted, and the crowd turned towards him. There were several students gathered around the dean’s quarters for any new orders, but Hans coming by himself was not what they expected.

  “Senior run, he’ll kill you.” Vanir came running, trying to drag Hans away.

  However, Hans was undeterred and quoted Rudolf, “There is time in every man’s life when he has to stand up no matter what,” and he unclasped Vanir’s begging hands from his wrist.

  “The hell you are mumbling,” Vanir jolted, pleading him to run, “why didn’t you ‘stand up’ yesterday night then?” He questioned.

  “A man needs to sleep too, junior,” Hans said, embarrassed.

  Before Vanir could quip, a roaring thunder shook the sky, “Get your ass up here, brat.”

  “Naah, I’m good here.” Hans outright rejected.

  “The more you make me wait.” Rudolf opened the door and stepped out, “The angrier I get.”

  “It won’t be as easy as before, grandpa.” Hans stared right into his eyes, and people understood that these two were about to clash, so they quickly cleared the yard.

  “So you wanted to do this the hard way?” Rudolf engulfed himself in the purple hue, his thunder aura crackling around.

  Photonise

  Hans cried out and lit up bright; many hadn’t seen Hans in action after the past year’s glory wars, and him shining like a light source was something new, even Rudolf only heard it from Sierra.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Hans, on the other hand, felt the surge of explosive power inside him. He raised his head only to see Rudolf appear before him in a flash, his fist filled with aura aimed at his face. “Shush!” Hans ducked with lightning speed and kicked high above, right at Rudolf’s chin. It even got connected, but Hans felt like he had hit some wall.

  “Darn his monstrous build,” he cursed and released his stored energy in the form of explosions from his right, propelling him to the left. With the same way he kept avoiding Rudolf’s assaults. He rained down photosied punches, kicks, tackles, everything, but Rudolf felt nothing.

  “Is that all your shining thing could do, brat? And here I was wondering you might’ve grown so much that stepping inside the barrier felt like a joke to you.”

  “Everyone has weaknesses. You taught me that, and you aren’t an exception.” Hans heaved a long breath before attacking again.

  “Right, but you aren’t capable of exploiting them, so just get beaten, brat.” Rudolf increased his speed, twice as fast as he was showing earlier. With the relentless assault, Hans had no window to attack; he could only focus on evasion.

  “Shook! Shook! Shook!” Sometimes they were on the ground, sometimes in the sky, but even with increased speed, Rudolf failed to land a single hit on Hans, and this was quite frustrating for him. He wasn’t using his full power, but it was sufficient enough to beat Hans. “So you’ve learned how to run like a rat. That still doesn’t give you any right to step into the red demon territory.”

  Skill: Surge

  With the lightning flowing inside Rudolf’s veins, his limits were off; he was at full speed, and Hans knew there was no way he could keep dodging him.

  ~Elderform~

  Hans cried.

  “You are making yourself a bigger target, stupid.” Rudolf lunged at him, but Hans suddenly turned all green and exploded into thousands of wooden shards. If that wasn’t enough, all were photonised and carried the explosive power inside them.

  Quantity never beats quality unless it comes with overwhelming numbers. Rudolf’s moves were restricted by sudden explosions. “I admit, you’ve become quite a nuisance, brat.” He stood firm on the ground, bouncing off the incoming shards.

  One after another, Hans was showing off the moves and spells none had seen, and there were many onlookers who were seeing it with curious eyes. “He really became something else.” Delimira commented, and Vanir puffed his chest as if she was complimenting him.

  Others had the same reactions; they all knew Hans was odd, but he was doing pretty well against the ninth-ranked knight, even when Rudolf seemed not serious.

  Rudolf wasn’t as perceptive as Reina and definitely not a knight who uses brains in a fight. He had faith in his strength that it could overcome anything, and he was right to do so since even with several hundred explosions one after another, he only suffered from minuscule bruises.

  “Is that it, show me what you really got, kid?” Rudolf mocked, and Hans responded with all the shards merging together to realise his gigantic humanoid form that everyone was familiar with from past year glory wars, but something was different. As they remembered, it was a gigantic body, dismembered from the torso, but Hans stood firm on his legs, his features detailed. He was huge, more than tens of metres.

  “YOU ASKED FOR THIS, GRANDPA. SO STOP GOING EASY. IT’S DISRESPECTFUL.” Hans moved his gigantic hand. It was quite slow but carried immense force. Rudolf could’ve easily avoided it, but just as he was about to jump, Hans shackled it with his VoidZone. He only needed him to be still, and to do so, he used the body of his elder form.

  Rudolf learned the difference between past Hans and current in a hard way as he was sent flying with quite the force. He used aura to shield himself, but VoidZone itself has three abilities: it gives an invincible armour to the user, second: Inectio— which forced the natural mana into the target— and third, the restriction of regeneration of aura or pure mana.

  “You ask for my respect. So there you have it — Thunderclap.” Rudolf called his sky-hung sword down, and it came as its name suggested, with a thunderclap to his hands.

  As Hans saw Rudolf equipped with his sword, he understood the game was serious from this point. He focused his control on the nature’s mana and guided it to the ground.

  ~SilvaOrtus~

  He recalled his basic spell of turning the ground into the terrain of his like, a forest that listened to his commands.

  “This isn’t a child’s play.” Rudolf lunged forward, slashing down his Thunderclap at Hans’s gigantic body.

  The elderwood’s eyes lit deep green, and his control over mana grew strong. So strong that Rudolf could feel himself in the deep waters; his movement became slow until it finally became so stiffed that he couldn’t move. “I’M NOT PLAYING A CHILDREN’S GAME EITHER. GRANDPA.” Hans stretched his hand towards affixed Rudolf and stopped right at his face.

  ~ManaCanon~

  As ManaStorm used his whole body as a pivot, in Elderform, his hand acted like that so as ravaging mana swirled around Elderwood’s hand, Hans stretched it back as far as he could and then let go of the mana he held tight. And like a rubber band, the ravaging mana hit Rudolf just after he released the control that fixed Rudolf in mid-air.

  The impact was quite the sight to see. It wasn’t that Rudolf was weaker than Reina, but Reina had made her skills such that his VoidZone was useless against her. To do this kind of attack, Hans needed Reina to succumb to VoidZone, which she avoided swiftly with her rotating sphere.

  Rudolf crashed badly, trailing like a meteor that unearthed everything in its path. Fortunately, there was no property harm, and none was injured. “Ugh.” Rudolf stood up, but he was finally wounded and not one but from several places. However, his head that bled profusely indicated that Hans had managed to hit Alastor.

  All students were baffled by the showcase of Hans’s might. Chris and Delimira were not the exception either, so were Aredhel and Sierra. “Since when did he grow so much?” Sierra mumbled.

  “I am Hans Parv.” Hans roared in delight. “Now tell me if I’m ready for Deadlands or not?”

  “Hey, minion.” Delimira nudged Vanir. “What is happening? Is he using some trick?”

  All awaited Vanir’s answer in anticipation, so he answered, “This is not even the full extent of his power.” All remained silent after that. Some were jealous, some concerned that he was soon going to leave this nest, while some itched to fight him.

  Rudolf, on the other hand, was now seeing Hans not as his bratty grandson but as someone who demanded respect for his full capabilities. “Sierra, be on standby.” He admitted, as he spat some blood to the side.

  With the sacrifice of half of the aura, a knight makes the surrounding of his liking. Norwin called it Ice Age, and every Dominion knight and above had the skill. So does Rudolf.

  Domain skill: Nimbus.

  In a flash, an absurd amount of aura got released from Rudolf and covered the whole forest of SilvaOrtus with a crackling light that charred anything that came into contact with it. Hans’s elderform wasn’t the exception either.

  Hans could feel the prickly jolt as he was connected to the Elderwood like an extension of himself. Transforming into shards would have been suicidal since the more he spread himself, the more he got shocked. So not to become disabled, Hans voluntarily canceled Elderform.

  The elderwood visibly turned into a small, dry wood statue, his green colour turned gray, and Hans launched out himself from his chest area. “Tsk.” He clicked his tongue; Elderform with VoidZone was a dangerous combo from his first book.

  “Get ready, Hans Parv.” This was the first time Rudolf had called his full name.

  Skill: Storm’s Eye

  He turned into a source of quick lightning bolts that hit in close proximity, acting both defensively and offensively.

  “So he wants to fight in close quarters?” Hans stretched his stiffed muscles, “bring it on, Grandpa.”

  He couldn’t risk using VoidZone without the exceptional control of Elderwood, at least not yet against a warlord. “I’ve shown the first book; now it’s time for the second.”