Tales of the Endless Empire

Chapter 455: King or Prince?

“Get up. This is not the time to lie around and look at the ceiling with those red glowing eyes,” Saranya shouted at Thalion when the water vanished into the deep rifts beside him.Yet she had no idea what was going through Thalion’s mind right now.

This was the place of the Scarlet Continuum, and the sheer density of blood mana in the air invaded Thalion’s and the Sanguis Impera’s minds.

The king’s chamber was massive. The ornate, rune-covered ceiling was a hundred meters above Thalion. The whole chamber was an octagon, wide enough to house a whole army. There were many crafted rifts in the red marble that led deep down where all the blood for the ritual was kept.

The whole ground was covered in runes and circles, and in the middle of it all was the king’s massive throne.

The throne was over five meters tall, and red glowing pathways made their way up to the figure who was sitting on top of it.

The king had dark red skin, broad shoulders, long black hair, and was wearing red rune-covered armor. Thalion wasn’t sure if the almost two-meter-tall weapon leaning against the throne was a scepter or a mace. Maybe both.

The king was holding the armrest in one hand as he arrogantly sat on the throne, looking down at Thalion who had just come in with the flood.

Thalion had to admit that he had better entrances so far.

He held back a wince when the Sanguis Impera snapped his bones back into place with the vines growing under his skin.

Fighting back against the overwhelming surroundings, he noticed the water had swept him over thirty meters into the king’s chamber.

Now the prince was coming with a wide grin on his face, his boosting skill no longer active.

Thalion had no idea what was going on with this dude, but he found it unfair. Normally, when using a boosting skill that powered you up like that, you would be left in a quite weakened state. In contrast to the norm, the prince was totally fine.

Thalion would also like to know what class would give such a boosting skill and that weird word skill in E-grade. Experiencing the two felt pretty overpowered.

“It was destined that someone would try to interrupt my ascension,” the king smiled with a deep voice that made the chamber rumble.

“Please, please. One after the other,” the prince said in a predatory, hungry voice.

“Wind Prison.”

The last word was for Thalion, and all of a sudden he felt like a hundred men were holding him down, not letting him move in the slightest.

He tried activating Mana Wave, but he was too slow to charge it up, and before he could release it, a steel-like grip grabbed his throat.

In retrospect, he should have immediately activated his bloodline skill, but his head was still spinning a bit from the undodgeable Water Wave before.

On the positive side, he now experienced the immobilizing skill firsthand. It felt very similar to when he had lain on the ice crystal while the two elves had forced the ice affinity into him.

Those had been good times…

The difference now was that this skill was only affecting his soul.

Thalion had a strong soul and a strong will. Even when it hurt, he pushed everything against the intruder that slowly began to freeze his whole soul.

The process couldn’t be stopped, and Thalion could only slow it down.

The moment the prince touched him, he also found out that he wasn’t able to activate any other skill.

Currently, Thalion could still move—but that didn’t matter much since the stupid Wind Prison was holding him in place.

Now, from his vision, he saw how the prince towered over him, opening his mouth wide like a snake, dark green mist coming from it.

If I survive this, it will definitely be a bonding experience between me and Eric, Thalion thought while moving the only thing he could move which was his sword.

The Sanguis Impera wasn’t sitting still either, and vines tried to stab at the prince. A few managed to penetrate the Wind Prison, and since it seemed like the prince’s protection was gone while using that green mist, they stabbed deep into his body.

This changed everything.

Thalion and the Sanguis Impera both pulled on the prince’s blood while trying to grow through him.

The green mist moved back into the prince’s mouth, and the moment it closed, the prince ripped out the vines with his free hand and threw Thalion to the side.

The violent throw broke Thalion’s neck and made him fly over sixty meters, landing hard on the marble, from where he slid over the ground for almost the same distance—only a vine of the Sanguis Impera stopping him from falling into one of the rifts.

“Oh, be gentle, alri—JEEZ!” Thalion tried to bargain with the Sanguis Impera, who snapped his spine back into place without any care for Thalion’s pain.

Feeling quickly returned, but that was mostly due to the rich air.

Thalion now lay on the left side of the king’s throne, from where he could see the prince pulling out the vines while the king slowly stepped down from the throne, putting on his helmet and taking his weapon.

The king, all in all, wasn’t that much of a likable person. He didn’t seem to like that the prince and Thalion were breathing his good air—but it seemed that the king was even more angry at the person who had plunged a few hundred liters of water into his blood ritual.

To be honest, Thalion would be pissed too if something like that happened to him—not that he was planning something similar.

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For the time after the treasure hunt, “getting so powerful that I can kill the prince with my pinky finger” was suddenly at the top of his list.

Yet now he could enjoy a very interesting fight.

King versus Prince.

Who would win? Thalion had no idea.

The king was at level one hundred eighty, which was the cap for E-grade. The prince was at level one hundred fifty-eight—quite low for someone who could just kill anyone while also being basically invincible.

The aura of the king was surpassing the prince’s by a large margin, which was quite impressive. It would all come down to how skilled the king was in battle. By how the king moved and spun the scepter around, Thalion had high hopes.

Only now did Thalion notice that the top of the scepter—or mace, he still wasn’t sure—was a skull with long blond hair still hanging from it.

Eww, gross. At least clean it up before using it, Thalion thought.

“You dare to disrespect me in my throne room? You even failed to kill the weak F-grade. I will drain your body of blood and add it to the ritual. All v-e-r-y slowly,” the king announced while his aura kept rising.

“This whole ritual is something I totally would do, but don’t think for a second that you have a chance. I’m just asking—what are you actually the king of?” the prince retorted with a wide, sinister smile on his face.

Two brains, one brain cell… Thalion thought while his body fully healed up. The prince wasn’t the only one who could heal in an instant.

“A prince dares to challenge a king. Truly foolish—but I will show you the error in your thinking!” the king shouted in some kind of war cry, his aura rising even higher before both fighters blurred and attacked each other.

Thalion was disappointed. He had hoped for some valuable information or anything that could be used. Well, at least he could watch the fight from his relatively safe position.

The runes on the king’s armor began to glow with bright red light, and Thalion noticed that red on red didn’t look that mesmerizing.

The air howled when the king unleashed his first skill by simply punching the air before him. A red shockwave tore out, hitting the prince hard and catapulting him backward.

The prince twisted in the air, landing on his feet and stopping after sliding for a few more meters—grinning.

“If that was everything, this will be a short one,” the prince retorted before shooting forward.

He was a lot faster this time, but the king had no problem dealing with that speed and effortlessly kept up.

For Thalion, they were already so fast that he would need to use multiple skills to slow them down to even have the slightest chance.

Currently, it seemed that neither of them was even thinking about killing him. Likely because he was just some weak F-grade not worth anything in their eyes.

The king, in fact, was taking it a step further by not taking the prince seriously. That was definitely an achievement after all the prince had already done.

Could the king really be this strong?

He was the king, and this was basically the end of the treasure hunt. With the soldiers not being that strong, maybe the king would make up for it. The king was also at the brink of evolving to D-grade.

Thalion never had the opportunity—besides that one time in the tutorial where he used evolution to escape from the blue robes.

If the king evolved, would it be like in the tutorial with that time stop?

The king was already powerful, and this guy getting to D-grade wasn’t something Thalion wanted to deal with.

Actually, he had enough of this trial. He wanted to get his evolution and do some sweet-ass leveling. Instead, he was in this horrible situation with everyone around being so much stronger.

And that wasn’t all.

Besides having more attributes, at least the prince had one stupid bloodline. At least this proved that there were simply no limits in the system. If he wanted to get to godhood, he would likely meet a good bunch of this kind.

There had been days where Thalion had found himself very overpowered.

Well, not anymore.

The king dodged the grab of the prince and slapped him across the face with the backhand of his armored glove. Before the prince had a chance to be thrown back by the impact, the king grabbed him by the neck and gave the prince a headbutt that would have broken rocks.

Well, it seemed the head of the prince was a lot harder than a rock, since it didn’t break.

Yet the impact was hard enough to make the prince lose orientation for a moment—which must have led to him not noticing the armored foot moving with pretty high speed in the direction of his face.

Thalion wouldn’t say that he knew the prince—but the longer he watched his face, the more he began to see the king as an instrument of karma.

Jeez, the king was really getting started now.

Disappearing in a shroud of bloody mist, he appeared right behind the prince, who had been shot back by the kick. Grabbing the prince by the neck before he had a chance of naturally hitting the ground. Well, the king decided to help with that and rammed the fellow headfirst into the red marble.

He followed up by stomping with his red foot on the back of the prince’s neck, which sent out a loud crack through the throne room.

Thalion almost feared that it was over—but all of a sudden the prince shot forward like a spider on all fours, dodging the next stomp of the king.

Yet the prince must have still lost his orientation, which led to him going in a circle, which maybe led to Thalion’s favorite moment of the treasure hunt so far as the king soccer-kicked the prince in the head, which almost shot the fellow like a cannonball through the whole chamber, making him smack into the opposite wall.

The experience must have been very similar to a fly making contact with a car’s windshield on the highway.

Sadly, the prince didn’t turn into a red spot on the wall but instead crashed against it and dropped to the ground like a bird hitting a window.

Thalion had to say that the display was quite scary—but at the moment it was very enjoyable.

The king was seeing it like Thalion, his eyes clearly laughing behind the helmet.

The prince was obviously not agreeing with that assessment, as rage was displayed on his face while he spit out blood.

“You sure you are a prince?” the king teased with his deep, commanding voice that definitely did the job.

The prince didn’t answer the king and just spoke the word Thalion had already heard two times and didn’t like that much.

“Heal!”

All the bruises and injuries vanished with that word, which Thalion found totally unfair.

I need more outsiders, he told himself while observing the fight.

There was no chance of him getting to the gate, and intervening in the fight also wasn’t in his interest. He was simply too weak, and he hoped that they would somehow weaken each other so that he could finish off the survivor.

This was, of course, not something Thalion deemed very likely to happen—but at the moment it was the only thing he could do.

Wait for some opportunity that allowed him to do something.

The prince wasn’t finished there, as his boosting skill began again.

This time Thalion could see the king tensing up a bit. The prince also noticed it.

“Now I will devour you.”

With those words, the prince shot forward with speed that surpassed everything currently displayed.

Thalion almost got a stiff neck from moving his head this fast.

The king tried to hit the prince with another shockwave, but it missed entirely, leading to the prince grabbing the forearm of the king.

Thalion watched with interest if the king would now also be devoured because the moment the prince would breathe out that dark green mist, Thalion would kill the guy.

In contrast to Thalion and all the others Thalion had seen being touched by the prince, the king didn’t seem to care that much and just held the long scepter under the prince’s chin.

The next moment an explosion blasted the prince upward, and Thalion could see the confused expression on his face.

The king seemed to have enough and powered up even more.

With a lazy motion of his scepter, the prince’s direction magically changed, and he was driven headfirst against the marble floor that so far seemed to be indestructible without a single scar.

The other thing that seemed close to being indestructible was the prince.

His shoulder was dislocated by the impact, and Thalion could hear a few bones snapping, which sent shivers of joy through Thalion’s body.

Thalion not only observed the fight but also inspected the runes on the throne, the walls, and the blood in the deep rifts below to find something that would help him should a winner be declared.

Mana, health, and stamina were full, while his soul also stopped feeling sluggish like before.

Should a battle arrive, he would do anything to get out victorious.

Yet all of a sudden the fight stopped as two more gates on the side opened while a certain human party was coming through the open main entrance through which Thalion and the prince had entered before.

Great so this is the end, Thalion thought when his eyes met with a few key figures of the event.