NOVGO.NET Chapter 569 Thoughts
Chapter 569 Thoughts
The sky convulsed as Gale moved.
The winged undead didn’t hesitate. With a single beat of his enormous wings, the air shattered into a cascade of pressure waves.
Wind howled like blades, every gust carrying shards of condensed mana that sliced through the formation of Awakeners above.
Gale didn’t let up-wave after wave of mixed attacks poured out of him: compressed wind lances and raw slashes of mana that tore through the very sky.
The disciplined formations of the flying Awakeners broke instantly. Some raised barriers, others countered with their own spells, but it was like throwing sand against a flood.
Entire clusters of students were flung aside, screaming as they plummeted from the air.
Shock hit the gathered Awakeners like a hammer.
They had come expecting something else. At worst, they thought they’d face some nasty tricks or hidden trump cards. But this… this was something else entirely.
The pressure radiating from Gale and Lucky was suffocating, enough to make even battle-hardened candidates feel their lungs seize. The sheer weight of it made their own power feel small, flimsy, like sparks against a wildfire.
And suddenly, the reward made sense.
Sixty million experience points. Five levels. Forty attributes across the board. It wasn’t generosity-it was compensation. A warning wrapped in temptation. The system had known what they would face here. The reason the reward was so outrageous was simple: Castle 37 wasn’t just another keep to topple. It was a calamity.
Voices rose in disbelief and fear, panic breaking their unity.
“This… this is insane. That’s a Rank 3 undead!”
“Two of them! That’s impossible!”
“Who the hell is this guy?”
Eyes turned downward. To Michael. To the calm figure hovering above his keep, black spear angled casually toward the heavens, gaze steady as if the army above was nothing but passing shadows.
For the first time, many realized the truth. The guardian of Castle 37 wasn’t some fabricated challenge. It was him. A fellow candidate. A necromancer, no less, commanding monsters that had no business appearing in an entrance exam.
Fear rooted deep.
Now they understood why the quest was so rewarding. The system wasn’t bribing them. It was paying them to risk their lives against someone who should not exist at this stage.
Michael remained still, hovering above his keep with his spear
lowered, eyes sharp. He didn’t interfere, didn’t rush. He only watched, measuring the tide of destruction Gale was unleashing, his senses
stretching far beyond the castle.
As for his other undead, he placed them back into the coffin.
Lucky, on the other hand, had vanished.
Michael had two missions.
Defend and attack.
Defend was left to him.
Attack was left to the two rank 3 undead.
One focused here and other focused on areas that wasn’t here.
Lucky focus was the whole island.
Since he decided to play big, Michael played big.
Since others dared to show him malice, he’d return the favor.
Gale turned the sky into a grinder.
Every beat of his wings birthed another wall of pressure, a heaving curtain of wind that shredded everything in its part.
Barriers ballooned, buckled, and burst; elemental bolts were torn off course and hurled back into their casters. A trio of knights tried to dive through the gale-feathers flicked, and a wind-lance stitched them from shoulder to hip, sending them spinning like broken kites.
“Fall back! Regroup-!”
The order never finished. Gale tilted one pinion and the air itself corkscrewed, a roaring funnel that vacuumed a dozen Awakeners in certain direction.
Their cries pinwheeled together, then vanished under the howl as the vortex spat them earthward in a rain of bodies and broken gear.
Panic detonated.
“Higher! Get above it-above it!”
They tried. The sky wouldn’t let them.
Gale’s pressure climbed with them, an invisible ceiling that crushed shoulders and spines. Those who forced speed found the air
thickening around their ankles like wet sand; those who slowed were swatted from the air by crescent slashes that arrived first as a hiss,
then as pain.
Only then did the truth dawn in full. This was disparity in Rank.
“Why can’t I-move-“
“Keep casting! KEEP-“
Their voices broke under the next blast. Gale folded his wings, dropped like a meteor, and unfurled with a thunderclap. The shock front rolled through hundreds, flipping them belly-up. A net of razor-thin currents zipped across the stragglers. One battlemage poured everything into a prism shield; it held for a heartbeat, then spiderwebbed and atomized, the backlash pitching him like a stone. Far from Castle 37, a different storm walked on two legs.
Lucky moved through the forest in his human guise.
The first keep was soon ahead of hjm.
Awakeners stood on its walls, glancing skyward toward the distant uproar where Gale was carving the heavens.
“Who goes-“
Lucky exhaled.
Green flame cascaded from his mouth in a smooth, unbroken sheet-
no roar, no theatrics-just a quiet tide that kissed stone and metal and flesh alike. The fire didn’t burn bright; it burned wrong, seeping into seams and pores, crawling under armor like liquid night. Screamers staggered, clutched their throats, and puked smoke.
Within three breaths, the keep was empty.
Another keep.
Three keeps. Five. Seven.
In the void above the island, ten figures watched the sky come apart.
Gale’s pressure.
Lucky’s green fire.
The teachers felt both-muted by distance, yet heavy enough to make
their marrow throb.
Nine of them went very still.
“We should have picked him! Dammit!”
“Fuck!”
In the void above, nine teachers cursed under their breaths. A good
number of them-if not all-had nothing to do with selecting who out
of the final fifty of the previous round the academy would send an
offer to.
Yet now, watching Castle 37, they couldn’t help but wonder: who had been so blind as to leave Michael unclaimed?
Veraunt’s Edge, the First-Rank Academy whose offer Michael had
accepted, stood as the lone exception. The teacher’s lips curved in
quiet satisfaction, his eyes gleaming.
****
Thanks for reading and I appreciate your continued support!