Shards of the Broken Heart

In the meantime, my sister didn’t stay idle and followed my instructions without any hitch. When the beast was distracted by my advance, Alice dexterously placed those Jade Discs around the crater created by the beast. The positioning of those discs was not haphazard, and they were placed as the vertices of a regular octagon.

These Jade Discs were no ordinary discs as they also had arrays engraved on them. These discs, if arranged in a given formation, were able to increase the concentration of Stellar Energy in the interior of the area covered by these discs. And the formation created by Alice was none other than that.

By the time she had finished placing all the Jade Discs, I had reached the top of the beast’s head. And the effects of the vaporised liquid were starting to take place. After reaching the top of its head, I didn’t stop my run and jumped off from its head.

The beast opened up its mouth and tried to use the previous ‘Ice-Fire Dragon Combo’ attack, but before it could finish accumulating the energy in its mouth, the previously collected energy dissipated. The beast's eyes looked at me in anger, but it could not even move its eyeballs and follow the trajectory of my fall.

Every fibre of the beast’s body was paralysed. And the culprit was none other than my dearest invention, ‘Drunken Melody’. With the improvement in my knowledge regarding poison, the strength of the ‘Drunken Melody’ increased a lot, and this beast was its very first victim.

I landed in front of the beast, and Alice, who had completed her task, rejoined me. She had already activated the array formation, so the concentration of stellar energy.

As the beast was paralysed, I got time to use the ‘Thousand Refinement Demon Tempering’ and coagulate my strength. With the help of the formation, the speed of energy absorption was quite high, and I was able to replenish my energy reserve. Alice also didn’t fall behind and used the time to catch her breath.

We had a few moments to accumulate our strength and attack the vulnerable beast before the effects of the poison faded out. The effect of ’Drunken Melody’ is only for a few minutes. And with the increased concentration of stellar energy, it would take much less time for the beast to dispel the poison from its body.

With the race against time, I was only able to temper my stellar energy to get 8x times the strength. I could get more time by having Alice act as a shield, but I didn’t want her to suffer the same as before. So, the only thing we could do now was to use the proficiency in our swordsmanship to finish off the beast and pass the test of our mother.

With our training, we siblings had developed many new forms of combo attacks to deal with strong enemies. And it was a good time to test them out.

I grasped Alice’s left hand with my right and looked at the beast. The beast would be able to move within a few seconds, and now was the perfect chance to finish it off.

“Big Sis, let’s dance.”

I pulled my sister and started sprinting towards the beast, the sword in my left hand. Alice didn’t fall behind and continued to keep up with my pace, her fingers interlocked with mine. As soon as we neared it, we jumped from the ground and started spinning.

Our bodies entwined through our hands with two blades rotating around us, we ‘flapped’ upwards to reach the head. Using the hands as an axis, while spinning, we slashed the neck below the head of the beast.

With the increased momentum due to our spinning, our strength combined to increase the ferocity of the attack. The combo-move ‘Wings of Butterfly’ was performed, which led to the two dazzling blades separating the head of the beast from its neck.

The beast became headless, and its huge body dropped into the crater. My sister and I landed near the headless body and wheezed to take deep breaths. Her legs went weak, but before she could slide down, I propped her body up against myself.

“Little brother… *huff*… I can’t take it… *huff*… anymore…”

She closed her eyes and surrendered herself into my arms. The previous attack had sucked her reserves dry, and with all the accumulated mental fatigue, Alice couldn’t help but fall asleep. I carried her up in my arms and walked in the direction of our carriage.

My legs were wobbly, and it took a great effort to walk up to the carriage. I placed my exhausted sister on the bed inside the carriage and turned back towards the direction of the dead beast.

But before I could take a few steps, I felt my vision turn heavy and hazy. My mind shut down as I started falling forward face-first on the ground. But before I could hit the ground, I found my shoulders supported by two fair hands under black robes.

“Please sleep soundly, young master. You have done a good job in dealing with the beast, and now you could leave the rest to me.”

The last words I heard before entering the dreamland were those of the cold but kind maid, sister Yvette.

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After Lucas fell asleep due to exhaustion, the maid Yvette carried him on her shoulder and went back to the carriage. She placed him on the bed beside his sister and looked at their peaceful sleeping faces.

These two young’uns were her young master and young miss, as well as her students. Inside her mask, she had a gentle smile of gratification. These two didn’t let her efforts down and were able to defeat a beast many levels stronger than them.

(Madam has good children. With their strength and support, the day would not be far away when Madam regains her strength and takes her revenge against those bastards.)

Even she didn’t think that they would be able to defeat the newly evolved beast without any serious injuries. And she was always on the alert to swoop in and pull them out if things went awry. But these two exceeded her expectations.

(Their new combo ‘Wings of Butterfly’ was only developed recently, and they still got such proficiency in it.)

She marvelled at the talent of the siblings. When they first gained insight into the combo move, they were not able to extract even one-third of their total strength. And now they were able to use their full strength during the combo attack.

After she covered the two siblings, Yvette went in the direction of a huge crater to dissect the beast and obtain the battle rewards. Unfortunately, her luck was not good as she could not find any beast core and had to make do with the flesh and bones of the beast.

After dissecting and extracting, she returned to the carriage and instructed the beasts to move in the direction of the capital, Angor. Unbeknownst to the siblings, with her everyday presence near them, the Snow Frekins had acknowledged Yvette for quite some time.

With the leash in her hands, she guided the carriage in the direction of the main event, the rebellion, which will reach its climax: The capital city of Angor.

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After depleting my energy reserves and falling into a deep slumber in the arms of sister Yvette, I thought of myself waking up in the carriage. But there was something else in store for me, as I opened up to find myself falling into a deep and dark well.

I had been already accustomed to this dark and creepy place that I no longer get affected by those nightmarish ravings and blurred visions. My psyche had strengthened immensely, and I could suppress all those negative emotions without any hitch.

This situation was like a daily routine, and I was anticipating a new memory related to my past lives.

Somewhere along the fall, the horrendous tendrils pulled me inside the wall and engulfed me in darkness. And left me waiting for the next vision or memory to appear.

Perhaps this was a punishment for the anticipation or me getting accustomed to the negative emotions, but the vision I glimpsed next pushed me to the brink of despair and madness.