Chapter 154 Laurene And Arnold’s Little Adventure III

"..."

"..."

Laurene and Arnold stared at each other in silence before Laurene suddenly applied body-strengthening magic on herself and was about to jump off the hill, only for her right arm to be grabbed by Arnold who looked at her with a frown.

"Your Highness.

Since you've confirmed what you are looking for is still here, let's go back. Your guards are definitely worried about you by now."

"Nahh, they have mages who can track my location so they should know exactly where I am and would be here soon.

Let's have some fun before they get here."

'Besides, I've already disabled the concealment artifact on me. Dad gave it to me to hide from enemies in the event of danger but he probably wouldn't have expected me to use it to hide from my own guards.'

Laurene's guards were indeed already tracking the princess and were closing in on her location, but unbeknownst to her, the area she was in had a boundary magic field that disabled all sorts of tracking magic; hence, her guards actually didn't know her exact location.

It was a result of a particular artifact that was within the structure not too far from her.

"Even if they do, it's not enough justification to dive into a monster nest."

"I want to test out my magic catalyst, that's justification, right? Besides, there's nothing there that can be a threat to me with you around."

"I'm happy that you see me so highly but let's go back, Princess."

Hearing Arnold's words, Laurene stared at him in silence before a mischievous smile suddenly crept onto her face. She moved her left hand and tapped on the bracelet on her right wrist.

It was a small simple gemstone bracelet with a single black spherical gem the size of a blueberry.

As soon as her finger touched it, the gem glowed and shot out of the bracelet, floating into the air as it shone with a bright light that made Arnold reflexively close his eyes.

"Grease."

In his darkened vision, he heard that one word and his grip on the arm of the girl in front of him loosened as her arm slipped out with ease.

He opened his eyes to see an incoming fist which he dodged by a hair's breadth before reaching out and trying to grab the arm of his assailant.

However, right before he touched it, he felt something was wrong and hurriedly jumped away, a second before the arm exploded.

**BOOMM!!!

The entire hill trembled as more than five metres of its twenty-metre height had been taken out with that one explosion.

**WHOOOSHH!!!

Arnold waved his arm and summoned a gust of wind to blow away the dust and smoke from the explosion, his gaze locking onto the person standing at the bottom of the explosion-ridden hill as he asked.

p "Princess Laurene, just what are you doing?"

However, the reply he got was not one he expected. Laurene who was initially chuckling to herself suddenly froze before turning to him and breaking out into a large smile.

"You finally called me by name!"

Arnold could feel the happiness radiating off her despite being over ten metres away from the girl, causing question marks to appear in his mind as he didn't understand why she was so happy.

'Is it because I addressed her the way I did when she was younger? Just that?'

His confusion was very visible on his face, but he did not have the time to think it through as the nearby orcs who were definitely not deaf, heard the explosion and were rushing over to find out the source.

"Princess, we have to lea-! Shit!"

Arnold cursed loudly as he felt the gaze of one of the level 100 orcs lock onto him, right before it shouted out something to the other orcs.

'It has spotted us!'

He looked down towards Laurene and saw that the young princess had wiped the smile off her face and was staring at the orcs with all seriousness.

The black orb that was the gemstone in her bracelet, the Magic catalyst 'Venus', floated in the air silently as she roused her magic power and prepared for battle.

'Did she use the explosion to get them to notice us?'

Upon realizing that the earlier explosion was Laurene's way of attracting the orcs' attention, putting them in a situation where they had no choice but to battle the orcs, Arnold's brow twitched as he barely held back his urge to flip out on the princess.

'I really didn't plan for a battle.'

He looked at the mass-produced sword he picked up from one of the city gates' guards, and then at his clothes and concluded that he had to be careful so as not to get hit even once.

'Even if my clothes are enchanted, they were not enchanted to be used in battle but for simple self-defence, but her...'

He studied the clothes that Laurene was wearing and noticed that they were enchanted with about a dozen physical and magic defensive spells with the materials of the clothes themselves being sourced from fairly powerful monsters, thus possessing enough defensive power to protect her from almost anything below level 200, except against beings with special abilities.

If he knew that these clothes were just prototypes and that the real deal was designed to be strong enough to take hits from level 300 monsters then he'd probably be in for the shock of his life.

While Arnold was tabulating the matter of equipment, Laurene had completely gone into battle mode, activating her 'Myriad Casting' skill that she acquired upon becoming Level 100.

The moment she activated the skill, Venus glowed lightly as seven fist-sized orbs of pure magic power manifested behind her, something that would make Evan 'Truth Seeker!' if he saw them.

'Activate all Elements.'

As she gave the command, Venus glowed and her skill's effect continued as the six of the seven orbs were then attributed with various elements of magic and changed colours.

Golden-Lightning, Red-Fire, Green-Wind, Brown-Earth, Blue-Water, Black-Dark.

The last orb remained transparent, showing the pure and non-attributed nature of the magic power contained within.

Seeing the skill's effect for the first time, Arnold's eyes widened slightly as he deduced what those orbs were meant for.

When one cast a magic spell, they took the (mostly pure) unattributed magic power in their bodies and infused it with an attribute, before channelling it into the spell circle that they either generated outwardly, or for skilled mages and experts in a particular spell, visualized inwardly.

There was also the issue of using a chant or having to call out the spell's name to solidify the image of the spell and its effect, allowing the caster to influence the magic power and make their will a reality in the form of the spell.

This was a process that usually took a certain amount of time, ranging from a few minutes for less skilled mages and those using longer chants, to mere seconds for more powerful mages and those who activated spells just by calling out the names of the spells in demand.

However, Laurene never had to go through the process of using a chant or even calling out the spell's name due to her chant revocation.

All she had to do was manipulate her magic power and will for the spell to be cast, but even that took time depending on the attribute of the spell and the amount of magic power required.

She only occasionally called out spell names to reinforce her image of the spell in her mind.

However, her myriad casting solved that problem for her by attributing her pure magic power for her and keeping it on standby inside the orbs floating behind her.

Thus, the moment she needed to cast a spell, all she had to do was will it and the already attributed magic power inside the orb would be consumed instantly to cast the spell.

This saved her the stress of having to infuse her magic power with an attribute every time she wanted to cast a spell and made it easier for her to switch attributes with others as even with her chant revocation, switching from water magic to fire magic was still going to take her a few seconds.

Seconds that when one looked at battles between existences on the master level and above, those few seconds could be the deciding factor.

An example would be the time that Glavore had suddenly appeared behind Evan and nearly split him in half. He would have perished there if not for the fact that Eliza's barrier managed to hold the blade wraith at bay for a few seconds, giving him the time needed to activate blink.

So, for a mage like Laurene, the ability to instantly cast attributed magic spells and switch elements, even going as far as to use multiple elements without any issues, was very useful.

And that was what she had achieved when she combined the effects of her chant revocation and her Myriad casting.

Due to being Loved by Mana, the amount of magic she required when casting spells was reduced drastically and the strength of her spells didn't drop but instead increased instead.

"Try to keep up, Arnold."