Code of Rainbow: Legends of Azure and the Masked Planet (Book 3)

Clang!

On the surface of a snowy mountain, a streak of lightning hit a tree and set it on fire instantly. Although the tree was covered in snow, the fire caused by the lightning was furious enough to melt all the snow immediately and started to spread. However, the next second, a stream of water was poured onto the tree and the fire was put out. The cold then froze the water, sealing a black burnt tree inside the ice layer, its remaining branches pointing in different directions. Part of the ice layer was flat and glossy, and in its reflection there was a figure flying by.

‘Why is it so hard…’ In the sky, Soarame shook his head, sighing. In his right hand, a purple demilance was sparkling – Thunder Tube, the Lightning magigear that Kastico had given him. In his left hand, there was a purple-coloured book – the Lightning tutorial book from Kastico, Soarame’s Lightning teacher in school.

Although Soarame’s previous Lightning spell actually wasn’t bad, especially as a result of his self-learning efforts, he didn’t seem to be satisfied. The young man had been ambitious enough to try to practise thundercade, the spell that he witnessed Kastico using to eliminate dozens of magimals in one go – during the mini beastide months ago. Since then, he had been fascinated by this lethal but charming spell, just like everyone else was; but once he started learning it, he just had to concede that this Expert-level spell was more difficult than he had expected.

‘Beyond this mountain, it should be there…’ Soarame flipped his hand and the Lightning book disappeared – he put it into his space-ring. He decided to stop practising his Lightning magic from this point on, because he might reach his destination any time after he flew over the mountain – it was supposed to be a small village that he had learnt about from the Sunrise Alliance branch in the Tottwal Empire.

Yes, Soarame decided to pick Tottwal as his first destination, because he couldn’t wait to get Max. If he chose to visit the headquarters first and spend time on the Essence of Magic Elements, it was most likely going to take him many months, if not years, before he made any remarkable progress. By then, everything would be too late. Therefore, now that he knew Rodka had survived and Sachastain was looking for him, Soarame had decided to set Max as his top priority.

Max, you’d better be there… Don’t let me come for nothing! Soarame gritted his teeth and flew on. As he passed the mountain, he saw a flat area not too far away – it was the valley between the mountain below him and another mountain on the other side. Giving it a more careful check, Soarame’s eyes brightened as he observed a cluster of stone houses not too far from the village. According to the information that he had gained earlier, the stone houses were all abandoned; and each stone house was supposed to be very similar to what he had witnessed from Myriad Eyes, the magic array that Naclad had brought to him. In the retrieved scene from Myriad Eyes, Max was inside a stone house; Soarame was counting on it to be one of the abandoned houses here.

Soarame took a deep breath and started to land. He had activated Lurker’s Veil and become invisible – it was the Epic magigear mask that he had obtained from Libral, a wonderful tool that allowed a wizard to hide his existence.

Just as Soarame was landing, he suddenly heard a strange heavy noise from below. As he checked around in bewilderment, he seemed to see the mountain below start trembling. Seconds later, he seemed to see the snow around him begin to slide down.

‘Earthquake?’ As this word flashed into Soarame’s mind, he was instantly struck. The possible earthquake didn’t offer him luxury to ponder; it started to develop more and more ferociously, as if the mountain had become a giant and it was waking up and trying to sit. Along with this process, more and more of the snow on the mountain slid down, as if the giant was shaking off the dirt on his body. A few seconds later, Soarame had to abort his plan of hiding and sneaking in, because he couldn’t bear to witness the villagers getting buried in snow.

‘AVALANCHE!’

Sadly, given his distance to the village, no one there would hear him. But fortunately, the loudness of the avalanche itself had woken up the villagers, and Soarame saw more and more dots appear in the clearing of the village, rapidly moving back and forth. Behind them, a wave of stumbling whiteness formed the background of the scene; the whiteness went downwards slowly but steadily, from the top of the mountain on the other side. This made Soarame pale – he hadn’t realized that there were actually two waves of avalanches happening at the same time. As he looked down, a big blast of snow was rushing towards the village, as if an army of white horses was charging at its enemy. Although Soarame was flying in the air and could hardly be hurt by the avalanche, he still felt as if its “enemy” was himself, and he suddenly realized that the running snow was actually much faster than he had thought he’d seen from the other mountain.

‘NO!’ Soarame roared as he maximized his speed towards the village. This was definitely one of the biggest crises that he had ever witnessed, and he really wasn’t sure what exactly he could do to help the people there. But, fortunately, he could fly faster than the snow, so he did have a chance of arriving at the village and doing something before the snow hit.

While Soarame was using every single second to think for a solution, he saw the villagers run towards a big building. Soon after they entered it, a long wall started rising from the ground, somewhere between the village and Soarame. The wall was shaped like an arrow head, with the arrow pointing towards Soarame.

That’s… not a bad idea! Soarame soon realized that it was a defence of some kind, specifically to protect the village from the avalanche. The arrow-head shape must be designed to split the snow and let it run sideways once it hit, so that it would effectively protect the village behind it. Giving it a more careful look, Soarame noticed that there were actually two defences – one on each side of the village, between the village and the mountain. Both defences looked quite long, but Soarame really wasn’t sure if they were high and strong enough to stop the avalanche from running into the village – the accumulation of the running snow looked so powerful – it seemed to be bumping the houses in the village up and down.

It’s not enough to stop the avalanche! Soarame was anxious again. He had to continue thinking for a solution, including using the broadsword from Ecrif, but he wasn’t convinced that the Godmade would be useful in this scenario.

‘No… this is not good!’ An old villager muttered. As he watched the avalanche becoming more and more furious as more snow joined, his face became paler and paler. He seemed to be convinced that the defence was not enough to block the avalanche. This opinion was soon shared by many other villagers, but none of them could do anything to improve their chances. Soon enough, screaming and crying sounded one after another, and people started to run in different directions, blindly trying to escape.

‘Lauchlin! Run!’ A man shouted at the old villager.

‘Aye!’ Lauchlin was wakened from his despair. He hadn’t been running like the others because one of his legs was a wooden one. ‘But my leg…’

The man didn’t wait for Lauchlin after the shout, but kept running for his own survival. Lauchlin gritted his teeth and tried to run too, but after taking a few steps, he knew that he wouldn’t make it, and no one else would either. The avalanche looked so enormous, and it came from both sides of the village. It would sandwich the entire village, and everyone would be buried alive.

‘Look! What’s that?’

A scream from someone was barely heard from the background noises. Lauchlin looked over, and saw the racing snow suddenly jumped up high along its way for some unknown reason – it looked like a sea tide striking the rocks on the coast, only there was no rock. And when the snow landed, its speed was decreased. A couple of seconds later, it jumped up again, and again, and repeated for a few rounds. As it went on, the avalanche was gradually slowing down.

‘That’s odd!’ Lauchlin was convinced that the snow was blocked by something on the ground, just like what he imagined seeing when the snow hit the defence. Finally, the avalanche stopped after a last round of jumping.

‘It… stopped?’ People were all bewildered to see this.

‘Not on the other side!’ Lauchlin shouted back at them – as, in sharp comparison, the avalanche from the other mountain was still accumulating and charging at them, showing no sign of stopping. If the mountain had not been farther away, it would have hit the village already. As people started screaming again, Lauchlin seemed to hear a special noise from somewhere above, as if something was passing at high speed. However, when he raised his head for a look, he saw nothing but a blue sky.

Watching the avalanche charging closer and closer towards the village, Lauchlin’s face was deadly pale as he staggered. But what he saw next made him scream. ‘AGAIN?!’

To everyone’s surprise, the oddness happened again – every couple of seconds, the snow jumped up towards the sky, and slowed down upon landing. This odd phenomenon kept on just like what had happened on the other side, until the avalanche finally got to the defence.

With a big noise, a vast amount of snow covered everyone. They screamed desperately, but soon realized that the snow was not deep enough to bury the village. After a few seconds, people climbed out of the snow one after another.

‘WE SURVIVED!’ Nobody knew who started cheering, but everyone followed him. They still needed to handle the overwhelmingly large amount of snow in the village, and repair some houses that had been crushed by it, but at least they had survived.

With the help of others, Lauchlin climbed out, distracted. He had suddenly caught sight of something shining under the snow, at its last jump before it reached the defence. The shining thing was instantaneously buried by the snow once it dropped, so Lauchlin wasn’t sure what it really was.

Meanwhile, an invisible Soarame was floating above a thick layer of snow, his breathing very laboured. Inspired by the defences, he had been summoning icewall spells repeatedly, so that they finally stopped the avalanche. The efforts had drained Soarame’s mind ocean, because he had to make each icewall long and strong enough so that it could really help; and for an Expert-level wizard this was supposed to be impossible.

What happened? Soarame shook his foggy brain. His eyes were seeing stars from over-exhaustion. I made it? I actually made it?

With a slight noise, a dent in the shape of a human’s figure appeared in the snow, but looked empty. The next second, Soarame’s body showed up in the dent, filling it up with an exact match – Soarame was too tired to keep Lurker’s Veil activated. Lying down for a rest, Soarame was still not sure how he had managed to stop this enormous natural disaster, which he had believed to be way stronger than his own power. In fact, he did run out of power halfway through, when he was trying to stop the second part of the avalanche. But he clearly recalled what happened at that moment: Just as he became desperate, he suddenly felt something surging into his body, giving him enough mind power. Otherwise, the second part of the avalanche would not have been stopped, and the village would have been wiped off the world.

But how? Master’s token was broken! As Soarame gradually recovered from the exhaustion, he started to regain his sanity and think. Scankeen’s token had been used up and broken during the battle against Naclad, and Soarame had put it in his space-ring. This time, he took it out and tried to feel it, and ascertained that it was not functioning any more.

I was completely exhausted, but then… As Soarame focused on recapturing the details, his eyes opened wider and wider. He looked excited, and his body even started trembling. Then he jumped up from the snow, grabbing his cloak in a flash.

Love of Winoces! Soarame stared at light blue cloak in his hands, madly overjoyed. Although he didn’t know why this cloak suddenly worked wonders at the critical moment, he knew that it was certainly it – he recalled that the incoming energy came from his back and shoulder. Since the first day Soarame put on this cloak, he had noticed that it slowly infused him with Life Energy it absorbed from the environment, and powered him up little by little; but the effect had been mild and unremarkable. However, once Soarame paid attention to comparing that to the sudden energy infusion a few minutes earlier, he recognized that they actually felt the same.

Right then, the cloak seemed to have returned to its normal status – it was still infusing Soarame, but much more unremarkably. And however hard Soarame tried to trigger the drastic infusion surge, it did not work anymore.

‘Is it just like Master’s token?’ Soarame muttered to himself. ‘It only works when I’m nervous?’

Unfortunately, no one could answer the young man. As he looked around, he suddenly realized that Lurker’s Veil had been deactivated and he could be seen.

‘Oh no!’ With a muffled cry, the young man became invisible again.

****

Thud!

A wooden door was knocked off its hinges to the ground and broke into halves, scattering snow around it. Behind it there was a small stone house, to which the broken door used to be attached.

After that, a number of empty footprints appeared on the snow. After a few seconds, a figure showed up on the newest footprint.

‘Where the heck can you be, Max?’ The face of the figure was revealed under the light – it was no one to be recognized, because Soarame had changed his appearance using Lurker’s Veil – for an Epic magigear mask, changing a face counted as a basic function. The young man looked obviously upset, because he had been here for a few days searching for Max, but found nothing so far.

Soarame had thought that the search for Max should be relatively quick, but now he had been proven very wrong. Since he had fully recovered from the avalanche and blended in in the village as a traveller, he had been asking around for information, and secretly searching the stone houses next to it. These houses had no windows, and the insides of them did look similar to what Soarame had seen from the Myriad Eyes hologram, but that’s all – no further discoveries whatsoever.

‘Naclad… you freaking imposter!’ Gritting his teeth, Soarame couldn’t help cursing. He had summoned help from Sunrise Alliance since last week for the search, but he couldn’t tell them about Myriad Eyes because Naclad had made him sign a magic pact to keep the secret. Therefore, all that Soarame could claim as his reason for believing Max was here was that he had “a strong feeling”. Fortunately, the Alliance did offer help, but unfortunately, they had found no clue to support Soarame’s belief. So the helpers were summoned back, and unless Soarame could find something to serve as convincing proof of Max’s existence in Tottwal, the Alliance would have to ignore his request.

In fact, the reason that the Alliance had offered help based on Soarame’s “pure feeling” was the Honir Badge that he was awarded from the beastide. From his previous visit to the Tottwal branch of the Alliance, Soarame had learnt more details about this special badge. Each and every wizard who reported to the Alliance would be granted a Sunrise Emblem, which was similar to the Libral Emblem but had more functions and could work over a much longer distance; and a Honir Badge was the superior version of a Sunrise Emblem. The badge holder could enjoy many privileges that were usually accessible to Master-level wizards – the least example would be the special title of “honir”. That was to say, even a professor like Sandoray was supposed to call Soarame “honir” if she ran into him; and that was why Kevin addressed Soarame that way in Cylone City.

‘I’m sorry, man.’ Inside a small tavern not far from the abandoned village, an old man with a wooden leg handed Soarame a glass of spirits. ‘Ya’ve decided to leave tomorrow?’

‘Aye.’ Soarame frowned at the strong smell of the spirits. ‘Thanks, Lauchlin, but you know I don’t drink.’ Beside the spirits not being his favourite, Soarame had to keep his mind clear at all times, as a precaution to Max’s sudden emergence.

‘Oh c’mon, Sam!’ Lauchlin patted Soarame’s shoulder. ‘Ya must be feeling sad for missing your friends. Drink it up and I assure you you’ll feel much better.’

‘Thanks, but I’m fine.’ Soarame – now with a fake name of “Sam” – cracked a bitter smile. Soarame had to use this fake name to hide his wizard identity in order to minimize the possibility that Max might detect his arrival.