The Amber Sword

Battle of Light and Darkness

Once Ina’s summons appeared, the Pendulum Golem immediately stopped talking and commenced his offense.

It raised its bronze staff, and a curtain of darkness materialized behind him. Tendrils of shadows drifted within the darkness, emitting an aura of decadence. As it raised its chain-covered ar, a bolt of darkness shot towards Brendel.

“Careful,” Ina gave a quick warning. “That is his ‘Decay’ ability. It will cause us to lose our Cards quickly. The spell he cast is Assassinate. Can you deal with that spell?”

Before she could even finish her sentence, Brendel had already cast the Mana Loss spell. He obtained that spell, at the same time he saw the Cards’s information.

- Assassinate (Paradise of Adversity XIII)

- Consumes 5 Dark EP

- Spell - Instant

- Targets one of the opponent’s Creatures or Artifact, and forcefully discards it. Assassinate deals damage equivalent to the spell’s cost.

This Cards is only useful against Planeswalkers. Brendel thought to himself. Brendel decided to cast the spell at the cog above the Pendulum Golem’s head, however, a shimmering barrier appeared around the cog, wasting Brendel’s counterattack. That was Anrolda’s Divine Ring. The cog must be very important if the Pendulum Golem was willing to use up a Cards to protect it. It stared at Brendel for a moment. It did not think that Brendel had such a Cards up his sleeve, so it dared not use any more similar spells.

At the same time, Ina expelled a ray of golden light at the curtain of darkness and destroyed it.

The two of them had the advantage in numbers as well as spellcasting.

However, the Pendulum Golem did not seem to worry at all, instead, it pointed at Ina and Brendel, commanding his Death Sentinels to attack. It was obvious that Ina and the Pendulum Golem were old enemies as neither were surprised at the other’s actions. Ina brandished her spear, and her Glorious Sentinels engaged with the enemy forces.

The black Death Sentinels wore the barest of armors, wielding swords that had hooks on it. One could obviously tell that they were tactical soldiers who were offense-oriented. The Glorious Sentinels were the exact opposite as they wore sets of white heavy armor while holding longshields in one hand and halberds in the other, marking them as battle-savvy soldiers who focused on defense.

The two forces of opposing colors clashed against each other, one defending while the other attacked, it was nearly impossible to judge who had the upper hand. Even though there were less Glorious Sentinels, the Grimoire played the role of a healer, constantly summoning halos of light over allies, allowing the Glorious Sentinels to push back the Death Sentinels through pure endurance. As they advanced slowly, the number of Cards in the Pendulum Golem’s Graveyard started to accumulate.

The Pendulum Golem did not seem alarmed at all. It pointed its finger, and another spell was cast at the oncoming Glorious Sentinels.

The spell was similar to Andrea’s Abyss Web, however, it was manifested in the form of a dark fog, blanketing the battlefield, causing the Glorious Sentinels to lose all their buffs, instead, they were now afflicted with Weakness, Slow, Blind and other various ailments.

“Drowning Sorrow, it reverses all buffs,” Ina explained while shooting a beam of cleansing light. The beam hit her soldiers and removed all status effects, both beneficial and detrimental, proving that it was an expelling spell.

However, Brendel noticed that Ina had never once explained her own Cards. Brendel smiled dryly to himself. What a shrewd woman.

The exchanging of spells by both sides caused all status effects to be removed. However, this meant that the Glorious Sentinels, who had fewer numbers, were at a disadvantage. Ina couldn’t hold in her nerves and started stomping her hooves. She turned to the teen with the trumpet and ordered, “Reno, sound the horn!” The white-robed teen stepped forward. He had beautiful curls on his head and a sweet face, like an angel straight out of the Bible. He puffed out his rosy cheeks and blew the horn. As the horn resonated through the area, the beating of wings could be heard. Soon after, a giant platinum dragon flew out of the darkness and landed on the battlefield.

“Shit, that horn can summon dragons?!” Brendel was startled by the dragon’s appearance. As if reading his mind, Ina looked at him and batted her eyelashes, not answering his question, as if she were teasing him. Brendel clenched his teeth. You damn demon!

After Reno finished blowing his horn, he sat down with a beat red face, completely exhausted. The summoned Platinum Dragon was not as intimidating as the actual dragon race, or perhaps it had yet to fully mature. Brendel guessed that its battle power was around level 60 to 70, which was around the level where it would develop its Elemental Power. Of course, its level was definitely sufficient to overpower the Death Sentinels, and soon enough the ground was littered with corpses of the Death Sentinels.

Brendel let out a sigh of relief. He had not expected Ina to be so strong, to the point where she could push back the Pendulum Golem. Despite that, he still did not think the battle would be won so easily. It turned out as he thought as Ina recalled her Platinum Dragon despite having the edge at the moment.

Brendel did not question her decision as he believed that both of them knew each other’s moves well enough to not make any dumb mistakes.

He saw the Pendulum Golem pull out another Death Sentinel Cards, and he saw the scene of the Death Sentinel summoning again. Every unit was replaced by a Death Sentinel, but now there were ten more of them. Had Ina not recalled her Platinum Dragon, it would have been trapped like Brendel had been before.

“Damn it,” Brendel wiped his brow. This Cards is extremely hard to deal with.

After the Death Sentinels had been summoned, the Pendulum Golem summoned yet another Cards. This time it was a Devil, who went on to engage in battle with the Platinum Dragon. It looked exactly like a Devil from Hell, but it had cyan skin instead of red, and its body exhumed cold flames that were turquoise. Brendel had never seen such a creature before, but it possessed tremendous power as it managed to fight the Platinum Dragon to a standstill. The Pendulum Golem started to summon more Ekronian Spellweavers. Soon there were another four more of those four-armed Spellweavers.

“What is he doing?” Brendel was not in a rush to join as he wanted to observe how Planeswalkers fought. He could not hold in his question after seeing what happened. He possessed the Ekronian Spellweaver Cards as well, but it was only level 25, so he could not think of how it could play a role in this particular battlefield.

Ina summoned another two more Glorious Trumpeters. All of them looked identical, having the same handsome face that made Brendel feel inferior to his own appearance. Hearing his question, she replied, “He is trying to filter the Light.”

“Filter the Light?”

“It means converting the Dark Element into Light Element. Hmph, without the Paradise of Purity, it has to resort to such crude methods to collect Light EP, the Adversity of Darkness is truly lacking.” Having its pride wounded, the Pendulum Golem let out a retort, “Aren’t you the same? The Paradise of Purity can only defend, all you are doing is delaying your inevitable defeat.”

Even as they fought the battle of words, their hands did not stop summoning creatures. Through the Glorious Trumpeters, Ina summoned another two powerful creatures. One was an Armoured White Elephant, and the other was Gleaming Giant Eagle. Only then did Brendel understand the role of the Glorious Trumpeters. It seemed that they could call upon any Cards from the summoner’s deck, and not that they had some sort of Planeswalking ability. Even so, it was an extremely valuable ability.

For example, the Platinum Angel in his deck needed nearly 100 EP to summon, which he had no way to obtain.

But if he had the Glorious Trumpeter, then he could summon the Platinum Angel for free. The only problem was that he did not know the cost of the Glorious Trumpeter. If it was too high, then it would rather useless.

Thanks to the Glorious Trumpeters, Ina’s creatures had the obvious upper hand against the Pendulum Golem. However, the Pendulum Golem still had some tricks up its sleeve. It summoned those beetle-like automatons, after a specific time it would duplicate itself, and these automatons had the ability to create extremely powerful balls of lightning. Every time one of those lightning balls were fired, one of Ina’s summons was finished off.

It was as the Pendulum Golem said, Ina had the superior defense, but she lacked offensive firepower. If this went on, defeat was imminent.

“What is that lightning ball? Why is it so strong?” After some observation, Brendel found out the answer. The beetle-like automatons actually have an extremely weak constitution, it was at most level 20, not even silver rank, it could be considered as trash among the trash. However, its attack power was off the charts, much more than what a monster at the peak of silver rank could attain.

Even though there are monsters whose attack power is extremely strong, none of them can skip so many ranks.

Brendel felt that it was similar to his Dragon Knight Battle Technique. The Wind Spirit Spiders were originally extremely weak, yet the Holy Sword Technique could make their offensive ability increase by several ranks.

“Those lightning balls are that Pendulum monster’s spells. As long as there are Nightmare Forges on the battlefield, then the lightning balls will continue to appear. It is one of the Pendulum monster’s two trump Cards.” Brendel wanted to ask what its trump Cards were, but instead, he asked, “Nightmare Forges?”

“They are those metal beetles. Known as Nightmare Forges, they were created using Ekronia’s Furnace of Adversity.”

So it’s like that. Brendel thought that the way these metal beetles worked was similar to his Dragon Knight Battle Technique, it was no wonder that they were so strong. At that moment, Ina had more bad news to share. “Not only that, but they can also create clones by consuming the Light Element. If we drag this out any longer, we are bound to lose.”

Ina let out a sudden cry of surprise as she realized that there were more Nightmare Forges hiding behind the Pendulum Golem.

“That damn metal head dares to use these underhanded methods against me!” Ina exclaimed with much anger in her voice.