The Capital Norvale

Even Minos wasn't killed by me in the end, it was her who did it.

"Um..." Nicola was at a loss for words, this made it even harder to find any clues.

"But levelling up is a good thing, right?" I could feel the power in my body grow stronger, having more strength to protect myself was not a bad thing.

"That's true." Seeing me say this, Nicola didn't dwell on it further. After all, we really couldn't figure out the reason.

After hiding my wings again, we left the room to find the others. Everyone was very surprised when they heard I levelled up, but they also had different guesses about the reason. Even Selene had no idea what happened.

After breakfast, everyone left the town and continued the journey to Norvale. 

As expected of the main road leading to the capital of the Astralrealm Kingdom, the road surface was not only much smoother but also wider, almost like an asphalt road. 

"Let me tell you, the phoenixes at the peak of Mount Lebosari are in their breeding season right now..." Brennan was skipping and jumping along the road, telling everyone about his planned next adventure. "If I could steal a phoenix egg and tame it, my beast mastery would reach a whole new level!"

"Forget it. A phoenix egg is something you dare to snatch in your current state?" Adrian poured cold water on him. "Have you forgotten what happened last time you tamed that light dragon? You blew up someone's house, and still didn't learn your lesson."

"That's why I wanted to ask you guys for help..." Brennan said somewhat awkwardly, losing all confidence.

"The key is why do you need to tame so many magical beasts? Your body can't handle that burden." Adrian berated Brennan distressingly, seemed like it wasn't the first time he said this to him. "They don't get tamed for free, they will absorb your life force and magic power. With your low magic, using them too frequently is prone to problems."

"I also agree with what Adrian said, you should focus your efforts on control and utilizing the existing ones for now." Vivianne joined Adrian's side and said concernedly to Brennan. "Your beast mastery still has a lot of room for improvement."

At first when I was listening to their conversation I didn't really understand. Isn't taming magical beasts just like raising pets? How did it involve life force? Later I asked Adrian and finally understood what was going on.

Turns out the way Brennan tames beasts is different from my understanding. It's actually a process of transforming the beast's body into elemental form. These elemental beasts would reside in the master's body, using his magic power to sustain themselves. Usually there's no problem, but once restored from elemental form to physical form, it would continuously consume massive amounts of magic power, even life force.

Since the magic power used to sustain the elemental form comes from the user himself, the beast's actual power changes along with the user's own strength. So it becomes a growth-type beast. In that case, the original power of the beast before taming isn't that important, what matters more is the potential. To lower difficulty, adults are rarely considered, usually only the young are taken for elemental transformation.

Because sustaining physical forms consumes huge amounts of magic power, even high level mages can't sustain it for minutes. So it's generally used for short bursts at critical moments, then made to disappear immediately. This predetermined that it has little use for mages, but is more welcomed by warriors who lack magic power but fight with their bodies.

This explains why in combat Brennan would only summon the beasts for a short instant before they disappear. Because he also can't sustain them for long. Once his magic power runs out, it would start depleting his life force. If it goes on for too long there'd be mortal danger.

"This way of using beasts is actually quite interesting. If used properly, at the right moments, like the instant it first contacts the enemy's body, it can deal massive damage while saving unnecessary consumption."

Nicola listening to our discussion on the side couldn't help but chime in. Having learned martial arts, her mind was quite flexible regarding combat.

"That's why I keep telling him not to obsess over collecting more and more powerful beasts. No matter how strong, the actual combat power won't surpass his own current self. Improving his own strength is the key." Vivianne sighed helplessly, seems she had worried over this a lot.

There were sparse farmhouses and villages scattered in the distance between the fields on both sides of the road, thin wisps of smoke rising up, it was simply an idyllic scenic view.

"We're almost there." Adrian pointed to a building with an extremely tall spire on the horizon and said.

"Is Norvale a castle?" I asked doubtfully. It clearly looked like a castle, and castles are generally not very big, if Norvale was only a castle it would be too small.

"That's just the royal castle!" Brennan jumped in to explain to me. "There are many, many more residential houses surrounding the royal castle, together they make up Norvale."

I see, that makes sense. It must be because we were still too far away to see the surrounding buildings.

It took about another one or two hours from when we first saw the spire before we gradually noticed that the buildings on both sides of the road started becoming denser. 

There were more and more forked roads, and the flow of people and vehicles coming and going became more frequent, even reaching congestion at times. The atmosphere also gradually became more lively.

When we finally got close, I realized how wrong my previous impression was, because this was an extremely huge and magnificent city.

Let's not even talk about the tall city walls that stretched endlessly into the horizon, with no end in sight. Just the royal castle situated right in front of us gave an extremely overwhelming sense of pressure. Because the castle was just so big, like a mountain lying across our view. It didn't seem so from afar, but up close you realize the terrifying size.

Norvale had three circles of city walls in total. My current position was right in front of the outermost city gate, waiting in line with everyone to enter the city. 

After about half an hour, we finally entered the main city area. The road surface suddenly became flat, and was completely paved with stone slabs, no longer the dirt roads outside.

The buildings inside the city were quite dense, although mostly just 3 stories tall, but the planning was well-organized, it didn't feel crowded. You could even see small alleys leading to unknown places between many of the houses.

Similar to the small towns we passed before, there were shops lining the streets. But the difference was, in the small towns people were dressed quite simply, while here you could often see people dressed in very gorgeous and cumbersome noble-like attire getting off carriages and walking into the shops by the roadside.

"Let me take you to see the royal castle first." 

Vivianne pointed to the castle that was still several kilometers away and said to me and Nicola. She had noticed all along that we were most interested in this.

"That can't have been carved out of a mountain right?" Looking at the royal castle that already occupied a good half of the skyline, I exclaimed.

"Don't know, but magic power was probably used in the construction." Nicola also felt it was a bit exaggerated. Looking at the technological development of this world, it would be almost impossible to build a near kilometer-tall castle without using magic. That height was probably comparable to the tallest buildings on Earth.

And it wasn't just tall, it was also very wide. The horizontal length was at least a few hundred meters too.

When we followed everyone to the city center, we finally saw the full picture. 

The royal castle was situated on an island in the middle of a lake, surrounded by water on three sides and connected to land on one side. The lower half was almost entirely made of piled-up rocks and stones, only gradually transitioning into the outer wall pattern as it went up.

This outer wall section looked like a high platform, taking up about half the total height. There weren't many windows and openings on it. Further up the top of the high platform was some magnificent Gothic architecture, with dome rooftops paired with tall, steep spires, giving a very dreamy and gorgeous feeling.

The designer seemed to really like statues, they could be seen everywhere, on rooftops, and all over the steps of the outer walls. I even saw an angel statue on one of the rooftops. 

"It would be great if we could go in and take a look." On Earth something like this would be a hot tourist attraction, but now I could only admire from afar.

"Show them your wings, maybe they'll let you in then." Vivianne chuckled. 

What she said made some sense. From our conversations along the way, I gradually understood that angels were not commonly seen in this world. Other than cooperating with humans in battles, they were rarely spotted in normal times. Of course, it's possible that most angels just hide their wings.

In many countries, angels were seen as the highest symbol due to their powerful strength and mastery of light element magic. If an angel appeared in a country, they would usually receive official courtesy. 

But keeping a low profile was still the way to go. Nicola and I just wanted to minimize revealing our identities, so we naturally wouldn't reveal wings and demand to be let into the castle. That would not only be shameless but dumb too. Who knows what the royals think of angels, the relationship was only cooperative at best. 

Moreover, appearing in public would inevitably cause quite a stir, potentially attracting attention from all sides, leading to other angels discovering us.

"Why don't Vivianne take you to walk around the city first then?" At this time Adrian spoke up. Their mission was complete, he and Brennan and Selene had to go report back first. But this mission wasn't from the Adventurer's Guild, so they had to stop by the church and city defense office that issued the request.