A deep, ringing voice came from within the smoke, resounding across the entire area.
The pair of stone wings flapped, instantly stirring up a great gale. The smoke abruptly scattered, revealing a majestic colossus. He stood there like a mountain, head held high and chest out. A golden crown sat upon his head, and behind him stretched a pair of gold-crowned wings. His body was pure white, marked with faint traces of age.
And at this moment, the colossus wore a very human smile on his face.
In that instant, everyone froze. They raised their heads and gazed up at the colossus, feeling a deep shock rise from the bottom of their hearts.
Almost no one failed to recognize him. Was this not the very colossus outside the city?
"Galio!"
Lux called out in delight. "You really came!"
"Of course I did, little golden-head!" Galio let out a hearty laugh. His laughter was full of strength. Then he said, "I told you. Whenever you need me, I will come."
At this moment, everyone present finally came back to their senses, but their eyes were still filled with disbelief.
"Galio is alive."
Jarvan IV rubbed his eyes, seriously suspecting that what he was seeing now was some kind of illusion.
But it was not. Whether it was the cracks that had appeared in the ground or the colossus standing not far away, all of it told him that this was reality.
The ancient colossus outside the city had come to life!
Come to life?
Was it possible that he had never been a dead object in the first place?
This enormous statue had a long history and was regarded by the army as a symbol of war.
Whenever soldiers went out to fight, the colossus would march with them.
The colossus carved from petricite possessed a body capable of absorbing magic, allowing him to protect soldiers from the attacks of powerful mages.
After absorbing enough magic, he had even awakened several times.
However, that was only what the legends said. In the long years that followed, the colossus had remained at the fork in Memorial Road outside the royal capital, there for people to admire.
As time passed, perhaps only children still believed that this colossus was alive.
Yet now, such an unreal scene had happened right before their eyes. Only then did people realize that the legend had actually been true.
Even Jarvan III and Xin Zhao were shocked by this sight.
In the royal library, there were indeed records concerning the colossus outside the city.
He was the most successful masterpiece of the famous Master Durand from back then, and he could even come to life and assist in battle.
But even the royal family had long since lost the method to awaken this colossus. By Jarvan III's generation, it had already become a legend.
"Lux, did you do this?"
Garen looked at Lux, his tone uncertain. "You and Galio..."
Because people had indeed seen her seemingly trying something earlier, and they could also tell that she and the colossus knew each other.
"That's right, I did it!"
Lux proudly lifted her head, her little face full of smugness. Her mouth spread into a happy grin. "We're old friends."
"Yes, old friends."
Before anyone else could speak, Galio was the first to approve her words, showing an extremely fond expression.
That immediately startled everyone present.
One had to understand that, in the eyes of Demacians, Galio was a spiritual symbol, a representation of the kingdom, a great existence admired by all like a grand hero.
Lux actually had such a good relationship with Galio?
Luke did know about it, but he had forgotten all about it just now.
Now that he saw Galio make his entrance, he felt that this round was secure.
If nothing else, in terms of combat power, Galio was absolutely top tier.
At this moment, Galio was in an exceptionally excited state. He looked around the entire area. "Mages. I see so many mages. Did you call me here so I could help you wipe them out?"
As soon as those words fell, the hearts of all the mages present could not help skipping a beat. Shocked and frightened, they took a step back.
There was no doubt that if Galio wanted to, he could slap one of them to death with a single palm.
If this colossal being was alive, then their rebellion had been a joke from the very beginning.
"No, no." Lux hurriedly denied it, then pointed at Galio's feet. "I called you here because I wanted you to help us deal with this."
"Under my feet?" Galio lowered his head and took a look. Sure enough, he sensed an extremely powerful magical presence beneath him.
So he moved his foot away. In the center of the pit, where the cracks had spread outward, Eldred lay there with his consciousness blurred. The wings behind him seemed to have been broken, and overall, he looked extremely miserable. The magic all over his body was fluctuating unstably, and he was already on his last breath.
No one expected that Eldred would still be alive after taking such a heavy blow from Galio. It was astonishing enough.
If anyone else had taken that earthquake-like strike just now, they would probably have been crushed straight into paste, right?
"Mm... I sense a familiar power."
Galio studied him for a moment, rubbing his chin with a thoughtful expression. After a long while, he said casually, "Forget it. I can't remember."
Then he crouched down, stretched out his enormous hand, and picked Eldred up as if grabbing a chick, looking at him curiously.
As his body swayed, Eldred recovered a little awareness, but it was still extremely hazy. He felt as if every bone in his body had broken, sending intense pain through him, while the two powers within him were also draining away.
Through the thin slit his eyes struggled to open, he saw the colossus examining him.
The colossus.
Even he had never expected the colossus outside the city to come alive.
He had indeed learned from secret records that the colossus might be alive, but this colossus had not moved for at least two or three hundred years.
No one knew how to awaken him.
Even he had believed that this secret record might be false.
So it was true after all...
At this moment, his life suddenly flashed through Eldred's mind like pages rapidly turning in a book.
He had been born into a family of Mageseekers. From a young age, he had shown decent talent and received a specialized education. Everyone in the family waited for him to inherit the role of the next Mageseeker.
Since childhood, he had also been taught to hate mages and regard them as enemies.
That hatred reached its peak when his father died during a mission to capture a mage.
He naturally inherited his father's position. At only fourteen years old, he became a Mageseeker.
Because he had decent talent and had received a Mageseeker education since childhood, after becoming a Mageseeker, he quickly began to stand out.
At seventeen, he became the captain of a small Mageseeker squad.
At twenty, he was promoted to senior captain and took charge of three squads.
At twenty-three, he was promoted to branch commander, with more than a hundred subordinates under him.
Someone like him could be described as young, capable, and full of promise.
That bound his life completely to the Mageseekers.
However, after becoming a branch commander, Eldred did not live the kind of life where he was respected wherever he went.
People hated mages, but they hated Mageseekers all the same.
In other words, the Mageseekers were not welcomed among the people.
The Mageseekers were crows, bywords for bad luck, people to be avoided at all costs.
The gazes people cast at him were fearful, terrified, and timid, never respectful.
To change this situation, Eldred worked even harder to capture mages. He threw himself into self-improvement, wanting the Mageseekers to become an organization respected by everyone.
But it was extremely difficult. Prejudice in people's hearts was a mountain. No matter how hard one tried, they could not hope to move it.
His path of promotion also ran into obstacles.
Even by the time he reached thirty, he remained only a branch commander. Former subordinates had reached the same position as him, and some had even risen above him.
More and more hardships in life were placed before him.
Eldred had once been confused and lost as well, until at thirty-two, he was struck by inspiration.
He began to stop caring about achievements and rank. He focused entirely on capturing mages, taking on the dirty and exhausting work that other divisions were unwilling to accept without complaint.
At the same time, he also began secretly accumulating power.
He started setting aside a portion of his time to research the mages he captured. In truth, this did produce results.
But he did not rush.
He began secretly cultivating subordinates he could trust, one after another, quietly developing his influence like this.
That repetitive life continued day after day for eight years. During this time, relying on his steady performance, he was promoted one more rank. At forty, he finally waited until an opportunity arrived.
The previous commander of the Mageseeker corps unexpectedly passed away from illness. With such an important position left vacant, someone urgently needed to fill it.
The deputy commander was the most suitable candidate, but Eldred was unwilling to simply hand this opportunity over to someone else.
Over those eight years, more than half of the Mageseekers in the corps had come under him. And when he brought out the results he had obtained from mages, more and more people supported him.
The intense competition he had imagined never came. The deputy commander seemed to sense that Eldred's weight within the corps had already surpassed his own.
Thus, he took the initiative to recommend Eldred to the king, expressing his willingness to assist him.
The king gladly agreed. Just like that, Eldred naturally became the commander of the Mageseeker corps.
But he still did not feel at ease with the former deputy commander. He spent a year making him resign of his own accord and leave the Mageseeker ranks.
From that moment onward, the Mageseeker corps truly fell under his command.
He began to imagine realizing his ambitions, but reality was cruel. After becoming commander, he failed to produce any real achievements for two consecutive years.
Until one day, he proposed a bold idea.
That was to allow mages to become Mageseekers too, using the power of mages to fight mages.
This idea received the council's support, and so it began to be carried out.
The Mageseekers started searching among the people for mages who could be recruited. At that time, they discovered a mage with a special ability.
That person was Sylas, who possessed the special ability to see magic in others.
Sylas was recruited into the Mageseekers, but not long after, a major incident occurred. A Mageseeker squad and his handler were all killed by Sylas.
Although the investigation suggested that this was most likely caused by magic going out of control, Sylas still became a criminal.
The Mageseekers launched a pursuit, but Sylas displayed strength far beyond everyone's expectations and proved unexpectedly difficult to deal with.
In the end, the Mageseekers used Sylas's trust in his friend Wisteria to finally capture him.
Originally, Sylas should have been sentenced to death for such a serious crime, but Eldred felt it would be too much of a pity for someone with such a special ability to die just like that.
Thus, he found a way to keep Sylas alive and imprisoned him in the dungeon.
After becoming commander, he became increasingly confused by the Mageseekers' situation. They had clearly always worked to capture mages and maintain peace.
Even if, during this period, there had been many things they had no choice but to overlook.
They had still never forgotten their original intention, wanting to drive out all mages for the sake of Demacia's peace.
Yet what they ultimately received was always a heap of cold stares.
He had never forgotten his ideal of making everyone respect the Mageseekers.
But to achieve that was incomparably difficult. The Mageseekers needed greater achievements to earn the people's recognition.
Perhaps it was from that moment onward that he started down the wrong path.
He began conducting more experiments on mages.
In his eyes, mages were inferior people, beings on the same level as those magical beasts, so he had not the slightest mercy.
The experiments achieved results once again. As the efficiency of capturing mages grew faster and the safety rate became higher, he felt that the Mageseekers' reputation seemed to finally begin improving.
After all, in such a vast nation, there would always be places he could not see.
The emergence of a cult made the king disappointed in the Mageseekers.
But he felt that all of this could still be salvaged, as long as the Mageseekers did not disappoint the king again.
Yet everything seemed to have come too late.
That day, the king proposed the idea of pardoning mages.
In that moment, Eldred froze.
Looking back on the past, from the time he could read and remember things until now, at sixty-three years old, nearly sixty whole years, more than twenty thousand days, he had poured almost his entire life into the cause of suppressing magic. He had dedicated everything he had to Demacia.
The words "suppressing magic" had already become a relationship he could not cut away from or separate himself from.
Eldred believed that this was probably the entirety of his life, and that it would be everything he had. If nothing unexpected happened, perhaps on the day he died, he would finally lay down the heavy responsibility of being a Mageseeker.
But the king actually wanted to pardon mages. Perhaps that was an idea he had long held.
If mages were pardoned, then mages across the world would no longer be guilty people, no longer needing to be captured and imprisoned. In that case, what use would there be for the Mageseekers?
The abolition of the Mageseekers would also be only a matter of time.
Then he, the commander of the Mageseeker corps, would naturally become useless.
How could that be allowed?
If so, what meaning would his life have had? Would it simply close like a stage play?
He had once tried to imagine his life after he was no longer a Mageseeker, but all he could picture was blank emptiness.
He could not imagine days in which he was no longer a Mageseeker at all.
The Mageseekers had already become his life.
But the king's weakening of the Mageseekers became increasingly clear. He watched the Mageseekers lose half their number overnight, yet he had no way to stop it.
It was at that time that Tourt came to him.
Tourt was a representative of the nobility. He had once supported Eldred becoming commander of the Mageseeker corps in the council, and he had also supported Eldred's policy of using mages against mages.
Thus, they had indeed always had some contact, though they rarely had any deep exchanges.
Even after entering Demacian society, Eldred had always remained a solitary and difficult Mageseeker commander, not easy to get along with.
Tourt came to him, and the other man seemed to know what Eldred had been doing in private.
Then Tourt proposed a bold idea, to plan a rebellion.
A mage rebellion. This nation needed a crisis to awaken it.
When mages wreaked havoc in the city, the king and the people would remember when they needed the Mageseekers.
At that time, he would only need to lead the Mageseekers into action.
In that way, the rebellious mages would cause panic, and the Mageseekers who saved everything would naturally become heroes.
The people needed heroes, and the Mageseekers were very suitable for that role.
Eldred was indeed tempted. He had once considered creating a great trouble that the nation could not solve, but that the Mageseekers could.
That way, he could solidify the Mageseekers' position, though in the end, he had still given up on it.
But this time, it seemed he had no choice but to do it.
He did not understand why Tourt wanted to help him do this. Tourt's answer was that he wanted more power, and supporting the Mageseekers was clearly a good investment.
In the end, Eldred agreed.
He had never thought of killing Jarvan III. Comparatively, what he needed more was Jarvan III's recognition. He needed Jarvan III to acknowledge the Mageseekers and make use of them again.
That way, he would not be useless. He would still be the commander of the Mageseeker corps, still shouldering the responsibility of continuing to capture mages.
Sooner or later, the Mageseekers would truly earn everyone's respect.
That was what Eldred had spent his entire life working to see.
But it seemed he would never see it now.
From the moment he rushed to the palace to rescue the king and saw Jarvan III's corpse, Eldred realized that everything had already exceeded his expectations.
He had been brought aboard a pirate ship and had no choice but to keep sailing forward.
Yet all of it, every last piece of it, had only been a plan within a plan by that Second Prince.
From the first moment he saw him, Eldred had vaguely sensed that this person was not simple.
However, he had still underestimated this prince found among the common people far too much. The prince had clearly already laid his extraordinary qualities out in the open, yet no one believed they were real.
Everyone believed that Jarvan III must have been secretly supporting this prince from behind, and that the remarkable things he displayed were only what Jarvan III wanted them to see.
From the very beginning, everyone had underestimated him.
He had actually guessed Tourt's plan from the very start and made preparations ahead of time, seeming to have calculated everything and waited only for this day to arrive.
The matter had been exposed.
Everything was too late.
Croger was dead. Josie was dead. Tourt was dead too. Only he remained.
He knew that he already had no way back, so he simply risked everything completely.
Over these years, after becoming commander of the Mageseeker corps, he had not wasted the resources that position brought him. He had also discovered some extremely extraordinary things, such as this rune, and the Winged Protector's feather.
He had even already overcome the difficulties of using these two powers.
Yet in the end, was he still one step away?
That one step was as difficult as ascending to the heavens.
From this point onward, the Mageseekers would be completely cast into the abyss.
In the end, everything had only served to pave the way for this prince.
He was unwilling to accept it. He was truly unwilling. If things ended like this, then what meaning had his entire life ever had?
"Damn it!"
Eldred roared in unwillingness. A powerful burst of energy suddenly erupted from his whole body, and he broke free from Galio's hand.
His pair of broken wings spread open. Eldred abruptly locked onto the Second Prince, who had secretly let out a sigh of relief, and in the next second, he charged straight toward him like an afterimage, moving extremely fast.
This scene exceeded everyone's expectations.
"Damn it, again?"
Luke, who had only just let out a breath, could not help growing angry at the sight.
He seriously suspected that he had some kind of boss-aggro buff on him.
But no matter what, he, Luke, was not made of clay either!
In the next instant, powerful Wuju Sword Intent surged from Luke's body. Wind intent instantly wrapped around his whole body, and a transcendent, heavy aura spread outward in every direction, suffocatingly intense.
"Wind, come!"
As he slashed out with all his strength, in that instant, a flash of light bloomed from the snow-white blade, and then a wild tornado roared forth.
The enormous tornado radiated a terrifying aura, kicking up dust everywhere. It swept toward the charging Eldred at extreme speed, crushing the broken bricks it picked up along the way.
Eldred likewise gathered magical energy in both hands, then released it.
Boom!
The two powers collided and erupted with a tremendous sound. Eldred broke through the tornado, only to discover that Luke had vanished from his sight, causing him to freeze slightly.
"Over here!"
Luke's voice suddenly came from behind him.
Eldred instinctively turned around, only to be met head-on by a sword strike. A sharp sword gleam flashed, and he was struck hard by that instant slash and sent flying.
Then he saw the wind intent around Luke gather to its peak in that moment.
Luke's entire aura also climbed to its summit at that instant.
The next second, he stepped through the air, erupting with extreme speed. Like an arrow loosed from a bowstring, he came walking across the air. At the same time, several fierce streaks of sword light flashed, dazzling and impossible to follow.
It was none other than, Last Breath!
With a crack, the anti-magic shell Eldred wore shattered. He only felt as if his body had been torn apart, and towering waves surged in his heart.
This Second Prince... was actually this strong.
He tried to release the magical energy in his body to counterattack, but Luke's sword directly pierced his heart, shattering all of Eldred's unwillingness as well.
The two powers rapidly drained away, and at the same time, so did his life.
In the final moment, what Eldred saw in his eyes was Demacia's blue sky.
It truly was very beautiful.
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