"The smartest and wisest choice at this moment is to safely store the seed, move into the Magic Ring, and be ready to sever ties with Benny at the first opportunity..."
Ronan thought to himself carelessly.
Soon, he put the small wooden box in his Waist Storage Bag and picked up the Rune Stone detailing the heritage of Metal Magic in front of him with a calm expression.
"How about we wait until sunset?"
Benny was sitting on a moss-covered stone step, tapping his pipe on the edge of the step and softly speaking to the long wooden box standing beside him.
Before him laid a desolate and ruined courtyard, a dry and collapsed water fountain, walls covered in withered vines... and a Sun that had already set halfway in the west.
"I actually had the chance to take the seed and leave immediately."
Benny put his pipe to his lips and instinctively took a puff, but exhaled no smoke.
He never smoked in front of Fiona because even the slightest scent of tobacco would make her cough violently.
"He even handed me the seed, yet I didn’t take it..."
"...The speed of my soul’s decay is getting faster, my Strength wanes daily, my spiritual power waves goodbye to me during meditation...
I’m worried... that I won’t last till the day I can return the items to him."
Benny murmured to himself with the pipe in his mouth, turning to look at the long wooden box beside him and whispered softly, "I might have personally discarded the sole hope of your Resurrection... Would you blame me, Fiona?"
The long wooden box stood silently, giving no response, yet Benny seemed to have received the answer he sought.
He reached out to caress the grain of the wooden box, even the festering wound on his left cheek seemed to soften.
Footsteps approached from outside the door, neither hurried nor slow.
Benny’s eyes brightened as he rose from the stone step.
But his expression changed quickly, and he swiftly put the long wooden box into his Waist Storage Bag.
"It seems not the person we were waiting for, Fiona."
A fleeting sharpness flashed across Benny’s valiant face, his teeth clenching the pipe, his robe billowing slightly.
He bent down slightly and slowly started moving toward the direction of the footsteps.
His steps were light, as delicate as the most agile cat walking on a soft carpet, making no sound at all, and his entire presence was retracted cleanly.
Dense black dots emerged on the skin of Benny exposed to the air, converging into lines of black, like the patterns of some rune.
Benny’s pace quickened, the fierceness and chill in his eyes becoming ever more intense...
Finally, he approached the position of the footsteps, just a wall’s distance away.
Benny silently and without sound gestured towards the direction of the gray wall opposite him with a forceful chopping motion.
As he made this motion, the black markings on his body came alive, flowing out from his skin, quickly coalescing into a massive, ferocious sheer Heavy Sword without a handle.
As the Heavy Sword swung out in sync with Benny’s action, the entire blade quietly transitioned from pure black to silvery white in color, mysterious energies intertwining and emanating along the blade...
At the Heavy Sword’s strike, the air compressed viciously, light twisted, and at last...
With a fierce strike, the Heavy Sword blasted the air apart, the gray brick wall at the point of impact silently turned into the purest powder, someone outside seemed to grunt, something was sharply penetrated, and then without a sound, was blasted away.
A number of powerful spiritual power fluctuations erupted from beyond the courtyard walls in an instant, voices cry out in a mixture of shock and anger, the sound of hurried chanting...
The next second, a terrifying storm of Energy Particles exploded, the entire courtyard’s exterior walls utterly shattered, dust clouds billowed, and intense light burst forth from the dirt.
With the cold color still in his eyes, Benny, already wielding the Heavy Sword that had reverted to pure black, prepared to make another cut towards the light and dust. However, he suddenly turned pale as if triggering some injury, and began to cough violently.
The handle-less Heavy Sword dissipated into countless black dots that melted back onto his skin surface, and the energy emanating from his body rapidly diminished.
Benny swiftly retreated while flinging dozens of black metallic orbs forward like splashing ink.
Inside the metal orbs, Energy Particles collided violently, and upon entering the dust, they suddenly exploded, creating a terrifying blast wave that spread, forming a heatwave and strong winds that nearly leveled the surrounding earth and vegetation...