Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
Viscount Ebenezer spoke loudly from outside the door, “Good news, sir Wizard Abel! We’ve found a place for you!”
Abel thought that Viscount Ebenezer was being quite strange. He’d expected a knock on the door, but perhaps the man was just too eager to build a good relationship with him. Anyways, he decided not to pay too much attention to it.
Abel replied quickly, “Thank you so much, then, Viscount Ebenezer. When can I visit?”
Viscount Ebenezer said with a smile, “We can leave as soon as you’re available.”
“Very well! Shall we depart now, then?”
There was something that Abel missed when he bowed to give his thanks. Viscount Ebenezer had quite a gloomy look on his face.
So the two came to the same carriage. This time, however, there weren’t any Tauren bodyguards with them. Abel thought that it was quite strange, considering Viscount Ebenezer had a few with him wherever he went. No, he didn’t think that Viscount Ebenezer was going to trust him as a bodyguard, either.
Abel looked forward and asked curiously, “So where might we be heading, Viscount Ebenezer?”
He didn’t know all the places in Annual City, but he recognized that the carriage was going towards the front city gate. From what it looked like, they were heading out of the city.
Viscount Ebenezer said with a smile, “I’ve got to say, sir Wizard Abel. Your luck is incredible. One of our barons here was just about to sell his castle, and you, ha! I’ve got you right on top of the client list.”
That was the first time Abel’s heard something like that. He didn’t know how things worked back on the central continent, but back on the Holy Continent, one couldn’t buy a previously owned castle. The castles were like the foundations of families. Even if the families had lost their influence, they would almost always get rid of their other assets before anything else. Selling the castles would usually be considered a very desperate last option.
What a coincidence it must’ve been, then, for him to immediately find a house and castle to buy as soon as he came to this land. He quickly looked towards Viscount Ebenezer to see what he had to say. Strangely, there was cold sweat dripping from the man’s face. The sound of his heartbeat was also quite fast. It was Autumn, though. He acted calmly this whole time, but he still looked quite suspicious.
“So who’s trying to go after me?” Abel couldn’t help but think. It had only been a few hours since he arrived on the central continent. He didn’t think that someone would want to harm him this quickly. Viscount Ebenezer, especially. He didn’t seem like the type who would want trouble with an advanced wizard.
Whatever. It appeared that Viscount Ebenezer was trying to lure him to the outer part of the city because advanced wizards can’t fight with full strength inside the city. The Wizard Union would not stand it if mass casualties were to happen in the city. They would’ve activated the defensive large circle if someone tried to cast spells over there.
“Thank you so much, then, Viscount Ebenezer.”
Instead of exposing Viscount Ebenezer’s deceitful words, Abel was more interested in finding who was after him. By tapping Viscount Ebenezer’s forehead, he made him lose consciousness as they continued to ride on the carriage. Then, by scanning Valaya’s ring with his power of the Will, a cape was quickly revealed on his body. It was his stability cape. He didn’t know what it was made of, but after seeing many divine items that belonged to this world, he predicted that this cape was once used by one of the divine spirits.
Soon, the invisibility cape took effect so that his body and costume became invisible. Then, he pried the wooden chunk from the floor and revealed the ground below as the carriage continued to move. He didn’t use any spells because he could feel someone watching them ever since they left the city. He couldn’t detect any power of the Will, though. They were probably afraid that he was going to find out about where they were watching him from
When he was moving, his body would still appear very occasionally. That was until when he fell from the carriage. After he did, he became completely invisible when he stood still on the ground. He stood and watched as the carriage continued to move in whatever direction that it was moving into. That was also when he noticed where they were watching him came from.
It was a wizard in a robe that was standing behind a tree. He was about five hundred meters away from where he was standing, but the wizard crest on his chest was still quite visible. He was a rank seventeen advanced wizard. Noticing this made Abel quite gloomy. He didn’t think that someone would want his life when he just came here, especially with a farfetched set-up such as this.
From what he could see, the rank seventeen wizard was contacting someone with his contact card. He could see exactly what he was doing. His five senses were sharpened as soon as he gained the world stone fragment. The blue dragon “ice crystal breathing technique” also did a lot to help. He could also hear a bit of what the advanced wizard said, as soft as his voice was.
The advanced wizard spoke, “The carriage Abel’s on left the city, Vice-Captain.”
“Be careful, Fifth. Make sure he doesn’t see you.”
“Don’t worry, sir. He’s just a child. I’m not going to let him see me, alright?”
So the advanced wizard put down his sign card and teleported straight towards the carriage. When the advanced wizard used his “instantaneous movement” spell, Abel also did the same. It was a way to get past detection because when a wizard performed the “instantaneous movement,” there would be a gap of a few seconds where he couldn’t detect things. Abel was doing this very quickly, by the way. Even if the advanced wizard had drawn his spell rune in advance, he could still respond quite quickly by teleporting himself simultaneously.
There was still something else. He had the invisibility cape on. The mysterious headband inside the invisibility cape could increase his total power of the Will capacity by twofold. When the advanced wizard performed one “instantaneous movement,” he could respond by appearing at a place that was a hundred meters away. Still, he couldn’t make an accurate precision as to where the advanced wizard was moving. Otherwise, he would’ve immediately gone with a melee attack followed by single long-distance teleportation.
This time, when the advanced wizard used his “instantaneous movement,” he used the digitalization ability of his world stone fragment. He also switched on his druid spirit to do a spontaneous analysis of the advanced wizard’s “instantaneous movement.” The carriage was still moving forward as he was about to perform his next one. There was just enough time for analysis. Every wizard has their own habits when teleporting. This was especially true when they were not in combat mode when they were just trying to get to places they wanted to move to.
Soon, with the world stone fragment and the druid spirit, Abel concluded three possible locations that the advanced wizard would move towards. Several factors led to this conclusion. One, the advanced wizard had to consider moving somewhere that was about five hundred meters away from the carriage. Two, he had to consider being discrete, so being in plain sight was not an option for him. Three, there were some subtle hints about how he usually moved.
After thinking through these factors, Abel decided to pick his own teleportation point to a big tree. That was when the advanced wizard activated another instantaneous movement. The two teleported at the same time. Due to the invisibility cape, the white light didn’t appear when Abel made a move.
Once the advanced wizard appeared behind the big tree, Abel decided to appear right behind him. He reached out one of his hands, and a shield appeared. He struck right towards the neck. The advanced wizard also responded quite quickly. He tried to deflect the hit with his magic staff before it reached him. It was quite surprising for him, actually. He didn’t think that he would teleport right in front of someone because he didn’t think that anyone was here.
No, the magic staff didn’t block Abel’s shield attack. All he could see was a shadow coming out of nowhere to strike at him with a shield? He did have the time to generate protective barriers, but Abel’s attack was just too powerful. The first one was splintered like glass, while the second one was shattered in less than half a second. That’s just what would happen if one tried to defend against the most powerful physical attack on the entire Holy Continent. Abel had already far exceeded his limit as a human. His body was actually shifting more towards becoming a giant dragon.
Still, the two protective barriers gave the advanced wizard quite enough time to respond. Despite having his defense utterly destroyed, his power of the Will managed to almost activate the “instantaneous movement” scroll in his portal bag. It would’ve worked if Abel’s attack was purely physical, actually.
As a white light flashed across Abel’s shield, a “shield attack” rune came out and slammed right towards the advanced wizard. The advanced wizard’s power of the Will fainted before he could touch his scroll. The fainting effect lasted for about two seconds, and all his defensive mechanisms went off because of this. Abel’s been keeping watch the whole time with his power of the Will. Since they were on the side of the road, there weren’t any pedestrians that would happen to come by. Besides, the location that the advanced wizard chose was also quite secretive, and that gave him the confidence to use his head knight commander ability so openly.
The shield attack was a technique that only the head knight commander could use. By using it on the advanced wizard, he’s basically given up on the idea of sparing his life. He had understood very well how knights were treated on the central continent, and he wasn’t going to risk being hunted down during his time here.
After landing the hit, he reached for the advanced wizard’s magic staff, portal bag, and the two passive defensive magic items that were hung on his waist. He then broke the wizard’s four limbs with his shield. To finish, he made a light tap on his head. It wasn’t a heavy hit. It was intended so that his power of the Will could make a direct strike towards the already fainted advanced wizard’s spirit.
The advanced wizard woke up instantly. His eyes stared fearfully towards Abel as he knew very well what he was being hit by. It was the “shield attack,” something that only the evil knights could use. Upon a closer look, he also realized that the young wizard in front of him was the target they were after. He was just laughing about how he couldn’t be found, but here, he got ambushed and struck down with just one sneak attack. There was something that he couldn’t understand in all of this. He didn’t know why Abel appeared where he had just teleported.
Nevertheless, there was not enough time to think about those things. He didn’t think that Abel would spare him after showing that he could use the “shield attack.” He was like a lamb that was about to be slaughtered. His soul was injured, so there was no chance for him to use his power of Will. He didn’t have the portal bag and magic staff with him, so really, he didn’t have many options.
Abel asked calmly, “Who are you? Why are you bringing me out of the city?”
As calm as his voice was, his murderous intent was terrifying the advanced wizard.
The advanced wizard said hatefully, “Your name is Abel. I know I won’t come out of this alive. Hurry and get this over with.”
Abel replied coldly, “Nothing you want to say?”
There was no time to waste with this wizard. The carriage was still marching forward. There was probably going to be another advanced wizard that would come out and strike at it. Instead of asking directly, he reached towards the portal bag with his power of the Will. He had to break the advanced wizard’s power of the Will seal first, but with one heavy strike, he broke through the defense relatively quickly.
The advanced wizard’s face got even paler. His injured soul became even more hurt after the portal bag was forcefully opened. Abel didn’t care to look at how hurt he was. He searched quickly inside the portal bag. Soon, he found the contact card and injected his power of Will into it.
The contact card was a spell card that allowed mutual communication between areas that had mini contact circles installed. It was not very often seen on the Holy Continent, mainly because of how complicated it was to craft them. Only a select few in some of the larger organizations on the Holy Continent would have the permission to have them.
Once Abel’s made the infiltration with his power of the Will, he gained immediate control over all the information the contact card contained. It also included information about the advanced wizard right here.
Abel said with a light smile, “Wizard Masin of the Ice Wind clan. Seems awfully familiar to me. So this is about revenge, isn’t it?”
After saying that, he made a light tap on Wizard Masin’s brain. There was a lot of control behind it. It was enough to turn the inside of Wizard Masin’s brain into mush, but the force was not quite enough to kill him instantly. He made it so the Wizard Masin would die in exactly twenty seconds. That was the amount of time he had to escape before a soul light would appear from Wizard Masin and ignite towards the sky. He wouldn’t want the rank eighteen Wizard Godwin to realize that he hadn’t actually survived.
Abel placed Wizard Masin’s corpse on the ground and disappeared. He was just copying Wizard Masin at this point. He was about five hundred meters away from the carriage. While diverting his attention to its surroundings, he could see that the man riding the carriage was still oblivious to what was happening. The carriage continued to march forward as what the city lord said.
The carriage made a sharp turn when it reached a curved road. It entered into a detour that lasted for a few minutes. On the way, blocks of circle cards appeared around the ground that was nearby. Upon counting them roughly, Abel could see that there were about one hundred and twenty of them. They all had white lights flashing out of them. The white lights would connect and create a gigantic pentagonal star wrapped around the carriage. The coachman jumped out of the carriage, and as soon as he saw this. He screamed, and without looking at where he was jumping, he jumped into a wall and lost consciousness right there and then.
Wizard Godwin appeared and laughed out loudly, “You can’t escape now, can you, Wizard Abel?”
With the circle control card in his hand, Wizard Godwin moved freely between the spell circle. He was planning on fighting Abel while keeping him trapped in one place. The idea was so that Abel couldn’t take any initiative if he was to start attacking.
Yet, he realized that something went wrong quite quickly. It wasn’t possible for Abel not to realize what was going on. He scanned his power of the Will into the carriage, and only Viscount Ebenezer was inside the carriage. Worse yet, Viscount Ebenezer was completely unconscious. Abel could’ve killed him, but he thought that the man was quite nice to him despite his betrayal.
On the other hand, Abel was busy doing his own thing. By unleashing small-sized war golems from inside of his Valaya’s ring, he had them trap around the circle in all directions. Since the war puppets were inanimate beings, they managed to move by without having Wizard Godwin notice them.
Wizard Godwin took out his contact card as he realized what went wrong, “Where are you, Fifth?”
There was no reply on the contact card. Of course, Abel noticed the commotion that was taking place inside his portal bag, but he didn’t think about making a reply. That’s when he saw a white light come piercing through the sky over the distance. It was Wizard Godwin. He was a bit dumbfounded to have figured out what just happened.
“Fifth!”
But there was no reply. He was just starting to get who the dead advanced wizard was. The light pillar there was pretty much Wizard Masin’s last hope.
Wizard Godwin screamed in wrath, “I know you are here, Abel! I will find you. You hear that? You can’t escape from me! I’ll rip your soul out and torment it for a hundred years!”
Wizard Godwin really liked Fifth. As nothing but a small fraction of the Ice Wind Clan, it was never easy for them to recruit other members into their own group. It wasn’t just that, either. Fifth was his trusted subordinate. He was even planning on having him as his sideman once he took over Captain Emir’s position. He’s spent countless efforts for this sole purpose. He’s even had to sacrifice his own training progress, and he thought that was okay as long as his team could gain just a bit more attention.
And now. A rank seventeen wizard loyal to him killed in front of his eyes. It wasn’t even a hard mission. It was very hard for Wizard Godwin to keep his calm.
Abel said calmly, “Wizard Godwin since you’ve planned on going after me, I’ll have the right to retaliate. It’s just like what happened with Wizard Bunker and Wizard Gerald.”
Wizard Godwin was even more certain that it was Abel. He fumed even more when he heard the two names. He searched desperately in all directions with his power of the Will. He wanted to find where Abel was, but he was quite far from him. Much further than where his power of the Will expanded, actually. Even the small-sized war puppets around went out of his range of coverage.
At the same time, Abel sent a “kill” command towards the elder sign card on his belt. The battle command spirit then ordered the four hundred small-sized war puppets to fire their ballista arrows. It made Wizard Godwin’s hairs stand. His instinct told him to activate his “instantaneous movement” rune immediately with his right hand.
Strangely enough, the four hundred ballista arrows were not fired in the same direction. It formed a cross-shaped attack in the entire area, covering up hundreds of square meters of area. Only the small-sized puppets were capable of covering up such a massive area with their high-density attacks.
So Wizard Godwin’s performed his “instantaneous movement” quite quickly. He activated it before the ballistas were fired, actually. He became a white light that disappeared and reappeared somewhere two hundred meters away. He was no longer searching around with his power of the Will. By scanning again with his power of the Will, he had another “instantaneous movement” ready, so he could teleport elsewhere. That’s when he faced the arrows that were fired at him like a thin fishing net. The arrows fired at him were non-stop, as he noticed. Before he could teleport again, one of the arrows was just a meter away from him.
He was starting to fear, fear death. His body almost froze, but luck was still with him. The arrow managed to miss, and he successfully performed another “instantaneous movement that got him out of the deadly net of arrows. He sighed in relief from the fact that he escaped death very narrowly. That’s when he felt a sharp pain that came from his right arm.
“Where’s my arm?”
When he looked towards his right hand, he could see that it disappeared to his elbow. What followed was a terrible shriek that came out of his mouth. Still, he managed to escape by performing another “instantaneous movement” with his left hand.
Abel watched as Wizard Godwin escaped. It was quite a shame, really. It’s not like he didn’t want to make a chase, but he didn’t think that there would be a point in going after a rank eighteen wizard that was running for his life. Wizard Godwin was teleporting randomly. The man was experienced even at his worst.
Instead, Abel turned to look at the arm he tore off Wizard Godwin. He saw that it was still grabbing onto a circle control card. After taking it with his “telekinesis,” he threw a fireball and burnt the arm into ash. Of course, he’s heard of how wizards could use potions to put back a broken limb. He didn’t want to give Wizard Godwin any chances, so he decided to destroy the arm right there and then.
After that, he injected his power of the Will into the circle control card. Since the energy inside wasn’t too much for him to handball, he managed to remove it quite quickly to leave his own imprint. Soon, a text came out of it to inform him that the circle’s name was the “dragon-trapping circle.” Of course, that’s not to say that it was capable of actually trapping a dragon. The scary thing about this dragon-trapping circle, actually, was the fact that it could separate energy that was in the same space.
Basically, wizards cast their spells by activating runes with their own mana. The runes functioned by interacting with the different elements that were in the air, which created all sorts of spell attacks. If a dragon-trapping circle trapped a wizard, then his ability to cast spells would be greatly reduced, so much so that it was very difficult to break through the circle that was binding him. If trapped for too long, it’d be impossible for one to even escape with the “instantaneous movement’ spell.
So Abel had the spell control card when he walked inside the dragon-trapping circle. According to the instructions written on it, he found the circle plate and put away all 120 circle cards in the way. It was quite rare to find such spell circles on the Holy Continent. He was still a bit sour to have let Wizard Godwin away, but perhaps he should be content with the fact that he received a new circle.
After retrieving the dragon-trapping circle, the carriage shattered into pieces of wood. The ballista arrows destroyed it. Viscount Ebenezer and the coachmen, too, were both shredded into pieces that scattered everywhere. Abel shook his head. He originally wanted to spare both of their lives.
The dragon-trapping circle was a trapping circle. It could trap people inside the circle. That created a weakness, though. It was never intended to defend against attacks that came from the outside.
Abel ordered his elder sign card, “Put back your ballistas, battle command spirit.”
“Yes, sir Elder,” the battle command spirit responded. From there, the four hundred small-sized war puppets entered the battlefield that was just cleaned. It’d take longer if humans were doing this, but the war puppets themselves had the ability to retrieve the arrows that they fired in the shortest amount of time possible. About 2400 arrows were being fired in the two seconds that they attacked. Abel didn’t want to leave too many marks here, so he decided to have them take back anything they could. He wouldn’t want to make them from scratch again, especially when he didn’t have so much time and connections here on the central continent.
So in Annual City, Wizard Julian and Wizard Carnegie decided not to leave. They were waiting for responses from the Wizard Organisation. Their mission was not complete yet. They could only decide what to do next after receiving a response from the Wizard Organisation.
Right now, the two advanced wizards sat in a luxurious room filled with exquisite food. Both of them came by rushing in. They decided to share a meal because they realized that neither of them had eaten yet. They did have quite an argument at the city lord estate, but that was for the sake of doing their mission. Now that the mission was incomplete, it was still alright for them to share a meal.
Just while Wizard Carnegie was looking outside the window, he couldn’t help but awe in shock.
“A Soul light? What happened?”
Wizard Julian was also shocked, “It is a soul light? Who died? This isn’t the battlefield!”
Both of them thought that it could be Abel, but that just didn’t seem all that likely. Whatever the case was, their initial response was to teleport away from the room immediately. There was no time for him to worry about the city’s defensive large circle anymore. The defensive circle was nowhere as fast as them, so as long as they didn’t stay in one location for too long, it’d be very hard for it to actually lock onto them.