Angele caught the six cores.
"Only six?" Angele was kind of confused, so he quickly checked the location where he left the woman's corpse.
The woman's corpse had already disappeared together with the black light, and the only thing that remained on the ground was the deposit of black mud and grass that was within the explosion.
A technique like projection, maybe? Angele wondered.
His wounds had nearly fully healed while he was checking the surroundings. However, only a small amount of the energy reserves was left in the biochip. Had the woman cast one or two more spells of considerable power, he would have been the one who had lost the battle.
Angele needed energy and blood to aid in his healing process. If there was no ample amount of blood, he had to rely solely on the energy stored in his body and the biochip.
Even though the healing process did not consume too much energy, this time he had taken too much damage.
Angele wiped some of the dust off his body before he traveled to a small hill.
"Get out!" His long, red hair expanded and stabbed into a giant bush beneath the hill, easily capturing a thin man wearing a white mask.
"Take your clothes off," Angele spoke in a low voice.
The man's face turned for the worse upon noticing the killing intent exuded by Angele's eyes and decided to keep his mouth shut. He hurriedly undressed his coat and pants, throwing them at Angele after.
It was a black leather coat.
Angele caught the coat and the pants before he let the man leave.
But he frowned when he put on the clothes.
"It's a bit too small…"
The coat and the pants were both too small. On Angele, the black coat looked like a tight suit. Obviously enough, the clothes barely fitted Angele's body.
Some of the wizards who witnessed the fight were plotting an ambush, certain that Angele would need time to heal. But upon seeing that just now, they immediately gave up.
The wizards nearby hurriedly fled from where Angele was at, and the place soon became deadly silent.
Angele walked down the river wearing the leather coat. He hesitated for a moment before he tied up the cores using his dark red hair. He had, after all, ended up with ten complete cores.
The composition of the cores was abnormal. The cores neither floated on the surface, nor sank completely into the riverbed, but only lingered between.
Angele jumped into the river and began swimming. The water gradually washed the bloodstains off him.
His long, red hair spread out in the water. The cores that were tied up were wrapped in a light-purple glow. It bore semblance to mysterious and luxurious hair accessories.
Angele swam slowly in the river; it had been a while since he had taken a dip while being in such a peaceful environment.
Because he had collected enough cores, he decided to take a breather in the remaining time.
The woman in white had six cores, and he had four. Angele was assured that he would be the winner, considering how there wasn't much time left.
Besides, it was impossible for him to discover how to travel to other rifts in time, so he was now merely waiting patiently for the results to be announced.
There were no living beings in the river — no fish and no freshwater plant. The only thing he could see through the clear water was the riverbed.
He floated on his back in the water and looked at the sky.
The black crevices amid the blue sky were becoming larger and larger.
He could even hear the noise from the cracks that were produced by intense gusts.
Air was surging into the crevices, and the gravitational force in the rift was gradually reducing.
Even though he now nearly looked so relax as though he had fallen asleep, Angele was actually using the biochip and his mentality wave to survey the nearby surroundings.
Finally, a deep male voice came from the sky after a long time of waiting.
"Time is up. Wizards who failed to obtain a core shall be deemed failures, while those with cores shall be teleported."
Appeared on the ground were columns of black light that streaked into the heaven and sent into the crevices in the sky as soon as the male voice ceased. Those who were sent out into the crevices were the wizards who failed to acquire a complete core.
Following that, white light also descended from the sky, turning into columns of light.
One such column appeared above Angele and surrounded his body.
He was still afloat in the water. The white light brought warmth and refreshment to him that he was no longer tired. Apart from that, water droplets were in it.
It seemed as though these water droplets were weightless as they descended from the sky and sank into Angele's skin.
The water droplets were refilling his energy, and his body was lifted up high by the power in the column of light.
"Wait…" his expression changed. The column of light reminded him of a particular fountain from tales and myths. "The 'Fountain of Rebirth'?"
"If this is really the Fountain of Rebirth…" he hurriedly glanced around.
While floating in the air, he saw more than ten columns of light and with it the wizards who obtained a core in the rift.
All of them were injured at the very least. Some had fractured limbs while some had holes in the heads or necks, yet no matter how serious their injuries were, all of them were healed in and by the white light.
Angele even saw a female wizard — or rather, half a wizard — whose bottom half of her body was missing, but she was nonetheless healed by the light. The bottom half of her body regenerated within seconds.
"Terrifying… If this is the real Fountain of Rebirth, then what's behind Dark Wizard Tower must be…" Angele's expression hardened.
Within the light, his body continued to float upward, and everything under was coated with a thin layer of the white light.
He approached the crevices in the sky minutes later and entered one of it and arrived in a dark space.
Everything was in the air afloat since there was no gravity in this space.
An egg-shaped exit appeared before him after a while.
The white light immediately took Angele to it.
Angele was blinded temporarily by the light due to him having stayed in darkness for too long.
His eyes adapted to the brightness outside the exit seconds later, and he could finally see where he was.
He was in a spacious, luxury bedroom. The main tone of the room was gold, and there was a queen-size bed in the middle. The sheets, walls, and carpet — everything — was painted dark-gold.
Angele was the only one inside. The room had no door, but there was a square window on one of the walls.
It was half-open, so he could hear water and birds flying outside.
"What is this place?" he glanced around and confirmed that the window was indeed the only way out of the room. He quickly walked to the window to peek outside.
What was beneath him was an enormous canyon that also had a river. But the water seemed to be boiling and splashing everywhere.
Angele immediately took notice that the room was built inside the trunk of a towering and broad tree and was surrounded by a black forest that had lofty mountains. A herd of deer and a scurry of squirrels could be seen jumping and frolicking around the rivers running down the mountains.
He stood beside the window and recited an incantation.
Then, with a flick of his fingers, a wisp of dark flame flew toward the forest.
Baaam!
It exploded and transformed into a flaming eye that was directly looking at him.
The scene before the Eye of Fire was transmitted to Angele's vision.
Light from the setting sun passed through the thin mist and painted everything beneath pale yellow.
It was a canyon of a sea of trees and rocky walls. There was a dark, deep fissure in the middle of it.
The towering tree was located on a large cliff by the edge of the fissure.
Water was flowing down the branches of this towering, dark brown tree. It flowed into the river beneath the fissure, making the tree as though water had come from it.
Its trunk was filled with windows. White and orange light emerged out of the windows. Standing in the rooms were wizards who had differing facial expressions.
Though some of the windows were closed and no light coming out of it.
"So the wizards who participated in the competition and obtained a core have all been teleported to the tree. That must have cost them a lot of resources…"
The eye-shaped amethyst ring on his left hand was not damaged even after all those battles, and he was still wearing the clothes he extorted from that certain wizard.
His pouch remained destroyed utterly.
"Were all of those just projections, or did I actually enter the world rift?" Angele was kind of perplexed, "If it actually was only a projection, my outfit and my pouch should not have been destroyed."
He checked the texture of the coat he was currently wearing; it was leather. Angele leaned and checked the ten purple cores tied to his hair. They looked like hair accessories made out of gems.
"It wasn't an illusion. Although I can't activate my ability, I can still distinguish reality and illusions with my merged bloodline.
"Wait, but if it's not a projected, the wizards who were killed should have died…" he recalled the moment he ripped that woman apart. "It's nearly impossible for anyone to survive with a broken body like that…"
Angele thought for a while, yet he still did not find the answers he was seeking. There wasn't enough data in his database and so he had to give it up.
He went around the room and decided not to leave through the window. Angele lay on the bed instead and rested.
There must be a reason as to why they had sent them to a room like this, so the only thing he should do was to wait.
After about two hours, from the window, he heard something flapping its wings.
It was a golden bird reflecting the sunlight, which slowly landed on the windowsill.
Chirp~
The golden bird jumped several times and spread out its right wing, dropping a tiny, green seed onto the windowsill.
The seed immediately took root on the windowsill. It looked like a sharp needle stabbing into a wooden plank.