Can the sadness that magic cannot take away be offset by love?

Before entering the arena, she received news from her subordinates and reminded Ernest for the second time about the same thing.

The last time was after he was caught stealing Alexia's flowers.

She didn't care whether he understood or not. She left a few little snowmen to guard the gate and went to rest.

The next morning, Ernest knocked on the door:

"There is a new mission."

She had only eaten half of her breakfast and opened the door with half a loaf of bread:

"where?"

He pointed in a direction and when we got there we discovered it was a supermarket. On the shelf to the right of the entrance was a row of glittering boxes of needlework, as if to prevent people from seeing that they were tasks.

"Buy a box of needles and thread... and get a random C-level item as a reward?"

Iris was confused. Isn't this the equivalent of giving it away for free?

Ernest interpreted her confusion as something else, so he added:

"You can only accept the same task once."

No wonder he was so kind to ask her to come over.

If there wasn't this restriction, the shelves would have been cleared out by him by now - this restriction was probably something he tested out by trying to buy needles and thread repeatedly.

Iris picked up a box of needles and thread, walked to the cashier, and scanned the money with Zhiwang.

She looked at the C-level item and raised her eyebrows.

"There's good news and bad news."

Ernest looked at her, waiting for what to say next.

"The good news is, I got a pair of walkie-talkies, so theoretically we can split up."

Both of them have a keen sense of their surroundings, and if they discover the problem in advance, it will only take a few minutes to reunite.

"Bad news...the shadow is only ten kilometers away from us."

With the speed of this witch lady, it would only take a few minutes for her to kill us.

The news was brought to her by the little snowman she kept nearby.

It was impossible to separate at this moment. Ernest's space water curtain jumped out from mid-air, decisively swallowed up the figures of the two, and instantly sent the two people to the door of the nearest safe house -.

The first thing they did when they entered the city was to search every house for safe houses, that is, houses with prompt boxes on the doors saying that the witch lady was not allowed to enter.

I did find several safe houses, but unlike the houses in the village, the safe houses here have a time limit. I can only stay in them for half an hour at a time. If I exceed the time limit, they will become invalid. I have to go out and wait for a ten-minute cooling-off period before coming back, or go directly to other safe houses - but the distance between the safe houses is actually very far.

Otherwise, the people who hid here before would not have died so miserably. If people could hide from beginning to end, it wouldn't be called a competition.

As for why the houses in the village had no safety time limit - Iris felt that they would become invalid in some way at some point in time, it was just that time had not come yet.

When the shadow got a little closer, Iris pushed the door open first, turned around, put her hand naturally on the doorknob behind it, opened the door a little, and smiled at Ernest who was still standing outside the door.

The other party immediately frowned fiercely, thinking that there must be something wrong when something is abnormal.

But she quickly withdrew her hand, folded her arms and looked at him:

"Shall I invite you in?"

The word "you" was deliberately emphasized, and Ernest felt a little relieved.

The thirty-minute countdown began, and the dark shadow continued to linger outside the door.

Iris tried to use the little snowman to lure the shadow away, but the shadow refused:

"I want to change the game today."

The witch stood at the door with her hands behind her back. The two of them could see her clearly through the one-way perspective magic.

Her voice was dull and childish, with a kind of clarity that is unique to children, and her tone was deliberately slow and melodious, sounding quite elegant and polite.

Ernest stepped aside to try to locate other safe houses. Iris walked to the door and spoke depressedly through the door:

"No more 'catch and run'? I thought you'd like it. Then ..."

The great magician also deliberately dragged out his tone to whet the appetite before he slowly and word by word said:

"Let's have a competition?"

Miss Witch blinked and said nervously:

"What are we competing for? I can't perform, and I'm not good at singing or dancing..."

Iris used her years of experience in coaxing children to coax the big boss of this game:

"Of course we don't compete with those. If we want to play, we should play something that requires technical skills, such as..."

The shadow tilted his head:

"Like...?"

"How about we compete to see who can catch the most humans in three days?"

Iris's smiling words made Ernest couldn't help but look up at her.

She didn't even glance at him, but just stood behind the door calmly, even though she would be immediately eliminated by the fog as soon as she opened the door.

The shadow pointed out the actual problem hesitantly:

"But there are too many people, and they disappear as soon as they are touched by my mist. I can't count them."

Iris patiently gave explanations and suggestions:

"Because the fog killed them, they would disappear if they died. You could fix them in one place and not let them move, which would make it easier to count them at the end."

The witch raised one hand and scratched her head, and her long, smooth black hair that mopped the ground also shook:

"Let me think... Well, it seems there is indeed a suitable magic..."

She tried to collect the mist, and when she turned her palm, cold air came out from her palm and formed beautiful little ice cubes.

"I'll freeze them..."

She muttered, turned her eyes and said:

"There are prizes for the competition, right? What's the reward for the winner?"

"Just tell me what you want if you win."

Iris said kindly.

I want lots and lots of little snowmen—that’s what Miss Witch wanted to say.

But she held back in time, curled her lips and changed her words:

"I want you to be able to make lots and lots of little snowmen."

Iris didn't want to know what she meant by "want", so she just nodded indifferently:

"Okay, that's settled."

The witch clapped her hands happily, then tried to suppress her pride and asked in a very "fair" manner:

"So what do you want if you win?"

Iris smiled mysteriously:

"I haven't thought about it yet. Let's talk about it later. I won't ask for anything you don't want to give."

The black shadow nodded his chin with satisfaction:

"I'll come to see you at this time three days later."

After sending the shadow away, the countdown had not yet ended. Iris threw the intercom to him and waved her hand:

"Hurry to the next one."

Ernest leaned against the wall and caught the object with one hand, then looked at her carefully. The curve of Iris's mouth had dropped a lot, and she looked at him with a half smile:

"I don't think I know enough about your space magic. You can make the space crack swallow the items you want to transfer through the air, right? Then why did you ask me to help pick the leaves at the beginning?"

A few words closed Ernest's open mouth, and she continued to add some glue to his mouth:

"I still remember what Olivia said to me last winter: 'Everything abnormal must have its cause.' What is your motive for coming to me when you clearly don't need help? Is it just a simple gesture of goodwill? It doesn't seem necessary."

Iris lowered her head as she said this, flipping through the notes she had taken out of the space artifact, and then showed him a certain page:

"I know you probably don't want to answer that question. You probably won't admit that you want to beg me, although it would make me happier - can you explain this sentence?"

Ernest glanced at the page, then lowered his eyelashes and answered sharply:

"I haven't heard that."

"is it?"

Iris turned the book back to face herself:

"There are four sentences on these two pages. How do you know which one I'm asking about?"

Ernest was silent for a long time, and Iris became distressed:

"Because you remember that you said this sentence - the other three sentences were not said by you."

"..."

Ernest still refused to speak.

There were only four sentences written on the two pages, two sentences on each page. At the top of the left page it read:

"Even if you're an ice mage, you should take medicine if you catch a cold."

The sentence directly below is:

“Everything abnormal has its root cause.”

At the top of the right page is:

"As an ice mage, I caught a cold earlier than a fire mage in winter."

Bottom right page:

"One of you must have taken the wrong medicine, or maybe both of you took the wrong medicine."

The first sentence was said by Ernest, and the last three were said by Olivia. They were all confusing remarks made by the two to her last winter - she could not understand them at the time, so she wrote them down.

It comes in handy right now.

What she meant by "incomprehensible" was not that she could not understand the meaning of the sentence itself, but that she could not understand the purpose or reason why the other person said this.

Of course, sometimes there were too many things she couldn't understand, so she just wrote down everything she could remember... In the end, it was hard to say whether she understood it or not, after all, there were few things that were helpful to her, and most of them could only be listened to as jokes.

Ernest was sure that she had almost forgotten about her previous cold, otherwise she would never have made such a joke.

She caught a cold because she went crazy and rolled into the snow in the middle of the night and slept until dawn for a week in a row. For seven whole nights, no one could stop her. He and Alexia each carried a lantern every night to dig for people in the snow - God knows why she threw herself into the snow in a white cloak with gray hair that was almost snow-colored. She blended in with the heavy snow and was buried by the falling snow. Anyone who came to look for her would be blinded -

The last time he poached someone like this was when Lucius was a kid! Alexia doesn't even need him to worry about this!!

When the cold medicine was brought to her, he kept saying, "What kind of cold is this about ice mage training?" He pushed the medicine aside and was about to jump into the snow again. In the end, it was only Alexia who held him down and fed him the medicine to save the situation. He had almost successfully forgotten about this matter...

Ernest swallowed his worries to himself, his face was as gloomy as it could be, and his hair, which was usually well maintained, became unusually frizzy - probably because he hadn't washed his hair since entering the space ball.

Iris admired his expression and started playing with the ends of her hair:

"You're mute today? Well, that's a shame."

Ernest opened the door and demonstrated his will through action.

Iris sighed softly and walked out as well, but she kept walking along the path closer to the safe house.

As Ernest was walking, he noticed that the footsteps behind him were not right. He turned around and saw her standing at the door of a grocery store. Facing the gray glass window, she was putting on a necklace with a small brass key on it.

He stood there waiting silently, not noticing the sinister gleam that flashed across the smiling eyes of the wizard in the shadow of the eaves.

Iris lowered her eyelashes, adjusted her necklace, concealed her strange feelings, turned around and clapped her hands:

"Should we go meet up with our companions? It's not safe to walk on the road with only two of us."

Ernest thought of the "competition" she had just mentioned to Black Shadow and closed her eyes:

"You lead the way."

Iris smiled happily. At this time, the sun hidden behind the clouds slowly showed its head, and a little light fell on the brass key at her neck, making the key reflect a dazzling light. Ernest couldn't help but squint his eyes and turned in another direction to avoid the light.

This brass key was a gold key not long ago.

It was half inserted in the keyhole behind the safe house door. Luckily, Iris was able to see it through the glass window at a certain angle and was dazzled by the golden light it emitted. She was even willing to open the door for it, and then she quietly put the key in her hand in front of Ernest.

"A-level mission: After receiving the mission, you will be rewarded with 1000 points for every 10 people eliminated (number of people eliminated: 0)"

But now, it's just an ordinary brass key.