Black Hearted Mage

Caesars's hands, white-knuckled, tightly gripped the magical short blade inscribed with ancient magic patterns. The faint blue patterns flickered across the blade. He pulled a translucent white stone from his faded leather belt pouch. The core of the stone shone with a sickly pale gleam, like solidified mist. With the crunch of his boots crunching over dead branches, he stopped before the youngest priest—a blond youth, imprisoned by an arcane barrier, struggling in vain.

“Save your energy!”

Caesars patted the man's pale cheek with the flat of his blade, then suddenly twisted his wrist and placed the blade's tip between the priest's brows. With the subtle sound of muscle fibers being torn apart by the magical blade, the five-inch blade plunged unimpeded into the skull. As the blade withdrew, strangely, only a few drops of blood oozed from the wound. A wisp of milky white mist, pulled by the suction of the soul gem, twisted and pulled away from the wound, eventually condensing into a grain-sized spot of light in the stone core.

His fingertips caressed the slightly warm Soul Gem, and Caesars turned to look at the remaining captives. The purple cage formed by the arcane barrier was becoming transparent, and the outlines of the prisoners began to blur as the energy decayed.

"Two minutes... The arcane barrier can only last two minutes without the arcane energy to sustain it!"

He glanced at the fading arcane energy and suddenly attacked. The blade's flashes carved a dozen afterimages in the twilight, and above each fallen body, a wisp of mist, captured by the soul stone, floated.

The clanging of metal was particularly piercing in the dead silence of the forest. Caesars was roughly stripping off the priests' gold-embroidered robes. Storage rings still adorned the corpses' fingers. He removed them without hesitation, stripping off every piece of armor he could—gilded plate armor, sweat-soaked linen linings, even silk belts embroidered with prayers. As the last piece of trophy was stuffed into the interspatial ring, the puppy's urging bark reached from the carriage.

The stench of humus filled his face. Caesars galloped through the beech forest, his deerskin boots kicking up aged pine needles. He plundered every corpse he passed like a vulture scavenging for food: steel-tipped arrows, bloodstained leather armor, even the few gold coins in his purse, which he gnashed between his teeth to verify their quality. When a storage ring was nearly full, Caesars vanished into the twilight, a look of excitement on his face.

"Emily, sit tight, I'm not very good at driving a carriage!"

Caesars sat in the driver's seat and shouted towards the carriage at the back.

"Brother, where is our driver?"

Emily stuck her head out of the car window and asked Caesars.

"The driver was killed by the robbers just now. This guy is a complete idiot. He only wanted to get the gold coins, but he didn't expect the robbers to kill to silence him!"

Caesar saw the driver's body in the dense forest. He was not killed by the puppies, but his head was chopped off.

"Brother, who are those robbers?"

"Battle priests wearing gilded armor, but I killed them all and stripped them of their equipment. It's just that these things are hard to sell in Violet City. Only the nobles of the Roland Empire like to collect them!"

As Caesar spoke, he whipped up his whip and gently waved it, causing the two bay horses to lift their hooves and slowly move forward. He didn't dare let the horses run too fast, as they were about to reach Felwood, and from there the road would no longer be smooth.

Dusk spread like ink at the edge of Felwood, and the sound of wooden wheels rolling over dead branches was particularly clear in the silence. Kaesus narrowed his glimmering eyes—thanks to his dark vision spell, he could see every low-hanging vine clearly—but the two bay horses suddenly stopped, foaming at the ground, their front hooves paddling restlessly in the damp soil.

"Emily, get off!" Caesars pulled the reins tight, his leather gloves gleaming coldly in the moonlight. "These two horses won't go any further."

A blond head suddenly popped out of the carriage window, with slightly curled hair at the ends.

"Brother, we're not going to spend the night in the carriage, are we?" Emily wrinkled her nose, clutching a hide bag in her hand.

Caesars had already swiftly slid out of the carriage, his boots thumping against the dirt. "Let's abandon the carriage. It must have been tampered with by the Saint Laurent Church. They'll definitely track us down!"

As Caesars spoke in a decisive tone, he opened the carved carriage door, and a round figure immediately rushed out like a cannonball - it was a dark red fat dog, which was now rolling excitedly in a pile of dead leaves.

As Emily stumbled to the ground, clutching Caesar's arm, he took the backpack from her. Half of a snake's tail, densely patterned with dark patterns, peeked out from beneath the animal-hide straps. Caesar unhesitatingly snatched out the dozing little golden-eyed black demon snake and flung it into the bracken beside the road like a dagger.

"Saint Paul! It's time to get to work. Lead the way southwest."

In the moonlight, a pitch-black snake head suddenly rose, its gilded pupils narrowing to two thin lines. This demonic snake, native to the Great Rift Valley of the Endless Forest, moved like an arrow from a bow, its scales scraping against grass stems a fleeting sound. Kaesus watched the dark shadow shoot straight into the dense forest.

The golden-eyed black snake is a ferocious beast among snakes. Unlike other snakes, which move in a zigzag pattern, the golden-eyed black snake moves in a straight line. They enjoy devouring venomous snakes and insects, and even as larvae, they devour smaller male snakes of their species.

"Emily, let's follow it!"

Caesars suddenly grabbed Emily's wrist and with his other hand drew the dagger from his waist. At this moment, a breeze blew by, bringing with it a faint fragrance.

Caesars paused and discovered that the axle was coated with a special grease that generated heat when it rotated. This special grease produced a fragrance when heated. The main ingredient of this fragrant grease was a secretion of a magical beast.

The night wind brought the cries of owls in the distance. The abandoned carriage cast a hideous silhouette in the moonlight, and the emblem engraved on the shaft was emitting a faint purple glow.

The golden-eyed black demon snake had long since vanished, leaving only a faint, sweet, fishy scent lingering through the forest. The plump puppy quivered its wet nose, its stubby limbs clumsily yet resolutely pushing aside the brush, persistently following the scent trail left by the black demon snake. Caesars, holding Emily's hand, followed closely behind. Felwood at night was fraught with danger, and Emily was undoubtedly too weak to handle it.

The darkness thickened, and the heavy clouds, like cotton wool soaked in ink, swallowed up the last ray of moonlight. Deep in the dense forest, five or six miles away from the abandoned carriage, a bonfire crackled, its dancing flames tearing the darkness within a radius of several feet into shreds.

Caesars sat cross-legged beside the flames, the soul gem in his palm emitting an eerie white light, absorbing countless tiny soul fragments like fireflies. He closed his eyes tightly, a vein bulging on his forehead—those devoured soul fragments surged in his sea of ​​consciousness, and shattered memories, like sharp mirror fragments, repeatedly streaked through his spiritual world.

About three meters from the fire, the tent, made of armored leather, shone glossily in the flames. Emily curled up on a soft mink fur mattress, her long golden hair cascading down, her chest rising and falling gently with her even breathing.

A loud snoring sound came from the campfire. The chubby puppy lay on its back, its dark red belly rising and falling rhythmically with its breathing. Its front paws were still holding a half-gnawed blue sheep leg bone, and its stubby tail occasionally slapped the ground.

The tiny, pitch-black snake poked its head out from among the rotting leaves. Its golden pupils narrowed to a thin line in the darkness, and its forked tongue silently probed for every breath around it. Dark lines faintly flowed beneath its scales, a dark element coursing through them—a hallmark of a golden-eyed black demon snake in alert mode. As the night wind whirled dead leaves through the tent, the snake's tail unconsciously entangled one of Emily's suede boots.

Caesars could easily kill the pursuers, but he knew he couldn't guarantee Emily's safety in combat. The pursuers were clearly well-trained, and if they got into a tangle, there was no guarantee one wouldn't take advantage and attack his sister. After careful consideration, he decided to lead Emily deeper into the dense forest—the complex terrain there might help them escape, and he could leverage his familiarity to gain an advantage.

In the pitch-black night, the patterns on the abandoned carriage shimmered faintly in the darkness. A dozen figures clad in matte black leather armor and soft leather masks fanned out, expertly examining every suspicious trace. Their masks, etched with venomous snakes at the corners of their eyes, shone an eerie green light in the darkness.

"There are fresh footprints on the roadside south of the carriage," a tracker squatting by the road suddenly reported in a low voice. His fingers gently traced the edge of the prints, rubbing a bit of the still-wet mud between his fingers. "It shouldn't be more than four hours old!"

The leader, standing in the middle of the road, turned upon hearing this, his leather armor creaking softly as he moved. His gaze from beneath his mask swept across the ground, and he suddenly crouched down. A faint, half-blurred footprint could be seen among a few clumps of bent weeds.

"The tracks are turning into the forest." He stood up, turning his soft leather mask towards the dark woods. "They must have left a scent. Bring us the lightning rat!"

The tracker at the end of the group immediately brought out an exquisite wooden cage. The small white creature inside was scurrying restlessly, its slender tail rustling along the bottom. This was their prized tracking tool—the lightning rat. Though a low-level magical beast, its sense of smell could detect a specific scent up to three days old; a four-hour scent was a piece of cake. It could also dart through the dense forest like lightning, guiding the way.

The moment the cage door opened, a ball of snow-white fur darted out and headed straight for the grass by the roadside. But to everyone's surprise, after sniffing a few steps, this usually daring little animal suddenly had its fur standing on end, letting out a piercing squeak, and scurried back into the cage even faster than before, curling up in a corner and shivering.

The leader's mask turned toward the depths of the dark forest, his right hand unconsciously pressing against the snake-shaped dagger at his waist. The scent that could terrify the Lightning Rat couldn't possibly be left behind by an ordinary prey.

"Damn it, we forgot about the golden-eyed black snake, it is the natural enemy of all rats!" The leader in leather armor complained in a low voice.

"Chief, should we continue chasing?" asked the leather-armored man holding the cage.

"Give up! It's too difficult for us to follow the footprints in this darkness. That great magician is not someone to be trifled with. At least those mercenaries and combat priests were killed by him. He has a fat dog and a golden-eyed black demon snake by his side. Even if we sneak, it will be difficult for us to get close to him!"

"The leader is right. I heard that dark magicians have a spell called dark vision, which allows them to see clearly in the distance even in the dark." said the leather-armored man holding the lightning mouse cage.

"Yes, I've heard of it too!" another leather-armored man echoed.

"Take all the bodies back and send them to Bitterwater Farm!"

The leader said this and walked towards the horse, then led the leather-armored men back quickly.

Two days later, at dusk, as Kaesus and Emily, weary and dusty, entered the towering gates of Violet City, thousands of miles away, Bitterwater Farm was shrouded in an eerie twilight. Inside a makeshift research facility, repurposed from an abandoned barn, twelve magicians in colorful robes sat before a suspended image stone, their faces dappled with shadows cast by a dark red magical glow. These memory crystals, sold at a high price by the Redstone Kingdom, were recreating the most thrilling duels from the Magician's Challenge.

In the corner, dozens of corpses covered in coarse linen were neatly arranged, dark brown stains seeping out from the edges of the fabric. The autopsies, which should have been a priority, were completely put on hold—all the mages' attention was fixed on the flickering images, and even the most rigorous representatives of the necromancy school temporarily forgot their duties.

As the last trace of the spell faded in the lingering image, Roman, cloaked in a pitch-black cloak, suddenly slammed the table and stood up. Spiderweb-like wrinkles trembled violently around his exposed eyes, and his hoarse voice, like sandpaper rubbing against iron, said, "My former student... has mastered the dark element to such an extreme!" His cloak rose with his excited movements, revealing seven white bone fragments etched with different spells hanging from his waist.

Suddenly, a sound like ice breaking came from the shadows. Sandro, who was surrounded by coldness, slowly leaned forward, and frost instantly formed on the oak chair under him.

"You underestimate him, old friend."

An inhuman voice seeped from behind the ice crystal mask, each syllable carrying the sting of frostbite. "That skill of simultaneously maintaining triple spell thresholds...even I in my prime would be inferior to you."

"Really?" Roman's eyes suddenly narrowed under the shadow of his hood.

"Crack!" With the crisp sound of icy shells peeling off, Sandro ripped off his hood. A flowing film of ice covered his pale skull, and a faint blue soul fire sparked in his hollow eye sockets. "Behold our first 'guest'! The priest of light, corroded from within by the dark elements... Each of his wounds tells the truth." The necromancer's bony fingers slashed through the air, condensing into a three-dimensional projection of the priest's body being dissected. The cross-sections of his organs, shimmering with black light, still moved slightly.

Roman’s leather gloves scraped harshly against his staff. “You call that a dissection? When I pushed the door open, I thought I’d walked into an ogre’s kitchen!”

"Crack, crack, crack..." Sandro's jaw suddenly opened at an exaggerated angle, as if dislocated—the unique "laughter" of the undead. The sound, created by the onomatopoeic magic, resembled nails scraping against glass. "After all... who could resist the temptation of studying the Corruption of the Holy Light?" Frost flakes from his cloak as he laughed, dissolving into a pungent mist before hitting the ground.