Azure Scepter

Page 52

The mentor was initially skeptical, but after a blind and ravaged old elf visited him, he suddenly made up his mind. As an exile, the mentor gathered all his followers and led almost all of his cursed subjects back to the Prime Material Plane.

After a long search and overcoming a series of obstacles that were neither easy nor difficult, they finally found the empty laboratory.

The lab's traps were so poorly designed they seemed like a lame joke, but the long-dormant guards turned that joke into a complete nightmare—the modified undead possessed bizarre and terrifying abilities, and a climate of tension and suspicion permeated the exploration team, making each battle brief yet brutal...

Of the ten, only one survived; to be precise, he is now the only surviving apprentice.

If their mentor, the Shadowless One, hadn't found a way to control the undead, the laboratory they had painstakingly reached would have become their burial ground.

After gaining control of the Undead Guard, the mentor delegated control to him and ordered him to guard the entrance and at least repel the first wave of cannon fodder hunters sent by the Radiant Church bishop; the mentor then locked himself in the deepest part of the laboratory, and no one knew what he was researching.

Sometimes the white-bearded mage even worried that his mentor had gone completely mad.

"Pfft!" The sound of flesh being torn apart brought the white-bearded mage back to his senses.

He took a deep breath, suppressing the negative thoughts brought on by his long-term exposure to negative energy. The white-bearded mage knew that the power of any spellcaster came from wisdom, and that a pure difference in strength could be overcome by leveraging intelligence. As long as he remained calm and cast the right spell at the right time and in the right place, he might still have a chance of victory, even against a true legend.

"It didn't directly blast us into dust one by one with magic, but only dared to attack when the church guards attacked. This means that the old lich in the laboratory is probably very weak now—we have already smashed its life casket. As long as we can kill it one more time, we will be completely safe... We must find it!"

"These undead in the laboratory must have a secret door; I must keep them away from me." With this thought in mind, the white-bearded mage raised his lantern and mentally gave the bizarre undead in front of him the order to launch a full-scale attack.

He immediately cast "Advanced Invisibility" on himself, while ordering the attacking mummy and other undead he could guarantee his loyalty to retreat to his side.

After doing all this, the white-bearded mage breathed a sigh of relief and looked up to search for the possible location of the hidden enemy.

Ceiling, corner, shadow...

Suddenly, his expression froze—from the shadows around the corner in the distance, a mangled human body covered in blood and scorch marks had appeared out of nowhere. Seemingly sensing his gaze, the man's eyelid-less eyes stared straight at him, and a slow grin spread across his lips, revealing a tongue as long as his forearm from behind his withered, broken teeth.

The shattered human body extended its hand, with fingers severed at the root, and slowly pointed to the top of the white-bearded mage's head.

"What is that?!" The white-bearded mage was startled. He blinked instinctively, but the shattered humanoid figure that resembled a muscular demon had already vanished.

In the instant he was stunned, a strange yet gentle female voice suddenly came from above: "Death."

The white-bearded mage looked up in surprise, recognizing it as the high-level divine spell "Decree: Death".

The next moment, he felt his heart skip a beat. As his heart stopped, his face began to melt like wax, and the scalding blood hissed like strong acid. The melting liquid from his skin and muscles instantly dissolved his tongue.

He collapsed to the ground, and before losing consciousness completely, he used his swift spellcasting skills to cast a "Bear's Resilience" spell on himself. As the winds of death surged into his body, the agony of his life and soul being ripped away vanished instantly. Before he could even exhale, a gentle female voice rang out again: "Shock."

—Law: Shock.

The white-bearded monk felt as if the words had turned into a heavy hammer, slamming into the bridge of his nose. A stinging, dizzying sensation instantly overwhelmed his senses, and he was unable to move as if he had been pierced by a wooden nail.

"Crack." The lantern controlling the undead in the laboratory suddenly slipped from my grasp and fell to the ground.

His remaining eyeballs tilted slightly upwards in an attempt to lock onto the enemy, when a fierce black shadow came crashing down on him!

A desiccated corpse beside him instinctively charged towards him. He stopped abruptly and raised his shield to try and block, but the immense force sent it and its shield flying sideways. Taking advantage of this opportunity, a headless knight, transformed from the corpses of other apprentices, swiftly grabbed his ankle and dragged him back into the cover of the horde of corpses.

The white-bearded mage only felt a blur before his eyes, and the suddenly appearing attacker landed silently on the ground. Then it unleashed a fierce low sweep, the heavy chain hammer whistling through the air, and the dull sounds of bones cracking echoed like a symphony. Anyone who touched it was either killed or maimed!

He tried desperately to make out the attacker's features, but only caught a fleeting afterimage before the headless knight in front of him was smashed in the abdomen by a flail, his unpreserved, putrid entrails spraying onto his face.

Amidst the rain of blood, he finally saw the attacker's face clearly—a silver-haired, red-eyed priest. Her right hand held a chain mace covered in bone fragments, which hung limply on the ground, while her left hand emitted a warm white light.

The pure light illuminated her solemn face, and her silver hair danced in the wind under the light, the ends of which emitted a hazy halo. At this moment, she was full of holiness.

However, the white-bearded mage smelled an extremely strong stench of negative energy. Although the other party tried his best to cover it up with the scent of citrus, the mage still recognized that the other party was not a living person—the priest in front of him was a bound spirit!

At this moment, another Death Tomb Knight, transformed from a fallen apprentice, rushed over and blocked the mage's path. Further away, a writhing and enormous corpse with limbs pieced together like jigsaw puzzle pieces was also rapidly approaching.

Safe, temporarily.

The mage let out a long sigh of relief, but the next moment, an extremely bright white light filled his vision like a storm.

—That spirit-binding priest actually used Sunfire Blast!?

Sunburst is one of the best spells for eliminating large areas of undead. The caster will simulate a dazzling spherical sun, and all creatures within the range will be burned by the high temperature. Undead creatures will also suffer additional positive energy damage.

"Sunfire Burst".

He heard the pastor's gentle whisper.

He could feel the scorching light. This light was not the soft, warm sunlight he remembered, but a steady beam of light so bright that it could dim one's vision. The brilliant incandescent light coldly swept over everything. He felt no pain. Half a second later, he smelled the stench of burnt hair.

The light gradually dimmed, followed by a terrifying darkness.

Chapter 96 Drought Lich

"Paji."

The boots stepped over the bloodstains, splashing up a crimson stain.

Fragments of the long-handled scimitar swirled past Trier, the air thick with the acrid smell of burning flesh emanating from the spiral staircase littered with charred corpses.

As the blinding light of the Sunfire Burst gradually dissipated, more than half of the undead surging in the darkness disappeared. Most of the remaining undead were severely injured, and the coarse black powder produced after their corpses turned to ashes flew around like knives scraping their faces.

Trier glanced at the information panel, where a dense list of kill records was scrolling across the screen like a leaky fan, while a golden ball of light surged over from a distance like a tsunami.

Roughly calculated, Noy's burst of Sunfire brought him nearly 7000 experience points. Considering the loss from Noy's resurrection, he could net more than 6000 experience points.

"This enclosed environment is indeed suitable for the Sunfire Burst," he thought. "Although the effect is significant, Noyi's attack is pure self-destruction; as a bound spirit, she can't possibly withstand her own Sunfire Burst..."

"As expected of Noi, he is indeed ruthless."

Suddenly, a line of cobalt blue information flashed across the screen of kill records.

[XP-1000]

The next moment, a piercing scream comparable to a banshee's wail suddenly exploded in his heart, the sharp and high-pitched sound like a sonic boom arrow shot by Futia, making Trier's scalp tingle.

"It hurts! It hurts!"

Trier shivered and turned to look at the resurrected Noy.

At this moment, Noi knelt helplessly on the ground, her hands clutching her forehead, her pure white eyelashes trembling with pain beneath Yingche's fingers. Seemingly sensing her gaze, Noi abruptly released her grip and looked up, raising an eyebrow and forcing a smile: "Sorry, I forgot that Solar Explosion can also kill me..."

Trier remained silent, then reached out and gently ruffled Noy's silver hair. The smooth hair carried the cool, aloof quality characteristic of spirits, and felt wonderful to the touch.

Noi stopped trembling, slowly closed her eyes, and then gently turned her head as if to feel a caress.

—The battle between the temple guards and the shadowy followers had been going on for some time, and Trir couldn't simply hide in the shadows and watch. In fact, he had used this time to complete the ritual that would allow him to regain control of the laboratory's undead.

The principle behind this ritual is very simple, consisting of only three steps. First, as the creator of the undead, he naturally has an extremely close and mysterious connection with the undead in the laboratory. Therefore, theoretically, he can easily re-establish a perceptual connection with one of the undead in the laboratory. Then, he can use the sympathetic connection that is inherent in the cluster of undead to perceive all the undead in the laboratory.

Secondly, after completing the perception, he can use ritual to manipulate the massive amount of death wind in the laboratory, thereby washing away the Shadowless Man's control over the undead; and the final step is to use his own spirit and will to penetrate the death wind, thereby regaining control over those undead.

"Thank you for your hard work," Trier said. "From now on, all you need to do is protect me while I cast my spell."

Noi opened his eyes and nodded solemnly.

The time traveler took a deep breath and removed the glove from his left hand. The sharp blade sliced ​​across the scar on his palm, and a drop of crimson blood dripped onto the ritual surface with a "plop."

The winds of death, carrying negative energy, swirled around him like a cloak in a storm.

In an instant, a layer of gray mist filled Trier's vision, within which swirled streams of indescribable dark red fluid. These fluids seemed not to exist in this world; only by focusing all one's attention could one see their hazy trails.

[The "Negative Energy Vision" ceremony was held on XP-500]

“These dark red lines are the death winds influenced by the Shadow Man—I think I understand how he controls the undead in the lab,” Trier thought.

He slowly reached out and grasped a dark red thread. The thread was as sharp as a monomolecular wire capable of cutting through a wall, and its violent power made it as difficult to approach as a chainsaw running at full speed. However, Trier, as an undisputed master of necromancy, had a special way of dealing with it.

According to the theories of the Twilight Witches of Gedran, the hand is the essential medium through which any intelligent being with hands compels the external world to obey its will, and magic is the mutual definition and sublation of the subjective and objective worlds. Therefore, the hand is the source of magic. The area between the index and ring fingers constitutes the smallest unit of constraint, which they call the "Arcane Zone"—according to this theory, magical items such as rings cannot be worn on the thumb.

He placed his ring finger on the tip of his index finger, and a miniature form of constraint appeared. A violent and sharp wind of death surged into it like a flood into a canal, and was then dissolved into nothingness.

Trier felt the power of the winds of death.

Black, bitter and salty, like scorching sand in the desert.

At that moment, Trier seemed to see a withered, mummified corpse dressed in a white linen robe and papyrus shoes.

This is a ceremonial robe from the Broken Desert region, and there is only one type of undead in the Broken Desert region who likes to wear ceremonial robes—the Drought Lich.

As the name suggests, a drought lich is a type of lich. Unlike ordinary liches, their caskets are typically made of clay jars containing their internal organs. As is well known, humans have five organs: heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys. Therefore, every drought lich has five caskets; these five organ jars must be destroyed for the drought lich to lose its ability to resurrect. Based on transliteration, the necromancy community in the Great Swamp region translates the drought lich's organ jars as "Canopis Jars," also known as "Canopis Jars."

From a purely technical standpoint, the Drought Lich doesn't possess any significant advantages over a regular Lich. Even its unique advantage of multiple Life Boxes became completely useless after the Life Box Splitting Technique was invented...

“The Shadow Man really is a lich,” Trier muttered to himself. “In that case, I must regain control of the undead in the lab to ensure everything goes smoothly.”

The stinging sensation traveled along the radial nerve to the cerebral cortex, but Trier coldly ignored it, letting his consciousness wander with the grasping winds of death.

A moment later, he sensed a "fulcrum" in the flowing wind of death. It was a Death Knight wielding an invisible blade. Trier suddenly opened his hand, and the complex flow of perception, like voltage being connected to an electrical circuit, traveled along the Death Knight to all the undead in the nearby laboratory.

Dong Dong... Dong Dong...

My heartbeat quickens rapidly.

A deluge of information flooded Trier's mind—the subconscious, fragmented memories, and instincts of countless dead souls coalesced into a surging, complex stream of information. The stinging pain of negative energy washing over his soul, the insatiable emptiness, the bloodlust, the stains on the laboratory floor, the rusty handle on the door—regret, indignation...

The information, unimaginable to ordinary people, was like the water pressure of a ten-thousand-meter-deep trench. In the dark and silent deep sea, the resentment and whispers of hundreds of dead people pressed down on Trier's mind from all directions. The bitterness and sorrow, the unwillingness and entanglement in his consciousness, mixed with the real negative energy, crushed his thoughts like a hydraulic press.

A slight smile appeared on Trier's lips.

"That's what it feels like!"

Faced with a massive flow of information powerful enough to overwhelm a mind-stealer, any attempt to endure until the information ends is suicidal. Faced with such overwhelming information, one must proactively abstract, proactively filter, and proactively process it.

This is a deadly race, as dangerous as a death duel between master swordsmen. Every transmission of nerve signals, every flow of neurotransmitters, is a step back after a sword exchange. Being even a beat too slow will result in disembowelment, severed neck, or decapitation.

At this moment, the transmigrator felt every nerve in his brain cheering and every groove trembling under the onslaught of massive amounts of information. He suddenly widened his eyes, and the complex flow of information abruptly condensed into one node after another in his consciousness.

Trier sensed all the undead in the laboratory, and at this moment, he had completely subdued the surging and frenzied flow of information.

“That way I haven’t wasted my talents. That’s the charm of magic: using constraints as weapons to engage in a deadly duel with a multitude of information…” he thought.

At this moment, the excruciating pain in the back of his head was accompanied by a euphoric feeling similar to that of casting a spell. Information flowed like water irrigating seedlings, completely activating his mind. Time seemed to be trapped in amber, becoming slow and viscous, lagging behind his thoughts.

"The next step is to wash away the influence of the shadowless figures that have seeped into the winds of death."

However, a warm trickle of blood suddenly gushed from his nasal cavity and flowed into his mouth; followed by a line of subtitles flashing past the corner of his eye.

[Warning: You have suffered a severe psychological shock; your condition has deteriorated to a minor injury.]

“My intelligence is just too low... My thinking is far from its limit, but my brain, the vessel of my thinking, is not.” Trier wiped the blood off his face with the back of his hand. “Perhaps my past amnesia was because the even more pitiful attributes of a young child simply couldn’t support this level of mental exertion.”

"Hold on, the next step is the second one: flushing..."

Trier raised his left hand again.

Chapter 97 The Old Lich

Every cell in his body was groaning as the coarse powder mercilessly ravaged his burned flesh, like a knife used by an executioner to dismember him.

At this moment, the white-bearded mage could see nothing. The blazing sun had blinded him completely. After the terrifying white light, only endless darkness remained.

Darkness was like a breeding ground for doubt, and fear silently gripped his mind.

"If I survive, I will definitely go to the Great Swamp to exchange for a Boda Corpse Eye..." he shouted, his voice echoing through the darkness along his bones and veins, which gave him a little sense of security. "You damned spirit binder, let your master kill me!"

No one answered him. The clanging of metal grew louder and louder, and the occasional rustling of the mummies as they moved reached his ears.

He breathed a sigh of relief—the mummified corpse was still there, and he was still alive; it seemed the spirit-binding creature had used its own Yang Flame Explosion to kill itself.

"Now, I have good news and bad news," he thought bitterly. "The good news is that a very powerful enemy committed suicide; the bad news is that I've gone blind."

He reached out with difficulty, groping for the fallen lantern, the key to controlling the laboratory's undead. If the legendary mage hiding in the shadows successfully regained control of the undead, he would have no hope whatsoever.

The charred flesh was stuck together, and every time his fingers touched the filthy ground, the wounds were torn apart. The pain, with its burnt smell, was like torture in hell, but the white-bearded mage still endured the intense discomfort and successfully reached the lantern.

The handle of the lantern was cold and heavy, and the metallic stench seemed to seep into his nasal cavity and nerves through the wound.

The white-bearded sorcerer slowly moved his fingers, trying to find some relief, when he touched the warm, slippery flesh clinging to the metal handle. He suspected the blood on it was his own. The blood and charred flesh acted like a cushion, slightly alleviating the unbearable pain.

“Being blind has its advantages, at least my other senses are more sensitive—like the sense of pain.” The monk told himself a joke, then laughed to himself.

A dark red thread pierced the darkness, followed by a second, a third...

He paused for a moment, then realized that the lines, like fish swimming in water, had in a few moments outlined a three-dimensional shape that he was very familiar with—a safety valve ritual that seemed to be a necessary part of any ritual.

The white-bearded mage's breathing suddenly quickened; he realized that he seemed to be directly seeing the winds of death!

He quickly released his hand from the handle of the lantern, and the scene before him vanished.

The monk quickly grasped the handle again, and the strange sight indeed reappeared.

"Incredible!" He gasped in astonishment. Common sense dictates that any magical wind can only be perceived through abstract inspiration, not directly grasped through intuition. Yet, the bizarre scene unfolding before him shattered his common sense.

The crimson wind of death was constrained by form, woven into a fine net. The intricate net intertwined, tangled, and twisted with each other, with each intersection having almost infinite variations and possibilities. The fragments ejected from the changing collisions of the wind of death fell like starlight in the night sky, then turned into a hazy mist in the mind.

"Although I am blind, if I could directly see the winds of magic, with just a period of time to accumulate experience, I could definitely become the most powerful spellcaster in history!"

He tried to sense the lines, greedily extracting wisdom and power from this miraculous experience.

"I see, I see..."