Chapter 2742 Inside and Outside <TOC> Chapter 2744 Mist Spells and Petrification
Translator: SumTLMan
The Gray Merchant’s face lit with delight:「Really? Mr. Eremy truly has a way?」
Angel nodded.
Gray Merchant:「If Mr. Eremy can truly extract my memories, then all the terms I proposed earlier will take effect; moreover, I swear in my personal capacity that I will owe you a favor.」
Angel was about to speak when the Sovereign of Wisdom in midair interjected:「Whatever requests there are, discuss them yourselves after the duel ends. For now, I grant each of you five minutes to make adjustments and prepare for the next duel.」
The duel between formal wizards had already concluded; the next bouts would be fought among the apprentices.
The Gray Merchant opened his mouth, wanting very much to say that if Eremy could truly release his memories, the duels need not continue.
But in the end he did not speak, because this contest concerned not only his personal memories; it also determined whether they could continue probing deeper into the underground sewers.
Even if the Gray Merchant and Shrew, both formal wizards, could no longer proceed, a victory by the apprentices would at least give the apprentices a chance to go deeper.
Moreover, it was very likely this was their one and only chance to delve into the underground sewers.
They had, after all, run into a powerful Hidden Mirror Dweller along the way, and even encountered the black-robed Adjudicator who stood at the pinnacle of the Wizarding World, as well as an avatar of the Black Count. Barring surprises, the Garden Labyrinth would in the future become a scene of chaos.
The Guman Kingdom had already been at a wind-tossed moment of almost-but-not-yet chaos; now, with a group of hidden powerhouses lurking in the sewers, it was one wave falling only for the next to rise.
What the future would bring, the Gray Merchant did not know. What was clear was that, after this, the Bylron family would likely no longer dare harbor any grand ambitions toward the Garden Labyrinth. The so-called Traveling Merchants Organization had probably reached the end of the road.
But matters of the future can be left to the future. For now he was still the Gray Merchant, one of the Three Merchants responsible for clearing sewer monsters and seeking secrets. So long as he remained in office for a day, he would shoulder that duty for a day.
Moreover, the greater part of the Gray Merchant’s life had been bound up with the underground sewers, and his most important memory had happened within them. In truth, he desired to explore the sewers’ unknown secrets more than anyone.
He did not wish to give up the chance, even if he himself had already lost the qualification to explore, because the apprentices he had brought still had a chance.
At that thought, the words in his throat: 「we can do without the duel」, stuck fast and were swallowed back down.
The Gray Merchant cast Angel’s group an apologetic look, signaling his resolve to continue the duel.
Angel and the others were unbothered; seeing a duel through from start to finish sounds better than breaking off midway. Besides, on their side they had a supporter of continuing, the Black Count.
As for the reason why, one look at Vai’s darting eyes told you everything.
After both sides reached a consensus, they entered the「preparation」phase.
But in truth, during this so-called preparation phase, neither side did much preparing.
On the Black Count’s side, the only action taken was the rescinding of the birdcage, granting Shrew her freedom.
On the Gray Merchant’s side, since Pink Jasmine had been silenced, no one spoke; the apprentices merely exchanged a few glances, and that seemed enough to form a tactic, evidence that they routinely cooperated and possessed a high degree of tacit understanding.
Time trickled by…… During this interval, Vai kept sneaking glances at the Black Count, wanting to say something, but in the end he could only droop in dejection.
Vai truly did not want to fight; even if he had to, he hoped for support…… for example, support from Lord Super Dimensional.
But it seemed his own ancestor did not intend to let him employ out-of-bounds methods, which left Vai miserable.
At last, the time allotted by the Sovereign of Wisdom for preparation was up.
「Go on. At least your ancestor won’t sit by and watch you die. Besides, you need some real combat. The last time I saw you fight was… what, decades ago?」Daus patted Vai on the shoulder; his words were meant to console, but his expression carried a gloating edge.
Vai flicked away Daus’ hand and snorted coldly:「Don’t get cocky. Don’t forget, you were once defeated by me. I still have proof of your loss. Want me to show everyone?」
Daus’ eyes went wide:「Back then, you used a recording stone?」
Vai huffed twice:「A moment worth remembering should be preserved for the long term, so I can take it out now and then to savor.」
Daus pointed at Vai, his hand trembling, his cheeks flushed scarlet. In the end, though, he said nothing and swallowed his bluster.
Daus’ reaction piqued everyone’s curiosity about the Recording Stone in Vai’s possession… It seemed Daus truly had a handle in Vai’s grasp.
Though Vai had gained the upper hand in the exchange with Daus, it brought him little comfort.
He still had to take the stage!
With a sigh, Vai walked slowly up onto the arena platform. The short path he trod seemed to trail a tragic air, as if he were walking the final stretch toward the headsman’s block.
Vai’s mounting of the platform, aside from maxing out the atmosphere, also filled the Gray Merchant’s party opposite with surprise.
The Gray Merchant’s group had actually prepared to go up first. After all, they had four apprentices to the other side’s two; with such an advantage, to insist on going second would have been downright discourteous.
Thus they only awaited the Sovereign of Wisdom’s announcement to take the initiative. Unexpectedly, before the Sovereign of Wisdom even announced anything, the other side had already stepped onto the stage.
They did not yet know the apprentice’s name, but from the earlier phenomenon of the mirror turning red, they could tell that the one who went up was the descendant of Noah.
「Your turn.」the Sovereign of Wisdom said, giving a glance to the crestfallen Vai, then turning his gaze to the Gray Merchant’s side.
The Gray Merchant and Shrew exchanged a look and, in tacit understanding, kept silent. With Vai already onstage, their eyes could readily discern his broad strengths and weaknesses; if they offered guidance now, it would be taking an unfair advantage. Better to let their four apprentices decide among themselves who would go up and who would hold back.
Among the apprentices, they had previously decided to send Mammoth first, because Mammoth enjoyed a battlefield advantage against anyone.
But now that the one onstage was the Noah descendant they most cared about, new arrangements were needed.
For a Noah descendant to dare mount the stage first, despite acting the part of someone「reluctant to fight」, such boldness itself implied considerable strength.
Backed by a great family, he would surely carry high-powered offensive items, and likely not be lacking in alchemy potions; none of these were forbidden in the duel.
Therefore, sending Mammoth, their front school pillar, might actually suffer a loss.
The four apprentices traded glances; in the end, they set their sights on the apprentice with the lowest sense of presence.
……
The first apprentice bout: Vai versus Ghost Shadow.
Earlier, when the Sovereign of Wisdom introduced the Gray Merchant’s party, he had focused on Shrew and the Gray Merchant; regarding the four apprentices, he only mentioned their general disciplines and said little more, mainly because apprentices rarely warranted special attention.
As for Ghost Shadow, there was no need for the Sovereign of Wisdom to say much; his alias alone made clear he was an apprentice of the shadow school.
Sending out a shadow school apprentice was not particularly surprising.
On their side stood two apprentices: Kael and Vai. Kael’s bearing at a glance was academic type, and academic types’ combat prowess has long been scorned by the practical fighters, so Kael would surely be the one overlooked. Vai, however, with the mirror’s turning red as a telltale, had been proven a descendant of Noah, and the other side would place great weight on him.
In such circumstances, deploying a shadow school fighter with strong survivability is in fact a sound choice. With the shadow school’s abilities, he could wage a long campaign.
The longer the fight, the more the opponent’s abilities are exposed.
Even if Ghost Shadow were to lose in the end, he could still probe out the vast majority of Vai’s capabilities, allowing the next fighter to launch targeted attacks.
To avoid this outcome, one could only seize the opening and take Ghost Shadow down swiftly, accurately, and ruthlessly.
However, Angel thought it through: Vai was an earth school apprentice, and among the elemental branch, earth is one of the few adept at material-plane confrontation. The shadow school, by contrast, tends toward energy-form. A clash between Vai and Ghost Shadow would likely not be comfortable.
This was probably their strategy.
「Oh ho ho~ being counter-picked, huh~」Daus’ laugh carried a brash edge, provoking Vai on the arena to glance back and glare at him.
At this moment, Kael murmured in the mental connection:「Perhaps I should have gone first…」
Within the mysterious branch, the space school counts among the strong systems; it can target the material realm and disrupt the energy realm, with little in the way of counters. This is why, when most wizards choose to cross-train, the space school is invariably on the list.
If Kael faced Ghost Shadow, Ghost Shadow would not dare to drag things out; he would need a quick decision. Otherwise, Kael could keep opening seams in the surrounding space to compress Ghost Shadow’s movement. If he opened a seam directly on Ghost Shadow’s body, then surrendering at once would be Ghost Shadow’s only path to survival.
So against Kael there would be no dragging out the time. The longer it dragged, the smaller your advantage.
This was why Kael sighed at this moment.
「Even if you went up, the other side might not send Ghost Shadow. You might face Mammoth,」Daus said from the side.
Mammoth was a bloodline branch apprentice; from the purity of his radiated blood-energy, one could tell that, like the Gray Merchant, he was walking the Blood Source school.
Bloodline fighters favor sweeping offense and defense; they can both extend a battle school and erupt for a quick decision. An academic type like Kael, facing a practical, bloodline branch fighter like Mammoth, would have little chance without out-of-bounds methods.
Kael thought it over and felt Daus had a point, however…
「Then there was no need to let Vai take the stage first. If they had gone up first, we could have judged whether I should go up or let Vai deal with it.」
Daus:「Well, about that……」
Daus paused and glanced at the Black Count floating to the side. Whether Vai went first or second was surely the Black Count’s decision, so Kael’s question should be answered by the Black Count.
Yet the Black Count seemed disinclined to speak. After a moment’s thought, Daus said:「When you’re exploring a ruin and you stumble into a battle, are you going to ask the other side to cooperate so their attribute is conveniently countered by yours?」
「And even outside of sudden battles, say you enter the Sky Tower competition, you have no way of predicting who your next opponent will be: whether you counter them, or they counter you.」
Kael:「That’s true, but……」
Daus put a finger to his lips in a「shh」gesture, then said:「No buts. Think again about who Vai is.」
Daus lowered his voice, not that it meant anything within the mind-link.
「Across from us are the Bylron family’s small fry, whereas Vai is a bona fide descendant of the Noah family. When wizard families compete, they fight not only for victory. On that point alone, he cannot choose an easy mode.」
Of course, this was Daus’ conjecture. Yet it was not baseless. He had adventured with Vai, and more than once Vai had complained that, in certain situations, family background was not a plus but a burden.
Wizard families and wizard organizations are, after all, different things. A family shares loss and shares glory, and thus prizes reputation more highly; even a top clan like the Noahs can scarcely divest itself of this.
This is not to say that wizard organizations do not value reputation, only that organizations contain many internal factions, and factional infighting often arises from uneven resource allocation. Sometimes, the public-opinion predicament outside is itself manufactured by other factions within the organization; they attack each other, and reputation naturally becomes a marginal issue. Not unimportant, just…… not as important as imagined.
On this basis, Daus had formed his guess.
From the Black Count’s lack of rebuttal, one could tell he was at least not wrong. Perhaps it was not the most precise answer; perhaps the Black Count simply wished to temper Vai’s crisis-handling. But a measure of family burden likely figured in as well.
Kael listened in a daze; he had not expected such byways to exist among wizard families.
Angel, however, could more readily understand. If one mapped wizard families onto the relations among traditional nobility, Daus’ words would hold water.
……
While they whispered among themselves, the fight on the arena platform had already begun.
As they had suspected, the opponent they sent, Ghost Shadow, showed himself only at the outset, revealing a man wearing a pitch-black mask, and then, like Eremy, slipped into the shadow on the ground.
Ghost Shadow was, however, only an apprentice and nowhere near Eremy’s level.
Eremy would dive wherever there was a shadow, and where there was none, he would become a shadowy giant and brawl head-on. Ghost Shadow was different: his abilities had to be mediated by shadows. And the arena platform was bathed in light; there were no surrounding structures to cast shadows. The only shadow present belonged to Vai.
Ghost Shadow could hardly brazenly dive into Vai’s shadow from the start, that would be suicide.
Therefore, to produce shadows on the ground, Ghost Shadow conjured a bank of mist above the arena before disappearing. He would use the mist’s shadow as his cover.
This mist differed from the illusions Angel used; it was a commonly used shadow school cantrip, collectively called the Mist Spell.
Though it bore a common name, most shadow school apprentices, or, indeed, any wizard who used this mist cantrip, drew their Mist Spell from different sources.
Some used specially prepared consumables; some produced an energy mist by combining multiple cantrips; others crafted illusions through light and shadow; and of course some employed alchemy items……
Because the sources of each Mist Spell differ, to break one you need a deep foundation of knowledge and a broad horizon.
If Vai wished to defeat Ghost Shadow, the foremost task now was to break the Mist Spell and leave the opponent with no shadow to hide in.
Staring up at the white, milky mist above the arena, Vai’s mind began to race……
Chapter 2742 Inside and Outside <TOC> Chapter 2744 Mist Spells and Petrification