Chapter 438 Crisis Reemerges <TOC> Chapter 440 The Glimmer of Hope
Translator: SumTLMan
Bogula’s eyes narrowed slightly: “It seems that you and Diavolo have a pretty good relationship. It’s true, if your relationship wasn’t good, he wouldn’t have angered Isabella for you, and even caused Naga to be decapitated. What a tragedy.”
Since Shadow had already told Angel his intentions, Bogula no longer beat around the bush and said directly:
“That’s right, I intend to craft you into a puppet.” Bogula spoke with a snake-like tongue: “However, the puppet I create may be different from what you think. You’ve witnessed Nagas’ wisdom and power, haven’t you? I can assure you that your consciousness won’t be lost, and as your upgrades and maintenance continue, reaching the wizard level won’t be impossible.”
“How about it? Are you willing to submit to me?” Bogula looked at Angel with covetous eyes.
Bogula laid everything out in the open, but Angel didn’t know how to choose. If it were true, as Bogula said, that his will would not disappear, then at least he could choose to “live” among the choices of life and death.
However, Angel didn’t really believe Bogula’s words. Were wizards not known for their eloquence? And Angel had an extreme aversion to bowing and submitting. Even if Bogula said he could continue to have consciousness and his strength would improve, he still found it difficult to convince himself to accept this choice.
If he were faced with only two choices: “becoming a puppet” and “death,” Angel would hesitate.
These two choices represented two attitudes: living like a dog or disappearing completely? Angel wanted to live, but if this “life” was a miserable one, what kind of choice should he make?
Just as Angel was caught in a dilemma, a young man with a limp emerged from the distant forest.
Angel looked over, and it was Shadow.
The two people who had signed the Kulakuka contract looked at each other under such extreme circumstances. Angel nodded to Shadow and whispered “thank you” silently. No matter what his outcome today, he would never forget the help Shadow had given him.
Shadow saw Angel’s silent gratitude, but he didn’t say anything, just shook his head slightly.
Angel was taken aback. What did Shadow’s headshake mean? He instinctively ruled out that Shadow was saying “no need to thank,” because such polite words would not appear on Shadow.
Then, did this headshake have another meaning?
He looked up at Bogula across from him, and Bogula’s face had become somewhat strange. Did Shadow mean not to agree to Bogula?
But from Shadow’s standpoint, shouldn’t he advise against it? After all, Bogula was his mentor.
Could there really be something fishy going on here?
After shaking his head at Angel, Shadow didn’t say anything or make any moves. He just stood silently at the edge of the forest, watching Angel make his final choice. Regardless of Angel’s outcome, he believed he had done his best.
At some unknown point, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed sisters were no longer entangled with Isabella, but appeared behind Bogula.
Angel looked back to see Isabella revealing a strange smile. A red light appeared in her hand again. As soon as the red light appeared, Angel noticed an eerie change in his blood.
Not the previous burning sensation, but changing according to some rule…
“Hehehe… She is implanting a curse into your bloodline’s origin. Once successful, whether you survive or not, you will be cursed for eternity,” Bogula laughed: “You only have thirty seconds, so the time for you to make a choice is the final thirty seconds.”
Angel felt the bizarre change in his blood, and Bogula’s words were likely true.
So… was Bogula forcing him to make a quick decision? Even using Isabella to pressure him into making a choice?
The first thing Angel thought of wasn’t what choice to make, but with Bogula’s unmatched power, why did he give him a chance to choose instead of directly turning him into a puppet without any discussion?
Facing Bogula, he had no strength to resist. Under such circumstances, a wizard who might soon attain true knowledge actually respected his opinion, which was strange to Angel.
“Twenty seconds left,” Bogula’s voice came again: “Once the time has passed, even if you choose to become my puppet, I will no longer be interested in you with your cursed bloodline. So, the opportunity is only once, and once it’s missed, it won’t come again.”
At this critical moment, Angel pulled his thoughts back on track. Faced with reality, how should he choose? What choice would be the best?
Angel closed his eyes and activated his supercomputing state with the last bit of mental power.
With such little time, he could only analyze the pros and cons through supercomputing. Moreover… he couldn’t let go of Shadow shaking his head at him earlier. Was he telling him to refuse Bogula?
But once he truly refused Bogula, there would only be a dead end. Although living at any cost was not what he expected, he still had many unfulfilled promises: Jon’s five-year agreement, Nausica’s mechanical arm, Toby and the No Eyed Man, and the expectations of the Kulakuka tribe… These were all responsibilities weighing on his shoulders. If living could give him a chance to fulfill these promises, even if he despised the choice, he might eventually choose to live.
Angel’s thoughts raced, constantly analyzing the gains and losses.
“Ten seconds left. Will you choose death, or will you choose to live with me?” Bogula cackled.
Standing across from Bogula, Isabella remained silent, merely focusing on the “work” in her hands, seemingly cooperating with Bogula. However, she was secretly accumulating another force. The curse was just on the surface, but what she really wanted was for Angel to die immediately!
Angel ignored the situation outside and continued to gather information and analyze the best choice for him at the moment.
Suddenly, Angel recalled the words Shadow had told him when he was leaving the Flowing Market: “Even if my mentor targets you, I have a way to save you.”
At that moment, Shadow should not have been lying. In other words, if he had truly chosen Bogula, would he have successfully escaped with Shadow’s help in the end? Then, Shadow should have supported his choice of Bogula, so why did it shake its head at that time?
Angel unconsciously fixed his gaze on Shadow once again.
Shadow, however, appeared deep in thought, silent and without any indication. It seemed as if its previous head shake was just an illusion.
But in his “supercomputing” state, Angel gathered a lot of information from the outside world, and he still noticed a subtle hint from Shadow. Shadow was deep in thought, but the object it seemed to be looking at was not Angel himself or Bogula, but Isabella on the other side?!
A light flashed through Angel’s mind, as if he had always been deducing with Shadow’s positive logic, but what if it were the opposite logic?
Angel had once thought about the opposite logic of this matter, and even lingered in his mind, but in the end, he dismissed it as “impossible logic.”
Now he pondered this logic again—
If Shadow’s head shake was not to tell Angel to choose between him and Bogula, but rather to tell him not to make any choice, that he could escape as well?
Then, the target of this choice would be Isabella, and Shadow was telling him: there is a way to make Isabella stop persecuting him?
In Angel’s view, this was absolutely impossible. However, since Shadow made such an expression, although he did not know if he understood it correctly, Angel decided to think more about Isabella…
“There are five seconds left.” Bogula verbally continued to provoke Angel: “Five, four, three…”
Before Bogula could finish counting, Isabella on the opposite side suddenly burst into laughter: “Die! Let the Blood Curse begone, I only have the Sacrificial Blood Rite here!”
Isabella’s words caught Bogula off guard.
As Isabella suddenly spoke, Angel felt his blood return to calm, and no curse took root in his veins.
However, the terrifying sensation of life and death still arrived on time.
“Sacrificial Blood Rite!” Bogula put away his twisted expression, his face becoming somewhat solemn: “You’ve been secretly accumulating this move, you…”
Bogula didn’t know what to say; the Sacrificial Blood Rite was a second-level peak spell of the Bloodline branch. With Bogula’s current level of strength, he dared not to confront it casually, let alone the fact that he had no preparations in place to face such a large-scale spell.
Bogula had no time to worry about Angel’s choice now; he had to leave the range of the Sacrificial Blood Rite immediately.
His figure vanished into the void in an instant. As he entered the void, the magic hand was dispelled, and Angel fell from mid-air, crashing onto the ground.
Isabella unleashed the Sacrificial Blood Rite, which surprised the Two-Faced Spirit Spirit Taros on the other side. It had only heard rumors about Isabella’s madness before, but this was the first time it had seen her go crazy.
A second-level wizard using such a large-scale spell to kill a low-level apprentice was not just madness but utterly irrational.
Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut could hardly describe Isabella’s current state. Given the difference in strength between her and Angel, it was as if she was exerting all her power just to kill an ant! Not many wizards would do such a thing, as it was unnecessary and would leave a bad reputation, but Isabella didn’t care at all.
Under this super spell, Angel remained motionless, seemingly about to be reduced to dust.
Chapter 438 Crisis Reemerges <TOC> Chapter 440 The Glimmer of Hope