Spirit Guiding Secret Potion

It took some time to outfit the entire team and prepare a few tents, supplies, and wilderness survival tools as precautions. After spending most of the gold coins Mog had given them, Li Wen and the others rented a carriage and set off toward Streamstone Rift.

Streamstone Rift was a choke point on the trade route for King Arthur's foreign merchants, and the locals of Black Dragon Territory knew its terrain like the back of their hands. There was no need to deliberately find the way—they could just follow the main road straight ahead.

On the carriage, Li Wen quietly briefed Take and the others on the specifics. She didn't go into detail about the Moon Worshippers, Black Wind Fang, or the cargo, focusing mainly on the mage.

"The other party is a mage from the Arcane Academy. It's unclear whether they're friend or foe, but it's best to treat them as an enemy. I don't need you to kill them—I just need you to hold them off."

"A mage?" Take was secretly surprised, but the quest in the newbie village shouldn't be too outrageous. "What level would they be?"

"No higher than level ten."

Li Wen said this, though she actually didn't know what level the mage was. She said ten because above level ten, that is, Stage Two mages, couldn't be overcome by sheer numbers alone—abandoning the quest would be the best choice.

Take had no clear concept of the gap between each level and no clear idea of what a level-ten mage meant, so she kept silent.

The carriage moved slowly forward in the group's silence, leaving behind the bustling crowds and towns, passing through rice paddies and villages, and finally, just before dusk, arriving deep in the dense forest—the location of Streamstone Rift.

"This is as far as I can go. If you want to go deeper into the rift, you'll have to get off here."

After who knows how long, the coachman, who hadn't spoken the whole time, reminded them.

The others on the carriage had long grown impatient, and upon hearing they could finally leave, they excitedly climbed down one by one.

Li Wen was the last to step off. She looked around—they had arrived in a canyon area, with a narrow passage cutting through the canyon all the way to distant Leicester City.

The area was arid year-round, with barely any vegetation. Finding the lost cargo shouldn't be too hard, but the only problem was that it was vast and filled with jagged rocks. Without splitting up to search, it would be difficult to find anything.

"Let's go."

Once the coachman drove the carriage away, Li Wen instructed Take and the others.

"It should be around here. Split up and search on your own—he's bound to have left traces. But don't stray too far. This is King Arthur's trade route, but the dangers here aren't limited to just the mage."

After a brief discussion on how to split up, Take and the others went their separate ways.

Li Wen stayed where she was, pondering why a mage from the Arcane Academy would steal that unknown cargo.

First, it couldn't be for money—Arcane Academy mages had the least need for wealth. Second, it couldn't be a personal grudge—if a mage wanted someone dead, they had countless followers to do the dirty work without soiling their own hands.

From that perspective, perhaps the mage had no choice but to act... The cargo the Black Wind Fang people mentioned might not be ordinary goods.

Before she could think further, Take and the others had already found clues—or rather, they weren't clues anymore, but the mess the mage had left behind.

Li Wen followed Take, and along the way, there were carriage fragments, damaged cargo, and things burned to charcoal, their original forms unrecognizable.

When they reached the actual scene of the incident, they found it looked like it had been ravaged by a terrible fire. The ground was scorched black, surrounded by charred, unidentified substances. Stepping on this scorched earth, she could still feel the residual heat from the burning seeping through her shoes.

Li Wen frowned. Besides the pungent smell of charcoal, she sensed another aura—wild, scorching, and extremely restless. That was the Fire Element.

Elements were a concept of the Aether Spectrum and also one of its paths.

From the traces left at the scene, the opponent was undoubtedly an Elemental Mage of the Aether Spectrum, most likely a Fire Mage specializing in the Fire Element.

Looking at the devastation, Li Wen pictured a scene in her mind:

A merchant caravan from Leicester City or even King Arthur City passed through Streamstone Rift, where they encountered the Arcane Academy's Fire Mage. For some unknown purpose, the Fire Mage attacked the caravan, manipulating flames to strike their wagons. Faced with this unknown power, the caravan's people panicked and fled in all directions, but ultimately couldn't escape the mage's grasp.

Li Wen also thought back to what she'd seen on the way here. Those traces suggested that at least some of the caravan's people had escaped with some cargo to a relatively distant spot before being killed. That meant the Fire Mage hadn't killed everyone immediately.

This indicated the mage might have been injured or had limitations on their spellcasting—otherwise, there'd be no reason to let anyone escape with the goods.

That was good news.

Beyond that, Li Wen noticed another point: Black Wind Fang—or rather, the Moon Worshippers—wanted her to find the lost cargo. Yet from the scene, it seemed all the cargo had been burned by the mage. Since those people knew the Arcane Academy mage was responsible, they couldn't have failed to investigate the scene.

Still, they wanted Dark Dawn to help recover the lost cargo. This meant the destroyed goods weren't the real cargo—they were a decoy. But the Arcane Academy's Fire Mage clearly hadn't fallen for it, slaughtering the entire caravan and taking the real cargo. That led to the current situation.

So where did the Fire Mage go?

He couldn't have left Black Dragon Territory. Spells capable of long-distance teleportation were all high-level magic requiring immense magical power. Unless the Arcane Academy had set up a Teleportation Array near Streamstone Rift that Li Wen didn't know about, the Fire Mage had no way to leave Black Dragon Territory.

If Li Wen wanted to recover the cargo, the most important thing was to find the mage's location.

That wasn't difficult—Li Wen had come prepared.

She took a thumb-sized vial from her backpack. Inside was a thick, fluorescent deep-yellow liquid.

[Spirit Guiding Secret Potion]

[Consumable - Potion - Magic (Blue)]

[One of the potions favored by Mage Hunters in the Sinful Nation. It's said that countless mages have fallen to hunters relying on this potion.]

[Pour out the potion to indicate the mage's location to the user.]

Potion-making originated from alchemy but later became its own discipline. Along with rituals, it was an academic subject that transcendents must understand or even master.

After completing the ritual she'd prepared yesterday, Li Wen used the remaining materials to brew this potion. Though the purity wasn't high due to limited equipment, it was more than enough to indicate a general direction.

She threw the vial directly onto the scorched black ground. The bottle shattered, and the thick liquid slowly flowed out. As it touched the hot air, the potion seemed to come alive in an instant. It writhed and clawed, absorbing the faint residual magic in the air, then trembled as it crawled with all its might in one direction, stopping only after a few seconds when the magic within the potion was completely exhausted.

"Let's go. It's in this direction."