Caged Bird

"Have you all forgotten who you are? Before becoming wizards, we were all children of noble families in the Secas Empire!" Will shouted.

Buck and the others exchanged glances and fell silent.

They understood Will's experiences all too well. The feeling of falling from heaven into hell was truly unbearable.

Amid the silence, Lynn suddenly spoke. "You should understand, Will. The Church would never change its treatment of us because of our status..."

As a monotheistic religion, what was the Church's most important doctrine?

Naturally, it was creationism!

Legend had it that the Lord, Ella, created everything in the world and bestowed the nectar of life, bringing vitality to what had once been a dead and barren land. For that reason, everyone was supposed to submit to the Church's rule.

Wizards, who sought to unravel the laws governing the world and draw power from them, naturally became the Church's mortal enemies.

After all, they were shaking the very foundation of divine authority!

"This time is different!" Will said excitedly. Looking at everyone present, he seemed utterly crazed. "Joanne, Carl, Buck, the Church's primary target isn't us. As long as we sincerely repent, Bishop Antioch and Duke Nordland will surely forgive our sins!"

"You've gone mad, Will!" Joanne sighed. "From the moment we chose to become wizards, there was no turning back."

Once they chose to become wizards, magic would flow through their bodies forever. In the Secas Empire, that was a symbol of demons and shame.

If Count Isk learned that his second son had become a wizard, his first reaction would undoubtedly be to sever all ties and cast Will out of the family...

In other words, they could never return to their old lives...

"I'm not mad. I know exactly what I'm doing!" Will sneered. He turned to glance at White Dove, who had remained silent, then drew several magic stones from the hidden pocket of his robe with his right hand behind his back and suddenly scattered them at Joanne and the others.

"Joanne... watch out!" White Dove screamed. From her psionic perspective, she could clearly see that each magic stone bore a concealed rune.

The instant White Dove cried out, several magic stones exploded in midair, their sharp fragments raining down like a swarm of locusts...

The gray-haired Witch's expression did not change. She raised her right hand, her fingers tapping continuously as though playing an instrument, while the runes on the gloves covering her slender fingers lit up one after another.

A faint flame appeared at her fingertips. Then the spark rapidly expanded, and in less than a second, scorching tongues of fire engulfed everything before her!

This was precisely the first-circle superior spell—Flame Touch!

Will had already planned his escape route the moment he threw the magic stones. He rolled away in a miserable scramble to evade the searing flames, then prepared to leap through the wide-open window.

But Lynn moved faster. A diamond-shaped ice blade arrived after it was launched yet struck first, piercing straight through Will's ankle. His body, already airborne, instantly lost balance and crashed to the floor.

A bone-chilling cold spread upward from his ankle, and Will immediately felt his right leg go numb. Leaning against the wall, he opened his mouth in panic to say something, but a slender Magic Missile flew straight at him and exploded in his eye socket.

Scarlet blood and brain matter splattered across the floor, staining the wooden boards red. Lynn immediately turned to look in the opposite direction as Joanne demanded in disbelief.

"What are you doing, White Dove?"

She had deliberately reduced the power of Flame Touch in order to leave him alive and interrogate him for information.

"There wasn't time! I could only kill him first!" White Dove clutched her head and cried out in terror. "Outside... there are at least a hundred guards outside. We've been surrounded!"

Upon hearing this, Joanne immediately ran to the window and lit up the dark night with a fireball.

In the burst of firelight, Lynn saw from afar groups of armored guards, crossbows at their waists, silently moving through the forest toward them at full speed.

The man leading them held a scepter and wore a white robe adorned with gold. From hundreds of meters away, illuminated by the firelight, he met Lynn's gaze.

"It's Bishop Antioch of Nordland Territory! It's over, we're dead!" Barton recognized him at once and sank into despair.

He had never expected the Bishop of Nordland Territory to personally mobilize just to capture a few Wizard Apprentices.

Lynn glanced at the dim alchemical array on the ground. They should have stopped the spell from activating just now, which meant...

Everyone's eyes turned to White Dove at the same time.

"It wasn't me... I didn't do it!" The thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl frantically shook her head, her face filled with terror and uncertainty.

The chaotic situation and the Church pursuers closing in had already left Joanne, whose nerves were stretched taut, dizzy and overwhelmed. She bit her lip, forced herself to calm down, and spoke in a low voice.

"Listen to me. Things aren't that bad. There's a wide drainage channel in the manor's basement that leads directly to the river outside. We can escape through there!"

As she spoke, Joanne turned and gave Lynn a pleading look, asking him to keep watch over White Dove. She no longer knew whom she could trust.

One minute earlier, in the dense forest outside Ur Town, more than a hundred uniformly dressed guards advanced slowly beneath the cover of the trees.

Priest Aaron, accompanying the force, looked toward the castle rising in the distance and asked in confusion.

"Bishop Antioch, according to the plan we made earlier, weren't we supposed to wait until these Wizard Apprentices reached Harbor Town before acting?"

For this Caged Bird plan, they had deployed a great many people to monitor the entirety of Ur Town. They had intended to use these Wizard Apprentices as leads and uproot every sinner in Nordland Territory who had abandoned the Lord's faith, sending them all to hell.

By taking the initiative now, they were undoubtedly ruining all their previous efforts.

"Aaron, a qualified hunter must not only learn how to set exquisite traps, but also understand when to draw in the net," Antioch replied gravely. "A sturdy iron cage may imprison a clumsy bird-ostrich, but if a griffin slips inside, it can break free and tear the hunter to pieces..."

"Remember, excessive greed will only make you lose everything you hold."

The essence of the Caged Bird plan's success was their absolute control. No matter how these Wizard Apprentices struggled, they could never escape the net he had cast.

However, Blainey's death had made Antioch sense a trace of unease. Among Coru's apprentices was actually an Official Wizard, which had completely disrupted his arrangements.

Antioch, who had dealt with these Demon's Followers countless times, knew very well how troublesome Official Wizards were. The spells they commanded came in every imaginable form, and a moment of carelessness could mean dying on the spot.

During that battle in Nordland Territory, if Coru had not voluntarily stayed behind to cover an apprentice's escape, capturing him would not have been easy.

(PS: A bird-ostrich is a herbivorous animal from another world. You can think of it as... an ostrich.)