"My name is Bansen. I'm a... zombie."
Led by Dox, Angel and the others walked through the cave for about half a minute before finally seeing a man sitting against the wall, gasping heavily.
He wore a white mask, and every patch of exposed skin was wrapped in white bandages.
This man was the wizard apprentice Dox had mentioned, the one who had fused Earthfire Salamander bloodline into himself.
He called himself Bansen and claimed to be a member of the Bilos Family.
"Zombie?" Kael looked at Bansen in confusion. Was that a nickname? What a strange nickname... a stiff corpse? A frozen corpse?
Bansen nodded. "Yes. A zombie."
As he spoke, Bansen removed the white mask from his face, revealing his true appearance.
His features were utterly ordinary. At first glance, he looked no different from a normal person. But upon closer inspection, his skin had the dull heaviness of stone, without the oily sheen of healthy skin. It looked like the hardened skin of a dead man.
Kael had no idea what was wrong with Bansen's skin, but he secretly guessed that perhaps it was some kind of Demonic Beast skin transplant, or perhaps it was a unique talent produced after Bansen fused with the Earthfire Salamander bloodline.
Just as Kael's thoughts were running wild, Dox suddenly said, "This should be some kind of illness, right?"
Bansen looked at Dox in surprise. He had not expected Dox to see through his condition at a glance. But after thinking it over, he found it perfectly normal. He had seen Dox's portrait in an illustrated collection held by the family and knew Dox was a bloodline-side wizard active in the Duchy of Laxum.
More importantly, Dox was a wandering wizard.
Though wandering wizards lacked organizations or families to back them,