An Ancient Scholar (Part Two)

"I can't."

Huh?

Reilo looked puzzled as he waited for the other man's answer.

"Come with me."

The old man's ice staff, topped with a stag's antlers, vanished. He walked farther into the cave.

Reilo felt rather weighed down as he followed.

The growing number of high-level creature specimens along the way kept drawing Reilo's gaze. But when he considered the other man's identity, the collection was hardly surprising.

The birth of a being comparable to a High God Pioneer had been an ecological catastrophe—at least for the Death Abyss.

The so-called Abyssal Tyrant held almost no special place in the other man's collection. It had been casually frozen beneath their feet in the tunnel, and they strolled slowly right over its corpse.

At last,

Reilo reached the end of the tunnel, where a crude, primitive laboratory sprawled across tens of thousands of square meters.

At least by the standards of modern scholars, the laboratory was far too crude. It contained only the most ordinary experimental equipment.

After they sat down wherever they pleased, the Frost Sorcerer pointed to a canary frozen on the workbench.

"That's your companion, isn't it? Take it."

The canary was trapped in a block of ice on the frosty workbench. Despite its tremendous vitality, under the Frost Sorcerer's power it had been reduced to a final, feeble breath, barely clinging to life. A few smaller specimens lay scattered nearby.

Within the azure ice crystal, only a faint breath of life remained.

"Don't be polite. Take whatever catches your eye. Consider it a gift from me."

Faced with the Frost Sorcerer's generous offer, Reilo shook his head.

He was no longer the young scholar he had once been; he couldn't do something so unbecoming. After retrieving only the canary, he let the Sun Eye flicker faintly.