The Unseen Threat

Without any fuel to feed it, the Fireball hovered in the air, buoyed by magic. Its wavering crimson tongues of flame looked as if they might go out at any moment, yet Lanlos could clearly feel the destructive power within.

Suppressing his excitement, Lanlos turned his gaze to a maple tree not far away and uttered a simple trigger syllable. The Fireball, which had been hanging in the air, shot forward in an instant, leaving a long, narrow crimson trail as it slammed into the trunk.

Boom!

A sound like a balloon bursting rang out. The dry bark shattered amid sparks, and a huge crater appeared in the trunk, crimson embers flickering across the blackened mark.

Though it was only the most basic spell in the school of evocation, the Fireball's destructive power was still nothing to scoff at. More importantly, it carried great symbolic weight.

Lanlos clenched his fists, his whole body trembling. Clearly, he was too excited to speak.

Spellcasters were the highest symbols of power in this world. Though physically frail, they could lay waste to the world with the slightest gesture.

But every spellcaster had one problem they wanted to avoid: the incantation required to cast a spell.

Though this was his first time casting Fireball, the roughly ten seconds it took was simply too long. Even an ordinary person could kill him in that time. So if he wanted to use his spellcasting in actual combat, he still needed to practice for a while.

He took a deep breath and slowly reined in his irrepressible excitement. Lanlos's blue eyes returned to their usual calm, like a deep, still lake in the forest.

Loud explosions kept ringing out in the woods beside Golden Beach, each one closer on the heels of the last. The nearby birds and beasts had long since fled. But perhaps because the elf boy's practice had been so rhythmic, an extremely faint sound suddenly carried through the air from far away. Immersed in his efforts to shorten the time it took to cast Fireball, Lanlos didn't notice the smell of gunpowder spreading through the nearby forest.

The slender body slumped to the ground, and the thick layer of dead leaves quickly buried it. But even they could not hide the terrible state of the elf ranger's corpse. Dense purple-black whip marks covered his body, his once-pink skin split and peeled back, leaving him a bloody mess, his features long since unrecognizable.

Ahead of the dead members of the elven squad, more than a dozen green figures stood out against the golden shadows cast by the maple trees.

"Kergash, my people have paid a heavy price for your plan." Looking down at the equally numerous troll corpses at his feet, Tregra narrowed his eyes slightly. With sticky blood covering his body, a dangerous aura quickly spread around him.

They were all elite Amani warriors, yet now they had died far from home for the Darkpine Tribe's plan...

Beside him, a hunched Forest Troll rolled his shoulders. The skull ornaments on his body clattered together, their faint, hollow sounds sending chills down the spine.

"Be patient." As chieftain of the Darkpine Tribe, Kergash paid no heed to the other troll's threats. "Zul'jin sent you to help me, not to complain."

"Help? Can't you see? We can't hide ourselves in this forest. The battles we've faced these past few days have nearly wiped out my hunters!" He raised the axe in his hand, as if he might swing it at any moment if they couldn't come to an understanding. "But aside from these rangers, I haven't encountered anything at all!"

Smack!

Before Tregra could finish speaking, a dark blur shot past and struck the ground in front of him. Dead leaves burst apart and flew everywhere, and the air suddenly went still.

"Hee-hee. Getting angry will give you wrinkles." With her smooth skin, rosy cheeks, and voluptuous figure, she was the sort of woman no man could easily look away from. Her naturally alluring pink aura made it easy to overlook the black horns on her forehead, her black, cloven-hoofed legs, and the pair of batlike demon wings on her back.

Though she wasn't especially powerful by Burning Legion standards, Sayaad was the kind of enemy every foe of the Legion needed to watch out for. Thanks to their inborn cunning, they could manipulate most people as they pleased.

They also had another, more widely known name: Succubi.

Tregra knew all too well how powerful this slender demon was. Even elven rangers couldn't resist her supernatural charm!

Glancing at the elf who had been slain by an arrow from one of his own people, Tregra knitted his brows. Then he silently forced down his anger. "Bitch, this has nothing to do with you. You and your cowering master haven't earned Zul'jin's trust."

Alisa arched a slender brow, her blood-red lips curling into a seductive smile. "Isn't it a little ridiculous to hear you say 'cowering'?"

"Are you questioning me?" The troll warrior's axe trembled in his grip, and an invisible fire gradually rose in his eyes. "Demon scum, why don't you try me..."

Just as Tregra was about to provoke a fight, a green eyeball quietly entered his field of vision.

"Before that," Kergash said, reaching out to catch it. A strange, cruel grin tugged at his face beneath the shadows. "I suggest you save your strength for the elves."

As Kergash crushed the eyeball, a curtain of light suddenly appeared in the shadow before him. Golden buildings of the High Elves flickered into view like images on a screen. Frail, carefree elven women, children, and old folk wandered to and fro, while the rangers who struck terror into the hearts of trolls were nowhere to be seen.

It was perfect! The curve of Tregra's lips was enough to make anyone shudder.

A perfect place for a massacre...

Lanlos would have been stunned if he had seen this scene. Everything in the image was all too familiar.

That's right—Golden Branch Village!

What was even harder to understand was that the Darkpine Trolls had long since submitted to the rule of the Amani Trolls. So why was Tregra, the leader of an elite squad, taking orders from Kergash, the Darkpine chieftain?

More absurd still, this seemed to be the order of Warlord Zul'jin. And when had demons joined forces with trolls?

But at that moment, Lanlos had no idea danger was drawing near.

The sound of Fireballs exploding near the beach had died away some time ago. Lanlos was slumped beneath the shade of a tree, wiping the sweat from his face as he continued working through the spell's structure.

After half a day of practice, the novice mage could now complete and activate the Fireball spell model in three seconds. It was something to celebrate, but it was also the source of his frustration.

It seemed the casting time for Fireball had been shortened as much as possible. Whether it was simplifying the spell model or drawing in magic faster, Lanlos could no longer find any room to improve. In simple terms, he seemed to have hit a bottleneck.

More importantly, casting spells was tiring. Communicating with and controlling magic each time required intense concentration. And Lanlos had been casting spells over and over without regard for his limits. Burning through so much of his mental energy in a short time could easily leave him dizzy and weak. In severe cases, it could even make a spellcaster collapse unconscious on the spot.

After learning the limits of his mental strength, Lanlos wisely chose to rest. What delighted him was that his mental strength was far greater than that of others his age. It was probably closely connected to the Keystone and the demon souls he had devoured.

"Wala-la, wuka!"

"Wula-la..."

Several strange, high-pitched voices suddenly rang in his ears. Lanlos immediately stopped studying Fireball and dropped to the ground, concealing himself completely in the grass.

After a while, the elf raised his clear blue eyes and cautiously studied the beach in the distance.

Murlocs. More than a dozen Murlocs had appeared near the shore at some point. Two of the larger ones were shoving each other, their strange, comical language growing more urgent and heated.

Watching the group of Murlocs begin to split apart over the two big ones' argument, Lanlos couldn't help the faint smile that tugged at his lips.

Were they about to fight? Interesting. It would be the perfect chance to test Fireball in actual combat.

Just as the elf boy was imagining the Murlocs breaking into a fight, letting him reap the rewards with Fireball, events took a disappointing turn.

"Wuka, wala..." One of the arguing Murlocs looked impatient. Then, to everyone's shock and fear, he raised both hands. The slime on his scales gleamed dazzlingly in the sunlight.

No! That wasn't sunlight reflecting off them!

Crack!

A bolt of blue lightning suddenly burst from his hands. Sensing the threat to their lives, the Murlocs who had been arguing with him immediately backed away. As the Lightning Bolt took shape, they dropped to their knees before him, full of deference.

With a satisfied smile, the Murloc Shaman withdrew the elemental power. Like a big brother heading out with his crew, he led his underlings away from the coast, head held high.

After a good while, a rustling sound came from the grass. Lanlos's pale head of tied-back hair appeared in view. Unlike before, the smug look on his face had completely vanished.

This wasn't the world he had once known. No matter what kind of creature he encountered, he couldn't judge it by its appearance. Shamans and mages had much in common, except that the former gained the ability to cast spells by communing with the spirits of all things.

The reason Lanlos fell silent was that Lightning Bolt was also a first-circle spell, yet that Murloc had managed to form its spell model in just two seconds.

A one-second difference was enough to prove that the Murloc was stronger than him.

He still had a long way to go on the path of spellcasting.

Burying his disappointment deep inside, Lanlos picked up his walking stick and headed back to the village, one step at a time. More troubling than being humbled by the Murlocs was the fact that a Murloc Shaman had appeared on the coast so close to Golden Branch Village. He had to warn Fergus and the Militia as soon as possible.