Music-Pit Ball

Dressed in a loose gray wizard's robe, a pale mask stamped with purple-black spiral patterns on his head, his golden curls spilled down, faintly hiding the Eternal Earring on his right ear.

For ten days, Green went in and out of the third floor of Black Isotta Wizard Academy, absorbing alchemy knowledge like a sponge.

Because of the knowledge and foundation he had accumulated through a large quantity of magic stones, Green had become even more mysterious now. From time to time, wisdom and contemplation shone from the eyes beneath the Pale Mask, sagacious and enigmatic. Even friends who had once been familiar with Green would absolutely not recognize him at first glance.

He came in haste and left in haste.

Green seemed to live in a solitary world of a lone traveler, enduring—or rather enjoying—loneliness, overthrown by endless knowledge.

Ten days later.

Green had filled an entire notebook with alchemy knowledge. In his little hut, he used basic materials to continuously attempt some alchemy experiments.

A sigh sounded.

"As expected, alchemy is by no means a subject whose knowledge can be mastered overnight. Without twenty years of accumulation, an ordinary person can't refine even the simplest magic-guiding wizard artifact."

Green rubbed his forehead somewhat wearily. His attempt just now to make the simplest magic-guiding wizard artifact had ended in failure, wasting materials worth several dozen magic stones.

However, Green did not feel discouraged.

Although alchemy was a subject difficult to enter, even a wizard with no aptitude in this area, so long as they carried out a large number of smelting experiments and accumulated knowledge, would still reach a decent height.

Half a month later.

Green once again came to the third floor of Black Isotta, but this time he entered a potion sorcery room to study potion knowledge.

Just like that, on the third floor of Black Isotta, Green paid the price of consuming a huge amount of magic stones and obtained the right to be taught knowledge by a wizard alone. Even some ambiguous points he did not understand, the wizard would explain to him with his own rich accumulation.

Thus, Green's wizard knowledge began to grow at an exaggerated speed.

During this period, however, the wizard apprentices of the same cohort were still constantly struggling to obtain magic stones and learn new sorcery. Occasionally, if they had some small opportunity, they would buy a magic-guiding wizard artifact; only in the subjects they themselves focused on would they be willing to spend magic stones to study in lecture halls.

Time passed. Gradually, less than a week remained before the trial exam.

In the final stretch, because the cruelty of the trial exam among the newcomers was being spread in increasingly bizarre versions, everyone even developed a feeling of facing a life-and-death test. Naturally, a feeling of being pressed until they could not breathe began to permeate the newcomers.

Some newcomers who had not learned enough of three sorceries began their final indulgence in despair, abandoning themselves to ruin.

The Blood Sail Alliance gathering place.

As the Blood Sail Alliance's power grew larger and larger, even those wizard apprentice organizations handed down by the school had no choice but to begin taking this emerging organization seriously.

Driven by this general momentum, the Blood Sail Alliance finally had its own independent gathering place in Black Isotta Wizard Academy.

Unlike those old organizations, which treated the trial exam as a tempering and screening process for absorbing fresh blood, aside from the dozen or so previous-cohort wizard apprentices the Blood Sail Alliance had sporadically recruited in the past three years, the vast majority of its members still had to face the trial exam.

Although it was said that because of the cruel selection and elimination on the sea ship back then, the people left all appeared to have decent potential, precisely because of this, this trial made the Blood Sail Alliance, which had experienced those cruelties, pay even more attention to it.

As long as they could successfully allow the majority of alliance members to pass the trial, then the Blood Sail Alliance would truly be able to establish itself in Black Isotta Wizard Academy, becoming one of the academy wizard apprentices' five great organizations.

As for now...

The Blood Sail Alliance was not truly an organization at all. It could only be counted as a powerful group assembly, because the Blood Sail Alliance did not have its own foundation.

Among the many wizard apprentices, there circulated a so-called expert ranking for the new cohort of wizard apprentices. This expert ranking was privately ranked by some wizard apprentices according to battle records from entering and leaving Desolate Yard and those occasionally flowing out of Thorned Bramble Forest.

Of course, this ranking only recorded the outstanding existences among this cohort of newcomers; those expert wizard apprentices from previous cohorts were not recorded within it.

The reason the Blood Sail Alliance was famous was that, among the top ten experts on this ranking, a full six were among the Blood Sail Alliance's current thirteen great elders.

In order to probe the reason behind this, some busybodies even privately found out about the Blood Sail Alliance's terrifying elimination system on the sea ship back then. This made those who knew about it even more terrified of the trial known as the bloody grinding mill.

However, the Blood Sail Alliance did not care about this so-called ranking at all.

Because it actually did not include the names of Solam, Yun Li, or Bibilionna. This was merely a boring ranking game among wizard apprentices...

With the trial exam approaching, the upper levels of the Blood Sail Alliance arranged a music ball, meant to increase interpersonal exchanges and friendships within the alliance. Taking this as an opportunity, they hoped everyone could help one another in the trial.

Elegant and relaxed music suffused the entire hall.

Lafi, Amiida, Yorkris, Yorklianna, Binhanson, and an unfamiliar woman sat together, watching the pairs of wizard apprentices dancing gracefully in the music pit.

Lafi wore a silver-white dance dress, a large expanse of snowy white exposed before her high, firm chest. The tight dress highlighted her graceful, tall figure and astonishingly long, slender beautiful legs. A pair of crescent earrings were faintly covered by her current short brown-black hair.

Sitting lazily on the long bench, Lafi made no attempt to hide the arrogance in her eyes, emanating the bearing of a powerful woman.

She had already refused the invitations to dance from more than a dozen wizard apprentices, yet these people rejected by Lafi merely smiled in a ceremonial manner and did not dare say anything more.

Over the past three years, because of Lafi's arrogance and proud willfulness, she had already offended quite a few people who were dissatisfied with her. Thus, she had entered and left Desolate Yard who knew how many times, yet up to now, she was still living perfectly well.

On the contrary, most of those enemies of hers had never appeared again.

Because of these impressive battle records, Lafi had become one of the top ten experts on Black Isotta's newcomer ranking for this cohort, and in secret, she had also gained the titles of Venom-Tongued Queen and Venom-Tongued Beauty.

Naturally, Lafi had never cared about this ranking either.

The more deeply she understood sorcery knowledge, the more Lafi felt how unfathomable those three had once been, not to mention that as soon as they had come ashore, each of them had a level-two wizard as a mentor, receiving focused cultivation, and for three years they had never again appeared before everyone.

The gap would only grow larger and larger, even larger than back then.

"I wonder if he'll come. What a stubborn temper, caring so much about face..."

In a voice almost too low to hear, Lafi suddenly said this inexplicable sentence while holding her wineglass. Only the few people beside her heard it, yet every single one of them understood what she meant.

Faintly, a trace of melancholy immersed Lafi. She stared blankly at the red wine in her glass, as though recalling those days on the sea ship.

"Brother Green probably won't come, right? After all, there's been no news of him for more than half a year. Maybe he..."

Yorklianna wore a half-mask that covered her lost eye and the scars on her face, and spoke in a low voice.

Though she had only said half of it, everyone understood what she meant.

Yorkris flicked his sister on the forehead and said quietly, "What nonsense are you talking about? Green is our closest companion. How could he die so easily?"

Yorklianna did not say anything more. She rubbed her head, and when Yorkris saw it, his heart ached, and he helped rub it for her again.

Beside them, Amiida stood a full one meter eighty-five tall, his long golden hair swept back. Beneath his rough beard, solid, broad chest muscles were exposed, and his cyan long robe was tied casually around his body, yet it only highlighted a burly, upright pressure.

For the past three years, almost everyone could see Amiida's infatuation with Lafi.

No matter how venomous Lafi's tongue was, no matter how foul her temper was, Amiida accepted it all, only so he could remain by her side.

But a full three years had passed. Amiida had already expressed his feelings to Lafi several times, yet he had received no response at all. He had originally been somewhat heartbroken, but now his thoughts began to move nimbly.

"Could it be... Lafi likes that person? But whether it was back on the sea liner or after they arrived at the Wizard Academy, that person never showed anything outstanding. At most, he was just a lackey following behind Lafi. What right does he have to be worth Lafi never forgetting?"

Amid his flustered panic, Amiida probed, "If he comes back, what will you do?"

Uneasy, Amiida stared tightly at Lafi.

"My business is none of your concern."

Lafi spoke coldly, tipped her head back, and drained the red wine in her cup in one gulp.

Sure enough, that person was in her heart!

Amiida's expression turned somewhat gloomy.

Should he give up, letting three years of effort flow away like water?

Or should he, as a man, openly and honorably demand that that guy compete fairly with him?

"Hey, hey, you people, are you really worried about Green or just pretending to be? You keep talking about Green, but only remember now? Don't tell me you usually never paid attention to any information about him. Look at this."

Binhanson suddenly spoke, taking a sheet of paper out from his clothes.

"A list of wizard apprentices? Huh, there's Brother Green! There really is him!"

Yorklianna cried out in pleasant surprise. Beside her, Lafi and Yorkris also snatched it over to examine it. Amiida followed Lafi's gaze and indeed saw Green's name on the list.

On the other side, the girl beside Binhanson lifted her brown curls and asked with a smile, "I didn't expect your feelings to be this good."

Binhanson chuckled, grabbed the girl into his arms, and teased, "If I remember right, he should be exactly twenty this year. I'm twenty-two. When the time comes, I'll make him call you sister-in-law!"

"Hmph, who said I was going to marry you..."

The girl pretended to be angry as she spoke.

Suddenly, Lafi, who had been sitting lazily, Amiida, who had been wavering over his choice, and the other Blood Sail Alliance elders all seemed to sense something at the same time. Their gazes turned toward the entrance of the hall, looking at the wizard apprentice who had appeared there without warning, smiling with natural arrogance.

Crack!

A male wizard apprentice of the Blood Sail Alliance, who had originally been chatting with a female wizard apprentice with elegant bearing, accidentally saw the person at the entrance. His eyes flew wide open. The wine glass in his hand fell to the floor and shattered into countless pieces, yet he was utterly unaware of it, murmuring in disbelief.

"Solam!?"

That was right. The person who had suddenly come visiting was precisely the existence who, to everyone in the Blood Sail Alliance, was like a myth: Solam!

The wizard apprentice who had been accepted as a disciple by the Faceless Mask wizard!

The undercover agent who had once been in the same small team as Green and the others, yet had almost never spoken!

Unless the people of the Blood Sail Alliance forgot everything that had happened back on the sea liner, then no matter when they recalled it, this mysterious, tall, unreachable wizard apprentice named Solam would inevitably appear in their memories.

Solam smiled with confidence, arms folded across his shoulders, looking with some pleasant surprise at the cheerful dancers in the orchestra pit, his gaze flickering.

Perhaps Solam was too bright, too dazzling, as if the protagonist before whom all living beings fell in admiration had made his entrance, drawing everyone's eyes. Because of this, no one noticed the person far away in the hall, wearing a white mask, who had arrived late.