Shadowy Creature

Startled!

Shocked!

Yin Ming lowered his head and saw Jeroen Hoven's old face.

He felt not the slightest fear, panic, or anger. Instead, countless absurd thoughts surfaced:

Could it be that Eno, the previous owner of this body, had offended Jeroen Hoven somehow—perhaps by accidentally killing his parents?

Or had I fallen under an illusion? Perhaps I had failed to murder him, and now he had come for revenge?

Yin Ming could hardly be blamed for thinking that!

This was not the deepest part of the Magic Beast Forest.

But the chances of encountering Magic Beasts were far from low. Man-eating predators such as bears, tigers, and leopards roamed everywhere.

Without a wizard's powerful spiritual perception and the 0-ring spell Wizard's Hand, Yin Ming would not have stayed in a place like this for even one second longer.

In the novels of his previous life.

Places like this were forbidden zones where protagonists survived only after being driven into desperate straits, while villains stopped at the border and dared not pursue them further.

A serf fleeing into the Magic Beast Forest was considered to be committing suicide. No slave-catcher would bother chasing them in.

What kind of grudge was this?

He had actually risked his life to come looking for him?

"If you haven't finished moving those stones, there'll be no dinner tonight!"

Beneath the tree, Jeroen Hoven wore a faintly mocking smile, with not a trace of anger visible on his face.

It was as though he had merely caught an idle serf slacking off, intending to teach him a lesson before urging him back to work.

"I'm not moving them! I wasn't planning to eat anyway!"

Even if Jeroen Hoven had not come looking for him, Yin Ming had been preparing to find an opportunity to poison him.

His spiritual power traced out the spell-rune structure of Wizard's Hand. All he needed was to inject magic power to activate it.

"My fault! I was too impulsive—I set the task too heavy!"

Jeroen Hoven's face was full of regret as he covered it, letting out a pained sigh of lament.

Then his face twisted into a vicious sneer. "I should have calculated it carefully and set a goal you could see but never reach. Only then would you not despair, and only then could you die in agony, tormented by hunger and exhaustion."

Yin Ming: "..."

Just how twisted could the humans of this world be?

The incense-offering ritual to worship the gods had devolved into a blood sacrifice!

Murder with neither hatred nor conflict of interest!

Taking pleasure in another person's suffering!

Jeroen Hoven was by no means an isolated case. The estate stewards throughout Golden Lion County were basically cut from the same cloth.

"Eh! You actually didn't run. Are you planning to fight me to the death?"

After his moment of regret, Jeroen Hoven discovered that Yin Ming was looking at him as though he were some rare animal.

The look made his heart jump slightly. He could not help but inspect Yin Ming from head to toe. Seeing the other's thin body, a trace of ridicule curled at the corner of his mouth.

The muscles on a serf's body and those on a knight's body were fundamentally different, like cattle and sheep compared to lions and tigers.

"It's been so long since I fought that I nearly forgot I'm a knight."

"..."

A knight!

A semi-transcendent knight.

Yin Ming had seen quite a few knights, but he had never witnessed a knight's strength.

Still, he could tell with his toes that anything bearing the word transcendent could not possibly be simple.

Knight ranks were divided into: Low Knight, High Knight, and Grand Knight.

Jeroen Hoven managed Tulip Manor, yet the knight guards held no reverence for him. Therefore, even if he was a knight, he was only the weakest kind—a Low Knight.

"Come on! Let me see a knight's strength!"

If he had not obtained the wizard inheritance, Yin Ming would have become a knight first.

But it would only have been the lowest of last resorts, a temporary stepping stone.

Back then, in the battle at Mountain Territory, the deaths of those three hundred knights had been far too miserable.

It left Yin Ming unable to summon even the slightest longing or anticipation for the semi-transcendent power of knights.

"I'll break your limbs first. I want your screams to go with my meal."

Jeroen Hoven's aura suddenly became incomparably violent, his skin reddening like heated iron.

His height swelled from one point eight meters to two, transforming him into a maddened bull charging out of its pen.

A faint ripple of elemental fluctuation appeared around him. It was entirely different from a spell manipulating elements; it was like a pebble falling into a lake, causing the elements to passively ripple outward.

[Wizard's Hand!]

Yin Ming did not dare lower his guard in the slightest.

He injected magic power into the rune, forming a transparent Wizard's Hand.

It seized the charging Jeroen Hoven and clenched with all its strength.

Even semi-transcendence was still transcendence. A lion used its full strength even when hunting a rabbit.

A moment later, the hand opened, leaving behind nothing but a puddle of flesh.

Yin Ming: [...]

There was no sense of combat at all. It felt like crushing a hopping grasshopper to death.

Still, that suited Yin Ming's fighting style even better.

Only a lunatic with something wrong in his head would leave flying swords, Daoist arts, talismans, and Dharma manifestations unused, then swing a huge sword and hack at someone else. Who had more heads to spare?

"A wizard! This is a wizard's power."

Looking at the puddle of flesh, Yin Ming felt no nausea or urge to vomit. He began considering the difference between knights and wizards.

A knight's strength was not actually weak!

Jeroen Hoven's full-force charge had unleashed at least two thousand jin of force, and his speed had reached twice that of an ordinary person.

On a battlefield, such physical prowess made him a harvesting machine against ordinary people, fully deserving the title of semi-transcendent.

But wizards did not need to engage knights in close combat at all. Wizard's Hand was completely transparent; without a wizard's spiritual perception, one could not even sense its existence.

A knight possessing only brute strength against a wizard who had mastered spells.

It was simply like encountering a natural predator—there was not even the slightest ability to resist.

For a knight to defeat a wizard, he either had to launch a sneak attack and kill the wizard before the spell circuit was drawn, or wait until the wizard exhausted his spiritual power and magic power.

"This is somewhat like cold weapons facing firearms—either kill the other party before they fire, or wait until they run out of ammunition."

Wizard Apprentices still had many shortcomings.

But Yin Ming had cultivated for only two days. He had merely permanently fixed one spiritual rune and learned a single 0-ring spell.

"..."

Suddenly, from the puddle of flesh Jeroen Hoven had become.

A small, pitch-black furball the size of an adult's fist emerged, with a pair of blood-red eyes.

Its four legs resembled four sharp reapers' scythes. With a slight bend, it sprang swiftly through the undergrowth, fleeing toward the outskirts of the Magic Beast Forest.

"What the hell is that?"

Yin Ming was greatly startled!

Wizard's Hand had not yet dissipated. He hurriedly controlled the giant wizard hand and grabbed the black furball as it sprang about wildly.

Before he even exerted much force!

There came a pop.

The black furball burst at the slightest squeeze like an inflated balloon.

It transformed into a sinister black crystal sphere the size of a fingernail.

[Collect!]

Yin Ming took out the Scavenger Gourd.

Jeroen Hoven's corpse could be left as an extra meal for the beasts of the Magic Beast Forest.

The black crystal formed from the black furball's corpse was obviously no ordinary item, but a transcendent object. It certainly had to be stored in the gourd for recycling.

[Name: Unknown Parasite Corpse Core.]

[Components: Crystal: 90%, spiritual energy: 4%, unknown energy: 3%, unknown creature blood: 2%, impurities: 1%.]

[Note: An unknown parasite fond of collecting unique souls. It can control its host's emotions, exists between matter and elements, and lacks reproductive ability.]

[Extractable: Unknown consciousness fragment: 1, spiritual power essence: 0.5, unknown energy essence: 0.2, unknown creature blood essence: 0.1.]