Chapter 19

A faint scent of sandalwood drifted in through the window, mingling with the slightly sour smell of ale.

He suddenly raised his head, his voice low.

"Do people like that... really exist?"

Wong did not answer at once.

He stared at a crack in the tabletop, as though it concealed an answer.

Only after a long while did he force out a reply from his throat.

"You and I both saw it.

Right before our eyes."

The liquid in his cup was drained in one gulp.

Hamir felt bitterness at the back of his tongue—not the taste of alcohol, but something else.

He recalled the scene from hours ago: in the Mirror Dimension, the sphere of light the young man had held aloft with one hand had torn apart every rule recorded in history.

The sight had branded itself into his eyes like a red-hot iron.

"A monster."

He murmured, the word slipping from his lips with the scent of alcohol. "Kamar-Taj has raised a monster."

Wong tugged at the corner of his mouth.

It could hardly be called a smile. It was more like an unconscious twitch of muscle.

He poured himself another drink. The amber liquid struck the side of the glass with a dull clink.

Compared to Hamir, he looked more like a stone statue weathered blunt by wind and rain, though invisible cracks had long spread throughout him.

The only sound between them was swallowing.

Faint bells rang in the distance. Once, twice, their heavy peals drifted into the dim room.

Hamir suddenly laughed, short and dry.

"What am I? Compared to him, I'm not even..."

The rest of his sentence dissolved into the air.

He shook his head and said nothing more.

Wong tapped the table lightly three times with his fingers.

"The ancient texts never recorded anything like this."

He sounded as if he were talking to himself. "There is no precedent."

"So we just have to accept it?"

Hamir's voice abruptly rose, then quickly fell again. "Accept this... this..."

He could not find the words.

In the end, he merely grabbed the bottle and filled both empty cups again.

The light beyond the window gradually slanted, and shadows crawled from the table legs to the base of the wall.

Behind the counter, the tavern owner polished glasses. Once, twice, three times. Cloth rubbed against glass with a faint creaking sound.

He never spared this corner another glance—some things were better left unseen.

Hamir finally spoke again, his voice as calm as a frozen lake.

"I taught him for three months.

Three months was only enough to introduce him to the most basic spells."

Wong raised his eyes.

"How long did he take? One day? Or half a day?"

No one answered.

The answer had long been carved into their memories, burning painfully hot.

The bottom of a cup hit the wooden table with a dull thud.

Hamir stood, the chair legs scraping harshly across the floor.

He walked to the window with his back to the room.

Dusk surged in from the direction of the distant mountains, slowly swallowing the outlines of the rooftops.

"Let's go back,"

Wong said.

He stood as well, the hem of his robe knocking over an empty bottle.

The glass rolled twice before stopping against a table leg.

The two left the tavern one after the other.

As the door shut, the bell gave a single chime, quickly drowned out by the wind in the street.

The owner behind the counter stopped moving and looked toward the door that had just closed.

He stood there for a while before slowly walking over to clear away the cups left on the table.

When his fingers touched the rim of one cup, he paused—there was a hairline crack along its edge, as though it had been pinched by knuckles gripping too hard.

He held it up to the light, shook his head, and tossed it into the trash.

A crisp shattering sound rose from the bottom of the bin, faint and quickly swallowed by the evening.

The sensation of that day's demonstration still lingered on his fingertips. Hamir closed his eyes, something churning in his chest.

He had always been called exceptionally gifted—among the ancient scrolls in Kamar-Taj's library, apart from the secret arts personally guarded by the Sorcerer Supreme, there was scarcely a field he had failed to touch.

Yet at this moment, the image of that young figure sweeping his arms was like a crack that had cleaved apart the certainty he had built over so many years.

The glow of the Chaos Orb seemed to still burn against his retinas.

One person.

By his strength alone.

His Adam's apple bobbed, and even his sigh seemed dry.

Perhaps not even the master who guarded the Sanctums had ever accomplished such a thing.

"Who would have thought?"

Wong's voice came from beside him, carrying weary agreement.

Over the past two days, the movements of his facial muscles had perhaps been more frequent than in the previous ten years combined.

Shock was no longer an occasional ripple, but a relentless tide battering the shore.

Whenever he thought he had glimpsed the young man's limits, those limits would be crushed by a new sight the next instant.

Sometimes Wong would unconsciously press a hand to the left side of his chest—if years of meditation and spellwork had not tempered this body, he suspected those successive shocks would already have stopped his heart.

"In the end, it isn't something for us to worry about."

Hamir withdrew his gaze from the void, tugging his mouth into something that did not qualify as a smile. "A talent like his is destined to be guided by the master personally.

Keeping him with us would only hold him back."

"Yes."

Wong agreed briefly.

Other than the Sorcerer Supreme, who else could steadily catch such a sharp ray of light? He could think of no second candidate.

But before that, the soil still needed to be firmly packed. "Tomorrow,"

Wong heard his own voice, firmer than he had expected. "We'll teach him the Mirror Dimension."

Hamir slowly nodded.

The evening breeze passed through the courtyard colonnades, carrying faint chanting from afar.

Kamar-Taj housed countless students, where innumerable currents of energy rose, faded, and intertwined each day.

The reason these ancient stone walls and wooden beams could endure the years unharmed was precisely because of that dimension which overlapped with reality yet remained separate from it. "It is time to teach him,"

he said quietly. "With his... astonishing power, without guidance, he may well shake the foundations of reality."

The existence of the Mirror Dimension had kept Kamar-Taj from becoming rubble.

Once Zhao Yu learned that power, Hamir had decided to teach him the secrets of the Mirror Dimension—this was a necessary precaution.

Otherwise, the consequences would be unimaginable.

"Speaking of that,"

Hamir's voice sounded in the quiet room. "Kaecilius is the one truly skilled in this field."

Wong frowned, his fingers unconsciously rubbing the patterns on the edge of his robe.

He was silent for a moment, then finally nodded.

Though he was reluctant to admit it, it was true: within the realm of the Mirror Dimension, no one could match Kaecilius. In some respects, his understanding even surpassed that of the Sorcerer Supreme.

He was the only one who could turn that illusory dimension into a blade. The shattered space had once left marks even the Sorcerer Supreme could not ignore.

"It wouldn't be beneath Zhao Yu to have him teach him."

Wong's voice was somewhat dry. He could distinguish between personal preference and strength.

Hamir agreed.

"Then we'll wait until he returns."

Wong made the decision, his gaze turning toward the door as though he could see through the walls to the distant battlefield. "He should still be out there clearing away those troublesome things."

"I am curious, though."

A nearly mischievous smile surfaced on Hamir's face. "What kind of expression will that fellow who looks down his nose at everyone make when he meets someone even more... extraordinary?"

Wong did not reply, but the image had already formed in his mind.

An unreadable expression flashed across Kaecilius's face.

It was indeed a scene worth savoring.

At the very moment someone mentioned his name.

This sorcerer was leading several companions into battle against certain entities.

More precisely, what he faced were not humans.

They were demons from the West.

They stood in a gray, murky space.

Several flame-wreathed demons kept lunging at the sorcerers.

Yet Kaecilius remained remarkably calm.

Not the slightest fluctuation showed on his face.

His right hand continuously held a transparent blade.

It looked like a fragment of shattered glass.

Yet this crude weapon erupted with astonishing power.

The demons' hard scales could not withstand it at all.

With only one swing.

Dark liquid sprayed from those creatures' bodies.

Before long.

The heads of several demons rolled to the ground—severed by the sorcerers led by Kaecilius.

"Master, this group of demons attempting to invade Earth has been completely eliminated."

"Following the Sorcerer Supreme's orders, we may return to Kamar-Taj to rest."

A sorcerer wearing brown robes said.

The corner of Kaecilius's mouth lifted slightly.

"Very good. Prepare to return."

"We have been away from the Sanctum for quite some time."

"It is time to go back."

His gaze turned toward the distance.

As Kamar-Taj's commander in external combat, he led sorcerers in cleansing beings that sought to enter Earth—whether dimensional creatures or demons from hell, all were their targets.

This expedition had lasted far too long.

Now, at last, it was time to rest.

When his fingertips pressed against his temple, he could feel a faint pulse beneath the skin.

He closed his eyes and let the throbbing travel through his bones to his wrist—the drain of constant spellcasting wrapped around his thoughts like a thin veil, and every breath felt heavier than the last.

He knew that if he was already like this, the sorcerers following him could only be worse off.

At the edge of his vision, someone had already braced his hands against his knees, the line of his shoulders and back rigid with strain.

What did Kamar-Taj look like now? The thought suddenly slipped into his mind.

After being gone for so long, did brooms still whisper across the stone slabs in its courtyards? Did the library door hinges still groan the same way when pushed open? He let his thoughts drift for a moment, then pressed them back into place.

Chaos Orb (Level 2, Progress 21%).

When those words surfaced deep in his consciousness, something in his chest gently swelled.

He remembered that eruption in the London Sanctum—not from seeing it with his own eyes, but from standing amid the ruins afterward and reading it from the scorched, broken grain of the shattered wood and stone.

Half the space had been crushed, reassembled, then crushed again.

Those were the marks Kaecilius had left behind.

And now, he held the same power in his own hands.

At that moment, another sensation intruded.

The Ring of Raggadorr around his wrist gave off a faint sense of resistance, as though something were slowly tightening.

It seemed to have sensed his focus on that new spell, and the speed of its operation was gradually slowing.

Almost at the same time, an entirely opposite force surged from his palm—the patterns of the Magic Weapon Construction Method suddenly became clear and urgent, as though eager to prove something. Their flow noticeably accelerated.

He opened his eyes and looked down at his spread hands.

At his left wrist, the golden-red halo was dimming by an almost imperceptible degree; in his right palm, however, a thread of silver-white light was rapidly weaving and intertwining, giving off an extremely faint hum.

He pressed his fingertips to his brow and gently rubbed it.

Magic that understood one's intentions too well could sometimes be a burden.

Most of the energy he spent each day went toward soothing those invisible entities—they each had their own temperaments and had to be handled carefully, like tending an unseen garden filled with spirits that needed looking after.

This feeling was akin to maintaining many ambiguous, on-and-off relationships at once; exhaustion was inevitable.

But matters in this world could never truly have it both ways.

If he wanted to grasp that power which defied common sense, then a few trivial costs hardly seemed worth mentioning.

As he guided the magic power circulating within his body along its prescribed path, he also sent soothing thoughts into the depths of his consciousness toward the other restless fluctuations.

Multitasking, his thoughts leaping between two utterly different domains—this busyness was likely no easier than that of his peers, who only needed to focus on meditation.

Knock, knock, knock.

A steady knocking came from the other side of the door, interrupting his thoughts.

He immediately withdrew the faint glow from his hand, crossed the room in a few strides, and pulled open the heavy wooden door.

The person standing outside wore a solemn expression. It was the guardian known for never smiling.

He had long since grown accustomed to that face, which rarely showed any emotion.

"It's you."

He dipped his head slightly, his tone carrying the proper respect. "What are your orders?"

"Come with me."

The guardian's words were exceedingly brief, and his expression remained as unreadable as ever.

As soon as he spoke, he raised an arm and casually drew a line through the air.

The air ahead seemed like the surface of a frozen lake struck by a stone. Cracks silently spread from his fingertips, blossoming into intricate, magnificent patterns, like frost flowers forming and shattering in an instant.

Without looking back, the guardian stepped forward, his figure vanishing into that warped field of light and shadow.