Shadows of War

Dago sat down beside Mariko and thanked him.

Mariko waved a hand. "I still haven't thanked you for last time. We're even."

Dago imitated Mariko and tossed a dead branch into the campfire. Through the fog-like night...

He saw the firelight flickering across Mariko's face, revealing an expression of deep worry.

"How have you been lately? You don't look very happy either," Dago asked.

"I suppose you heard today about the Black-Robed Wizards of the Dark Crystal Highlands invading. War has begun again!"

Mariko stared blankly into the campfire and spoke uneasily.

Dago remained silent. The war had come too suddenly, and he did not know how to deal with it.

"I once lived through a war in the wizarding world. I know how terrifying it is."

"While destroying everything, it also crushes the extremes of human nature—cowardice and courage, selfishness and sacrifice, forgetting and remembrance—into dust, scattering them into the winds of time. We have to take it seriously."

Mariko spoke with a distant gaze, lost in memory.

"From my experience, the war is still only local and small-scale for now. The day of a full-scale invasion has not truly arrived yet."

Mariko's aged, low voice passed through the flickering fire once more.

"How long will that take?" Dago asked.

"Perhaps one or two months. Or perhaps even sooner. This is the time for hostile wizards to test our strength, gather intelligence, assassinate, and betray."

"Next, the prices of all kinds of goods in Aina Town will rise dramatically, especially anything related to the supernatural."

"It's already too late to move to Aina Town. People from the surrounding villages are flooding into town, and rents have already become outrageous."

Mariko analyzed the course of the war one point after another. After thinking for a moment, he added, "There's actually no need to follow the crowd and move into town. Once the town falls, living there will be the most dangerous."

"We wizards scattered throughout the forest are instead what hostile wizards find most troublesome. We know the terrain, and we're slippery as eels, like old hunters in the forest."

"We usually watch out for one another, but now that war has come, we must look out for and help each other like brothers and sisters."

Dago silently listened to Mariko's analysis and nodded repeatedly.

"My proposal is to establish a Forest Mutual Aid Society. Though there are only the two of us for now, I'll seek out more people living in the forest and bring them in."

Mariko looked at Dago with blazing eyes.

"I have no problem with that." Dago nodded, then spoke after a moment of silence.

"Thank you for your support, Dago." Mariko stood and patted Dago on the shoulder.

Dago shook his head without saying anything. He then got up and left Mariko's cabin, picked up a burning piece of wood, and walked back to his own shelter.

He had witnessed one corner of the wizarding world's war. Mentor Rosalyn had been the first wizard in this world to treat him well.

Yet she had been destroyed by war in the blink of an eye.

"The Black-Robed Wizards of the Dark Crystal Highlands?"

Dago clenched his teeth and forced down the fire in his heart.

For an apprentice wizard at the very bottom like him, he might not even qualify for an urn.

He had considered leaving the territory of Ainak Wizard Academy and becoming a wandering wizard somewhere else.

Leaving aside how many Magic Stones he had left to start the next leg of his journey, that fire in his heart had continued burning him.

When the world shed its fairy-tale filter, madness became the idealist's final candle. Between lucid despair and gentle obsession, I choose to become Don Quixote, using imagined glory to fight real mediocrity.

Dago pulled himself together, buried his grief, and entered a frenzied training mode.

Only strength could extinguish the fire in his heart.

Over the next dozen days, Dago trained desperately like a madman.

He compressed his natural sleep to less than four hours a day, spending almost all his remaining time on grueling cultivation.

During that time, he made a trip into town to replenish his daily supplies and discovered that the situation was far more serious than he had imagined.

The entirety of Aina Town seemed to have fallen into an atmosphere of tension and anxiety.

From potion ingredients and equipment to grain, bread, and other daily necessities, nearly everything was skyrocketing in price.

The most outrageous increase was in rents within the town's residential districts. Rumors from nearby areas said that some villages had been completely massacred by the Black-Robed Wizards, so those people had all flooded into town.

A town originally planned for three hundred thousand residents had swelled to nearly four hundred thousand. Even the cheapest rent cost four or five Magic Stone Fragments per month.

Meanwhile, the wealthy merchants and nobles within the town had fled early to regions beyond the reach of the war.

War swallowed everyone's lives like a vortex.

On the morning of the fourth day, at the shelter in the forest.

Fully armed, Dago squatted in the clearing and wolfed down roasted venison. He had already finished the delicious magical beast meat.

Before long, he had finished eating. He slung on his pack, picked up his machete, and adjusted his fitted hunting clothes.

Today, he was going to Moonlight Lake to gather Moonlight Flowers again. He called up the system panel.

[Universal Wizard Meditation Method (Transformation 11/10000); Ice Crystal Cannon (Transformation 97/10000); Resonance Art (Beginner 855/1000); Detection Technique (Beginner 787/1000); Potion Brewing (Novice 1/100)]

This was his confidence. Two skills had entered Transformation, becoming faster and stronger.

However, Transformation required a brutal amount of progress, and he had also discovered that gaining progress had become more difficult.

During the Beginner stage, using a skill once earned one point of progress. After entering Transformation, he had to use it two or three times to gain a single point.

It was probably related to the massive increase in his total mental power after advancing to a Third-Level Apprentice Wizard.

Following his previously marked route, he set off for Moonlight Lake, with Detection Technique clearing the way for him like a radar.

His magical beast meat had happened to run out, and he also intended to hunt some more to bring back.

Leaving aside its delicious taste, its ability to strengthen the body alone made it worth hunting.

However, Mariko had eaten the magical beast meat Dago brought him last time without saying anything. It seemed that its minor effects were insignificant to wizards.

It was merely meat that tasted better than ordinary meat, suitable for an occasional treat or for sale.

The Shadow Leopards in the dense forest seemed to have died out. None attacked him along the way, and Dago arrived at Moonlight Lake with regret, where he saw that patch of Moonlight Flowers.

The traces from his previous harvest were still there. This time, he planned to dig them all up at once.

If he left them here, they might be harvested by wizards sent out to scout.

Dago casually glanced at several floating logs in the lake, then strode toward the flower patch as though he had noticed nothing.

He pulled out his iron shovel and started digging wildly. Before long, the vast field of Moonlight Flowers looked as though it had been torn up by a dog.

Dago filled an entire pack, then sat in the clearing, enjoying the breeze and the scenery.

Only when a Bronze Crocodile could no longer restrain itself and charged rapidly toward him.

I've been waiting for you. Deep blue rings flowed through Dago's eyes. With a raised hand, he gathered and fired an Air Bullet.

Boom! It struck the crocodile's bronze-colored back dead on, but did not inflict much damage on the hardest part of the five-meter-long Bronze Crocodile.

The shockwave from the Air Bullet's explosion slowed the Bronze Crocodile's charge, while pain only heightened its ferocity.

Dago remained seated in the clearing, quietly chanting the spell for the Ice Crystal Technique. In the blink of an eye, snowflakes drifted through the air as an ice crystal pillar rapidly condensed into shape.

"Go!" Dago shouted, and the ice crystal pillar, thicker than an arm, shot forward.

Bang! The ice crystal pillar slammed directly into the Bronze Crocodile's back, embedding itself there as cold air spread outward, though it did not penetrate deeply.

More than ten meters away from Dago, the Bronze Crocodile roared in pain and continued charging.

Like a matador, Dago continuously chanted spells and drove ice crystal pillars into the Bronze Crocodile's back. Only after the fourth one did it slowly come to a halt, let out a mournful cry, and die.

Still worried, Dago fired an Air Bullet at its wound. Only after seeing it remain motionless did he breathe a sigh of relief.

The other Bronze Crocodiles by the lake were also stirring restlessly. Dago calculated his remaining mental power...

He could probably kill another ten or so, and his expression showed no trace of panic.

He fired an Air Bullet into the lake, frightening them back beneath the water.

Seeing that, Dago quickly grabbed his machete and ran toward the dead Bronze Crocodile, hacking at its limbs and tail.

Firing an Air Bullet into the lake every few minutes, Dago spent more than ten minutes cutting off the Bronze Crocodile's limbs and tail. His blade had even become chipped and dull.

He tied the limbs and tail together with the rope he carried. They weighed twenty or thirty pounds in total, and he hoisted them onto his shoulder.

Then he returned to the clearing, slung on his pack, and hurried away.

He discovered that as time passed, the Air Bullet's deterrent effect on the Bronze Crocodiles by the lake was steadily weakening.

He could slaughter them now, but he did not want to take that risk.

After returning to the shelter, Dago removed his burdens.

He placed the Moonlight Flowers in a corner to dry in the shade as before, washed the Bronze Crocodile's limbs and tail clean, then put them into his wooden refrigerator.

Dago left the shelter and began his daily training. This behavior had already become ingrained in his bones.

Before he knew it, it was nearly time for lunch. Dago stopped training, lit a fire, and set up an iron pot.

He took out the chilled Bronze Crocodile meat, put it into cold water, and skimmed off the foam after it came to a boil.

Then he added some local forest berries and fine salt and let it stew.

Nearly an hour later, Dago finally ate the pot of stewed Bronze Crocodile meat. The meat was firm and springy.

Its distinct muscle fibers could be felt when chewing, yet it was not overly tough or dry.

He licked his lips with lingering satisfaction. Now that he had found a Bronze Crocodile hunting ground, he would not have to worry about running out of delicious magical beast meat in the future.

However, the selling price of magical beast meat in town had now plummeted, because many of the nobles and wealthy merchants who could afford it had fled. Dago felt rather helpless about that.

"If nobody's buying, I'll keep it for myself. I'll bring some to Mariko this afternoon too." Dago sighed.