Vissel's Death

Thus, they carried out tedious patrol duties every day. During that time, Dago discovered that Vissel's arrogance was ingrained in his bones.

There was no contempt in his eyes, not even emotion—only a deep, marrow-deep indifference, as if "making eye contact with commoners was a desecration of his family's wizard identity."

He loved using phrases like "you rats" and "wandering wizards should act like wandering wizards."

Every sentence seemed to stress, "Wizards are divided into ranks, and I stand at the top of the pyramid," as though bloodline were the only measure of everything, while all other effort and talent were beneath his notice.

This caused the others in the squad to maintain distant relationships with him. If not for earning Magic Stones, the hired wizards in the squad would have left long ago.

Thus, amid this oppressive atmosphere, they safely completed ten days of patrol duty.

Around midnight, light snow fell beneath heavy snow clouds, which completely obscured the radiance of the twin moons.

Dago and two hired wizards held torches as they walked across the broad fields.

He wore a black heated cloak and walked at the front of the group, while the other two young hired wizards followed behind him on either side.

Dago silently walked along the torchlit path with the Detection Technique active, occasionally looking toward the forest. At this point, vast stretches of farmland had already been swallowed by darkness.

As they walked, suddenly—

Boom!

A deafening blast swept across the fields like a hurricane. Dago instinctively looked up, searching for the source of the explosion.

The sound had come from nearby, in the direction of the watchtower. Something had happened.

Dago tossed aside his torch and turned to instruct the two hired wizards. "I'll go ahead. Follow me."

His physical abilities now surpassed those of most wizards at the same level, mainly due to the physical enhancements granted by Resonance Art.

He suddenly broke into a sprint toward the watchtower. He remembered that Mariko's group was resting in the cabin at this time.

Dago drew his crystal wand from his storage pouch, praying that their group was safe.

In the direction of the watchtower and cabin, roaring flames illuminated a vast expanse of farmland. Faintly, he could see figures darting about and fighting in the firelight.

As he ran closer, he saw Vissel crouched over two mangled Black-Robed Wizards' corpses, wand in hand as he searched them for spoils.

Not far from the burning cabin, Mariko lay on the ground with one arm severed. Beside him, a young hired wizard wept as he pressed down on the wound and scattered healing powder over it.

Numerous craters of various sizes, left behind by spell bombardments, dotted the area. Dago quickly ran toward the fallen Mariko.

Vissel noticed him and glanced his way. His gaze was like poisoned shards of ice, and the corner of his mouth curled into a barely visible smile.

When he turned away, it was no smile. It was the smugness of a hunter waiting for prey to fall into the trap, the viciousness of someone calculating how to chew another person's bones and swallow them.

Dago did not notice anything amiss. He crouched beside Mariko and the young wizard, asking in a trembling voice, "What happened? How did Mariko get hurt so badly? Where's the other member of your group?"

Dago took out a healing potion from his storage pouch and fed it to Mariko, whose face was pale with pain.

The young wizard spoke bitterly. "Our group had been resting peacefully in the cabin when it was inexplicably struck by a Fireball Spell. One apprentice was burned to death inside."

As he spoke, he deliberately looked toward Vissel. "The captain and I escaped the cabin and fought two Black-Robed Wizards outside. One of them was even an Advanced Third-Level Apprentice Wizard."

"We were attacked too suddenly. Vissel never came out to help us, and he didn't even give a warning."

"Only after we killed one Low-Level Apprentice Wizard, and the captain lost an arm protecting me from the other Black-Robed Wizard, did Vissel appear and kill that Advanced Third-Level Apprentice Wizard."

"Damn it!"

After learning the full course of Mariko's injury, Dago felt a nameless fire rise from the depths of his heart. Beneath his cloak, he clenched the Ice Crystal Wand, wanting to rush over and kill Vissel.

But then he saw Mariko open his clouded eyes and tightly grasp one of Dago's pale hands with his remaining withered arm.

His lips moved like two dead leaves withered by autumn frost, barely opening and closing in the wind. Each movement came with a visible tremble.

Mariko forced his voice from his throat. "Dago, I know you're furious, but he's a genius wizard of the academy. If you kill him, the academy will hunt you down, and you'll eventually become a Black-Robed Wizard. It isn't worth sacrificing your future over one of my arms."

Before Dago could calm the rage in his heart—

At that moment, an overwhelming sense of danger surged up from behind him, accompanied by a piercing whistle through the air.

Blue halos swirled through Mariko's clouded eyes. He unleashed the last of his mental power and shoved the two of them several meters away.

A gale carrying invisible blades howled past. Mariko did not even have time to let out a complete scream.

Green Wind Blades, like several transparent knives, instantly sliced through flesh. The droplets of blood they kicked up were torn by the wind into even finer mist before they could hit the ground.

Mariko's body seemed to be tugged by invisible strings. In the next instant, a crimson gash split open from his shoulder, while the crisp crack of breaking bones was swallowed by the wind.

His hair was shredded into disarray by the gale. His eyes were wide open as blood poured from his torso, forming a dark red stain that was rapidly dried by the frigid wind.

Mariko was dead, his body sliced apart by Wind Blades.

Dago fell from the air, rolled over, and sat on the ground, helplessly watching it happen.

In an instant, the fury churning in his chest nearly melted his blue eyes, and the veins at his temples throbbed as if they might burst. Yet that violent malice suddenly sank at some point.

Like blazing coals doused with a ladle of ice water, it had not gone out—it had condensed into ash flecked with ice.

Dago turned and stared at Vissel, who held his wand aloft. His murderous pupils suddenly contracted. The deep blue halos in his eyes carried traces of black, still as a deep pool without the slightest ripple.

The flush vanished completely from his face, leaving only the pallor of ash.

Dago did not say a word. He merely raised the Ice Crystal Wand in his hand. Its tip was perfectly steady, without the slightest tremor, as though he were doing something utterly ordinary—such as picking up a fallen leaf.

Violent mental power surged forth. The cold wind wrapped shattered snow into a small vortex at the tip of his wand, and an Ice Crystal Cannon rapidly expanded before Dago fiercely fired it.

The enormous, ink-dark blue Ice Crystal Cannon howled forward. Snow on both sides of its path was blown away, and its powerful wake stirred up a biting hurricane.

The terrifying Ice Crystal Cannon pierced Vissel's protective barrier as he stared in disbelief, veered off course, and grazed his torso.

The powerful vortex shattered several of his ribs and hurled him several meters away. He crashed heavily to the ground and rolled several times.

The Ice Crystal Cannon exploded dozens of meters behind him, leaving a crater several meters wide as wild icy winds overturned the thin layer of snow on the ground.

The icy wind shoved Vissel across the ground again before he finally came to his senses.

Dago stood with the Ice Crystal Wand aimed at him. The pearl at its tip glimmered, while large amounts of ice elements gathered into an energy sphere.

Seeing this, Vissel suddenly went mad and screamed, "Impossible! Absolutely impossible! How long have I been away from the Patrol Guard? How did you become this powerful?"

Like a fish out of water, he curled up on the ground and convulsed, his limbs kicking wildly and sending dust everywhere.

"Obviously, I'm the academy's genius wizard, while you're just a rat from the forest! I'm the pride of the Hailam Wizard Family! I can't lose to a mud-legged peasant like you!"

Vissel suddenly seemed to think of something. He activated the communication crystal around his neck and shouted into it, "Help! A wizard named Dago from the Southeast Patrol has rebelled! Hurry, Wizard Academy, save me!"

He laughed sharply at Dago, like fingernails scraping glass. "You wouldn't dare kill me. I've already called the Academy Mobile Patrol Unit. If you kill me, you'll die too! Hahaha!"

Yet Dago merely continued aiming his wand at him, his eyes filled with thick, inextinguishable killing intent. Death approached Vissel like a ticking countdown.

Dago's voice was calm as ice. "When you caused Mariko to lose an arm, you should have died. He saved your life."

"When he died, you died too. Not even Jesus can save you. I said so."

"No... don't kill me... I have Magic Stones! I have the inheritance of a Formal Wizard!" Upon hearing Dago's words, Vissel suddenly lunged forward and crawled toward him, his nails clawing into the ground. Even as his knuckles were ground bloody, he felt nothing.

His eyes bulged as though they might pop from their sockets, and savage bloodshot veins covered the whites. "I'll give you my storage ring! I'll be your dog! Your slave! Please... please, for the Wizard Academy's sake..."

The madness in his eyes instantly shattered into pleading fragments. "Spare me... please... I was wrong... I really was wrong..."

One moment he cried, the next he laughed. One moment he swore he would repay the favor, and the next he cursed hysterically, like a puppet whose soul had been ripped away.

Dago ignored every word he said and fired the ice-blue energy sphere before his wand at Vissel's body.

Watching the exquisite blue energy sphere slowly fly toward him, Vissel knew his time had come. The slowed time only represented his final attachment to this world.

His body shook like a sieve. The chatter of his teeth drowned out his pleas, yet his eyes remained fixed on Dago, swirling with fear, jealousy, and madness.

In the end, it all turned into a pool of murky tears that flew straight toward Dago.

There was no explosion, no gale.

Vissel's fingers, which had weakly scratched at the ground as if trying to grasp one final lifeline, remained frozen in a grasping pose. His eyes were wide open, and the ugly expression that had been half madness and half pleading before his death was completely sealed in ice, becoming an ice statue that emitted a chill.