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 bone-deep indifference, as though "making eye contact with commoners was a desecration of his family's wizardly status."

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

Every word seemed to emphasize, "Wizards are inherently different, 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 also left everyone else in the team distant from him. If the hired wizards had not been earning Magic Stones, they would have left long ago.

Thus, amid that stifling 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.

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

With Detection Technique activated, Dago walked silently along the torchlit path, occasionally glancing toward the forest. At that moment, 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 threw away his torch, turned to the two hired wizards, and instructed them, "I'll go ahead. Follow me."

His physical abilities were now stronger than those of most wizards at the same level, mainly thanks to the physical enhancement brought 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 pulled his crystal wand from his storage pouch, praying that their group was safe.

In the direction of the watchtower and cabin, blazing flames illuminated a large stretch of farmland. Faintly, figures could be seen darting through the firelight, fighting.

As he drew closer, he saw Vissel crouching over the mangled corpses of two Black-Robed Wizards, 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 on the wound and sprinkled healing powder over it.

Numerous craters of various sizes, left by spell bombardments, surrounded them. Dago hurried toward the fallen Mariko.

Vissel noticed him and glanced his way. His eyes were like poisoned icicles, and a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

He turned away. That was not a smile—it was the smug delight of waiting for prey to enter a trap, the viciousness of calculating how to chew a man's bones to pieces and swallow them.

Dago did not notice anything unusual. He crouched beside Mariko and the young wizard, asking in a trembling voice, "What happened? How did Mariko get so badly hurt? Where is 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 suddenly hit by a Fireball Spell. One apprentice was burned to death inside."

As he spoke, he deliberately looked toward Vissel. "The leader 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 did not even give a warning."

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

"Damn it!"

After learning the full story 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, ready to rush forward and kill Vissel.

But Mariko, who had opened his clouded eyes, tightly grasped one of Dago's pale hands with his remaining withered arm.

His lips moved like two dead leaves shriveled by autumn frost, barely opening and closing in the wind. Every movement trembled visibly.

Mariko forced his voice out from his throat. "Dago, I know you're furious, but he is 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. There's no need to sacrifice your future over one of my arms."

Before Dago could suppress the rage in his heart—

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

Deep-blue rings swirled through Mariko's clouded eyes. He unleashed the last of his spiritual force and shoved the two of them several meters away.

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

Green Wind Blades, like several knives thin enough to be transparent, sliced through flesh in an instant. The blood droplets they flung up were torn into an even finer mist before they could reach the ground.

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

His hair was ripped into disarray by the gale, his eyes wide open. Blood poured from his torso, forming a dark-red stain that the cold wind quickly dried.

Mariko was dead. His body had been cut 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 though they were about to burst. Yet that violent malice suddenly sank at some point.

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

Dago turned and stared at Vissel, who held his wand aloft. His pupils, blazing with killing intent, suddenly contracted. The deep-blue rings in his eyes were threaded with ink-black streaks, still as a deep pool without the slightest ripple.

The flush vanished entirely from his face, leaving only the pallor of ashes.

Dago did not say a word. He merely raised the Ice Crystal Wand in his hand. Its tip did not tremble in the slightest, as though he were doing something utterly ordinary—such as picking up a fallen leaf.

Violent spiritual force surged forth. Cold wind wrapped around shattered snow at the tip of his wand, forming a small vortex. An Ice Crystal Cannon rapidly expanded before Dago fiercely fired it.

The massive, ink-dark blue Ice Crystal Cannon screamed forward, blasting the snow on both sides of the ground into the air and whipping up a biting hurricane in its powerful wake.

Before Vissel's stunned eyes, the terrifying Ice Crystal Cannon pierced his protective shield, veered from its trajectory, and grazed past his torso.

The powerful vortex airflow broke 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 behind a crater several meters wide as chaotic icy winds overturned the thin snow on the ground.

The icy wind shoved Vissel again, and only then did he come back to his senses.

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

At the sight, Vissel suddenly went mad and shouted, "Impossible! Absolutely impossible! How long have I been away from the Patrol Guard? How did you become this strong?"

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

"I'm obviously the Academy's genius wizard, while you're nothing but a rat from the forest! I'm the pride of the Hailam Wizard Family! I can't possibly lose to a mud-legged bastard 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, send wizards to save me!"

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

Yet Dago only continued holding up his wand. His eyes were filled with killing intent so intense it could not be dispelled. Death approached Vissel like a countdown, ticking closer and closer.

Dago's voice was as calm as ice. "The moment 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, clawing at the ground and crawling ahead, oblivious even as his knuckles were ground bloody.

His eyes bulged as though they might pop from their sockets, savage blood vessels crawling over 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 fragments of pleading. "Spare me... please... I was wrong... I was really wrong..."

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

But 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 that his time had come. The slowed time only represented his final attachment to this world.

His body shook like a sieve, and the chattering of his teeth drowned out his pleas. Yet his eyes remained fixed on Dago, filled with fear, jealousy, and madness.

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

There was no explosion, no gale.

Vissel's fingers remained weakly clawed, as though trying to seize one last lifeline. His eyes stayed wide open, and the ugly expression of half-madness and half-pleading on his face froze completely, becoming an ice sculpture that radiated cold air.