Under Watch

Rubbing his waist, Zheng Yichen looked at the empty bag in his hand. He had used up almost all the Contract Documents inside. Finding people had been easy. This body had let him conceal his true form perfectly, but it had also limited his power. At most, he could sense how strong a target was.

His distribution of the Contract Documents had drawn considerable attention in Star City. Even though Zheng Yichen had tried to avoid it, some of them had still ended up in the hands of people who wanted to study them rather than use them.

Of course... all their research had accomplished was to give the Contract Documents extra magic reserves and increase the mental power within them. That was right... his mental power also had a "stealing" property, and even after separating from him, it retained nearly the same absurd effect!

If Lolise had the kind of constitution that killed any living thing on contact, his own constitution plundered special powers on contact, right down to his core...

Anyway, the researchers could replenish the magic they had lost. Losing part of their mental power was a far worse bargain. Mental damage did not heal quickly the way physical injuries did. Watching how fast the Contract Documents accumulated power, Zheng Yichen thought letting people who wanted to dig out their secrets study them might not be a bad idea.

After thinking it through, he decided against it. This would only happen once. When those people discovered the nasty property that came with probing the Contract Documents' origins and deeper secrets, they would probably give up that suicidal pursuit.

And now, his continued distribution of the Contract Documents had gotten him noticed.

Not long after Zheng Yichen left Star City, several dark figures followed him. He spotted them along the way and immediately took a detour away from the route back to the Illusion Demon Forest. This temporary body still restricted his senses in every way. In his dragon form, he would have spotted a mere handful of people long ago.

"He's leading us in circles." The people following Zheng Yichen communicated in secret. They were all sharp-eyed veterans, so they noticed something was wrong as soon as Zheng Yichen shifted his route. After days of investigation, they had confirmed that the Contract Documents were connected to this young man of unknown origin. A great many of them had been distributed by him.

"Then we move." The black-clad figures closed in on Zheng Yichen and attacked without hesitation. He had taken them for a few small-time thugs, but the instant they struck, he realized something was wrong. These people were strong!

Working together, they sent Zheng Yichen flying before he could make more than a slight response with this body. Several deep cuts opened across him, all aimed at places that would hinder his movement. The blades had been poisoned, too!

The poison was not lethal, of course. It was meant to subdue him. These people clearly intended to capture him alive. As for Zheng Yichen, he had never learned any martial techniques. In a fight, his skill was probably about the same as a street thug's. The difference was his powerful body... and that came from his true form.

The human incarnation he was using had reduced his hand-to-hand combat ability to almost nothing. As for magic, this body was like plate armor, severely obstructing his direct contact with the magic around him. Any spell he cast would be badly affected, its power cut by eighty or ninety percent.

Fortunately, this body was undead. Despite its limited duration, it was still powerful and could ignore the effects of injury. As long as it was not torn apart and rendered useless, it could keep fighting at full strength. Poison was even more useless against it.

"What do you want?" Zheng Yichen stood up and looked at the black-clad figures. His wounds had already begun to close. Their eyes flickered. Such recovery was abnormal, certainly beyond an ordinary person. Yet when they attacked, his response had been remarkably clumsy, as if he were an ordinary man with no training at all.

It was a contradiction.

"Why are you distributing the Magic Weapon Contract Documents?" one of the black-clad figures asked, staring at Zheng Yichen.

"Uh, does sharing a benefit count?" Zheng Yichen scratched his head and came up with an answer. Under the rules for using the Contract Documents, their users really did get a unique benefit. The people hurt by it were probably the ones selling magic weapons.

"No. You're coming with us." The black-clad figure glanced around and spoke coldly. Before Zheng Yichen could answer, they attacked without hesitation. They were not the only group watching him. Everyone interested in the Magic Weapon Contract Documents wanted to get their hands on him.

They had only managed to strike first because they had found Zheng Yichen first. Every Magic Weapon Contract Document that had appeared so far was a projection, albeit an unusual one. As long as no one signed a contract with it, the projected document could continue to exist. It would take at least several decades to dissipate.

That was not because the projection contained an enormous amount of magic. Its creator was simply highly skilled in the Projection Spell, able to create a long-lasting projected object with an ordinary expenditure of magic and give it a single-use function!

The projections were certainly connected to the originals. The members of their organization had paid dearly for studying the projected Magic Weapon Contract Documents. Several Mages had suffered magic damage—their MP limits had permanently fallen. Worse still, several Mages had lost mental power. For the former group, only their magic reserves had decreased. Their mental power was unharmed, so the effect on their strength was not too severe.

At worst, they could cast one or two fewer spells. For the latter group, it amounted to a permanent loss of strength!

That was the consequence of studying the Magic Weapon Contract Documents directly. Or perhaps they had triggered the documents' defenses. Despite their losses, it also demonstrated just how powerful the documents were.

Their research had not been entirely fruitless, either. They had established that the Magic Weapons called forth by the Contract Documents were also a kind of projection, but not one produced by a conventional Projection Spell. They were projections summoned by a Summoner, yet they also differed from a Summoned Projection. It was as though the strengths of both kinds of magic had been blended into a unique "summoning spell."

Anyone who signed a contract with a Magic Weapon Contract Document received a "Summoning Mark" that let them summon a Magic Weapon. Each summoned Magic Weapon was independent. Even if someone else summoned the same one, neither would interfere with the other.