Master Moses had requested a six-month leave of absence for Kai, allowing him to dedicate himself entirely to meditating on his mental power and frantically accumulating magical energy during this period. Kai didn't dare to venture into new areas of knowledge recklessly—after all, one could tell from the solemn look on his master's face that time and the current situation were as tense as a stretched bowstring. To achieve a leap forward in any branch of magic within just six months was simply wishful thinking. Therefore, sparing no effort to enhance his mental power and magical energy for the time being was the fastest way to boost his strength.
It was also during these six months that Kai noticed the public courses at the academy had quietly come to a halt. Low-level and introductory apprentices could only scrape together limited knowledge in the public library, but how many times could their meager academy points last them? When he thought about the impending changes in half a year, it was likely that these weak little apprentices had long been forgotten by the official dark magicians at the academy.
To help the academy install "coordinate generators" in an unknown otherworld, one would probably need to be at least a high-level apprentice or an apprentice magician to be capable of such a task. Even an intermediate apprentice like Kai might end up as cannon fodder when the time came, let alone those weaker underlings.
Over the past six months, Kai and Lina had frequently discussed matters related to the otherworld. Lina had heard some news from her master, Felena, early on, but her knowledge was still not as comprehensive as Kai's. Topics like the "coordinate generators" and the hidden threats on the surface were never mentioned by Felena—she only vaguely stated that the academy would explore the otherworld beyond the spatial rift in half a year.
Apart from Lina, after much thought, Kai finally chose to reveal the news in advance to two close friends: Merry and Bows. As expected, the fat Bows had been kept completely in the dark; his eyes widened like bronze bells upon hearing the news. This six-month head start in knowing the information was enough to make him stand out among the low-level apprentices, and if a crisis really arose, his survival rate would also be significantly higher.
What came as a great surprise to Kai was that Merry, who had an official dark magician, Dils, as her master, knew nothing about the events that would unfold in half a year! It was clear that the level of attention Master Dils paid to Merry was far less than what Moses devoted to Kai. Even a seemingly unapproachable old witch like Felena had at least hinted at some news to Lina, whereas Dils kept his apprentice completely in the dark. Of course, it might also be because Merry's strength was too weak—a low-level apprentice would probably be even more like cannon fodder than Kai when the time came. Dils had more than just Merry as a potion apprentice under him; if he lost this "femme fatale," he would most likely not even bat an eyelid.
The six months quietly slipped by in the tense and eerie atmosphere of the academy. At first, only a handful of intermediate and high-level apprentices like Kai and Lina were in the know. But as time went on, fragmented news and all sorts of rumors spread like wildfire throughout the academy. Although there was no panic, that tense atmosphere had long wrapped around the entire academy like a thick fog. All apprentices went crazy trying to enhance their strength, or wracked their brains to figure out how to increase their chances of survival.
In this situation, Bows' magic shop was almost trampled down by customers, and Merry also received a flood of potion orders from low-level and intermediate apprentices. Thanks to knowing the news in advance, Bows invested all his private money in stockpiling goods. Before the potential crisis arrived, he had clearly figured out one thing—life was more important than money. During these six months, he barely sold any low-tier magic materials or potions; he either kept them for himself or gave them to people like Merry and Kai who could maximize their value. He also somehow managed to find a decent intermediate magical item—a cloak that could cast the Swift Wind Spell, which greatly enhanced his ability to save his own life.
Merry's choices over the past six months came as a bit of a surprise to Kai. Apart from hastily learning the enhanced version of the Minor Fireball Spell from Kai for a period of time, she devoted most of her energy to potion brewing. After several years, her apprentice rank was still stuck at the low level, but her talent in potionology was truly remarkable—no wonder she had been chosen by Dils. A year ago, she had already barely been able to make intermediate healing potions, and over the past year, she had also mastered the formulas for intermediate antidotes and vitality potions.
Vitality potions were rare items that magic apprentices were eager to obtain. They could refresh one's spirit and increase the efficiency of meditation. Sometimes, after spending a whole day and night conducting experiments, one's spirit would be on the verge of collapsing, but after drinking a vitality potion, they would immediately feel recharged, as if injected with 鸡血. However, compared to restoring one's spirit, Kai and most magic apprentices were more eager for its ability to improve meditation efficiency and accelerate the recovery of mental power. When the time came, with both vitality potions and the Acid Staff for dual recovery, even if Kai was only an intermediate apprentice, he would be able to compete with ordinary high-level apprentices in terms of magical endurance.
None of the potions Merry made had ever fallen into the hands of outsiders. Kai, Lina, Bows, and Merry had already formed a fairly tight-knit small group. Lina had the strongest strength, and Bows and Merry each had their own useful skills.
As for Kai, relying on the vitality potions provided by Merry, he focused on high-intensity meditation for several months. In the last two months, he went all out and created three high-quality pieces of equipment—also the best-quality ones he had ever made so far.
A black stone necklace that could accelerate the user's channeling and accumulation of dark elemental power. This was a magical item he made for Lina, and it could be considered a fine piece among low-level magical items. With Lina's strength, equipment inscribed with low-level offensive magic was not to her liking at all; instead, this functional black stone necklace was more to her taste than ordinary intermediate magical items.
A pair of ankle bracelets inscribed with the low-level magic "Light Body Spell," made for Bows. Kai had originally wanted to make an offensive item, but Bows himself knew very well that even with an additional offensive magic, it would do little to improve his strength or chances of survival. It would be better to make a life-saving item; when paired with his cloak, his ability to escape would be greatly enhanced.
A Corrosion Staff, which was Kai's masterpiece over the past two months. He gave it to Merry, who had provided him with many potions but had relatively weak strength herself.
The Corrosion Staff was the highest-quality magical equipment Kai had personally crafted since he began learning alchemy several years ago. As its name suggested, this staff was a replica of the Acid Staff gifted to him by his master, Moses.
Unfortunately, Kai's foundation in alchemy was far from comparable to the years of accumulation of his master, Moses. His mental power strength and sensitivity to elemental power were also much inferior. Coupled with the limitations of the material grades, after all his efforts, this equipment had only barely reached the threshold of intermediate magical items. But this was already enough to make Kai excited! If his master, Moses, or his senior brother, Zorro, had known about it, they would have definitely praised him on a usual day. But these were extraordinary times, and only Kai himself, Lina, and Merry knew that he had created the Corrosion Staff.
"This Corrosion Staff is made mainly from the magic crystal and skull of a mid-tier magical beast, the Saltwater Crocodile," Kai explained to Merry. "Due to the lack of some rare materials and the fact that my alchemy skills haven't reached my master's level yet, its cooldown time is a full forty hours. Moreover, what it releases is only the intermediate magic Corrosive Slime, so you have to choose the right time and use it carefully."
The power of the Corrosive Slime did not come from the magic array carved by Kai, but from the elemental power within the crocodile's skull and magic crystal. This was the reason for its long cooldown time and the absence of the dual effects of restoring mental power and magical energy that the Acid Staff possessed.
After receiving the Corrosion Staff, Merry had a complex yet moved expression on her face. Her lips moved as if she wanted to say something, but under Kai's earnest and solemn gaze, she ultimately did not utter a word of refusal. More than four years had passed, and the little girl Merry from back then had grown into a graceful young woman. She was eighteen years old this year, two years younger than Kai, with a head of eye-catching emerald-green long hair. Her height had even surpassed that of Lina, whose figure hadn't changed much, except that her chest was flat and not as impressive as Lina's.
Merry didn't say anything, but after returning home, Lina couldn't help but ask, "The Corrosion Staff would have been quite useful to you too. Now that you've given it to Merry, what about yourself?" There wasn't much complaint in her tone—after all, Merry had made a lot of potions over the past six months, especially intermediate healing potions and vitality potions, which even a high-level apprentice like her could make use of, and they could even save her life at critical moments.
Kai pulled Lina, who was not even up to his shoulders, into his arms and said softly, "No matter how outstanding my alchemy skills are, the Corrosion Staff is already the limit of what I can do. But don't forget, I still have a master." A look of surprise appeared in Lina's eyes: "Are you saying that...?" Kai nodded: "Although my master hasn't explicitly said it, I know he will never stand by and watch me and Senior Sister fall into danger. With his abilities, high-level magical items are nothing to him. I believe he will leave us with trump cards and means to save our lives."
The six-month deadline had arrived, and all apprentices of the Dark Magic Academy in Menzoberranzan had finally received the official notice from the academy. The notice was sudden; it only informed all apprentices to set off for Shadow Valley in three days and revealed no other information. Only rare terms like "spatial rift" and "otherworld" were faintly circulated among the apprentices, giving them a rough idea of what they were about to face. But in reality, having never been to the otherworld and only knowing a couple of terms from fragmented remarks was far from being considered "in the know." Only those like Kai, who had received the news in advance, researched relevant materials, and had the support of their master, were truly prepared. The other apprentices below the low level were basically going to their deaths.
While the apprentices were either hesitating or confused about the mission to Shadow Valley, a meeting of official dark magicians was quietly taking place on the top floor of the central teaching building of the Dark Magic Academy. The last person to enter the meeting room was Kai's master, Moses. At this time, sixteen official dark magicians were already seated inside, and he was the last one to arrive. However, no one, including Dean Dardaron, had any objections to this. These dark magicians all knew what Moses had been busy with recently. It was no exaggeration to say that whether the spatial rift in Shadow Valley could be successfully opened this time depended not mainly on the three deans, but on Moses. After he took his seat, the meeting officially began.
The first to speak was a dark magician who had always kept a low profile and rarely appeared at the academy. He asked directly, "We're rushing to carry this out seven years earlier than the original plan—can we really succeed? Besides, there are no Holy Towers or Knight Halls near the Underdark, and even those smaller magic organizations and knight families basically have secret connections with us. How can you be sure that it's the Holy Tower forces that have set their sights on us?" His tone was filled with aggressive questioning.
It was no wonder—anyone who had just emerged from their laboratory, only to learn that a plan they had been preparing for decades was going to be advanced in the final ten years without any warning, would be angry. Magicians' experiments usually required a great deal of energy and time to invest; the more advanced the magician, the longer the experimental cycle. The dark magician who spoke had already reached the late stage of Level 1 in terms of personal strength, making him one of the top performers among the seventeen dark magicians in the meeting room. The experiment he had just concluded had lasted for five years, during which he never stepped out of his laboratory, so it was true that he had missed a lot of news.
"Jeda, you explain this," said Dean Dardaron, who was sitting in the middle of the meeting room.
Following the dean's words, the eyes of most of the dark magicians present turned to a dark magician on the right side of the meeting room. His body was wrapped in countless bandages, and there were obvious traces of fire elemental particles remaining on him. He had suffered severe injuries—one of his eyes was gone, and half of his body had been burned by fire elements. It was a wonder how he had managed to survive.
This dark magician didn't say much; he slowly raised his remaining right hand, holding a silver badge. The moment they saw this badge, the expressions of most of the dark magicians present changed.
In the current era, most Holy Towers and Knight Halls had their own unique emblems. Some magic organizations and knight families had also gradually followed this trend, using emblems as a means to deter evildoers and enhance the cohesion of their own forces.
The silver badge in the hand of the injured dark magician had extremely subtle power fluctuations inside it. But compared to these power fluctuations, what was even more striking and even intimidating was the meaning and strength represented by the badge itself—it truly belonged to a Holy Tower force, and many of the dark magicians present knew something about it.
The Underdark was located in the gap between several ultimate forces. There were top-tier wizarding civilization forces here that were even more powerful than ordinary Holy Towers and Knight Halls—legendary existences like the True Spirit Tower and the Dominator Hall were distributed in these two regions, and there was more than one of each. The forces to the east and west were ones these dark magicians didn't dare to provoke at all; only parts of the northern region and the endless ocean to the south were areas where they could move cautiously on a regular basis. When Moses and the others had traveled from the Western Islands to the Underdark many years ago, they had taken the sea route. In recent years, these dark magicians had mainly operated in the south, and they had also discreetly recruited apprentices and plundered resources along the coast of the southern Wizard Continent. They would also go to the north occasionally, but the number of trips was small and they rarely went deep into the region.
The silver badge in the hand of the official dark magician Jeda was an identity symbol of a Holy Tower force located along the southern coast of the Underdark. There were many magic organizations located along the southern coast of the Underdark, as well as several Holy Towers and Knight Halls. Compared to other prosperous regions in the wizarding world, there were indeed not many Holy Towers and Knight Halls near the Underdark—otherwise, such a gathering place for dark magicians would not have been able to form. But even the weakest Holy Tower was by no means a force that these dark magicians could afford to provoke.
In the past, the dark magicians of Menzoberranzan had done their best to avoid contact with them, but this time, the other party had taken the initiative to come to their door—it was clear that they had no good intentions!
"Have they discovered our location?" an official dark magician with relatively low strength couldn't help but ask. These dark magicians could act tyrannically in a corner of the Underdark, but when faced with the pursuit of surface forces like Holy Towers and Knight Halls, they seemed extremely vulnerable. After all, the group of dark magicians was synonymous with evil and extreme darkness in the wizarding world. They randomly used humans as experimental specimens and frequently disrupted the peace and stability within the wizarding world, making them the target of joint suppression by various Holy Towers and Knight Halls. In the wizarding world, there were very few Holy Tower forces that were truly on good terms with the dark magician group. Even if some Holy Tower masters had colluded with dark magicians, they would never dare to admit it publicly—otherwise, the punishment from the Plane Guardians and the trial from the Wizard Alliance would be no joke.
The frightened question from this dark magician, combined with the badge brought out by the injured Jeda, soon caused chaos in the meeting room. Dark magicians like Moses, Felena, and Dils, who had long been aware of the inside story, remained relatively calm. But someone like Kaysen from the plantation had his old-looking face instantly contorted into a bitter frown—it seemed that if the situation took a turn for the worse, he would immediately slip away and escape. Escaping was not something to be ashamed of for dark magicians; they were a group of truth-seekers who had abandoned morality and shame and had no bottom line. In the past, dark magicians had been a group that was hunted down everywhere and forced to wander around in the wizarding world. In the face of the covetous gaze of a Holy Tower force, escaping was the most rational and correct decision. It was just a pity for this underground world of the Underdark—they had managed it for decades, and the number of official dark magicians had been increasing. Given time, it might have become another paradise for dark magicians.
In the end, it was Dean Dardaron who managed to calm down the dark magicians in the meeting room, who had gradually fallen into panic and chaos. This powerful Level 2 dark magician tapped his staff on the table; after the meeting room fell silent, he slowly said, "Our location here has not been discovered by the Dawn Holy Tower. When Jeda was evading pursuit, he used the Blood Ignition Spell to detonate half of his own magical energy and also killed a Holy Tower magician who was chasing him. This badge is one of the spoils of war he obtained. Menzoberranzan is an underground city personally chosen by me—if it were so easy to be discovered, I would not have chosen to settle here back then. The current situation is that we must speed up the exploration of the otherworld on the other side of the spatial rift in Shadow Valley. We must gain as much as possible before we leave, so as not to waste the efforts we have put in over the past few decades. This is also the opinion of the other two vice-deans."
Dardaron's words helped calm the dark magicians in the