Chapter 93: Hard-Earned Preparations

Grim, having safely returned from the depths below, once again found himself caught in a whirl of activity.

Yet unlike his former routine, his busyness now had a clear purpose and a sharper focus.

The first thing he did after returning was to pay another visit to the Losa Trading Company. When he left, five high-grade wind-element cores had been added to the pouch at his waist. But such an extravagant purchase also sent a flood of magic crystals pouring out of Grim’s hands.

More than half of the three thousand magic crystals won in the previous wagered duel had vanished in the blink of an eye, and Grim’s reserves had already fallen below eight hundred. Considering that both he and Mary had now become gluttons, with magical meal bundles never ceasing each day, those crystals had to be kept to sustain their daily consumption. Thus, obtaining a large sum of magic crystals again in the short term had become an urgent, pressing necessity.

After returning from the depths, the three had temporarily formed an alliance to seize treasure and held a meeting together. When Grim laid out what he had seen at the wizard tower ruins, Mary and Kaby both fell into a state of nameless dread.

A wizard-class magical beast!

Was this... was this something their small group could possibly handle?

Mary, though proud and self-assured, was after all only an advanced vampire. If she truly faced that terrifying flower spirit, she would likely be slain in an instant. As for Grim, he was still only an intermediate apprentice. Though his mental power was growing rapidly every day under the dual nourishment of magical meal bundles and focus-restoring potion, intermediate meant intermediate. If he truly encountered a wizard-class magical beast, he would not only be of no help, but the very shockwaves of the battle might inflict fatal injuries upon him.

As for the great goblin merchant Kaby, its unconventional talent for concealment and stealth had some merit, but it had nothing whatever to do with combat. So aside from the fragments of memory in its mind offering a little help, it truly could contribute nothing else.

Seeing the fear on the faces of the two, Grim smiled in understanding and began calmly analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of both sides. Step by step, under his guidance, the two gradually overcame their dread of the wizard-class creature and began carefully and seriously plotting a plan to bring down the terrifying flower spirit.

First, all three were certain of one thing: if that flower spirit were allowed to retain wizard-class strength, then plotting this treasure-seizing operation would be no different from walking into death. Therefore, they had to find every possible means to weaken the terrifying flower spirit.

There were two ways to accomplish this. One was through sorcerous curses; the other was through the flower spirit’s body itself.

As for sorcerous curses, Grim could try to buy some cursed wands or disposable sorcery scrolls. However, whether such inferior goods, crafted by apprentice hands, could pierce the flower spirit’s magical resistance remained unknown, so they could not place too much hope there.

On this matter, Grim quietly revealed that he had contact with the wizard Angus, and might perhaps be able to obtain some wizard-grade sorcery scrolls from him. But if he wanted to make designs on a formal wizard, Grim would also need to produce something valuable enough to tempt the other party.

So this problem still had to be solved by Grim himself.

As for the flower spirit’s true body, Grim inferred, based on his own deductions, that it was very likely hidden near the ruined elemental pool. At this point, Kaby’s role became apparent. Relying on its familiarity with the wizard tower, it quickly drew up a map of the interior and clearly pointed out the location of the elemental pool.

According to its description, that elemental pool lay in the second underground level of the wizard tower ruins, and the route there required passing through numerous secret sorcerous doors and formation checks. Though most of these devices had likely long since lost their function, if even one or two remained active, they could cause immeasurable harm to Mary’s infiltration. Therefore Grim insisted that Kaby must enter the wizard tower ruins together with Mary.

On this point, Grim was uncompromising, and Kaby could only agree in trembling obedience.

And to accomplish the two goals above, the foremost prerequisite was that Grim must possess the strength to fight the terrifying flower spirit, or at least keep it occupied. All of that depended to a great extent on the lightning giant that was nearing completion. Perhaps only when that lightning giant reached the expected height would Mary and Kaby have even the faintest confidence in this treasure-seizing plan.

Thus, in the days that followed, Grim, Mary, and Kaby all became busy.

Grim spent day and night in the alchemy laboratory, working on his new magical construct, while Mary also left early and returned late every day, each time coming back covered in fresh wounds. For a vampire clan so gifted in feeding upon blood and rising anew, to still leave so many wounds behind was proof of just how severe her trials were, and how high the danger had become—so high that it had already reached the limit this body could bear.

As for Kaby, that little goblin, who was content once he had made a modest fortune and aspired to become the greatest goblin merchant of all, he also rarely appeared in the ground-floor hall these days. Instead, he donned an old and tattered set of thief’s gear and practiced every day in the sorcery training chamber, honing his prized skills of concealment and stealth. As for the glittering magical equipment he had once worn, it could only be locked away in a wooden chest with tearful reluctance.

Of course, during this period, Grim and Mary also took time to join a subterranean raid organized by the training camp. Yet after their previous miserable failure, the fallen apprentices had clearly strengthened the defenses of their various resource points, and this plunged Kevin’s squad into an exceptionally bitter and difficult battle.

In this fight, when the two quasi-wizards in Kevin’s squad became locked in a stalemate with the fallen quasi-wizards on the other side, Grim had no choice but to send out an earth-serpent construct to withstand the furious bombardment from the extra fallen quasi-wizard.

With their number of quasi-wizards inferior to the enemy’s, and the strength of their advanced apprentices not holding much advantage either, Kevin could only reluctantly abandon the raid to avoid being pincered by the enemy’s reinforcements.

The squad members, however, remained quite calm about this outcome, for in their previous war of attrition, such results were the norm. As for Grim’s performance in the battle, no one had any objections. For a middle apprentice to endure the furious bombardment of a fallen quasi-wizard for a full quarter of an hour, such a feat was beyond reproach.

It was precisely his resilience that prevented Kevin’s squad from collapsing due to a shortage of quasi-wizards. Otherwise, once the formation had been scattered, which advanced apprentice could guarantee that he would certainly escape pursuit? In the dim and deep subterranean tunnels, there was no shortage of ambitious genius apprentices who had been buried there.

Every year, more than a dozen advanced apprentices would quietly die in some dark corner of the Nether Hollow, and even the fall of quasi-wizards was by no means rare. The last time Perfect Joy City was violently destroyed by surface wizards, the catalyst had been a surface team of six that happened upon a fallen wizard while patrolling belowground.

No one ever learned the full cause of that disaster, because two quasi-wizards and four advanced apprentices died without a sound beneath the earth. The enraged surface wizards, with assistance from the wizard alliance sent by the Scattered Pine Tower Wizard Association, surged into the depths and forcibly smashed the enemy stronghold, Perfect Joy City.

Unfortunately, the enemy’s second-rank wizard, Priedka, had seized the chance to blow up his wizard tower, taking some of the fallen wizards with him as he fled Perfect Joy City and escaped that calamity. Thus, within a few years, a new Perfect Joy City rose once more.

The more they understood these matters, the more wary the elite apprentices became of large-scale battle and conflict, for once either side pushed matters too far, it could very likely provoke a fierce retaliatory response from the opposing camp.

In a place like the Nether Hollow, under such special conditions, no matter how extraordinary the genius or how formidable the apprentice, once a wizard from the opposing camp was drawn out, the only ending was one of bleak downfall. That was why, after taking three advanced fallen apprentices’ heads in one stroke last time, Kevin’s squad had already become somewhat alarmed by every rustle of wind and every cry of a crane. This time, though they had come away battered and humiliated, the two quasi-wizards in the squad instead secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

Grim, as a traveler passing through the Nether Hollow, could not possibly remain here for long, so he was utterly unable to grasp these hidden undercurrents of thought. The reason he was lying low this time was simply that his spirit and physical strength were both failing.

During these days, Grim once again took focus-restoring potion, but this time the spiritual increase it brought him was only 0.51 points. In contrast, his physique had fallen below 3 points, causing the chip’s assessment of his body to change from healthy to weak.

With no other choice, Grim had to suspend his use of the focus-restoring potion and instead devote himself fully to adjusting his body. With the vigorous vitality of a fifteen-year-old and the stimulating, strengthening effects of mental power upon flesh, his physique should normally have been around 4 to 5 points.

But this was the common failing of all elemental path apprentices: in ordinary times they paid heed only to training and cultivating mental power, whether sitting in meditation, reading and studying sorcerous knowledge, or copying sorcery books for long hours bent over a desk. For the sake of sorcery experiments, they even spent prolonged periods in contact with sorcerous materials harmful to the body... and these unhealthy habits caused all elemental apprentices to resemble one another, each looking gaunt, sickly, and thin as reeds.

If they could successfully advance to wizardhood, then naturally they would have ample time and many means to seek out rare wonders and make up for the body’s deficiencies. But for now, they could only grit their teeth and endure, even to the point of repeatedly sacrificing their bodily well-being in exchange for a little increase in mental power.

The failure of the mission had not affected Grim in the slightest. The moment he returned from the depths, he plunged back into the alchemy laboratory, spending most of his time there, diligently and carefully refining his most promising construct of all—the lightning giant.

Finally, after more than ten agonizing days, Grim waved his hand to extinguish the magical flame upon the alchemy table and lifted the main core in his hand, the crystal core that served as the vessel for the construct’s consciousness, narrowing his eyes to inspect it closely.

At that moment, he could finally let out a breath of relief, because...

The lightning giant had been born.