A Sorcerer’s Journey

Whoosh!

Alone, Grimm descended onto the hexagonal rooftop square of the Dark Demon-Hunter Headquarters. There weren’t too many people gathered on the main square as of yet. There were only what seemed like seven to eight thousand Dark Demon-Hunters gathered around.

A continuous stream of Demon-Hunter Sorcerers arrived onto the square from all directions.

Grimm chose his landing spot in an area where the Dark Demon-Hunters were more sparsely distributed. He donned a wide dark-gray sorcerer’s robe as well as his iconic gray-white spiraling Mask of Truth. With the voluptuous green-red Myna perched on his shoulder, Grimm made a tired, listless yawn.

One of his eyes was a frosty shade of blue, while the other was crimson red. A faint halo glowed from underneath the Mask of Truth. All these features made him all the more inconspicuous in the crowd of Dark Demon-Hunters.

A nearby Dark Demon-Hunter flashed a look at Grimm. Similarly, Grimm returned a look at him, confirming that he was another Level-1 Dark Sorcerer.

He had a pair of emerald-green eyes and leaned against his body was a magic staff made from an old, wrinkled tree root. A brown-yellow cat with long, thick fur rested lazily on his shoulders like how Myna would.

Seeing the Honor Badge on Grimm’s sorcerer’s barrier, the Dark Sorcerer was stunned for a moment, before he performed a sorcerer’s greeting toward Grimm.

Grimm returned the gesture with a simple nod.

As time passed by, newly-landed low-leveled sorcerers would perform the sorcerer’s greeting towards Grimm from time to time. And as the number of Dark Demon-Hunters grew larger, a Mechanical Marionette originally floating in the air, suddenly flew towards Grimm’s direction

“Respected sorcerer, I have verified that you have a Rank-3 Honor Badge. As such, you have the priority to get on the Expeditionary Principal Void Fortress before other regular sorcerers. Would you like to get on the Principal Void Fortress now?”

Grimm was surprised by the Honor Badge’s convenience.

Without hesitation, Grimm nodded and replied firmly, “Yes.”

With a loud thump, the Mechanical Marionette landed on the rooftop square and led Grimm across the crowd of other Dark Sorcerers towards the other direction.

After a short while.

Grimm stood on a five-meter-long flying bird soul slave with silver-white fine scales that decorated its body. With a loud shriek, it warped into a phantom, flying at mach speed towards the sky, breaking effortlessly through the Seven Rings’ Defense Barrier and the thick layer of clouds.

In the blink of an eye, Grimm had arrived at a sea of clouds.

Immediately after that, the hemispherical behemoth Void Fortress that continuously exuded a cold, blood-red shine above the sea of clouds had appeared in Grimm’s full-view. The clouds below the Void Fortress seemed to have been pushed away by the pressure of its own weight. Right now, the Void Fortress looked like a cursed blood-red moon that hung high up in the sky.

It would seem from first glance that the Expeditionary Principal Void Fortress was just an arm’s reach away. In actuality, that was just an illusion and the Fortress was much farther away. This is due to the sheer size of the Void Fortress.

A tight formation of three-hundred-meter-long, shark-like Voidships flew into the hangar doors of the Void Fortress, one after the other.

In the cloud layers further up, there were three more Void Fortresses waiting silently for the arrival of orders for new Demon-Hunting Expeditions.

The silver-scaled bird carrying Grimm was traveling so fast that it carved out scars on the tranquil layer of clouds.

In the even more distant sky, there was the Heavenly Water Screen World Law that shielded the Sorcerer’s World from being entirely devoured by the Void Energy.

As for the proxy zone between the Heavenly Water Screen and the sea of clouds was the Sorcerer’s World’s energy vacuum layer which replaced the Chaotic Layer as found in foreign worlds.

“Hm? The size of this Void Fortress is slightly larger than the one from the previous expedition.” Grimm muttered to himself.

As they gradually got closer to the new Void Fortress, Grimm realized that this Void Fortress’ size was in fact, multitudes larger than the Void Fortress used in the Shadow Enigmatic World Expedition.

The diameter of the Void Fortress back at the Shadow Enigmatic World was roughly ten thousand meters. As for the diameter of this new Void Fortress, it was reaching upwards of twenty thousand meters!

The diameter itself was twice as big as the last one. Considering that this Void Fortress was an irregular hemisphere, it would mean its volume was ten times larger than the last Void Fortress.

‘Which Stigmata Sorcerer is the one that ordered the construction of such a behemoth?

‘What kind of a foreign world are we heading into this time?’

Grimm felt a slight unease at the thought of this. However, it was not long before he made his descent onto the square of the Void Fortress.

Clank!

Both Grimm’s feet had finally made contact with the metal floor of the Void Fortress square. Gathered on the massive square was only about six to seven thousand people. Most of them seemed to have Demon-Hunting experiences similar to Grimm.

Instinctively, Grimm threw a piece of Combustar to the Silver-scaled Bird as a gesture of thanks. His eyes flashed around nonstop under the Mask of Truth as he walked towards the gathering crowd while holding the Sabbatic Goat Staff in his hands.

In the crowd of six to seven thousand people, only a small minority were Level 2 Dark Demon-Hunters or Level-1 Dark Demon-Hunters that had an Honor Badge. On the other hand, a great majority of the gathered people were Bright Demon-Hunter Sorcerer squad leaders.

Grimm quietly observed these Demon-Hunter Sorcerers from afar.

Many of the Dark Demon-Hunters remained still as they focused on the floating crystal ball in front of them. These crystal balls individually projected to them information about the upcoming Demon-Hunting Expedition.

There was always some Bright Demon-Hunter Sorcerer that stood in front of the Dark Demon-Hunters, observing the current situation. From time to time, they would leave behind their contact information to the Dark Demon-Hunters after a short exchange.

“Hm? That’s…”

In the midst of confusion, Grimm suddenly lit up.

So this was the reason why some Level-2 Dark Sorcerers could manage to call for backup by Bright Sorcerers and in some cases, fire support by the Expeditionary Voidships whenever they get into a tight spot?

Standing still as his thoughts sunk in, Grimm took out his crystal ball and played some of his mission recordings he received in the Shadow Enigmatic World just as he joined the team of awaiting Dark Sorcerers.

How Bright Sorcerers selected Dark Sorcerers was itself, based on the measure of one’s sense of responsibility.

From the Dark Sorcerer’s perspective, the Bright Sorcerer was his sole emergency line of help. But when viewed from the big picture, from the standing of the entire Expeditionary Force, the Dark Sorcerers were merely a special fighting force that cooperated in deadly efficiency alongside the Bright Sorcerers.

Generally speaking, a task that was deemed too much for the Dark Sorcerers to handle would mean something that involved a whole other level of danger.

If the total amount of information left behind by these Bright Sorcerer squad leaders was insufficient, that would mean there were no guarantees to the benefits of this World Expedition.

On the contrary, another set of problems arise if they were to try and leave behind too much information. It could mean leading their own squadmates into the jaws of death, or wasting too much time on low-level missions.

As such, the intensity of information gathering must be carefully determined by each of these Bright Sorcerer squad leaders.

In short, Voidship captains typically choose Dark Sorcerers who possess strong abilities who can survive encounters with extreme peril. This would not only make it easier to get higher rewards, it would also lower the level of danger exposed to the Bright Sorcerer squad leaders.

A non-stop stream of Bright Demon-Hunter Sorcerers walked past Grimm.

The vast majority of Bright Demon-Hunter Sorcerers would not even bother stopping in front of a Level-1 Dark Sorcerer. There were a small fraction of Bright Sorcerers that looked at his mission footage in the Shadow Enigmatic World and were slightly surprised that the Dark Sorcerer in front of them only had a single expedition under his belt.

Even so, these Bright Sorcerers still shook their heads in disappointment and chose to leave Grimm without any contact information.

It was undeniable that purely judging from the surface, it seems there was too much dumb luck involved in Grimm’s Rank-3 Honor Badge from his first Demon-Hunting Expedition.

As the number of Bright Sorcerers and Dark Sorcerers that gathered on the Fortress square grew larger into the ten thousands, the arriving stream of Demon-Hunter Sorcerers seemed to have stopped.

A full two hourglasses had passed.

Completing their respective tasks, the crowd of Bright and Dark Sorcerers had started dispersing. With that, they awaited the Fortress Battle Command’s activation of the Void World Stone.

With the Void World Stone’s activation, the elite Dark Demon-Hunters could make long-distance communication with the Bright Demon-Hunter Sorcerer squad leaders at the expense of the Void World Stone itself.

However, there was still a small number of Bright and Dark Sorcerers who have yet to complete their tasks, with Grimm as part of this small minority.

As boredom started creeping into Grimm’s mind, there was finally a female Bright Sorcerer that stopped in front of Grimm. Looking up at her, his face lit up with anticipation under the Mask of Truth.

‘Is this she?!’

This female Demon-hunter Sorcerer turned out to be Julni, the green-eyed sorceress from the Bright Sorcerer camp back during the sorcerer apprentices’ territorial battle. Both of them bumped into each other on the airship as they were heading to the Holy Tower of the Seven Rings with their respective mentors, after which they traded their mechanical hearts.

Now, it happened that these two had participated in the same Demon-Hunting Expedition.

“Grimm?”

Julni, whose face had aged noticeably, asked Grimm in surprise, “You already received an Honor Badge? I thought you and I were the same, we only participated in a single Demon-Hunting Expeditionary mission after all.”

Suppressing the strange feeling in his heart, Grimm replied solemnly, “It was just pure luck.”

Pausing for a moment, Grimm looked at Julni’s crystal ball before continuing enviously, “What about you, I see you’ve become the leader of a small team of twenty-five sorcerers.”

Shaking her head, Julni replied, “This was only because of my friends’ trust in me. My teammates are all from the same batch of sorcerers from my academy. Well then, since both our mentors had already formed a well-established contract, I think it’s no longer necessary for me to give you my contact information.”

Grimm quietly rejoiced in his heart. Although this small team of twenty-five Bright Sorcerers belonged to the bottom-most echelon, it was Grimm’s first time experiencing this level of authority.

Nodding his head, Grimm said, “That would certainly be unnecessary.”

The two talked briefly for a while. Although there was virtually nothing in common between them for them to be called friends, they still valued the convenience of establishing a friendly relationship.

After half an hourglass, most of the Bright and Dark Sorcerers that remained, had finally dispersed. Even the Bright Sorcerer squad leader that eyed Grimm was nowhere to be seen.

From afar, the first wave of Mechanical Bees, gigantic flying devices as well as massive flying beasts carrying whole teams of Demon-Hunter Sorcerers were making their way towards the Void Fortress. Roughly ten Fortress Battle Command Sorcerers started issuing the Void-World Stone to the people standing around the square. Suddenly, Grimm froze in his tracks as he recognized a few familiar faces.

At the same time, these people had discovered Grimm.

Third Ghostpepper, Kuryak, Roqhiroo, Gabriel, and that Demon-Hunter Sorcerer whose robes were burning in flames. It seemed they were with two other unknown Dark Demon-Hunters as well. These Dark Demon-Hunters who were once pitted against each other for the limited placings during their apprenticeship had now formed into a team and participated in a Demon-Hunting Expedition together?!