A Sorcerer’s Journey

“If I’m not mistaken, we’re at what used to be known as an Acraepoid’s commercial building.”

The wounded Level-2 sorcerer opened up his sorcerer’s robe and heedlessly pasted grey medicine cream on the huge patch of purple boil that was on his stomach. The grey medicinal cream was negating the effects of the dark purple aura as it became entangled.

The sorcerer drew in a cold breath with a huff. He dropped his sorcerer’s robe and stored the medicinal cream away like it was some kind of treasure.

“Caw? Does it mean… we’re rich!?”

Little Myna shrieked out in excitement. It seemed like it could not wait to plunder all of the treasures in this place. Beneath the Mask of Truth, Grimm too appeared to be joyful.

The resources needed to set up an experiment to observe the destructive energies was like a bottomless pit. One of the reasons Grimm came to this world was to pillage their wealth to support his future experiments.

“Hahahaha…”

Wicky was laughing raucously. The huge hammer in his hand rotated in high-speed and shrunk into a tattoo on his skin in a lively manner.

“Who’d knew we’d have such great luck. Master, are there any other resisting forces up there?”

A hundred meters away, a sorceress spoke in a low voice. “The treasure vault is sealed using an opposing infernal energy. To open it up according to the normal sequence, you would have to release the appropriate complementing infernal energy.”

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh…

The party of more than ten Demon-Hunter Dark Sorcerers flew up to a huge door of an enclosed chamber. They found a place with four fingerprints. That must be where they entered the password using their infernal powers.

There was a bone-chilling aura being exuded from the enclosed chamber. It felt like the coldness was about to penetrate into their bones.

Wicky was the most anxious one amongst the crowd. The essence of earth vein seemed to be of great concern to him.

Wicky placed both his hands on the wall and released a faint ripple. He was trying to sense the situation within the enclosed chamber.

“Damn it! Opening it up by force will trigger the self-destruct device within the room. This world had actually evolved to the extent of having such a device.”

No wonder Wicky was taken aback.

In a world where the inhabitants evolved by practicing the Infernal Swords, though there might be some simple mechanisms, they would normally not reach this level of refinement.

In Grimm’s mind, he thought about how things went down.

The Demon-Hunter Sorcerers must have found out about the treasures of this Flame Burrow by accident. Out of greed, they would not destroy it nor reach out to other Demon-Hunter parties for help. They would not tell others about this place and have their wealth watered down.

On the other hand, the Acraepoids did not wish to abandon their treasures as well. They would send in groups to repel them like what had just happened.

Beneath the Mask of Truth, Grimm’s pair of eyes lit up. The eternal flame was lit as he pressed his palm on the wall.

Huff…

The eternal flame was converging with the cold air. Quite a while later, Grimm retracted his eternal flame. He shook his head and gave up.

“To use up the energy reserve of the device inside through external forces would take up more than a year. It’s utterly impossible. Looks like we have to get a specialist sorcerer if we want to unlock this room following the correct sequence.”

Thus, the sorcerers were surer than ever. There must be immense wealth waiting for them inside!

Was not the point of the sorcerer’s expedition to pillage the wealth of foreign worlds?

“Damn it, I have a friend who has great mastery in mechanical sorceries and elemental magical arrays, but I can’t get through to her right now.”

A Level-1 sorceress grumbled.

In her anger, she pulled her long hair and violently bit into a green apple.

‘Can’t get through?’

In a flash, Grimm conjured up a Null World Stone.

As he was about to list out the conditions, Claudia walked gracefully and looked at the uninjured Level-2 Demon-Hunter Sorceress.

“Master, do you know where the corpse of the owner of this treasure vault is?”

There was a grass crown on top of the sorceress. She looked at Claudia and sensed the ripple of a Rank-3 Honor Badge. After pondering for a while, she pointed at a charred, dismembered remains in a distance.

“When we were occupying this place at first, the Level-1 Acraepoids were guarding this Acraepoid. But we hadn’t discovered the secret of this place then, that’s why we killed them without much thought.”

Claudia nodded. With her tall, slender legs underneath her short skirt, she walked slowly towards the remains. She gently bent down and picked up a charred limb.

“I’ll give it a try. If I’m successful, I want to have first dibs on the loot.”

Claudia had a bewitching smile. Some of the sorcerers would be delighted by her smile and thought of her as friendly, which would make them relax around her. Some sorcerers would naturally resist her.

“Ok.”

The crowd set their sights on Grimm. Naturally, the Rank-1 Honor Badge sorcerer was without a doubt the sorcerer with the absolute authority here and had the right to determine how the loot was going to be divided.

After giving consent, Grimm continued on, “I’ll take all of the essences of earth vein.”

With a smile, Claudia gently placed the palm of the charred limb on top of the door. Pink scorpions that were the size of fingernails crawled up from Claudia’s skin and burrowed themselves into the charred limb.

A while later.

Nothing happened to the enclosed treasure vault, yet Claudia flashed a confident smile. She started to chant some incantations. A negative energy that belonged to the occult of life and death started to fill the air.

Buzz…

Kachak, kachak, kachak…

It looked like the charred limb was given a second lease of life in Claudia’s hand. The hand injected a weak sequence of infernal energy into the door which matched perfectly with the cold aura. After that, the sound produced by the friction between metal chains could be heard.

Rumble!

The door to the treasure vault had been opened. The crowd could not wait to look inside. Everyone, including Little Myna, was stunned.

“Caw caw caw, cawcawcawcawcaw, we’re rich, rich, rich…”

Little Myna was salivating. Crystals of various colors filled its eyes, as well as hundreds of thousands of soul essences, wonderful ores, and exclusive broken branches. There were also small containers that were filled with various precious liquids.

“Wow! This… this is the Wood of Traverse! A legendary precious wood that could be used to communicate with the traveling fires!”

A Demon-Hunter Dark Sorcerer walked up to the long wood and could not contain his excitement. Although he wanted to make it his own, he did not do so due to the Dark Sorcerers rule.

Wicky rushed excitedly in front of three small containers that were filled with black liquid. Beneath his metal helmet, his eyes were fixated on them.

Certainly, those were the essences of earth vein.

Grimm walked past pieces of level one and level two crystals. After stopping at some precious-looking level three crystals, his eyes were attracted by some of the natural elemental souls amongst the hundreds of thousands of soul essences.

For the Acraepoids, there was not much distinction between natural elemental souls and normal souls. They had all been distilled into essences by some special means and lumped together!

The rest of the Demon-Hunter Sorcerers soon realised this as well. Two of them set their sights on the floor.

“Huh!”

A black metal caught Grimm’s eyes. He was astounded as he mumbled,” Mysterious Metal… they even have this in this world?”

Lefay’s grandfather was a great Level-3 sorcerer. He had clearly said before his passing that those who could unlock the secrets of the Mysterious Metal would one day become a distinguished sorcerer.

Grimm then found out that the metal could induce mysterious forces by melding with flesh. Although it was great, it was not earth-shattering.

Claudia stopped in front of a huge ember. Her eyes were fixated on an insect about the size of a palm that was sealed in the ember. She appeared to be contemplating about something.

A while later.

A Level-2 sorcerer appeared to have sensed something and abruptly said to Claudia, “Close the door to this treasure vault.”

“Huh?”

Claudia came to from her deep contemplation. She suddenly thought of something as well. Kachak, kachak, kachak. With the sounds of metal chains, the huge door of the enclosed chamber was shut off in a rumble.

“Looks like we’re gonna have to move fast to distribute the treasures before they destroy this Flame Burrow. Heehee, I’ll take this.”

As the sorceress who unlocked the room, Claudia was the first to pick out a treasure. She chose the mysterious piece of ember.

Grimm chose to have the black metal and a few pieces of natural elemental souls. He also quietly stored the three bottles of essence of earth vein. The rest of the Demon-Hunter Sorcerers too started to loot the treasures for themselves without stopping.

Everyone was overjoyed by the huge windfall.

A while later, a rumbling sound came through, shocking everyone in the enclosed chamber. Grimm called out loudly, “The Flame Burrow is about to collapse, it’s free for all now!”

Everyone was prepared for this. With Grimm’s words, they manipulated the nature force to move the treasures around them. Grimm and Little Myna tore open dimensional gaps to store the huge piles of crystals.

Rumble…

Before the Flame Burrow collapsed completely, the group rushed out in haste.

Grimm looked at the collapsed rubble in a pitiful manner. In the final moments, quite a huge portion of the treasures had been destroyed after the group broke through the enclosed chamber.

It was the terrible nature of the Dark Sorcerers.

They would rather destroy the wealth than to share them with the other Demon-Hunter Sorcerers that would arrive later at the Flame Burrow.

After looking at each other, the sorcerers wiped away their joyful expressions and reverted back to inconspicuous members amongst the millions of Demon-Hunter Sorcerers.

As the beneficiaries of the Demon-Hunter expedition, the wealth derived by the chance discovery had far exceeded the average income of the other Demon-Hunter Sorcerers.

The sorcerers turned and left.

Grimm took out two out of the three bottles of essences of earth vein. Calmly, he said, “Twenty-eight grams in total.”

“Hahaha, good, here’s twenty-eight Sorcerer Essences.”

Wicky seemed delighted. With his big hand, he took out a lump of Sorcerer Essences from his sleeve and broke it into a smaller portion. He handed over the essence to Grimm in exchange for the essences of earth vein.

On the other hand, Claudia was melting down the outer portion of the mysterious ember with nature force.

After storing away the Sorcerer Essences, he took a look at Little Myna who was very much delighted, so much so that it was on the verge of insanity. That little guy took as much as Grimm at the last moment.

Grimm had always been suspicious. Perhaps this little guy had accumulated an obscene amount of wealth, hidden somewhere in the depths of the dimensional gap, unspent due to its scrooge nature.

“Alright, let’s move on to find Solumn and Millie.”

Grimm led the group ahead on their journey.