Chapter 18
In less than ten minutes, the mercenary group, which had been employed by the three Apprentice Adepts, had almost been entirely wiped out.
The last four of them were covered from head to toe with blood. They were standing back to back, barely able to defend themselves against the attacks of the surrounding demons. On the other side, their employers, the three Apprentice Adepts, were casually standing there and watching the mercenaries get killed with a cold indifference. Unless they were attacked by the demons, they didn’t interfere the battle between the demons and the mercenaries. It was as if the deaths of these mercenaries meant nothing to them.
As the last four mercenaries were fighting for their lives, the three Apprentice Adepts were leisurely chatting with each other.
“The Elementium aura we sensed just now should have belonged to one of the local Apprentices. Why didn’t you let me capture them?” The cute and chubby faced girl grumbled at her large muscular companion.
“What’s the point of capturing him?” The man shook his head and continued, “Clearly this place has a well-built Magical Formation. We have been roaming around here for three days and are still unable to find the way to enter it. Without one of them leading us there, I’m afraid we wouldn’t be able to find that Adept Tower even if we spent another three days searching.”
“That’s exactly why we should’ve captured him!” The little girl spoke furiously. Perhaps due to the fact that her opinion was not accepted, she began to release her anger onto the creature she had captured in the birdcage.
As she muttered something under her breath, the internal space within the birdcage began to squeeze in on itself, shrinking. The compression of the space soon reached the body of the Demon Baby, and some cracking noises started to issue from its body. Hearing the sharp and pain-filled cries coming from the demon baby, the smile on this little girl’s face became filled with joy.
When the poor little Demon Baby finally imploded and crumpled into a pile of meat paste, little girl immediately waved her arms in the air and stamped her feet in joy, a look of extreme excitement covering her little face.
Seeing that the little girl had relieved her anger on her ‘toy’, the other two Apprentice Adepts breathed out sighs of relief.
The Snake Headed Apprentice shook his head and moved closer to the muscular leader, asking, “Are you sssure it wasss alright to let that ssscout get away? I’m sssure he’ll bring more guardsss here!”
“Guards?” The muscular leader laughed grimly, “This swamp is just an ordinary resource site. Do you think the Sarubo Family would really be willing to waste an official Adept to guard it? In my opinion, with the exception of Adept Anderson, all that’s left in this place are Apprentice Adepts. You really think we should be afraid of the Apprentice Adepts we are likely to find in this place?”
Snakehead Apprentice laughed hideously, his forked tongue flicking in and out through his lips, creating a gruesome sounding hiss.
“Thisss place doesss have quite a lot of rare materialsss that I need. In any cassse, it’ll take a while before those guardsss get here. I think I’ll just do a little sssightssseeing while I wait.”
After saying that, the Snake Headed Apprentice simply walked toward another swampy area in the distance.
Something really strange was occurring. Although the stony trail was not that far away from him, he didn’t notice it and walked right past. This was, in fact, one of the many defensive mechanisms of the Adept Tower. Only those internal Apprentice Adepts, who wore a Magical Talisman, could see the stony trail, while, in the eyes of any outsider, the trail was just another part of the swamp, no different in any way.
Watching as one of his partners disappeared into the fog, the muscular leader hesitated for a moment, then he just turned around and walked off in another direction. It was a rare opportunity to be in the private resource site of an Adept family. If he didn’t get himself something good before he finished his official business here, that would be quite a waste.
As for that bizarre little girl, either intentionally or unintentionally, they left her in the middle of those violent and bloody demons. Would she be hurt? This question never crossed the minds of these two male Apprentices. Honestly, perhaps the biggest and most brutal demon in this swampy land was the little girl.
Therefore, when Greem brought Ellen and the ‘strongest three’ here, what they saw in front of them was a cute little girl with a golden birdcage, standing right in the middle of a crowd of blood-covered demons.
At this moment, there was not a single member of the entire mercenary company that had not been torn into chunks of meats and scattered all over the place. While their broken corpses were being pulled apart by an army of Demon Babies, the little girl was standing right in the center of these demons. Oddly enough, no demons dared to get within ten steps of this little girl.
Not only that, but when the little girl bounced and skipped from place to place, those Demon Babies, who were busy eating, would roar at her in anger, then they would move aside and make way for her, not daring to really get in her way.
A mercenary, who had bloody stumps for legs and a single broken arm, was being gnawed on by dozens of Demon Babies. Barely alive, he raised his bloody and broken arm, waving toward the little girl, who was approaching him, and said, “Save me… save… me…”
With a sweet smile on her face, the little girl squatted in front of him and asked, in a soft voice, “I can save your soul from these demons. Are you willing to let me save your soul?”
The dying mercenary was surprised to hear that and immediately nodded his head. However, he didn’t notice that the girl had said the word ‘save’ in a vague and weird tone. If he had known the other languages the girl knew, he would have found out that when these weird tones fit together, she had actually said a word meaning ‘Consume’, which was from the Ancient Andes language in the Adept Continent.
After obtaining the approval of this mercenary, the smile on little girl’s face became even sweeter. She swiftly took out a milky white crystal ball from her pocket and placed it against the mercenary’s forehead. With a short and simple spell, the mercenary’s body trembled, and then the tiny flame of hope, which had just appeared in his eyes, died off.
A white shadow came out from his forehead and disappeared into the crystal ball.
The life force of the mercenary evaporated, and his bloody arm collapsed to the ground, never to rise again.
The Apprentices of the Tower had watched this all happen and were standing there, appalled at what they had just seen.
Their arrival had attracted the little girl’s attention. She walked straight up to Greem’s group, raised her head, and gently asked, “Hi! I’m the adorable Alice! Are you guys from around here?”
Greem and the others glared at this little Lolita, who seemed to be trying to make herself familiar with them, and didn’t get deceived by her disguise. Within the population of Apprentice Adepts, friendship, love, and humanity were all just beautiful words that had long since be thrown away. All that was left inside them was the desire for knowledge, resources, and power.
Those Apprentices who were naïve would die before ever reaching intermediate Apprentice. The thought of such a person reaching the level of Advanced Apprentices was simply too impossible to even be conceived.
Noticing that they were eyeing her crystal ball and birdcage, Alice quickly hid both of them behind her, quirking her lips and saying, “All of these things belong to Alice. You wouldn’t think of taking them away from me, would you?”
Ellen looked all over the place, then sternly whispered to Greem, “I thought you said that there were three Apprentice Adepts? Where are the other two?”
“Kerry went that way… he’s a big guy, and good at fighting… if he meets with this big sister, I’m sure something lively will happen…” the little girl pointed her finger to the East and spoke in an innocent manner. Clearly, she was referring to Madwoman, who was also carrying a huge sword on her back. “Jeffrey went that way… I think he said he wanted to look for some materials…”
What she said shocked the five of them, and their eyes took on ghastly looks.
No matter how many demons were killed, none of them would feel even the slightest bit of pity about it, but if those secret medicine plantations and gardens were found by these outsiders, perhaps all the Apprentices of the Tower would be punished by Adept Anderson.
Madwoman’s loud, braying voice instantly exploded.
“I’ll go that way and stop that guy!”
After saying that, Madwoman’s bulky body started sprinting toward the East. As she ran, she crushed the few Demon Babies who got in her way under her feet, making others screaming angrily, though none dared to move closer to her.
“I’ll go this way!” Hawkeyes said coolly, pulling up his cap and dashing towards the West.
For some unknown reasons, the caws of Scavenger Crows were heard from the sky, though they were hidden by the thick fog. The noise immediately followed behind Hawkeyes. Apprentice Leader Ellen rolled his eyes and murmured, “I’ll go and help him!” After saying that, he simply followed behind Hawkeyes and left.
In the end, only Evil Bugs, Greem, and the strange, unpredictable little girl were left at the scene.
“Are you going to fight me?” The little girl tilted her head and stared at the remaining two men. “Before we fight, don’t you guys want to know where we came from?”
“There is no reason to ask you anything. You have caused mayhem here, and you shall be punished for it. If I capture you, you’ll have to tell me everything. If I can’t defeat you, I’ll bear all the losses here. Now, show me what you can do!”
It was rather rare to hear Evil Bugs say so much.
But, right as he finished speaking, the black soil underneath the little girl’s feet exploded, and a huge amount of black scorpions burst from the ground. Each of these scorpions was the size of a human palm, had a pure black body and a pair of claws, and on their backs was a tail with a poison needle. The stinking smell of poison filled the air near these scorpions.
Although there was a distance of twenty meters between them, it was impossible to tell when Evil Bugs had sent these scorpions out, sneaking their way underground to hide near the little girl.
This little girl shouldn’t have a strong Physique. Thus, as long as she was poisoned, she should quickly lose the ability to cast any of her bizarre spells.
Before they had come here, Greem had emphasized the strange abilities of this little girl, therefore, Evil Bugs had no plans of experiencing it himself. He just wanted to knock her out as quick as possible.
But what happened probably made Evil Bug’s mouth drop.
An invisible barrier was created between the little girl’s feet and those scorpions. No matter how they slammed into it or pricked it with their tails, there was no way they could get past it. Slowly, when more and more scorpions gathered together, a wall of bugs was built up against the invisible wall.
One after another, scorpions stacked on top of each other, crazily attacked the invisible barrier in front of them, but, no matter how they tried, they just couldn’t break through it.