Diary of a Dead Wizard

“What is this thing?” Shaya looked down, not noticing that he now had an extra eye in the center of his forehead.

What Saul had given him was a white tooth wrapped in a gray transparent substance.

It looked like a beast’s tooth encased in gray amber.

“It’s a tooth.” Saul answered very seriously.

Shaya across from him rolled his eyes speechlessly. “I can see that.”

Saul smiled. “You’d better not know exactly what it is. Just know that if you’re in a critical situation with no other way to save yourself, this thing can cause extreme damage to both you and your enemy.”

Shaya’s eyes widened speechlessly again. “Then why are you lending it to me? For suicide? To avoid being controlled by Beth and becoming her slave?”

“It’s slow suicide.” Saul remained calm. “As long as you win, you can come back to find me before you die, and I can save you. If you lose, at least you can still get revenge.”

Shaya looked conflicted but still accepted the wrapped tooth.

Shaya stared at Saul with wide eyes, wanting to speak but hesitating.

Saul patted Shaya’s back. “Alright…”

The house around them began to shake again.

The orange cat Kate immediately arched his back, then stood upright after regaining his composure. “Those tree roots are coming again.”

Shaya was about to transform into a full moon again but was stopped by Saul. “Don’t worry about us anymore. Go directly where you need to go. Beth is recovering faster and faster—you don’t have much time left.”

“Eh?” The orange cat was stunned and asked first, “Then what about us?”

“Fight if we can win, run if we can’t.” Saul said indifferently.

“Ah?” Kate’s cat eyes widened.

But Shaya was decisive. “Fine, then take care of yourselves.”

His figure instantly disappeared, completely unconcerned about who would remove his pollution if Saul and the orange cat died under the tree roots’ attack.

He seemed to suddenly have much more trust in Saul.

After Shaya left, this originally unstable space was immediately invaded by countless thick tree roots and branches.

These tree roots and branches seemed to have their own consciousness. As soon as they broke through the room, they immediately launched an attack on Saul and the orange cat.

The orange cat Kate nervously prepared to find a gap to fight, but before he could act, Saul grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and lifted him up.

Kate: “?”

“What are you doing? Put me down quickly!”

But Saul said calmly, “The deal has been made. There’s no need to stay here anymore.”

Kate was even more confused. Looking at those sharp branches about to touch him, he was just about to cast a spell when Saul yanked him, directly interrupting it.

“Hey!!!”

However, the next second, Kate found that the entire world had suddenly stopped.

The damaged house, flying debris, roaring tree roots, sharp thorns…

Everything was quietly staying in place.

Only the hand behind him was still carrying him spinning in the air.

“What’s happening?”

Then he heard Saul’s voice.

“To leave this place, you need to see this place clearly.” Saul surveyed the world that had suddenly stopped due to his mental power suppression. “Just like Old Days Manor, if you can’t see the path before you clearly, you won’t find the exit.”

He lifted the orange cat and flew into mid-air. “Kate, actually, this city… is upside down.”

Without giving Kate time to understand, Saul closed his eyes.

The moment he closed his eyes, Kate suddenly felt dizzy and disoriented.

When he adapted to the dizziness, he suddenly found that the world had turned upside down.

Gravity was coming from overhead, but he wasn’t falling toward the ground.

“What’s keeping me from falling?”

Kate looked down to check, then was startled by what he saw.

The reason he hadn’t fallen to the overhead was that there were many fine rootlets under his feet, wrapped around his limbs and torso!

And these rootlets had extremely fine tips that were drilling into his body through the pores of his skin!

“Oh my!” Kate immediately struggled, trying to shake off the rootlets’ entanglement.

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t tear off the rootlets on his body.

Just as he was about to try lighting them on fire, he heard Saul’s calm voice again.

“Don’t be afraid.”

Saul also opened his eyes, saw the rootlets on his body, and didn’t care at all. He looked up and around.

The house Shaya had created collapsed with a thunderous crash, falling toward the overhead. Through the swirling dust, he could vaguely see many tall black shadows standing around.

In the distance were many square shadows that looked like high-rise buildings. Nearby were also several thin, long shadows resembling streetlights.

It was as if the nighttime city they had just left had actively come looking for them.

Saul waved his hand, and wind carried away the dust, making the surrounding scenery clear.

“My God!” came Kate’s weak exclamation from beside him. “Have we always been in this kind of place?”

“Yes.” Saul was also somewhat shocked. “So this is how Beth’s sacrifice works.”

Were the towering buildings around them actually buildings?

They were extremely thick, straight tree branches reaching toward the sky.

In Saul’s eyes, they looked like high-rise buildings.

Growing within these branches were hard nodules that looked like tumors.

And in the middle of the nodules were human heads.

Looking carefully, it wasn’t that heads were growing on top, but rather that people were wrapped in the tree’s fruit, with only their heads left outside, hanging limply.

Saul suspected that the shadows they saw at night and the pedestrians they saw during the day were all the souls of these people.

Dull and mechanical.

They were puppets completely controlled by the Inverted Tree.

Life and death could be easily controlled by another’s will.

Unlike the conscious Shaya, these trapped people probably still lived in that originally busy city full of false hope.

Until death, then being forgotten.

The rootlets on Saul and Kate’s bodies grew more numerous and penetrated deeper into their skin.

“What do we do? Will we also become like those people? Trapped here forever?” Kate’s voice was also trembling.

“Meow.” He couldn’t help but cry out again.

“Since we can already see the path clearly, we can find the exit back.”

After Saul finished speaking, the skin on his body suddenly began to peel away, revealing the black bones underneath.

As the skin disappeared, the rootlets wrapped around him suddenly lost their grip.

Just as the rootlets tried to continue forward to entangle Saul’s skeleton, several gray tentacles extended out, reversely coiling around the rootlets and gently twisting, snapping them.

Black smoke poured out from the broken ends of the rootlets.

That was pollution belonging to the Inverted Tree.

When Saul was still a first-rank wizard, he had once been afraid to tangle with the rootlets because of this pollution, but now…

Black viscous liquid was expelled by the suction cups on the tentacles, directly spraying onto the black smoke and staining the nearby rootlets.

These black liquids were like piranhas suddenly released into water. Upon contact with the black smoke and rootlets, they began desperately corroding and rapidly spreading, directly clearing out all the nearby rootlets.

Kate, being carried by Saul, was naturally also stained with the black liquid.

Seeing those corroded rootlets, he thought he would suffer the same fate and was so scared he kept “meowing.”

After crying for a while, he finally realized that the black liquid on his body only corroded the rootlets on him, while he himself was completely unharmed.

The surrounding branches and rootlets instinctively felt fear toward the black liquid Saul released, curling up and retreating one by one.

As large numbers of rootlets retreated, they revealed a point of light not far below Saul’s feet.

“There! There!” Kate immediately realized that was the exit from the Inverted Tree. “So it was underground all along!”

Saul looked up one last time at the overhead.

There was a black sea of fire, with countless human figures struggling within it.

Then he restored his appearance and flew toward the light point with Kate.

Passing through the light point was like crossing into another world.

With a flash of light, Saul and Kate returned to the bare tree stump with its very fresh cross-section.

(End of Chapter)