Warlock Apprentice

Chapter 3025: Chapter 3026: Island Strongman

"H-he, who is he?" Vay stared in shock at the man in the suit.

The other seemed to notice Vay’s gaze as well. His originally indifferent expression suddenly hooked up into a faint smile.

Under Vay’s gaze, the suited man slowly opened his mouth—

Vay knew the other was speaking, but as for what he actually said, Vay was completely blank. His sight had been enhanced by the Black Earl, but his hearing hadn’t!

Just as Vay was racking his brains, trying to read the man’s lips, Shayina and Gailuo also noticed the suited man.

Both of them were Official Wizards; if they wanted to see a distant scene, they had plenty of ways.

Now that the Black Earl had already given the answer, they only needed to follow Vay’s line of sight to see the suited man—how could they possibly miss this!

"It’s him, no mistake, the man from the third image!" Gailuo exclaimed. "Him showing up here is absolutely abnormal!"

They had to catch him!

This thought rose in Gailuo’s heart.

Gailuo didn’t even discuss it with Shayina before he directly turned into a streak of purple firelight, shooting out like a flaming arrow.

"Gailuo!" Shayina called out, but Gailuo acted like he didn’t hear anything. The purple firelight had already left the bow; it was hard to call it back.

Shayina stomped her foot helplessly, quickly moved into a nearby shadow, and sent a voice transmission to Elder Shu in the sealed space: "The suspect has appeared in the arena. Very likely he’s the attacker who controlled the Shallow Sea Strongman!"

Shayina’s words immediately drew the attention of Elder Shu and Xingye. They dismissed the shadows without hesitation and reappeared under the moonlight.

Before Shayina could explain, Elder Shu and Xingye had already seen the direction where the purple firelight was streaking.

At the same time, following the purple firelight, they saw that suited man standing atop the Sky Tower Registration Office.

It’s him! Elder Shu and Xingye reacted immediately.

They didn’t know why the suited man would appear in the arena, nor how Gailuo and Shayina had discovered him, but that no longer mattered. Catching him was the most crucial thing right now.

"I’ll go support Gailuo." Xingye said, and his body turned into scattered points of starlight. These stars rapidly dispersed, and when they gathered again, they were already several kilometers away.

In just an instant, Xingye was about to catch up to Gailuo.

The suited man, clearly, had also noticed their movements. He showed no surprise at all and instead said something in a low voice.

Even though Xingye and Gailuo treated drawing near to the suited man as their top priority, the other’s actions were still within their Observation.

Earlier, Vay couldn’t read what the suited man said because his hearing was weak.

But now, Xingye and Gailuo, relying on their five senses amplified by Bloodline Power, clearly heard the man’s voice.

"Guests for the game have arrived. Sekhmet, Tefnut, won’t you come and greet our guests?"

Putting the rest aside for the moment, the first thing Xingye and Gailuo focused on were the two names that came from the suited man’s mouth: Sekhmet and Tefnut.

Were those his companions?

So this suspected attacker might be working with a group?

However, after waiting two seconds, no one appeared around the suited man.

Is he messing with us? Xingye narrowed his eyes. No matter whether this man had a group or not, he had to stay here. As for those so-called companions, if they came, then staying would be their only option!

As Xingye’s thoughts flickered, endless starlight poured down from midair and, directly opposite the suited man, condensed into Xingye’s true body.

Right after Xingye revealed himself, Gailuo’s firelight also appeared nearby.

Xingye had actually arrived a step faster than Gailuo!

However, Xingye was more cautious. After coming to face the suited man, he didn’t strike immediately. Instead, he quietly observed the other while planting hidden pieces.

Gailuo, on the other hand, didn’t care about any of that. His body turned into purple fire, ignited an arrow in the Void, and shot it straight at the suited man’s chest.

Xingye did feel that Gailuo was being a bit reckless, but he didn’t stop him.

Letting Gailuo probe first was fine. Even if Gailuo’s strike hit the wrong target, Xingye had ways to clean up afterward; of course, if Gailuo killed the other in one shot, then most likely they had grabbed the wrong person, and his death could only be called an accident.

However, judging from the suited man’s indifferent attitude, Xingye didn’t think Gailuo’s purple fire strike could really threaten him.

Sure enough, when the purple flames turned into a piercing arrow, trying to punch through the suited man’s chest, the other gently opened his mouth: "The game hasn’t started yet. Attacks on the referee are invalid."

As his voice fell, the purple fire strike seemed to slam into an invisible wall and could no longer advance an inch.

A few seconds later, the purple fire slowly dissipated, revealing Gailuo’s shocked face.

The suited man continued, "Attacking the referee counts as a foul. For a first offense, your own power will serve as the punishment."

Before Gailuo could react, a violent mass of purple fire exploded in front of his chest.

"Boom—" With a deafening blast, Gailuo’s whole body was charred black and he fell from midair.

However, halfway down he was wrapped in a cluster of starlight and pulled over to Xingye’s side.

Xingye glanced at Gailuo...and couldn’t help but frown.

Gailuo himself hadn’t suffered any serious damage. The reason Xingye frowned was that on Gailuo’s charred skin, he sensed a special flame fluctuation.

...Purple fire.

This was the power of the special flame Gailuo himself wielded. It had originally been meant to attack the suited man, but now it had bounced straight back onto Gailuo.

Even so, because Gailuo himself controlled purple fire, being suddenly hit by it didn’t cause any major problems. Aside from looking pitch black on the outside, his internal organs were unharmed.

Gailuo’s body surface hadn’t taken real damage, but inwardly he was just as shaken as Xingye.

Why could the other control his purple fire?

Was it a rebound ability?

Gailuo’s thoughts were in chaos at this moment. But before he could sort out the mess in his head, the suited man opposite them spoke again: "The game is about to begin. You two guests should..."

The suited man broke off halfway through his sentence.

He slowly turned his head and looked to the other side.

They saw a sapling slowly rising not far away. In an instant, the sapling grew into a towering giant tree, completely covering the top of the Registration Office, not leaving the slightest gap.

"Looks like more guests have arrived." The suited man laughed.

His smile looked refined and reserved, but his trembling shoulders and the excitement at the corners of his eyes all betrayed the intense thrill he was suppressing inside.

In Xingye and Gailuo’s eyes, this was clearly a madman struggling to hold down his emotions.

On the other side, Elder Shu looked at Shayina beside him.

"Shayina, I’ll leave things here to you. I’ll go over there." As Elder Shu finished speaking, his figure began to blur, while the huge tree in the distance radiated a faint glow.

Obviously, that towering tree covering the Registration Office was Elder Shu’s doing.

Shayina: "I’m going too!"

Shayina had also seen that scene of Gailuo being blasted backward. Although he was caught in time by Clan Leader Xingye in the end, Shayina was still very worried about Gailuo’s injuries.

She wanted to go over and take a look herself.

However, Elder Shu only shook his head.

"You stay here." Elder Shu said in a pleading tone, "Help me take care of our guest, and keep an eye on Lucia... Don’t worry, I won’t let Gailuo get into trouble."

"And also..." Elder Shu added in a low voice by sound transmission next to Shayina’s ear.

Looking at Elder Shu’s earnest expression, and hearing the whisper at her ear, Shayina bit her lips, and finally nodded. "Alright, I’ll leave things here to me."

Only then did Elder Shu let out a sigh of relief. He smiled at Shayina, and in the next instant, his whole body faded into nothingness. Up above the Registration Office, however, Elder Shu walked out of that towering giant tree out of thin air.

The moment Elder Shu appeared, the man in the suit smiled even more happily, the corner of his lips curling up: "A new guest has arrived, so... the game is about to begin~"

The suited man’s voice trembled a little, not from fear, but from excitement.

"I don’t care what game you’re babbling about. Who the hell are you? Right now I only want to know, were you the one who stirred up those Shallow Sea Strongmen to launch this attack on Bilun Tree Court?" Gailuo stared hatefully at the man in the suit.

The suited man smiled. "Want to know the answer? I can tell you—but only if you clear the game... I’ll make the answer the reward for clearing this game, how about that?"

"Game? Hah, you think we’re all children?" Gailuo sneered. "You know the answer, which means you’re very likely the attacker! Even if you aren’t, you’re absolutely tied to them. So you have only two paths now."

"Surrender, or die!" This line was spoken at the same time by Gailuo, Xingye and Elder Shu.

Although they hadn’t touched minds, they were already in complete agreement on how to deal with the man in the suit! This was the tacit understanding forged from years of fighting side by side!

Faced with the thunderous roar of three Wizards acting as one, the suited man’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. He even looked as if he hadn’t heard them at all, continuing to talk to himself, "You’re looking forward to the game too, right? I’m really looking forward to it as well."

"It’s just a pity. I’d already made contact and invited Sekhmet and Tefnut to come play with you. But they got hopelessly obsessed with a ’whose fur is prettier’ comparison game, and no matter how I shouted, they refused to come out."

"So, I can only let Amit and Libiya be your opponents."

"Do you want Amit to play with you first, or Libiya?"

Gailuo: "I already said, no one’s playing your game, we’re just going to kill—"

Gailuo hadn’t finished speaking when the suited man suddenly glanced his way. "I hereby announce the first rule of the game: before the referee grants permission, no one is allowed to speak. Anyone who breaks the rule will be punished... Ah, wait, if none of you can speak, how do I punish you? Forget it, we’ll skip the punishment."

Gailuo’s lips curled in a cold smile. He wanted to open his mouth and mock the other party’s childishness, but the moment he opened his mouth, he realized he couldn’t make a single sound.

As if some strange power was pressing down on him.

Gailuo looked at the suited man in shock. Could the other guy be a Silence Wizard?

Gailuo’s abnormal state was also noticed by Xingye and Elder Shu. They secretly tried to speak as well, but no matter how they tried, they could not break through the obstacle of this "rule."

Among them, Xingye was the most shocked.

Keep in mind, he was a peak Second Level Wizard. Although he had not yet stepped through the threshold of True Knowledge, in terms of combat strength, he wouldn’t bat an eye even facing a True Knowledge Wizard head-on.

Yet now, he was being suppressed by some unknown Wizard using a bizarre power.

What the hell was going on?

More importantly, Xingye hadn’t sensed any Spell Technique like a "Silence Barrier" in the surroundings at all. The man in the suit across from them seemed to truly be grasping some kind of rule, and it was under the pressure of this rule that they were unable to speak.

"The effect’s pretty good. Now I announce the second rule."

"The second rule is that the referee is only a referee and does not participate in the game. Any and all attacks on the referee will be completely reflected back."

After speaking, the man in the suit looked at Gailuo and the others. "Want to give it a try? I’ll just stand here and wait for you to run your test."

However, no one made a move.

Gailuo held back because he’d already been hurt once by a rebound earlier, so he was even more cautious now.

Xingye and Elder Shu didn’t attack because they were sensing the energy changes in the surroundings. Before figuring out how to counter the suited man’s ability, they absolutely wouldn’t act rashly.

The opponent’s power was extremely strange, and he clearly carried himself with utter confidence. Very likely he was deliberately goading them into attacking. If they fell for it and ended up suffering instead, that would be bad.

Right now, what they should be paying attention to most was whether his act of setting rules had any effect on the surrounding energies.

Just like that earlier silencing effect, it couldn’t possibly be acting directly on their bodies. He must have tampered with the surrounding field in some way. As long as they could confirm this point, they were confident they could break it.

Their line of thought was correct, and Xingye and Elder Shu did faintly sense an energy fluctuation in the surroundings. But whenever they tried to trace the source of the fluctuation, it seemed to vanish without a trace.

"Third rule... let me think... Ah, there are no more rules. In that case, I’ll just explain how the game is played~"

"The rules are simple: free-for-all. The winners live, the losers die. How’s that?"

"Ah, I forgot you can’t talk. Then I’ll take your silence as consent."

"Next, back to my earlier question: do you choose Amit, or Libiya as your opponent?"

"I know you can’t talk, but you can point with your fingers~ I’ll let Amit and Libiya out right now. Whoever you want to fight, just point at them."

As the suited man said this, he narrowed his eyes and muttered softly, "Amit, Libiya, it’s time to come out and welcome our guests."

As his voice drifted through the air, two figures slowly took shape.

Both figures were enormous. From the perspective of an ordinary person, they were like mountains.

One was a crocodile-headed monster with four limbs sprawled on the ground, and the other was a yellow giant gorilla pounding its chest with both fists!

Leaving aside the former for now, the moment the people present saw the latter, they immediately recognized its identity... a Desolate Island Strongman!

Desolate Island Strongman and Shallow Sea Strongman, though they had different prefixes, if you traced them back to their source, both belonged to the same category: the Strongman line!

The Desolate Island Strongman’s Bloodline was quite pure as well. But unlike the Shallow Sea Strongman, which provided the Water Attribute tide-crushing power of battling the sea, the Desolate Island Strongman granted the Earth Attribute mountain-toppling power. There were quite a few of this branch in the Wizards’ Realm, but those Desolate Island Strongmen who had reached Wizard Level were extremely rare.

First a Shallow Sea Strongman of the Wizards’ Realm had appeared, and now a Wizard Level Desolate Island Strongman showed up.

Xingye and Elder Shu couldn’t help but make the connection.

Could there be some relation between the two?

Gailuo, however, wasn’t like Xingye and Elder Shu, who were still bothering to speculate. The instant he saw the Desolate Island Strongman, he was already certain the man in the suit was definitely an accomplice of the attackers!

There was no way it was a coincidence that two Wizard Level Strongmen of the same line showed up in Bilun Tree Court in succession. So the answer was already obvious.

Though there was no direct evidence, Gailuo firmly believed his own judgment.

In his words, this was a man’s intuition!

Because of that, Gailuo raised his hand without the slightest hesitation and pointed at the Desolate Island Strongman.

He didn’t give a damn about any so-called game. What he wanted to do right now was hammer this Desolate Island Strongman into the dirt!

Seeing Gailuo lift his hand to point, the corners of the suited man’s lips unconsciously curled upwards.

"Very good. Since you chose the Desolate Island Strongman, then the game... begins."