As Balack bowed, the strange black ring on his right hand emitted a layer of dim light.
All the radiance on the ring—shaped like two black snakes intertwined tail to head—converged into a dark, deep ray that shot outward at tremendous speed, striking Lucian just as he was beginning to react.
In that instant, Douglas's Spell Absorption Wall vanished, and the "Normal Free Movement" effect enchanted into his high-level Archanist badge dissipated. An antimage field sprang up around Lucian's body as its center.
Seventh-tier spell—Antimagic Ray!
As a combat mage, Balack was more cautious than the high-level mages Lucian had encountered before, like Traquille. He had chosen a targeted spell from the outset, activating his finest equipment to prevent Lucian from using high-tier magic items beyond his level, placing himself in an unassailable position.
The "Element" ring couldn't activate, and the structured magic was difficult to cast. Fortunately, this wasn't Lucian's "first time" facing an antimagic ray. He made an immediate decision to throw himself to the side, planning to rely on speed and terrain to dodge temporarily until the short-lived antimagic ray wore off.
Seeing Lucian's body leave afterimages as he moved—his knight rank was considerable—Balack was unconcerned. He smiled faintly, pointed a finger, and a tall, transparent force wall instantly materialized in front of Lucian.
With a crack, Lucian slammed into the force wall before he could change direction. Yet under such a violent impact, the wall didn't budge—it seemed impervious to virtually all attacks except for a handful of specialized spells.
Lucian didn't waste time. Using the rebound from the collision, he leaped to the side, then sprinted around the force wall.
The greatest weakness of this fifth-tier spell was that, unlike the Mana Prison, it wasn't fully enclosed—it was merely a wall!
Just as he was about to leap into the surrounding lake and use the terrain to slow the attack, Balack—who had gotten past his casting cooldown—fired a hazy gray beam from his right index finger. No matter how Lucian tried to dodge, he could only watch helplessly as it struck him.
Lucian's eyes went blank, and the areas where the ray had hit began to take on the gray-white texture of stone, as if a Stone Skin spell had been cast upon him.
The gray-white spread rapidly. In just one second, Lucian had been transformed into a dusty stone statue.
Sixth-tier spell—Petrification!
"Ha! A Primordial Devil—the fifty-third on the Purification Sequence—and so laughably weak!" Balack's triumph swelled after his successful strike, and he couldn't resist a few mocking remarks.
A Night Watch spy like him endured immense pressure every moment of his life. If he didn't seize chances like this to vent, he'd go mad sooner or later.
But mockery aside, he didn't let his guard down on anything else. He cast several spells in succession, binding the petrified Lucian in tight restraints.
"Mission complete—time to rejoin the Night Watch!"
Only now did Balack finally relax completely. After all, Lucian was the student of the Storm Sovereign, that Grand Archanist. Who knew whether he carried strange magic items or trigger-type magic scrolls on him?
Looking at Lucian, who now resembled a freshly mined stone, Balack's dark face broke into a smug grin. "Their orders were simply to eliminate the fifty-third Primordial Devil on the Purification Sequence, but I've captured him alive! Ha ha ha! When the Church publicly burns him at the stake in the Holy City of Lance, will the rewards, honors, and rank advancement be anything less than plentiful?!"
"Though I'll have to hide in the Holy City of Lance for a few decades. Fernando's fury isn't something the Holm Diocese can shield me from."
In the Holm Kingdom, the Night Watch operated almost entirely undercover. Once exposed, they were easily eliminated by the Magic Parliament.
With that said, Balack began surveying the surrounding landscape, trying to determine where he was, so he could bring Lucian back to the Tribunal and claim a merit unmatched in the last fifty years!
"Qilag Lake, southeast of Rantat?" After spatial counterflow disrupted the teleportation array, the arrival point was random. But judging from the time the spatial jump had taken, they shouldn't be far from Rantat. Balack made his preliminary assessment.
Then he cast the Shrink spell, transforming the petrified Lucian into a statue small enough to hold in his hand. Apart from the dusty gray surface, it was remarkably lifelike!
"What a shame you've blasphemed against the Lord's majesty and are destined to be purified by Sacred Fire. Otherwise, I could petition the Pope to have you turned into a blasphemer's statue for my collection room. You're the highest-ranked one on the Purification Sequence I've ever hunted down—though also the weakest by far!"
Balack gazed at the "Lucian statue" in his hand, venting his pent-up frustration and swelling arrogance. "Do you understand now? Without sufficient magic rank to match, no matter how great your achievements in the arcane, you're nothing but a phantom—easily captured or killed by a high-level mage like me with a low arcane rank!"
Mentioning his low arcane rank was like probing a wound in his heart. "Why is it that because I'm not good at the arcane, I have to be secretly mocked by classmates, teachers, colleagues, and other Archanists as trash, an idiot, a fool? Even as my magic rank rises again and again, they pretend not to notice? The girl I loved fell into the arms of that man I despise most—his arcane rank is only two higher than mine, and his magic rank is actually a whole tier lower!"
"Did you know? During one adventure, when I caught him secretly and slowly tortured him to death, how wonderful I felt—while that man who always looked down on everyone sobbed and begged for mercy, even offering to find a chance to hand his wife over to me. High arcane rank—it's really quite useless!"
If Lucian could still think, he would certainly have mocked Balack's personal failings and fragile sensitivity. Within the Magic Parliament, nobody dared openly ridicule a mage with high magic rank but low arcane rank. At most, they'd be considered to have limited potential with little chance of further advancement.
After venting a few more sentences, Balack forcibly reined in his emotions and prepared to conceal himself, fleeing into the Grand Cathedral of Radiance. He couldn't afford to delay any longer. The higher-ups of the Elemental Will, and the Storm Sovereign in Alina—any moment now, they might sense something wrong and use Divination to pinpoint his location and come after him!
No matter how carried away by triumph or how weighed down by frustration, Balack would never completely lose his reason. He still knew how to assess the situation and seize the window of opportunity.