Leilin gazed at the endless sea of black flowers stretching into the distance, simultaneously estimating their progress.
As long as they could finish harvesting the Dark Datura here as quickly as possible, the headquarters would surely no longer have any reason to keep them stationed here.
Meanwhile, within the flower sea, the apprentices Leilin had seen before were carrying simple containers woven from green vines, their hands coated in a ring of dark energy-particle film, carefully harvesting the Dark Datura.
"At this rate! It's far too slow!"
At this pace, Leilin estimated it would take at least another month before this flower sea could be completely cleared.
And the opposing Dark Wizards would never give him that much time — not by any stretch.
"We need to find some way to speed things up!"
Leilin crouched down, layering his hand in a shimmer of black magical aura, and touched the petals of a Dark Datura directly. At the same time, a faint flicker of blue fluorescence passed through his eyes.
Ding-a-ling!!!
Just at that moment, a string of shrill sounds like bells suddenly rang out.
Buzzing! A white light barrier erupted from the perimeter of the Datura flower sea, firmly enclosing it.
"The defensive magic array has been activated!!! There are intruders!!!"
An apprentice shouted: "Everyone, be careful!"
Whoosh! At the same time, a dark figure shot out from the bushes beside the flower sea.
Crack! Crack!
Two massive white skulls emerged from the dark figure's hands.
The skulls had no bodies and floated eerily in midair. Within their pitch-black eye sockets, two clusters of red flames burned ceaselessly.
The enormous skulls opened their maws, and their fine, sharp white teeth bit directly into the white light barrier.
Rumbling! Trembling!
The white light flickered unsteadily, as though it might shatter at any moment.
"Hmm?" Seemingly dissatisfied with his own strike, the dark figure let out a sound of surprise. Then a ring of dark energy-particle light flickered across his body.
The dark energy ring instantly blazed with a deep, profound glow, then split into two streams of luminescence that shot toward the skulls.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The red flames within the white skulls' eye sockets surged violently, and the skulls themselves swelled to several times their original size. Moreover, cracks appeared across their surfaces, as if the force expanding within was so overwhelming that it was literally splitting them apart.
As their bodies swelled, the power of these two spells surged in tandem. The white barrier of light kept retreating backward until, under the desperate gaze of the apprentices, it shattered apart.
"A semi-elementalized Wizard? We're finished!"
One of the more knowledgeable apprentices collapsed to the ground, his face awash with despair.
"Don't be afraid! Lord Lei Lin is a full Wizard too!" George clasped the trembling little hand of Xirui beside him.
"What do you know?!" the apprentice who had collapsed earlier screamed in desperation. "Our side only has a freshly minted Wizard who was pushed out and sent here as a castoff! The other side is at the very least a powerful Wizard who's been at the full Wizard stage for decades! As a first-tier semi-elementalized Wizard, every spell he casts automatically gains nearly half again in power! For any newly advanced Wizard, that's essentially a death sentence!"
As if convinced that his end had come, the apprentice had thrown everything to the wind, and his respect for Lei Lin had evaporated along with it.
"Heh heh heh! What an interesting explanation! And quite accurate too!"
The dark figure strode leisurely into the sea of flowers, revealing himself before Lei Lin and the others.
He was a young Wizard with green hair, wearing a bizarre black robe embroidered with several green skull-and-chain motifs.
"Kuruti Academy—known for necromancy and the torture of flesh!" Lei Lin's eyes flickered as he recognized the origin of the Wizard before him.
Kuruti Academy was nothing more than a minor dark wizard faction lurking on the fringes of the South Coast.
It was a hotbed of madmen, perverts, and every manner of lunatic. Even other dark wizards could barely tolerate them, which was why they were consistently excluded from any coordinated operations and left to scrape by on stray adventures and odd jobs.
The green-haired Wizard stood with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing at the field of black mandrake flowers with undisguised greed.
"What an intoxicating scent… I feel as though I can smell the fragrance of darkness itself…" the young man murmured.
Then he turned his head, and a pair of emerald-green eyes locked directly onto Lei Lin.
"White Wizard! Kneel before me—the great Lord Ciel! Surrender your soul and your loyalty, and I might perhaps consider taking you on as a servant…"
This Wizard called Ciel carried himself with supreme arrogance, and Lei Lin understood the source of that pride.
A Wizard's true age could not be judged by appearance alone, but based on the energy fluctuations he had inadvertently leaked, Lei Lin could estimate that Ciel was no older than fifty.
To have reached semi-elementalization at such a young age—this Wizard Ciel certainly had grounds for his pride. It was simply a shame he seemed to have chosen the wrong person to flaunt it before.
Lei Lin smiled and was about to speak when the apprentice who had collapsed earlier scrambled forward on all fours, threw himself at Ciel's feet, and began kissing the ground before him.
"Respected Lord Ciel! I am willing to submit to you! I will be your most loyal servant!"
The apprentice's action clearly caught many off guard.
A number of Lei Lin's apprentices wore expressions of open contempt on their faces—they clearly had never suspected that someone who had seemed perfectly decent in everyday circumstances would turn out to be this kind of person when it truly mattered.
On the faces of the remaining apprentices, barely concealed expressions of inner conflict flickered and struggled to stay hidden.