Perhaps won over by the gentle smile on Raylin's face, the
"Me? Of course I'm not from around here!" Raylin chuckled, then turned his gaze upon the three Apprentices.
"There are still many things I'd like to ask you, but I just realized it'd be faster and more convenient to simply look for myself..."
Under his gaze, all three Apprentices immediately began trembling from head to toe, as though being stared down by some terrifying behemoth.
"Run!" Ailin shouted, positioning himself in front of the two female Apprentices, his lips mumbling an incantation.
"Pathetic! Far too slow!" Raylin shook his head, and three streams of black energy shot out instantly, sinking into the foreheads of the three Apprentices.
The three Apprentices' vision blurred, and without even a single sound, they collapsed unconscious.
Raylin walked over to the male Apprentice named Ailin, pressed his right hand directly atop the young man's head, and his eyes instantly turned pitch-black, the pupils vanishing entirely.
A flood of images and sounds replayed before Raylin's eyes like video recordings, while the Chip operated at full capacity, collecting and organizing every piece of information it deemed worth recording.
This was a spell similar to soul-searching, allowing Raylin to browse through the memories of low-level Wizards.
However, this form of magic was rather useless—it only worked on beings below the strength of a formal Wizard, and it required the target to be unable to resist.
When Raylin had come across it in the library of the
With his cunning and methods, infiltrating this small squad to extract information would have been easy enough, but Raylin couldn't be bothered with all that trouble, nor did he want to waste that much time.
Besides, no matter how well he disguised himself, the South Coast and the Underground World were bound to have many differences—these weren't things that could be bluffed away through acting alone. Rather than raising suspicion later, it was better to just act now.
"Underground language data collected. Designated as Dark Polar language. Stored in database..." The first thing the Chip collected was linguistic information. All he needed to do afterward was transmit these organized memories into Raylin's memory center, practice a few more times, and he would quickly master this common underground tongue.
Next came a wealth of geographical and factional distribution data.
Although Ailin's cultivation was very low and he had barely ventured beyond the eastern region of the Dark Poles, it still gave Raylin a better understanding of this Underground World.
Once all valuable information had been recorded, a cold glint flashed in Raylin's eyes. He began forcibly altering Ailin's memories, erasing every trace of his existence today—leaving behind only a false memory of a high-ranking Wizard of unclear appearance suddenly appearing to help them subdue the Six-tusked Giant Boar.
None of these Apprentices or Knights had anything Raylin valued, so he didn't see the need to spill any more blood.
Since there were no personal stakes involved, Raylin didn't mind showing a bit of goodwill.
After all, he wasn't a psychopath. He wouldn't kill someone just for the thrill of it.
However, this kind of memory alteration carried considerable risks. Raylin had shown no regard for Ailin's original memories, forcing his way through with brute force — it was pure luck that no lasting side effects had resulted.
Next, Raylin repeated the same procedure on the other four people.
Though what he obtained from each was largely similar, piecing it all together filled in quite a few gaps.
"I'll take this Six-tusked Giant Boar as your compensation!" Raylin said with a faint smile, glancing at the unconscious apprentices sprawled on the ground. The black ropes binding the Six-tusked Giant Boar suddenly constricted — bang! Blood sprayed in every direction!
A long while after Raylin had gone, Ailin finally woke up, rubbing his head. "Ugh… my head hurts so much… where am I?"
Then fragmented memories surged back into his mind. Scene after scene replayed before his eyes: "We ran into a Six-tusked Giant Boar, and that coward Blake ran off first. Thankfully, a passing lord saved us…"
Ailin looked at the enormous corpse of the Six-tusked Giant Boar in front of him and let out a cheer. "A massive specimen like this — how many Magic Stones could it sell for?! I'm rich!!!"
……
Whoosh, whoosh!
Fine streams of air constantly rushed past Raylin's ears. The scenery on both sides stretched and distorted, smearing into long streaks of light.
Raylin was hurrying toward Bott Town, turning over the information he had gathered from Ailin and the others.
This was indeed the Underground World, and moreover the first layer — the one closest to the surface continent. Unfortunately, it was only a small isolated region, completely cut off from the rest of the Underground World.
The Dark Poles — that was the name of this area.
Surrounding the Dark Poles were either territories teeming with vicious Dark Beasts or vast expanses of molten lava seas. These dangerous zones separated the Dark Poles from the outside world. Without the strength of a Morning Star Wizard, there was no way to break through them.
The only passage connecting to the outside had long been abandoned.
It was said that thousands of years ago, two Morning Star Wizards had waged a battle near the passage. The aftershocks of their spells had triggered a massive collapse of the earth's crust, and rocks weighing hundreds of millions of tons had completely sealed the corridor linking the Dark Poles to the outside world.
Because of this, the entire Dark Poles had instantly become an isolated island. Fortunately, the region itself was vast — by Raylin's estimate, roughly half the area of the South Coast — yet its population was only around forty to fifty million, so it could still sustain itself. This situation had persisted until the present day.
"According to Ailin's memories, the entire area is called the Dark Poles, and it can be divided by direction into five regions: the Eastern Domain, Western Domain, Southern Domain, Northern Domain, and Central Domain. They follow a system of independent city-states here — there's no unified kingdom or anything of the sort…"
In Raylin's view, every city here could be considered an independent force. Because the land was vast and sparsely populated, the rise and fall of these forces happened very quickly, making the situation appear extremely chaotic.
Raylin had no interest in the territorial conflicts among mortals. What caught his attention was the intelligence regarding the Wizard world in this region.
In the Dark Poles, the Wizard world had preserved the style of the ancient era to a relatively complete degree, still developing through private mentorship and the establishment of academies.
As for anything like formal schools, there was absolutely nothing of the sort in Ailin's memories.
Ailin and the two female apprentices were three disciples under the same mentor, while the Great Knight had been hired by them as a helper for their expedition.
However, what interested Raylin the most was the intelligence about high-grade Meditation Methods contained in Ailin's memories!!!
That's right — Ailin's memories were filled with a large amount of information about high-grade Meditation Methods. What's more, their mentor had once promised that if they could demonstrate sufficient talent, he would even apply to the academy on their behalf for qualification to cultivate a portion of a high-grade Meditation Method!!!
Compared to the South Coast, where major forces had tightly locked down access, the restrictions on high-grade Meditation Methods in the Dark Poles were clearly far more relaxed.
Those Wizard academies were fundamentally built upon different high-grade Meditation Methods as their foundation. Basically, all the high-ranking Wizards within the same organization cultivated the same high-grade Meditation Method, and the earliest academies were organizations spontaneously formed by groups of Wizards who cultivated the same high-grade Meditation Method, in order to exchange knowledge more effectively.
"A high-grade Meditation Method!" Raylin's heart surged with excitement.
But he quickly came to his senses. The underground world was the closest to the ancient era, having inherited much from the ancient Wizards. Moreover, due to the isolation of the Dark Poles, the Wizard environment here had retained the customs of the ancient era to a relatively complete degree, so it was perfectly normal for there to be many high-grade Meditation Method lineages.
"However, judging by the fact that an academy can be called a major academy just by having a Second-Rank Wizard presiding over it, the high-grade Meditation Methods here apparently aren't all that impressive — either they're incomplete, or they lack some specific resource..."
In Ailin's memories, the overall strength of Wizards here was still similar to the South Coast. Formal Wizards were lofty and rarely seen, while Second-Rank Wizards were the big-shot level figures who held dominion over entire regions. Even the capital cities of the five domains were actually under the control of Second-Rank Wizards.
"Overall, Wizards here have a much higher chance of coming into contact with high-grade Meditation Methods than on the South Coast. But high-grade Meditation Methods are still the core of each academy — aside from a select few, other Wizards or apprentices can at most access a portion of the content or a simplified version. And that Ailin's Meditation Method is exactly like that..."
During the soul search, Ailin's Meditation Method memories had naturally been recorded by the Chip as well.
Later, upon comparison, Raylin discovered that the Meditation Method this Ailin cultivated was quite interesting. It was suffused with an ancient flavor, giving him the same impression as the Eyes of Comos and the Sacred Light Candleflame, but with all requirements significantly lowered, and without any effect of granting special abilities or attributes.
After carefully searching through the relevant information in Ailin's memories about Meditation Methods, Raylin finally learned that what he was currently cultivating was a simplified version of the high-grade Meditation Method of the Eglasis Academy — his mentor's academy — called the Heart of Flames.
This simplified version enhanced Spiritual Power far more effectively than the
Furthermore, since it was a simplified version of a high-grade Meditation Method, there would be no problems whatsoever with transitioning to the authentic version if one were to obtain it later. Because of this, these simplified versions were distributed widely in order to identify apprentices whose constitutions were suitable for cultivating high-grade Meditation Methods.
"Treasure! The Dark Poles is a vast treasure trove of high-grade Meditation Methods!"
Lei Lin's eyes brightened frighteningly in an instant.