Crack!
Space stuttered for the briefest instant, then seemed as though nothing had happened at all.
The black spider totem began to dissolve slowly, and Anya's voice drifted out.
"You've grown old…"
Boom! The black sigil shattered into motes of light and burst apart, while the old man's face instantly turned deathly pale. Several of the plant roots running along his back snapped off, and a milky-white sap oozed from the wounds.
When the old man raised his head again, he seemed to have aged another few years. Gray-black death spots had even begun to appear across his body.
"Has this body's life force finally run its course?"
The old man looked down at the mottled patches on his skin and smiled bitterly, though the sharp gleam in his eyes had not dimmed in the slightest.
"Time…"
A long, heavy sigh echoed from the old man inside the cave. Then the glow winked out, and everything sank back into darkness.
……
Ailin returned to his room.
Beneath the dim light, rotting floorboards and patches of mold in the corners blended together, releasing a foul stench.
As a third-tier apprentice, he had at least been assigned a single room—but this kind of environment was clearly deliberate harassment!
But Ailin no longer cared about any of that. He kept replaying the scenes he had witnessed today over and over in his mind.
Patrols. Detection arrays. The young man. Those eyes…
"I've definitely seen him somewhere before! But why can't I remember?" Ailin rubbed his head fiercely, and then he clutched his skull as veins bulged at his temples and he let out a scream of agony.
The searing pain nearly blacked out Ailin's vision, and he collapsed to the floor, convulsing in writhing torment. It took several minutes before the agony gradually subsided.
Hot sweat streamed endlessly down Ailin's face, and he gasped in sharp, cold breaths.
"It again! It's happening again! Ever since I came back from the wasteland, I've been plagued by these episodes, and each time it weakens my soul talent a little more..."
Crack!
At that moment, the floor seemed unable to withstand his thrashing, and a piece of it was pried up.
A dark gleam immediately caught Ailin's attention.
"What... is this?" He curiously pried out the black object and placed it in his palm.
It was a ring, covered with some archaic runes on its surface, its color a dull, muted shade that made Ailin's heart skip a beat.
"A ring?" Ailin turned it over curiously. "It seems to have a faint energy fluctuation — could it be a Magical Item?"
If he could get his hands on even a low-grade Magical Item, it would be enough to keep him alive on the battlefield. At that thought, Ailin's breathing grew heavy.
Suddenly, a piercing pain shot through his finger. Ailin cried out and nearly flung the ring away.
"What was that?" Ailin stared in shock at his index finger, which now had a small puncture wound, a single drop of blood falling onto the ring.
On the rim of the black ring, a tiny thorn had emerged — clearly the culprit behind the sudden sting.
Whoosh! The moment the blood touched the ring, it was absorbed like water into a sponge. The black ring flashed once and turned even more ashen in color, its faint energy fluctuation vanishing completely, as though it were nothing more than an ordinary, powerless trinket.
"Could this be... the legendary bonding ritual?" Ailin scratched his head, not quite daring to believe it.
He didn't know much about Magical Items, but he was aware that some very high-grade ones couldn't be used by their new owner directly — they required a specific ceremony, and the catalyst used in such ceremonies was most often blood.
"Haha! Lad, you're thinking along the right lines!"
Just then, a voice rang out directly inside Ailin's mind.
"Who? Who's there?" Ailin looked around in alarm but saw no one.
"I'm right here in your hand!" the aged voice replied.
"You're... the ring?" Ailin's eyes went wide.
"That's right! Lad, how about we make a deal?" The old man chuckled hoarsely.
"No! I'm not making any deal with you, and I'm certainly not selling my soul..." Ailin's expression was resolute.
Wizards weren't reclusive people. Ailin had heard plenty of stories about ancient or otherworldly creatures that liked to toy with humans through contracts and harvest their souls.
"Oh? So you don't even want to repair your soul aptitude?" The old man let out a sinister laugh.
"Repair! Repair my aptitude?" Ailin's heart rate spiked.
"The mysteries of the soul are all within my grasp. If your aptitude had been poor from birth, that would be rather troublesome — but yours was affected after the fact. It can still be reversed..." The old man explained to Ailin in a calm, indifferent tone.
"Who exactly are you? Why would you help me?" Ailin suppressed the surge of excitement in his heart, questions still lingering.
"I am a fragment of residual memory belonging to the ancient legendary Grand Wizard Merlin..." The old man paused mid-sentence, nearly making Ailin collapse on the spot.