"Chip, organize the target's memory! Pull up the data as I require!"
[Ding! Task established. Beginning analysis! Extracting from target!]
Now a master of soul research himself, with the Chip's assistance, Leilin found what he wanted within mere seconds.
"Ah... what are you doing?! I won't let you get away with this! I curse you! I curse everything about you!"
After having his soul extracted, Ivec's body naturally died immediately. But as a being in a half-luminous state, he still retained the ability to speak. Fragments of information flowed from the soul, punctuated by several screams of agony.
Having one's soul memories forcibly extracted was far from a pleasant experience.
"Oh! So you have a brother you don't get along with, and he also died under my curse this time. What a pity!"
Streams of data scrolled before Leilin's eyes. "But it doesn't matter. Dead is dead. Don't tell me you think this is over?"
"Void Assassins!" He waved his sleeve, and a translucent phantom immediately materialized beside him.
These were his spoils from the Crimson Ruins. Each one possessed strength at the peak of the Third Rank, and combined with their ability to traverse the Void, even a Morning Star Wizard had to tread carefully around them. On the South Coast, they were virtually invincible.
"Based on this data, kill every friend, apprentice, and subordinate that this person holds dear!"
Leilin pressed his hand down, sealing Ivec's soul directly into the head of a Void Assassin. "Let him watch everything happen with his own eyes. And when you're done, sink directly into the underground magma. Let his soul be scorched for all eternity..."
"As you command!" A mechanical voice echoed from the Void Assassin, and then its entire body vanished into the Void. Only Ivec's final, desperate screams seemed to linger across the land, reverberating back and forth.
"Are you satisfied with how I've handled this?"
Leilin turned his head to look at Krupp.
"Satisfied! Completely satisfied! Whatever the Ancestor does is the right thing to do!" The moment Leilin's gaze fell upon him, Krupp's entire body tensed up.
Thinking back to the Ancestor's methods just now, even though Krupp considered himself well-acquainted with the dark side of the Wizard World, he couldn't help but break into a cold sweat.
"To exterminate an entire bloodline like this, not even sparing friends and apprentices in the end..."
Krupp wiped away the cold sweat inwardly. "This ancestor probably wasn't a good person back in the day either..."
"Let's go! Otherwise, some more insects will come to disturb us!"
After dealing with Krupp, Leilin glanced at the horizon and beckoned to Krupp.
"Also, bring her along. At least wait until we reach the next town before dumping her. She came with me, after all — dragging her into this indiscriminately wouldn't be right..."
Just as they were about to get into the carriage, Leilin seemed to remember something and pointed at Darenlai.
But at this point, the female wizard had already been completely stunned with terror.
"Neighhh!" Horses wreathed in black flames, reduced to nothing but skeletons, stomped across the ground leaving trails of fiery hoofprints — like nightmarish beasts from legend.
The massive carriage hurtled down the road like a black whirlwind. Inside, Krupp sat stiffly to one side, only daring to steal occasional glances at Leilin's black leather boots.
Darenlai remained in her dazed state, huddled in a corner with her arms wrapped around her shoulders, trembling faintly.
Everything that had just transpired had dealt a tremendous blow to the female wizard's consciousness. In truth, had it not been for Leilin's deliberate protection, neither she nor Krupp would have survived the initial eruption of Ivec's power.
However, for this female wizard, surviving wasn't necessarily a fortunate thing.
The fall of a Third Rank powerhouse, along with the accompanying curse of annihilation — Darenlai could imagine what kind of tremendous storm this would stir up on the South Coast.
And as a firsthand witness to this event, her prospects were grim. Though the White Wizards tended to uphold order, when their interests were at stake, they would be the first to trample the rules.
Whenever Darenlai closed her eyes, she could almost see an army of high-ranking Wizards prying open her skull and extracting her brain tissue.
Though this sounded like something Dark Wizards would do, Darenlai knew full well that many White Wizards possessed memory extraction techniques no less impressive — they could replicate every thought she'd ever had from childhood to adulthood, without missing a single detail.
As for what would happen to her real body afterward, that was something no Wizard would care about.
Sacrificing herself for the greater good, for all the White Wizards — she should have considered it an honor and willingly given up everything, right?
Only when she truly felt the crushing weight of this overwhelming force did Darenlai realize how utterly powerless she was. Though she had once been filled with pride in the White Wizard system and its glory, she now wished nothing more than for all of them to be destroyed immediately.
When life and death hung in the balance, everything could be discarded.