Next came the most valuable harvest of this expedition.
Leilin looked at the few items before him, falling into deep thought.
Laid out were several rather battered objects: a dagger broken in half, a mangled silver hand, and half a length of silver chain that still sparked intermittently with arcs of electricity.
The three apprentices who died at Leilin's hands were all wizard seeds from the opposing academy. How could they possibly not carry Magical Items on them?
But unfortunately, the half-dagger he'd obtained from the blonde-haired female apprentice seemed capable only of summoning abyssal aura. Leilin hadn't yet figured out any other uses for it.
As for Silver Claw Sorin, he was a complete freak, having actually fused his Magical Item entirely into his own palm.
In the end, Leilin could only chop the entire hand off, to attempt separating the Magical Item from it later.
Then there was Tolezas from earlier. The Magical Item on his person had been self-destructed by him, which was also the reason he could unleash that final, sixteen-degree attack.
Exploring Magical Items was an extremely dangerous endeavor. Without more information, Leilin didn't dare rashly use these things.
Furthermore, there might well be hidden mechanisms or traps left behind by the enemy on these Magical Items. Leilin felt he needed to inspect them carefully.
If he discovered any problems, Leilin, no matter how reluctant, would have no choice but to discard these broken Magical Items entirely within the secret realm.
After all, he didn't want to become the target of a full-fledged Wizard from the enemy side.
"In fact, there was still another Magical Item on the scene, which would have been effortlessly obtained! That was the green vine badge on Jiamen!"
Leilin had seen Jiamen use this Magical Item while they were on the Airship, where he subdued Kreweir in an instant, leaving a deep impression on Leilin at the time.
But this badge had been gifted to Jiamen by his mentor, Duolote.
And Duolote was a formal instructor at Black Bone Forest Academy. If Leilin forcibly took an enemy's Magical Item, he could probably stay safe as long as he remained hidden within the Academy. But if he took Jiamen's, Leilin would never be able to show his face in Black Bone Forest again.
Having a reputation for betraying a fellow student during the Academy's time of crisis would make him a social pariah in the wizarding world.
He wasn't about to lose his reason over such a small benefit.
"And this!"
Leilin flipped his hand, and two badges of different designs appeared directly in his palm.
These were the badges from Sorin and the blonde-haired female apprentice. Though they were less valuable than the previous Lightning Thrower's, they were still worth at least twenty to thirty contribution points.
"I'll keep them for now. As long as I can find other badges later, I won't need these!"
These two badges served as Leilin's insurance. If he could collect other badges during the Blood Battle and accumulate fifty contribution points, he wouldn't use these.
But if his contribution points fell short, Leilin would have no choice but to hand over one or both of them.
As for Torresas, Leilin figured that with his strength, he must have been highly regarded at the academy. His mentor had surely poured an enormous amount of effort into him, so it was best not to provoke him.
……
Two days passed in the blink of an eye.
The wasteland outside the secret realm stretched out in a pale yellow expanse, with gusts of sand and wind rising from time to time. Every living creature on the surface gave this area a wide berth — even moles and ants were no exception.
The entrance to the secret realm was steadily contracting, undulating like a living organism.
Outside the entrance, the deans and mentors from the three academies watched as various rays of light flickered across the shrinking portal, each wearing a different expression on their face.
Slaye glanced at the silver hourglass hovering in midair. In the upper chamber, golden grains of sand continued to trickle down one by one, and now only a thin final layer remained.
Drip!!! As time ran out, the last golden grain of sand fell.
"Time's up — let's bring our students out!" Slaye spoke, his voice low and deep.
"Rather eager, aren't we?" Gu Lu chuckled darkly from the side. "Every additional minute that passes means another Black Bone Forest apprentice inside has been killed. Their heads will hang upon the gates of our Gothic Sages' Hut as trophies of our glory…"
"By now, there may not be a single Black Bone Forest apprentice left in there. We all know that once apprentices from two academies band together, the Black Bone Forest lot become nothing more than meat on a cutting board — utterly at their mercy, worse than lambs to the slaughter…"
The blonde woman on the other side wore a smile on her face, though it looked rather ghastly.
"Ligula, can you still not let it go?" A flicker of expression finally crossed Slaye's face — it looked almost like guilt?
"I forgot about all that long ago!" The blonde woman, Mingula, kept her face as cold and stiff as if a layer of frost had settled over it.
"Whatever revenge you want for what happened back then, I'll allow it. But if you try to destroy the academy I inherited from my mentor, you will be my enemy for life!"
Slaye's expression hardened as well.
"Haha… haha… you're just as proud as you always were — thinking you're the protagonist of some novel, that everything in the world must revolve around you!"
"But looking at that expression of yours really makes me want to vomit!" Flames seemed to burn in the blonde woman's eyes.
"I intend to destroy everything you've built your entire life on — to bring down Black Bone Forest Academy. Even if the Nightwatch Lighthouse intervened this time, there will be a next time…"
"Enough!" Gu Lu cut Ligula off from the side.