The early morning air was blessedly cool for once; even the lava river nearby seemed less scorching than usual.
The gates of the black city slowly swung open, and a small merchant caravan filed out.
Most of the caravan's members were black-furred folk of the unicorn race, and their chosen mode of transport was a massive creature resembling a snail. Its shell rose high in a great dome, with several openings cut into it for easy access to stored goods.
On the back of the largest snail mount, the cavernous shell held no cargo—instead, a space had been cleared out, and Leilin sat cross-legged inside it.
Though these snails were not especially fast, they made up for it with their smooth gait. There was hardly any jostling to speak of, and the shell even insulated against the external temperature. Leilin was quite satisfied.
Thinking back to the reluctance on Uma's face when they had parted, and the astonished expressions of Urke and Upoel, Leilin could not help but smile.
He had no intention of meddling in the affairs of these alien races. The sage among them had sensed the deliberately released fluctuations of Leilin's aura and understood he was not to be trifled with—nor did the sage want Leilin, a ticking time bomb, lingering nearby.
Thus, both sides came to an immediate accord. The unicorn race agreed to bring Leilin along on their next trading expedition, and this caravan would serve as his guide, leading him to a larger city.
Honestly, compared to the great cities where many different races lived together in harmony, the black city the unicorn race had built for themselves felt like a small rural town.
"Wogjin City! The largest city in the entire Land of Fire and Thorns—let's hope it doesn't disappoint!"
Leilin's eyes swirled with inscrutable light, but his hands were already moving with blinding speed.
Vast quantities of spellcrafting materials were pulled from his spatial ring and pieced together into a small magical array.
The entire process was utterly covert. Not a single sound escaped—not even the unicorn folk outside, or the snail beneath Leilin, noticed a thing.
A faint hum… an incredibly subtle pulse—discernible only to a Comoin warlock of Morning Star level—rippled outward into the distance.
"Go!" Two dim wisps of soul fire materialized in Leilin's hands and swiftly sank into the magical array.
Leilin then closed his eyes. A thread of soul power linked his mind to the entire array, and his consciousness seemed to pierce through the snail's shell to the outside world, spreading ever farther into the distance.
After a long while, Leilin opened his eyes and shook his head.
"Still no good. This is the absolute limit of what I can do from here. I'm afraid the two dukes aren't in this region…"
Leilin exhaled slowly, his expression conflicted.
An alien world was simply too vast. The current Molten World dwarfed the entire Central Continent in sheer area; finding two people within such an expanse was surely harder than finding a needle in a haystack.
Though
"Still… Morning Star strength is exceedingly rare, even in an alien world. If I were a Jupiter's Thunder wizard, I would probably first seize an existing major power here, then arrange for the other members to cross over…"
Leilin began imagining what he would do if he were Gilbert and the others, suddenly arriving in this world, and several lines of thought immediately presented themselves.
"I'll probably have to visit several large cities. Their intelligence networks should have the information I'm looking for!"
A sharp gleam flashed in Leilin's eyes, and he pointed a finger at the magical array suspended in midair.
Whoosh! A layer of crimson flame immediately engulfed the magical array and the two pieces of soul fire within.
Within the scarlet flames, the once-bulky magical array continuously shrank, ultimately condensing into drops of rolling liquid that seeped into the soul crystal.
When the crimson flames finally died down, all that remained was a fist-sized red crystal.
Within the crystal, two slender strands of silver-white flame intertwined, forming the eerie shape of a two-headed serpent.
"There. The sensing runic formula is locked in. I won't need to set up a full array every time from now on…"
Leilin tucked the crystal away with a relaxed expression, only to notice that the entire caravan had come to a halt.
"What's going on?" Frowning, Leilin opened the snail shell and stepped outside.
"Mr. Leilin! There's a battle happening up ahead—the fluctuations have reached Earth level! I ordered the caravan to stop and wait." A massive member of the unicorn race approached Leilin, his expression one of utmost deference.
He had once harbored reservations about the sage's plan, but after witnessing Leilin demonstrate even a fraction of his abilities, he had been completely won over. Now he looked at Leilin with nothing but reverence.
"Oh? I wasn't really paying attention just now."
Leilin nodded. A pair of enormous white feathered wings unfurled from behind his back, generating a powerful downdraft that lifted his body into the air.
The wide field of view immediately allowed him to take in the scene in the distance.
Energy waves raged wildly as two figures darted back and forth through the lava, sending sprays of molten rock raining across the sky.
"As I thought—Earth-level fluctuations." Leilin nodded.
This world naturally did not use the same classification system as the Wizard World, but it did possess supernatural power, and the divisions between its tiers were rather crude.
As far as Leilin currently knew, all beings possessing supernatural energy were divided into just a few tiers: Transcendent, Earth, Sky, and Star!
In Leilin's understanding, Transcendent was the bottommost tier—beings like Knights and Apprentices who had grasped a sliver of supernatural power. Earth corresponded to the rank of an official Wizard, with some exceptional individuals perhaps reaching second-level strength. By extension, Sky-level powerhouses were the equivalent of third-level Wizards. And Star level—that was the realm of myth and legend, aligning precisely with the Morning Star Wizards of the Wizard World.
The mere fact that the Star category existed led Leilin to surmise that this Molten World had once been influenced by the Wizard World—at the very least, some Morning Star Wizards had taken an interest in it.
Otherwise, the classification of that tier would not have been so similar.
As for the power system, the unicorn race members Leilin had seen so far relied entirely on physical strength. Only the sage he had encountered that day seemed to have awakened some form of magical ability, which was considered remarkable by their standards.
The two alien combatants fighting before Leilin now were inferior to the sage he had seen earlier in both energy intensity and fluctuation.
However, after watching for a while, Leilin made some new observations.
"Summoning magic? Or totemic power?"
These two aliens were clearly not of the unicorn race. One was enormously obese—its waist invisible beneath rolls of flesh—with a long trunk dangling down like an upright elephant, though its skin was a bright yellow.
The other was a green-skinned alien with an enormous head and a remarkably small body, yet it possessed extremely dexterous arms. Countless symbols and runic formulas slid from its fingertips, etching themselves into the ground.
"Ignite!" At its command, the patterns on the ground flared to life. The earth solidified, taking the form of a raging bear-like creature.
The elephant-like alien, meanwhile, conjured a pentagram array that emerged from its body. The next instant, space shattered, and a massive two-headed leopard descended from another dimension.
The two beasts locked eyes, then immediately tore into each other with savage fury, sweeping waves of massive energy in all directions.
"Both of them carry traces of the Wizard World's influence. It seems the rumors are true—in the ancient era, the Wizard World conquered countless worlds, absorbing their strengths and weaknesses, and giving rise to a multitude of different power systems!"
Leilin watched with keen interest, occasionally spotting traces of Wizard World systems in the way these two aliens channeled their energy.
But his leisurely spectator's attitude clearly provoked the two aliens opposite.
"Damn bird-man, what are you looking at?!"
The elephant-man bellowed and summoned a massive goshawk. Its razor-sharp feathers and talons gleamed like steel, radiating an aura of chilling menace.
The goshawk screeched and dove straight for Leilin, its enormous talons poised to rend everything in their path.
The other alien, meanwhile, slowed its hand movements, adopting the air of someone content to stand aside and watch the show.
"Unbelievable…" Leilin could not help but shake his head, staring speechlessly at the incoming goshawk. He had never imagined that watching a fight could land him in trouble.
"Summoning magic! Breaking it down further, it can be classified into elemental summoning, spatial summoning, bloodline summoning, and ultimately, otherworldly summoning! The summoning magic used here is probably the lowest-grade spatial summoning—capable only of instantly calling forth a contracted creature from within this world to one's side…"
Leilin stroked his chin, watching the goshawk swooping toward him, and a sudden smile crossed his face.
For some reason, the moment the elephant-man on the ground caught sight of that smile, a chill ran through his body—as though he had just made a terrible mistake.
Leilin's soul power invaded the goshawk's sea of consciousness, where he immediately discovered a contract-bound magical array. Its light flickered as it detected the foreign intrusion and began to backlash.
But the level of his soul power was far too superior. With barely a sweep, the elephant-man's inferior spiritual power crumbled, and his mental imprint was wiped clean. The great goshawk staggered in a daze, then immediately felt a surge of goodwill toward the white-winged figure before it, circling loyally around Leilin.
"Impossible!" The violent psychic shock, combined with the erasure of his imprint, dealt a devastating blow to the elephant-man on the ground.
He let out a strangled cry, spat out a mouthful of blood, and collapsed straight to the ground.
The other alien appeared to have been frightened witless, frozen in place on the spot.
Could a summoned partner be subdued just like that? The green-skinned alien felt as though its mind had crashed.
It actually felt a little sorry for its opponent now—one careless gesture had provoked such a terrifying existence. That white-winged figure was at least a Sky-level powerhouse, wasn't he?