"Be careful!"
A companion of the approaching man shouted, giving a loud warning.
But the man only had time to turn around and swing his sword once before sparks flew.
The chain nimbly slithered along the blade, slipped off, and wrapped around his neck.
The man's face turned red, quickly suffocating from lack of oxygen, and he collapsed to the ground, lifeless.
The group behind caught up, stopping in their tracks to meet up with the two others who had been pursuing earlier.
Sure enough, they were all in it together!
Seeing Roy swiftly take down two men, they were all stunned and didn't dare act rashly, instead stopping to observe from a distance.
The leader, with a hint of probing, spoke up, "Roy?"
"Pimier?" Roy also recognized him.
He was a senior apprentice from the tower, also living on the third floor, and they had crossed paths several times in the ring tower's commercial street.
"So it's a fellow from the third floor, what are you doing wandering around here?" Pimier said.
After a moment of silence, Roy pulled out a big name to intimidate, "I'm here on Senior Olen's business."
The group immediately exchanged glances, "So are we!"
These men had received the same commission to help collect Chalk Soil in the Gale Hills.
Not long after, Pimier and his group took their dead and left, gradually moving out of Roy's sight.
"Pimier, was that guy also a senior apprentice from the third floor of the tower? He seems somewhat familiar, have I seen him on the second floor?" one of the team members asked with some confusion.
"His name is Roy, he was indeed promoted just this January, so it's normal you've seen him on the second floor before," Pimier briefly explained.
"I see... I wonder if he might have some of that Chalk Soil Senior Olen wants," another person started to scheme.
"Those two were just taken out like that, we can't let them die in vain!" others chimed in.
"Don't get any wild ideas, that guy's not easy to deal with," Pimier, also a senior apprentice, shook his head, his expression somewhat gloomy.
Taking out Roy, a fellow senior apprentice, wasn't something that could be easily done.
Even for him, it would require a very good opportunity to have any certainty.
He wasn't willing to risk himself for these followers; they were expendable after all, and there was no need to get himself involved.
The same logic applied to the Chalk Soil; Olen's affairs weren't worth risking his life over.
After some thought, the others also saw the reasoning and abandoned such notions.
If a conflict were to arise between the two sides, Pimier might not come out unscathed, but they would definitely suffer heavy casualties.
...
After confirming they were far enough away, Roy's face showed a hint of confusion.
"The strength of the man who just died wasn't great, seems like he was just a follower promoted from a junior apprentice...
Why take their bones away?
Looking at Pimier, it didn't seem like he cared about them enough to give them a proper burial.
There must be something fishy going on here!"
Roy didn't believe those people cared about their companions; if they did, they wouldn't have let it go so easily earlier.
So he mounted his Undead Warhorse and quietly followed them.
Unconsciously, Roy followed them for over ten kilometers, discovering that after passing through a valley, Pimier and his group threw the bodies inside, then set up camp at the sheltered entrance of the valley to rest temporarily.
Roy glanced at the sky and, under the moonlight, made his way to a nearby high point to survey the area from a distance.
What he saw, however, surprised him—things were far from simple.
"This is actually a corpse pit! And it's guarded by Stone Fiends!"
Before his eyes was a natural depression surrounded by small hills, with a stone pit at its center. Four towering Stone Fiends, each over two meters tall and resembling burly men, stood guard around it, silent as statues.
They bore a striking resemblance to the Earth Elemental Puppets Olen had once summoned, but their bodies were composed of more stone, making them appear even more solid and formidable.
But what truly caught Roy's attention wasn't the four Stone Fiends—it was the scene inside the pit.
The cold moonlight was unusually bright, casting an eerie and sinister glow over the scene below.
Numerous human corpses were scattered haphazardly in the pool, their flesh dissolving and fermenting. Some had even bloated to a grotesque size, resembling the phenomenon known as "giant's view."
Pimier and his group had just stripped two of their slain companions and thrown them into the pit, adding fresh material to this horrifying pool.
"These people have no boundaries at all!"
Roy marveled silently, trying to piece together the origins of this corpse pit.
"This must be Olen's doing. Could it be that the puppet he's trying to create isn't a Homunculus, but something else related to Necromancy?"
Roy recalled what Olinda had once told him, and a terrifying suspicion flashed through his mind.
It was the Necromantic Wizardry that the Wizard Tower of Nickmansha specialized in!
As he watched, Roy suddenly felt a familiar sensation wash over him.
That faint, stinging pain in his forehead…
It was the feeling of Inherent Essence!
The same feeling he had when he encountered the Fishman Lord!
A look of surprise crossed his face, but it was quickly replaced by worry.
"Pimier and his group are guarding the valley entrance, and the Stone Fiends are inside the valley. How can I get closer to investigate?"
He stared intently at the corpse pit, trying to sense something, but not even a translucent, illusory panel appeared.
"It seems I'm too far away. The sensation is too vague. I need to find a way to get closer and investigate.
But with my current strength, I'm probably not capable of dealing with both the Stone Fiends and those people…"
After all, Pimier was an advanced apprentice, skilled in some form of Wizardry, and likely possessed one or even multiple Enchanted Items!
Roy pondered for a long time but couldn't come up with a solution.
As he waited, however, he was pleasantly surprised to find that, by midnight, Pimier had assigned his companions to keep watch while he went to sleep early to rest.
While adequate rest was essential for long-term adventuring, this lax attitude suggested that their vigilance was limited.
"That's more like it. Warlock Apprentices grow step by step from weakness to strength…
Even after becoming a full-fledged Wizard, they can still make all sorts of mistakes!"
Roy concealed himself and, relying on his far superior mental sensing and shielding abilities compared to those intermediate apprentices, quietly approached the valley entrance where they had set up camp.
Then…
He found the upwind position and poured out the hallucinogenic potion he carried with him—the "Orchard Curse."
This was an Alchemical product he had successfully concocted before advancing to the rank of advanced apprentice, achieved through his proficiency as a Proficient.
So far, this remains one of the more challenging formulas at the apprentice level, still holding some value even for advanced apprentices.
As the scent of alcohol, reminiscent of fermenting rotten apples, wafted through the air, the eyes of the night watchmen in the camp gradually grew hazy.
Just as Roy had anticipated, they soon fell into the dreamscape conjured by the potion.
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