Translator: AnubisTL
High above, the biting Gang Wind was blocked by an invisible shield.
Jieming and David transformed into two elusive streaks of light, hurtling toward the next marked area where the suspected target had been active.
During this high-speed flight, David's eyes remained tightly shut beneath his visor. His surging mental power, like the most precise probe, meticulously examined the fragmented soul forcibly imprisoned within the severed head.
After a moment, he opened his eyes, his voice muffled through the armor: "Analysis complete."
"This guy was just an unlucky bastard," David concluded. "He wasn't one of the target's subordinates. He merely stumbled upon that illegal wizard recently and was forcibly infected by some unknown power, turning him into this monstrous form."
Within the soul fragments, only memories twisted by endless hunger and pain remained, along with the primal terror of the figure who had transformed him into a monster.
Almost simultaneously, Jieming completed his analysis as well.
He simultaneously activated his analysis art, alchemy, and Universal Eye, subjecting the twisted flesh to a comprehensive dissection.
Before him, a luminous screen projected by the terminal displayed Jieming's analysis of the wizard's bodily sample, revealing its most microscopic structural patterns.
"I've got results too," Jieming said calmly. "It's confirmed that the 'negative energy' this creature uses is essentially a negatively transformed form of vitality. His inhuman appearance is a direct result of prolonged exposure to and erosion by this energy."
Pointing to a constantly decaying energy chain on the screen, Jieming continued his deduction: "According to the model, his body likely suffers a constant, self-depleting loss of vitality even in its normal state. This explains his withered, ghost-like appearance. It seems he must continuously drain vitality from others just to maintain his existence."
Then, Jieming shifted his focus to the most critical and perplexing anomaly.
"However, based on the energy traces I've collected," he pointed to a set of alarming data on the luminous screen, "when that 'wizard' cast his spell just now, he must have wasted the vast majority of the vitality he had plundered—or, to be more precise, nearly all of it dissipated into thin air during the transformation process. Only an extremely small fraction of the energy was successfully converted."
"Otherwise, if we extrapolate from the total energy traces remaining on his body, he must have successfully absorbed the entire vitality of at least a hundred ordinary people. With such a massive amount of energy, even with a low conversion efficiency, the black fireball he unleashed should have possessed far greater destructive power."
After delivering this intelligence, Jieming lowered his head, falling into a brief moment of contemplation.
His mind, operating at a speed hundreds of times faster than that of an ordinary person, rapidly searched his vast knowledge repository for any information related to energy manipulation techniques.
A moment later, he shook his head decisively. "I can confirm that this method of energy manipulation is absolutely not part of the mainstream system used within the Noren Workshop."
A trace of disdain crept into the corner of his mouth. "The main problem is... this method of energy utilization is simply too inefficient. So appallingly inefficient that anyone who dared use it in combat would be laughed to death on the spot."
Jieming glanced up at David, who stood silently beside him.
David immediately understood his meaning.
His brow, hidden beneath heavy armor, furrowed deeply. After a moment of contemplation, he shook his head with unwavering certainty.
"I can also confirm that the original extraordinary system of the Elosia Plane never contained such power."
"While they possessed similar 'necromantic power' involving life and death, the fundamental nature of that energy was entirely different from this."
Having exchanged information, the two men locked eyes in mid-air, a peculiar glint in their gazes.
The enemy had demonstrated power beyond the scope of the Noren Workshop and the Elosia Plane's original systems, further enhanced by its specialized life-absorption capabilities...
Considering these factors, this was no longer a simple mission to apprehend a deserter.
"If our deductions are correct," Jieming suggested, "we should request additional reinforcement from the academy."
"Agreed. We'll likely need to expand the search area."
After that, neither spoke further, silently accelerating their flight toward the next marked city.
Silence stretched between them, but Jieming's thoughts were in turmoil.
He couldn't help but recall everything he had witnessed in the previous city.
Chuck, the child filled with fantasies and longing for "wizards," and the other children who treated "wizards" as mere bedtime stories.
It was clear that neither Noren Academy nor the local wizard rulers had deliberately emphasized their presence, nor had they actively concealed it.
Yet even so, in just over a century, the descendants of those modified survivors from the Elosia Plane had almost completely forgotten the brutal truths about "wizards," reducing that history of blood and fire to vague, distant legends.
Jieming couldn't help but remember his own transmigrated arrival in this world.
Back then, he too had believed that no transcendent forces existed in the world.
Looking back now, it seemed the lord who ruled that precinct hadn't deliberately concealed the existence of wizards.
Within the territory's legends, faint traces of "mysterious guardians" could still be found.
But considering that lord was a second-tier wizard with a lifespan practically eternal to mortals, what did mere centuries mean to him?
He might have simply become absorbed in a particularly fascinating research project, and centuries would have passed.
Or perhaps he had participated in a protracted planar war.
And while he was away from his territory, engaged in these "routine activities,"
the mortal inhabitants of his domain—with their fleeting lifespans of mere decades—gradually forgot the mysterious and powerful lord through generations of reproduction and replacement. It was only natural that they would forget the existence of transcendent forces in the world.
Memories fade, and reverence is diluted by time.
Eventually, reality becomes legend.
"Is this... the insurmountable difference in perspective between higher and lower life forms?"
Jieming couldn't help but sigh inwardly.
He suddenly gained a deeper understanding of Mentor Clark's earlier words.
Perhaps the so-called "maturity" Mentor Clark spoke of wasn't merely about emotional detachment and rationality.
It was more about completely and thoroughly transforming one's perspective into that of a true higher life form—a mature wizard!
No longer measuring gains and losses by mortal standards of time.
No longer allowing mortal emotional attachments to bind him.
Acknowledging and accepting the insurmountable chasm that now separated him from those ephemeral creatures who lived and died in a single day.
Only when he could truly think in terms of centuries and millennia, planning for the distant future, would Amy and Victor's deaths become like a mortal's faint, regret-tinged memory of a childhood pet they had carelessly let die.
Only then would he truly be considered a "mature" wizard.
As these thoughts flooded his mind, Jieming felt an indescribable mix of complex emotions.
He knew his road ahead was long and arduous.
And this so-called "maturity" was merely the first price he had to pay on this cruel path.
Two years later.
The azure sky stretched endlessly above, while the salty sea breeze swept across the land.
At a temporary coastal stronghold, Jieming and David had just finished exchanging the latest intelligence with a wizard squad sent as reinforcement.
"The target's last suspicious energy fluctuation was detected in the 'storm' sea territory. Thank you for your efforts," the opposing squad's captain, a second-tier wizard enveloped in crackling lightning, said solemnly.
"It's our duty," David replied in his characteristic monotone.
Jieming simply nodded calmly in acknowledgment.
Without another word, the two turned and transformed into streaks of pitch-black light, hurtling toward the turbulent ocean.
Two years prior, after tracking down the first pseudo-wizard, they had immediately transmitted all their findings to the academy.
Noren Academy took the matter with utmost seriousness, dispatching a large number of specialized reconnaissance personnel and mobilizing the wizard lord across the Elosia Plane to conduct exhaustive searches of their respective territories.
Even with such a massive mobilization of resources, the wizards still couldn't directly catch the true illegal wizard.
Each time they cast their net, they only managed to capture one or two "pseudo-wizards"—those infected individuals who had become neither human nor ghost, just like the ones they'd caught before.
Of course, as time passed and the plane's reconnaissance network gradually improved, the illegal wizard's operational area became increasingly restricted.
He was like a cunning fox being relentlessly driven into a corner, his space to maneuver shrinking with each passing day.
It might seem like the wizards were just unlucky, always one step behind.
However, Jieming and David had anticipated this outcome long ago.
Two years earlier, after deciphering the energy sample from the first pseudo-wizard, they had discovered the truth:
These infected "pseudo-wizards" weren't merely victims; their true purpose was to serve as mobile "base stations," tools for the hidden illegal wizard to harvest vitality.
(End of the Chapter)
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