Advent of the Archmage

Chapter 436: A Fourth Person Appeared

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

He circled the Neanderthal girl many times. When his search proximity reached 100 feet, he still couldn't find any trace of the Yabba.

The Yabba had appeared out of thin air and then vanished.

She must have used some portal spell. Link checked the surrounding air but didn't find anything.

This wasn't surprising. The event had happened at least one day ago, but the Void's aura was very heavy here, and the space was extremely unstable. Anything left behind would have been erased by the chaotic circumstances.

Link returned to the Neanderthal girl and checked her injuries.

Broken bones, chewed clothing and accessories. This must be some powerful force field spell. While looking, Link's gaze fell on a fist-sized rock below the corpse.

The rock was soft mudstone. An average person could break it with their hands. One side was normal, but the other side had a finger-sized scrape. The mark was very smooth and could clearly reflect one's image like a mirror. One needed very mature and condensed spatial energy to create this effect on mudstone.

This Yabba is a Spatial Magician. From the looks of things, she's at least Level-9, Link realized.

Spatial Magicians were rare in Firuman, but they still existed. In addition, most Spatial Magicians looked at the world differently than regular people. To them, there were no restrictions. Even different realms weren't restricted.

As a Spatial Magician continued growing, they would generally turn into a Hermit Magician. They chose to live in isolation, cut off from the world to avoid all the complications.

This Yabba Magician was probably like this too. Otherwise, the Yabba wouldn't have appeared when Lirico City was in danger.

He searched for a bit more but didn't find anything else.

Link started retreating carefully and went to meet up with Magician Gaimin. Halfway there, he saw the dwarf. He seemed to be in a hurry to find Link. After seeing him, Gaimin immediately called, "Master Link, come with me. I found something."

Link's heart jumped, and he caught up. "What did you see?"

"A Yabba woman's corpse. It looks bad." Gaimin shook his head as he spoke. "I've never seen such a horrible death."

The two bypassed the dark shadow and walked around 1500 feet to the location of the corpse.

Link looked at the body and his temples pulsed. It was a Yabba woman, around three feet tall. She was tall for a Yabba. Her clothes were all gone, and she was completely nude. Her skin had cracked apart, as well as her muscles and flesh. Her skin looked loose and flaccid.

This injury made the Yabba look as if someone had pumped air into the body. She swelled like a balloon. After her skin exploded, the air inside escaped, and she turned into this limp and shattered state.

"I don't know what happened, but from her contours, she's different from the Yabba I've seen before. She's stronger and has strange characteristics. Look here, here, and here. There are dense, dark-red scales."

Gaimin squatted and prodded the corpse with a stick. There were red scales on the Yabba woman's private spots.

Link studied them and concluded, "They're dragon scales."

The scales had advanced resilience to magic, and the patterns on the surface were natural runes. Only dragon scales were like this in Firuman.

He opened the Yabba's tightly shut eyes and saw her pupils were vertical slits and crystal-red in color. "She should be a half-dragon, the product of crossing Yabba and dragon blood."

Gaimin shrugged in confusion. "But Yabbas are so small. Even if dragons transform into a humanoid shape, there's still a limit. They're usually over six feet tall. How can such a big thing get into such a small hole?"

Link shrugged too. "Maybe it's a small thing inside a big hole?"

"Uh… That…" Gaimin tugged at his beard. "That's probably really interesting."

Link moved on from that weird topic. He squatted and continued studying the Yabba's body. After a few minutes, he found another inexplicable detail. "She probably was a Magician. Look at her hand. There's a small mark from being burned by focused Mana from a wand… but the problem is, I found another trace of the Yabbas over there. That Yabba used spatial magic to kill a Neanderthal. Comparing these two signs, it seems to be the same person."

Gaimin was shocked. "What did you discover?"

Link recounted the evidence he found. After that, Gaimin was pulled into the mystery and couldn't get out of it either.

"That doesn't make sense." The dwarf started tugging at his beard. "The Void Tentacle attacked a Neanderthal Assassin, and the Assassin escaped. Halfway through, this Yabba used a portal rune and appeared. She killed the Assassin and then escaped but then died so horribly thousands of feet away. What exactly happened?"

He clenched a fist and hit his head. A few seconds later, he suddenly stopped and asked, "Link, do you think something happened to her during the teleportation?"

On the other side, Link was walking around the body, trying to find new clues. Hearing the question, he shook his head. "No, if it was a problem during teleportation, she wouldn't have a body."

Usually, her body would be ground into powder by the spatial currents and disappear in the Sea of Void as if she'd never existed before. As for circumstances causing one's body to swell and explode, Link had a vague guess, but he needed more clues to prove it.

A few minutes later, he found a light yellow, amber-like shard in the grass 100 feet away. He used the Magician's Hand to pick it up and studied it.

After a while, Link confirmed that it was a piece of a wand. There were many runes on it, and the enchantment was similar to what was used in modern Firuman. The material used was also Level-9. Judging from the small marks, Legendary power had flowed in reverse through it.

"This might be why the Yabba died. A Legendary fighter attacked her, and strong power poured into the wand, finally entering her body and causing it to explode. But where is this Legendary fighter?"

Another mystery had appeared.

"Gaimin, there's a fourth person here. He's the strongest. He killed this Yabba half-dragon but didn't leave any trace behind. However, he's a Legendary Magician. He can cast spells from 1000 feet away. Let's split up and see if we can find any clues in this area."

Gaimin nodded. "Understood."

The proximity was smaller this time. They separated again; Gaimin was responsible for the area away from the Void creature while Link was responsible for the closer area.

"Clear Sign." Link cast the powerful detector spell again and continued forward.

Not even five seconds after using the spell, Link was 600 feet away from the dark object. He was very close.

Here, he discovered an entirely new clue. There was an extra aura in the air—something minute that only another Legendary figure could sense. The energy was very small and intricate. If Link hadn't used the Clear Sign spell, he wouldn't have noticed it at all.

Unique ripples appeared in the space. It seems to be sending some message… Let me see.

Link got an idea, and he tapped the air with his Burning Wrath of Heavens wand. He cast the detector spell, Space-Time Mark.

Whoosh. A narrow, crystal-red light beam spread out from the wand's tip. A second later, it covered a 300-meter wide area. In this area, the red light would become heavier where the spatial frequency was higher and vice versa. Every little disruption would be shown clearly.

Link instantly saw an immense amount of mysterious runes.

This… is some type of law rune. It's strange. Separate, they're not strong but when so many are together… They seem to have built a spatial web.

An idea grew inside Link's mind. He started circling the Void creature. The Space-Time Mark spell followed him, showing the surrounding spatial structure. After finishing looking around, he discovered that he had guessed correctly. There was a super-law web around the shadow.

The web's nature was very strange. It was one-way and wouldn't reject outside power from going in. However, the power coming out of it would be restricted heavily.

Link tried it with his Demon Slayer Whip. He discovered that when going out from the inside, the whip would collapse after only 100 feet. Since he was restricted so much, the Void creature at the center of the web of runes must be under extreme restrictions.

Even so, it could still defeat a Level-10 Crystal Golem. How terrifying must its true power be? Link couldn't even imagine it.

This web was most likely cast by that Legendary figure but where is he now? Could he be…

Link glanced at the Void creature. At that time, pleas for help sounded in the shadows once again. "Please save me. I can't take it anymore…"

The voice was so pitiful, urgent, and imploring. She seemed to be able to sense Link's presence.