Chapter 133: We Are a Team

Chapter 133: Chapter 133: We Are a Team

Time is heartless. It does not stop for anyone.

After pushing Evelyn and Leon away, Phoenix continued forcibly constructing the large-scale spatial translocation skill for the second time.

Spatial-type skills inherently consumed a terrifying amount of magic power, let alone summoning it multiple times on the same day.

The larger the number of people teleported, the more times it was used, the more the consumption and backlash compounded. The ultimate limit was the soul being damaged, leading to death.

Blood seeped from his nose and mouth. Phoenix still didn’t stop.

He swallowed back the rising stream of blood. The undead staff in his hand radiated a bizarrely gloomy aura. A massive phantom hidden behind a layer of mist gradually took shape.

The angel phantom concealed beneath the ghostly mist lifted Phoenix up. Its dark wings drooped down like a guardian, shielding the youth who had summoned it.

In just twenty seconds, Phoenix drained all his magic power, paying the price of compounded backlash, forcibly mobilizing his bloodline power to erect yet another teleportation matrix.

Pain swept through his body. The hidden patterns in his eyes deepened by the second.

When his ruby-like eyes were completely swallowed by darkness, Phoenix completed the third teleportation matrix of the day.

The massive magic disk appeared. But because it had exceeded the limit, its existence time this time was significantly shorter — less than half a minute.

As for the storm’s side, it remained a patch of stillness until now. Still no sign of Lucius or Jeremy.

Phoenix stared at it, counting down in his head.

Thirty... twenty-nine... eighteen... seven...

Only a few seconds left before the matrix began to dissipate.

"...Dead already?"

Phoenix slightly furrowed his brows. His mood in that moment also fluctuated slightly.

There was just this feeling that the outcome shouldn’t be like this...

Unfortunately, the matrix didn’t give him any more time to hesitate. Phoenix raised his hand, preparing to activate it to leave.

"Who are you cursing?"

A voice with a lazy intonation rang out. The storm was cleaved in half by an icy purple scythe.

In less than half a second, the figures of Jeremy and Lucius entered his line of sight.

Lucius used his fox tail to wrap tightly around Jeremy.

Jeremy cooperatively retracted the scythe.

The tail pulled him back. Lucius’s arm wrapped around his waist. The instant teleportation skill activated. In a blink, the two were standing next to Phoenix.

The entire glacier river melted away. Just as the suction force from the crack reached its peak, the magic disk flared brilliantly, taking the three away from the land that had just turned into a void.

Five minutes later.

The five heavily injured individuals gathered back together in one spot.

Because the backlash was too fierce, right after arriving at the peak of the snowy mountain, Phoenix collapsed into a coma without a single warning sign.

Leon, who had been keeping an eye on the magical fluctuations, immediately stepped forward to catch him.

At the same time, Lucius and Jeremy, a beat slower, also lost consciousness and collapsed.

Evelyn flashed over, managing to catch each of them by the arm right before they hit the ground.

She then summoned vines to weave a large bed, laying both of them down on it.

The breathing of all three was very faint, their magic power drained clean. The miserable state of each one surpassed the other.

"...Really," Leon sighed, stopping midway through his sentence.

He placed Phoenix onto the same vine bed, took out a few bottles of magic potions and sprinkled them over the bloody wounds, then downed a magic power recovery potion himself.

Waiting until he had recovered somewhat, he immediately transferred his own magic power to the three exhausted individuals.

Evelyn, after the Wasteland trip the previous semester, had also learned healing magic. Supported by Leon, she mobilized her meager remaining magic power to treat them.

An hour later.

Leon and Evelyn’s faces were as pale as the snow around their feet.

Fortunately, the other three finally woke up.

Leon retracted his magic power, looking at Jeremy and Lucius, who were covered in blood.

"What exactly happened back there?"

"Why did you guys hesitate back then? Wouldn’t it have been better to just leave?"

Leon’s sentence and Jeremy’s voice rang out simultaneously.

Leon froze, his gaze finally settling on Jeremy.

He didn’t expect the first thing he asked after waking up to be that.

Faced with that question, all four fell silent.

A very long time later, Phoenix finally spoke up: "We are a team. Do you still need to ask why?"

He inherently didn’t like to speak. Unless he encountered a matter where he absolutely had to speak up.

That sentence sounded like a statement of fact, devoid of any emotion.

Yet it was precisely this impossibly short sentence that made the moods of everyone present very hard to name.

They were a team. Teammates to each other.

That was the truth.

But when it was blurted out so clearly, the feeling was uncontrollably foreign.

The whole group knew perfectly well that none of them were good people. Their moral threshold when facing the sight of others dying while they ran away was inherently very low.

Frankly speaking, whether the ones running away were themselves or the ones being left behind were them, no one would feel a ripple of emotion. In their worldview, the word "interests" always stood above all else.

In a life-and-death situation like that, even if it truly happened, they wouldn’t feel a shred of guilt.

Yet at that time, why didn’t they want to leave...

Could it truly be like Phoenix said, hesitating simply because they were teammates?

Because they were teammates, they chose to stake their lives to gamble?

Because they were teammates, they... couldn’t bear to turn their backs and leave?

This didn’t seem like something they would do. Nor should it be a stupid decision they would make.

The atmosphere sank back into a deadlocked silence. No one could answer Phoenix’s question.

"Hmph..."

Jeremy suddenly chuckled, the sound extremely light.

He stood up, stepped in front of the four, and for the first time voluntarily bowed his waist, performing the empire’s most solemn gesture of gratitude:

"This time, many thanks."

This favor, he had recorded it.

That overly solemn action startled the others.

Evelyn stepped forward to help him up, clearly unaccustomed to such a Jeremy: "...No need to thank us. As Phoenix said, we are... teammates."

"Back on Moonlit Island, you also said similar things..." Having said it, Evelyn herself felt a bit awkward.

Leon was even less able to stand this scene. The surroundings were clearly engulfed in ice and snow, yet he acted as if roasted by fire, raising his hand to fan himself vigorously.

Realizing that meaningless action distracted no one, he abruptly stopped.

Coughing lightly, he returned to the old topic: "So what exactly happened back there? Also, Phoenix, what the hell were you thinking?! Forcibly sending us away, do you know that compared to you staying alone, having one more person means one more chance? What if the three of you died completely back there, were you planning to let Evelyn and me collect your corpses?"

That long, unpausing sentence truly caused a headache.

"..."

Phoenix quietly put his hat back on, casually smoothing down the bangs he had just swept aside, pretending not to hear anything.

"?" Leon, faced with that "plugging one’s ears while stealing a bell" act, was both helpless and amused.