Though the destruction left behind by the fire mage was horrific, Taketori and the other players didn’t show a hint of fear.
In fact, their faces bore an odd kind of excitement.
Li Wen paused for a moment, then understood why.
From a player’s perspective, the stronger the boss, the rarer the loot.
And some players thrived on challenge—the harder the fight, the more it stirred their blood.
With that in mind, their reaction made perfect sense.
Realizing this, Li Wen felt compelled to remind them again, “Mages from the Secret Institute are extremely dangerous. You must never underestimate them.”
“Dangerous” was a relative term.
The Institute was mostly filled with scholars devoted to magical study.
They wielded magic powerful enough to reshape the world, yet rarely showed themselves before common folk.
But this fire mage was clearly not one of those gentle researchers.
Judging by the wreckage he left behind, he might very well be a madman.
Taketori and the others nodded solemnly.
It seemed they were taking her warning seriously.
They continued moving in the direction the potion had pointed out.
By the time dusk deepened and the sky darkened, they still hadn’t found any trace of the mage.
If they hadn’t been players, they’d probably have collapsed from heat stroke or dehydration by now.
Even so, exhaustion was written all over their faces—especially the male players burdened with tents, armor, and weapons.
Li Wen even heard one of them muttering, “Why doesn’t this game have a teleport-to-quest function? So unfriendly…”
That unfriendly design was the point.
After all, this wasn’t a game—it was a real world.
Li Wen looked up.
The sun was half-sunk below the horizon, the deep-blue sky now speckled with stars.
Judging by their position, the mage’s direction was to the north.
Stonecreek Ravine… to the north…
A heavy feeling settled in her chest.
So, the mage’s target was that place after all?
“We’re making camp here.”
The male players lit up with joy.
Taketori blinked in surprise.
“We’re stopping? I think we could still keep going.”
“We’ve already found him,” Li Wen replied, shaking her head.
“Set up camp and get ready. He’s here.”
“Here?”
Taketori flinched, eyes widening as she glanced nervously around.
But there wasn’t even a shadow of a person, let alone any living thing.
Li Wen didn’t say anything.
She simply pointed at the solid, dry ground.
The message was clear.
The players quickly set up the tents.
These weren’t for resting, but served as respawn points.
Like logging out, a player’s respawn had to occur in a secure, private space.
If the respawn point was destroyed, they might reappear somewhere unpredictable.
As they worked, Li Wen picked up a stick and began drawing circles on the ground—neatly spaced, precise, one after another.
Taketori watched in confusion.
She didn’t understand what Li Wen was doing, but it clearly wasn’t random scribbling.
She tried to memorize what she could—who knew, maybe it was a powerful spell.
Li Wen was drawing a complex magical formation called “Leonate’s Fourth Resolution.”
It could contain up to eleven smaller formations, each bearing a symbolic pattern—keys, blades, stars, eyes, spirals, and the hanged man, to name a few.
In Ritual Magic Theory, Leonate’s Fourth Resolution was often mocked as a “universal formula that no one used.”
It had many potential applications for common magical problems, but the issue was it required full construction.
There were no shortcuts, no simplified versions.
That made it cumbersome and unwieldy—universal in theory, but rarely practical.
And yet, for situations like this, it was perfect.
Li Wen needed three specific effects from the array: Revealing, Opening, and Sealing.
Revealing would expose hidden objects.
Opening would unlock unseen doors.
And Sealing would prevent anything from escaping the array’s boundaries.
After completing the entire formation, Li Wen sacrificed half of her total mana.
This was both the formation’s strength and weakness: it required half of the caster’s mana to activate.
The more powerful the caster, the more potent the result.
But that also meant the stronger you were, the more inefficient it became—since the same amount of mana could be used in better ways.
Li Wen was only level one, with a total of ten mana points.
Using half meant she was down to five—barely enough for two Word-Prayer Spells.
That was dangerously low.
She needed at least six points to survive a fight—three for maintaining a protective enchantment, and three more for offensive spells.
A single Dark Curse wouldn’t be enough to kill.
But she had planned ahead.
Li Wen pulled a piece of dried Mandrake leaf from her bag.
As a magic-infused herb, Mandrake was a primary ingredient in crafting Clarity Potions—used by mages for emergency mana recovery.
According to Advanced Alchemy, the main ingredient of a potion usually contains a diluted version of the potion’s effect.
In other words, chewing Mandrake leaves could help restore a small amount of mana.
A small effect—but enough to push her back above six points.
When Li Wen infused her remaining mana into the formation, it lit up in a brilliant radiance, glowing like the stars themselves.
Anything within its range was revealed in full clarity—and in that moment, the ruins of an ancient temple emerged from the shadows before them.
Before the Kingdom of Arthurian bore its current name, it had been ruled by the Norlaton people.
They had built this temple, called Trion, in ages past.
During Arthurian’s conquest and unification of the land, an earthquake struck, and the temple was lost.
Stonecreek Ravine had been formed during that same disaster.
Many believed the Trion Temple had been buried beneath it ever since.
As for why the Norlaton built the temple in the first place—speculation abounded.
Generations later, after Arthurian’s fall, a black dragon rose from the ravine—and the Trion Temple, buried for thousands of years, reemerged into the light.
And with its return, the truth was laid bare: the Temple of Trion was not the goal, but the gate.
It had been built to conceal a far greater secret.
That secret was the Amber City—a ruin from the golden age long before history’s memory.
It was known as the Land of Eternity and Dusk, the city every immortal longed to find.
A city suspended between life and death, it was the only dwelling of the Twilight Witch in the mortal world.
Tftc!
Taketori should be she or her not He
FIXED