Demon Hunter: School of the Wolf.

Chapter 602 Ottoran's Mystery! The Right Eye of the Zombie Ruby!
A small-scale conflict that could hardly be called a war had just ended when the Ban Ade ritual group, who seemed to have been pulled out of the mud, were summoned to Senny, the de facto leader of Ban Ade.

Instead of immediately acknowledging them, Sunny glared angrily at someone from the Risberg Civil Partnership.

“What do you mean by ‘disappeared’?” Sunny pointed to a charred crater. “That Wild Hunt just landed there; everyone saw it.”

"At that time, your people were still surrounding him..."

“Lord Sunny,” Sunny said, maintaining a respectful and restrained demeanor, but with a hint of impatience in his voice, “disappearance means that it was indeed there just now, but now it’s gone, can’t be found, is gone, as if it had never existed.”

"But……"

“No buts, Lord Sunny,” the wizard interrupted rudely, seemingly having exhausted his last bit of patience. “If I remember correctly, six months ago, Ban Ad reportedly killed dozens of Wild Hunts, but in the end, he didn’t leave behind a single corpse.”

"Why do you think the Risberg Civil Cooperative, which ranks below Ban Ade in the wizarding world, can survive?"

"in addition……"

“The Risberg Civil Partnership is not a subordinate organization of Ban Ade; we are here to ‘help’ you.”

The sorcerer paused, glanced at the group of ritual workers from Ban Ad who were walking over in a disheveled state with their heads down, and gave them a faint, almost imperceptible, contemptuous smile:
"Instead of getting entangled with me here, why don't you think about how to deal with the fact that you used a large-scale necromancy spell but all the elves escaped?"

"None of the Warlock Brotherhood's inspectors are easy to deal with."

"Please make way now, Lord Sunny. I'm very busy and have work to do."

"We must also find a way to locate those skeleton knights who roam the skies and avenge 'you'..."

Just say it.

Ignoring the grim expression on Sunny's face, the wizard arrogantly lowered his head slightly, gave a salute, and then looked the members of the Ban Ad Ritual Department up and down. Holding a thick parchment book, he left the battlefield with his head held high and headed towards the gathering place of the Risberg Civil Cooperative.

Sunny stood silently in place for a long time, his face grim.

The people in the Ban Ad Ritual Department stood behind him, looking at each other, none daring to make a sound to disturb him.

“Did those long-eared ones escape?” Sunny suddenly turned around.

His face was no longer gloomy and dissatisfied, but expressionless, as if he were asking why the wandering cat of Ben Ade had not been seen for the past few days, something that had nothing to do with him or Ben Ade.

The people in the Ban Ad Ritual Department felt a deep chill.

As Sunny's eyes and ears, and also the eldest and nominal leader of the Ban Ad Ritual Corps, Ignis had no choice but to swallow hard and step forward:
"Lord Sunny, the elves escaped when the celestial spheres aligned and broke the shackles of the Death Curtain, but..."

"Did you see what I just went through?" Sunny interrupted abruptly, his face expressionless.

No one dared to answer at that moment. They didn't even dare to exchange glances, but just looked down at the ground scorched black by the magical flames, as if they could find Himles Fendabe, the leader of the free elves, inside.

"I, the Dean of Ban Ade, the leader you have chosen, and the first king of the future Warlock Kingdom, have just been humiliated by a male wizard in charge of the Risberg Civil Cooperative!"

But what can I say?

Sunny's gaze swept over the group from Ban Ad Ritual Department, and he repeated, "What can I say?"

"Even the dying elves can slip through your fingers... Don't talk to me about the conjunction of the heavens or the Wild Hunt..."

He raised his hand to interrupt the explanation of a male priest in the ritual department who had just raised his head:
"It's been a week. I've given you almost a week, and I even lifted the Warlock Brotherhood's taboo against necromancy for you..."

"Is it really that difficult to completely and quickly eliminate all the Pokémon within a week?"

"Malaki, tell me, is this difficult?"

Sunny's cold gaze was fixed on the male wizard standing beside Ignis, whose fists were clenched at the core of the Ritual Department.

Malaki met his gaze intently, the veins on the backs of his hands bulging, blood seeping from his palms and dripping onto the scorched earth.

Sunny stared at him coldly for a while before turning to the other wizards:
“A few months ago, you told me you didn’t want to be just a tool for maintaining the magical barrier. I gave you a chance, but you disappointed me.”

"They used necromancy to turn ten thousand living soldiers into undead, but they got nothing."

“You have made me and Ben Ade look like a joke in front of Grandmaster Ottolan in the Lisberg Civil Cooperative Organization.”

"You guys are a joke too."

"Now, all of you give me..."

Before he could finish speaking, the male wizard in charge of the Risberg Civil Cooperative walked over from a short distance away, silencing Sunny.

"Grandmaster Ottolan has something to ask..."

Sunny glanced at Ban Ad Ritualists again, then strode toward Ottoran.

However, they hadn't gone far, and hadn't even reached the wizard in charge of the Risberg Civil Cooperative.

The supervising sorcerer suddenly shook his head: "It's not you, Lord Sunny, or rather, it's not just you."

"Grandmaster Ottoran is looking for the people who were in this forest from the very beginning."

Upon hearing this, the ritual wizard Ban Ad, who had just been subjected to a severe reprimand, exchanged bewildered glances.
-
When the group was led to a place not far from the cave where they were hiding, this was the scene they saw:
A large group of people surrounded a clearing in the woods—or rather, it could no longer be called a clearing. After being bombarded by the Wild Hunt, Ban Aard the sorcerer, and the warlocks of the Risberg Civil Cooperative, all that remained were deep and shallow ravines and landscapes that were either frozen, raised, or even scorched.

Beyond that group of people lay various obedient monsters lurking at the edge: some were covered in lizard-like scales with long tails but human faces; others had human bodies but the heads of enormous cyclops; and of course, many more were a hodgepodge of organs and tissues from snakes, insects, rats, birds, and beasts…

Even the cynical, necromancers like Ban Ad Ritual Koch, who worshipped life and death, found him quite unsettling.

Discomfort to the point of causing instinctive nausea.

However, no one dared to say anything, and no one even dared to show the slightest instinctive disgust. Instead, they all admired these monsters with look of admiration.

Because among these monsters was a white-haired, gray-bearded sorcerer, said to be even older than Ban Ad's former headmaster, Demon Source Hen Gedimidis—the founder of the second largest wizarding organization in the Northern Continent, and one of the five members of the Talent and Skill Association.

Those monsters embody the essence of a legendary master's lifelong research in genetic mutation science; they are living, top-tier papers and monuments.

Noticing the arrival of strangers, the monsters became alert, their fur bristling.

Only after Ottoran waved his hand did the monsters relax again, lying prostrate on the ground, making this world-renowned legendary mage look like the king of beasts in a chivalric novel.

Of course, this illusion disappeared when Ottoran spoke.

“Senni, you’ve come.” Ottolan stroked a tuft of gray beard, looking every bit the most venerable old man in all the stereotypes.

“I’ve arrived, Grandmaster Ottolan,” Sunny nodded respectfully, then asked curiously, “Have you discovered where the Wild Hunt fled to?”

Ottoran shook his head, his thick gray beard trembling as it hung in front of his black robes: "Those legendary ghost knights riding skeletal horses didn't escape; they left because they couldn't find their target here and didn't want to waste their time fighting us."

He looked up at the sky just beginning to lighten, squinting his aged yet clear eyes, filled with emotion: "I always thought—even when I heard half a year ago that Ban Ade had been attacked by the Wild Hunt—that the ghost knights of folklore, who came with thunder and lightning, ghostly howls and nightmares, and who foretold the coming of war, did not actually exist."

"I never thought I'd actually meet the legend today..."

"In a daze, I seemed to have returned to hundreds of years ago, listening to my mother, who had long since rushed to the golden wheat fields of Meritelli, the land of harvest and abundance, using the skeleton knights in the sky to scare me into going to bed early."

"Hehehe~"

Those around him smiled politely and echoed his sentiments.

"Yes, who would have thought that the legendary monster would actually come true?"

"But what about the legendary monsters that can foretell war? They still fled in disarray under the magic and creations of our Risberg Civil Cooperative Organization."

"It was Grandmaster Ottoran's unique binding spell that played a crucial role in the fight against the flying behemoth..."

"If only we could catch one, it would be another excellent paper, at least a stepping stone or a stepping stone to the advanced review council..."

"Yes! Yes! But it's not just one case. If we catch a Wild Hunt, the Risberg Civil Partnership's seat on the High Council will increase from at least 20% to 25%..."

When the paper was mentioned, all the wizards in the Risberg Civil Cooperative looked disappointed and sighed deeply.

The Warlock Brotherhood highly values ​​the contributions that so-called warlocks make to the human community.

How can this contribution be quantified and measured?

In the old days, when there were not many sorcerers, it was naturally the renowned archmages who recommended them.

But when the number of sorcerers reached new highs, and the supernatural world was isolated from worldly struggles, sorcerers could only immerse themselves in academic research rather than war, and archmages also had their own research to do, the paper, the root of all evil, became the only metric.

There's a joke in the warlock community...

Even if an illiterate wild mage learns the forbidden spell that could destroy the northern continent, he will not be able to enter the lower council of the Warlock Brotherhood.

But a farmer from Ban Ade, on his way to town, finds a master's paper, puts on a proper mage's robe, and sits in the seat of a high council member, manipulating the lives and deaths of mages.

Of course, this is just a joke. The promotion of the council level, in addition to papers, also includes practical requirements.

However, one can still glean the importance of the research findings from this joke.

At this moment, Sunny's expression turned somewhat grim.

Ban Ad is the faction that holds the most seats in the High Council of the Brotherhood of Warlocks.

Seats in the High Council of the Brotherhood of Sorcerers are limited. Assuming no major changes occur in other factions, the only way for the Risberg Civil Cooperative to seize a seat is to take it from Ban Ad.

More importantly, these wizards, whose abilities and status in the wizarding world were far inferior to his, were openly and brazenly taking away the seat that belonged to Ben Ade right in front of him!

Sunny glanced at the male wizard of the Ban Ad Ritual Department next to him, a cold glint in his eyes.

"OK OK."

Ottolan raised his hand to interrupt the clamor of the crowd, and almost the instant he raised his hand, the surroundings fell silent, as orderly as a conductor of a symphony orchestra waving his baton.

He beckoned to Sunny with a wrinkled hand and said, "Come and bring your children over to see..."

As Sunny approached with the men from the Ban Ad Ritual Department, they saw a zombie lying in front of Ottoran.

This is an ordinary zombie.

With its flesh rotting and muscles exposed, powerful and strong, and a pair of sharp canine teeth and a hideous face, it's hard to believe that such a monster could be transformed from a human.

But in the end, it was just an ordinary zombie, exactly like the hundreds or thousands of its kind surrounding it.

wrong!

As Sunny approached, he frowned.

It's a little different. Although he doesn't specialize in necromancy, zombies are a very typical product of necromancy, and all academic sorcerers are familiar with them.

Well, a more accurate description would be that they are quite familiar with each other.

Necromancy is a forbidden art as defined by the Brotherhood of Sorcerers. Without knowledge of necromancy, how can one supervise each other, or even remain vigilant to prevent accidental loss of life?

Therefore, unless one is a wild wizard or a male or female witch expelled by Ban Ade or Aretusa, one should know the characteristics of zombies, the undead, and spirits.

Even for underachieving students who drop out of school, kind-hearted mentors will give them extra advice.

Corpses possessing magical talent are highly prized materials for necromancy.

Normally, a zombie's eyes would never be this red; its entire left eye is practically a top-grade ruby.

Sunny glanced at Ottolan, and their eyes met.

"Is this one of your Ban Ad's creations?"

It wasn't a creature modified by Ottoran, but what was so special about this zombie that made him value it so much...?

Just as Sunny was about to shake his head, he seemed to remember something, paused, and turned his head. His gaze lingered on the aged Ignis for a few seconds before landing on Malachi.

Malaki paused for a moment, about to shake his head in denial, when suddenly he thought of something, closed his lips that were about to open, and frowned his thick eyebrows.

"What are you thinking about?" Ottoran took a step closer and asked, squinting his eyes.

Malaki glanced at Sunny, hesitated for a moment, and said:
"At the very beginning of the battle with the Wild Hunt, I felt something glance at me..."

"When I looked in the direction I felt, I saw a zombie."

"Is this the one?" Ottoran asked.

Malaki hesitated for a moment before saying, "I'm not sure, but...it looks very similar..."

Upon hearing this, Ottoran turned his gaze back to the zombie with great interest: "A certain being... is getting interesting..."

Just say it.

He gently waved his withered right hand.

The zombie's ruby-like right eye fell into the hands of Ottolan, the most powerful sorcerer of the northern continent.

(End of this chapter)