Wizards: Starting with Synthetic Gems

Chapter 362 Puppet Thousand-Layer Silk and Mycelial Branding Curse (4000)

The puppeteer quickly retreated, and at the same time, Locke summoned the Executioner's Hammer Mushroom from his Astral Ring. The mushroom head of the mushroom hammer was flashing with the spell model of the first-circle spell [Mushroom Hammer].

Locke swung his hammer at the first-ring wizard dressed as a puppeteer. The next moment, the wizard urgently mobilized all eight arms in front of him, and a puppet doppelganger covered in white magical threads flashed in front of him to block the attack.

In an instant, the gravity field erupted on the puppet. Even the first-ring level magic alloy and adamantite were deformed by the mushroom hammer magic driven by Locke 4000 (3400+600) magic pressure. It was like a stuffed animal bursting, its internal parts squeezed and deformed by the enormous force and exploded. A large number of intricate parts made of adamantite and still iron were ejected.

'The adamantite golem was smashed to pieces with one hammer blow. That mushroom hammer is really troublesome...' Upon seeing this, the puppeteer broke out in a cold sweat, realizing that he absolutely could not be hit by the mushroom hammer in the opponent's hand, or he would die!

After practicing meditation on the void warship for more than a month, Locke's base magic pressure reached 3400. Due to taking the Eye Demon Elder's potion multiple times, the abyssal energy in Locke's body circulated independently, and also upgraded from 500 to 600.

The ratio of Abyssal Magic Pressure to Locke's normal Magic Pressure rose slightly again, reaching 0.176.

According to Locke's calculations, as long as the ratio of abyssal energy to his normal magical pressure does not exceed 0.3, then the problem is not too big.

"Did you block it with a puppet?" In a flash, Locke locked his gaze on the puppeteer, stepped forward again, and swung the mushroom hammer at the puppeteer's head.

Although his hammer blow was blocked by the puppet the opponent controlled, the opponent had revealed too much of his true strength.

If the opponent's Perpetual Defense Field is a defensive spell, then their actions just now seem very strange. They could have used the Perpetual Defense Field to withstand their own mushroom hammer and then manipulated the puppet to attack and kill them.

However, the opponent chose to use the puppets they controlled to defend themselves instead of continuing to attack, which suggests that the opponent's permanent defensive field was not defensive magic.

In the darkness, Locke noticed strands of translucent silk threading through the darkness and heading towards him. He slightly turned his body to dodge them, and then struck the puppeteer with his hammer again.

The execution hammer mushroom automatically extended its stem and smashed the puppeteer's body with its hammerhead.

In an instant, many fragments of adamantite parts exploded from beneath the puppeteer's wizard robe, and gears flew out one after another. It turned out that his so-called true body was just a puppet, and his real self was ejected from this puppet and fled in another direction.

The puppeteer himself was a halfling, less than half the size of a human. At this moment, the halfling wizard looked at Locke in the darkness with a grim expression.

"This guy's insight is amazing. He can see in the dark. We've all undergone special training to fully master fighting in the dark. Moreover, his timing is exquisite, and his insight is astonishing. He completely saw through my little tricks."

"When did such a troublesome character appear in the White Wizard Society? If we had known, we should have included him in the sealing targets from the beginning. We made a mistake."

The halfling puppeteer's permanent defensive field is certainly not defensive magic, or rather, it's meaningless for this group of wizard airship pirates to pursue defensive magic.

These pirates sought magical, unpredictable moves, stealing all their targets before anyone could react and then making their escape.

Therefore, none of them set the Permanent Defense Field as a defensive spell, and instead all chose a support spell with unpredictable and varied effects.

The magic within his permanent defensive field is called [Puppet Thousand Threads]. It can transform magical power into tiny threads that are difficult for others to see, attaching them to people, wizards, objects, or some kind of magical creature. It can temporarily control the opponent's body for a fraction of a second. This effect can even bypass that person's permanent defensive field. Therefore, although the effect is short-lived, it can often bring about unexpected changes in battle.

But to the halfling puppeteer's surprise, Locke, who clearly did not know him, had already avoided the traps he had set twice during the battle.

If a circus magician's tricks are all figured out, then he has nothing to fear.

At this moment, Locke stared intently at the puppeteer, his eyes fixed on him. The puppeteer's deception skills were truly astonishing. In just two short exchanges, the puppeteer had already tried to deceive him twice. At times, Locke had almost fallen into the trap, only managing to avoid it entirely through some kind of instinctive combat talent.

This might be some kind of innate ability of a golden two-headed dragon, and it shouldn't just be a normal instinct.

Locke gave chase, his mushroom hammer mercilessly slamming down on the fleeing puppeteer. "I almost fell for your trick again. When I first saw you manipulating the puppets, I thought you were a shapeshifter wizard."

"When a wizard sees those thin threads you're shooting at me, he might mistakenly assume they're threads made of some special material created by some kind of transmutation magic, like rubber threads."

"Even if you get some on it, it's not a big problem."

"But your permanent defensive field is... a spell from the Conjuration school, right? You should be majoring in manipulation sub-magic from the Conjuration school, not polymorphism from the Transfiguration school."

The puppeteer scoffed, dodging Locke's follow-up attacks while pondering a countermeasure.

He was nearly hit several times, and just now the mushroom hammer grazed his cloak, tearing off a large piece of it. It was as if a mere graze would cause injury, and a direct hit would be fatal; that heavy mushroom hammer was truly terrifying.

The halfling wizard was annoyed. Why did he have to come and kill the Salvadoran expert? He should have sent someone else instead.

The puppeteer pondered a solution. "This is troublesome. Competing in terms of raw strength is not my forte."

"Damn white wizard, when did he become so good at fighting? It's like he's fighting one of the best among us black wizards."

“I can’t keep fighting him. The other members should have gone to their targets and looted the spoils… There’s never any mutual help among circus members. If I die here, none of them will come to my rescue.”

At this moment, the puppeteer manipulated the puppeteers who secretly flung out puppet threads during the battle. Countless threads were densely packed in his hands, with some of the threads being objects, tables, chairs, magic books, and even wizards who had been unknowingly caught in his puppet threads and were being secretly manipulated by him in the dark.

At this moment, all these objects, spellbooks, tables and chairs, and even the wizards who had fallen under his puppetry spell were temporarily controlled by him through a spell from the Conjuration School. The wizards even immediately recited some short spells and used magic to attack Locke.

Meanwhile, the puppeteer, with his short legs, fled in another direction. He knew his opponent definitely possessed a defensive, permanent defensive spell. This attack might delay him, but whether it would actually harm him was uncertain. He was merely a thief among dark wizards, not a professional assassin, so it was best to slip away first.

In that instant, Locke immediately activated his defensive force field, the Life Field. A verdant crystalline barrier surrounded him, blocking many spells.

At the same time, the fleeing halfling puppeteer cried out in surprise. He turned around abruptly and saw that there was a white triangular pattern encircling the wizard's robe behind him.

Upon closer inspection, these patterns were all made of mycelium, stamped onto his body like a seal.

when?
Right, it was at that moment that the bastard's mushroom hammer grazed his body, and that's when the magic was applied.

The next moment, the mycelium branded him, forming a gravity field on his body. He was sent flying, and even the magical vest he was wearing snapped and flew away.

This is part of the botanical magic accompanying the execution of the hammerhead mushroom: the Mycelial Branding Spell!
The moment it comes into contact with this mushroom hammer, the mycelial brand will attempt to transfer to the target, rapidly multiplying on their skin or clothing to form enough mycelium to create a miniature array that is equivalent to a blow from the mushroom hammer, exploding on the enemy.

Therefore, the executioner's hammerhead mushroom is indeed so sharp that a mere graze will cause injury, and a single touch will result in death.

In fact, a wizard with keen insight, amazing fighting instincts, strong hard skills, and outstanding overall strength is exactly the type that completely counters the elusive, deceptive, and superior fighting style of the dark wizards of the Magic Thieves Circus.

The puppeteer, clutching his back, hadn't even gotten up from the ground when Locke's mushroom head slammed into him again.

With a loud bang, the gravity field imprinted by the mycelium on his body merged with the gravity ball of the Locke Mushroom Hammer, doubling in power in a short time, instantly sending the puppeteer flying backward.

Locke's fighting style might not be effective against wizards with permanent defensive fields because it requires a head-on confrontation, but it is a natural counter to dark wizard thieves from the circus.

Locke grabbed the puppeteer, whose lower limbs he had crippled and whose entire body of defensive magical artifacts he had destroyed, and demanded, "Tell me, what exactly is your plan?"

This is Locke's real purpose in wanting to capture the other party. If the Ptolemy family had hired an ordinary dark wizard assassin, they would at most have tried to kill Salvador, and Locke would only need to protect Salvador.

But the other party's purpose was clearly not just that; they even wanted to hijack the void warship. Since the wizards could not survive independently in the sky the next day, they naturally had to rely on the void warship.

Therefore, Locke needed to find out whether the other party wanted to make a quick buck and leave, or if they wanted to do something else with this void warship.

If it's only the former, then I only need to protect El Salvador, and everything else is none of my business.

Locke heard a woman's scream coming from not far away. "Help... Dark wizard, you..."

Locke frowned. The situation was chaotic. He looked at the puppeteer in his hands, a fierce glint in his eyes. "I'll count to three, and if you don't speak, I'll snap your neck immediately. If you make any unusual movements, as soon as I sense something is wrong, I'll snap your neck right away."

"three two……"

The puppeteer's face was deathly pale. He knew Locke was capable of such a thing. During the battle just now, Locke had tried to kill him several times without holding back at all. The man before him was definitely a decisive and ruthless individual. Under the threat of death, the puppeteer halfling screamed and said, "I'll talk, I'll talk! The captain and the others are going to steal the most valuable core component of this void warship, then sell it to a branch of the White Wizard Association for money. As for the things they can't take, they'll blow them up along with the void warship's energy core, that sun."

"That way, the White Wizarding Association won't trace it back to our circus. Those wizards we forcibly exiled for an hour will reappear in this second sky, filled with malice towards wizards, when the time is up. They'll have nowhere to go, and everything about our circus will be hidden in the boundless flight path of this second sky..."

"The captain is carrying the Eclipse Seed. As long as he throws the Eclipse Seed into that artificial sun, this void warship will immediately self-destruct."

In fact, there was another reason why the puppeteer cooperated so well: he really didn't want to die.

Dark wizards are selfish. Now that he's been captured and the other circus members are definitely not coming to his rescue, he'll surely die in the explosion.

The puppeteer halfling knew this, which is why he spoke so frankly. "This... Eye Demon Wizard, the captain has already captured the heir of the Plutarch family. The other members have gone to rob their target. The captain must have gone to the energy core of this void warship—the artificial sun. It is estimated that the warship will explode in less than twenty minutes."

Locke's expression was complicated. "The warship exploded, what will your circus do now?"

The puppeteer half-human said, "The void warship has many small, short-to-medium-range flight devices for escape..."

The Salvadorian wizard seemed frightened and hurriedly ran over in the dark, saying to Locke, "Augustin Breeder... I... I can't die yet, I still need to go to the Land of Six Towers to restore the ecosystem."

"What should we do now?"

Locke scoffed and tossed the half-crippled puppeteer to the Salvador wizard. "Keep an eye on him. I'm going after their leader. Don't worry, I won't let the dark wizard blow up this void warship."

The wizard Salvador and the halfling black wizard collided, sending them sprawling across the sky. Both fell to the ground. Salvador immediately used a vine-binding spell to firmly restrain the halfling, then looked in Locke's direction and weakly called out, "Wizard Augustine, why did you leave me here alone..."

"And keep this dark wizard... by my side..."

The eccentric old man from Salvador suddenly seemed to remember something, and hurriedly touched the lotus leaf on his head. Only after confirming that the lotus leaf was intact did he breathe a sigh of relief. "As expected of our botanical wizard, Augustine the wizard is indeed powerful in combat."

"This is the power of the highest level of botanical wizardry among all magic."

(End of this chapter)