Wizard: Starts with Advanced Meditation

"call!"

With Luna's help, Tyr put on the isolation mask. Tyr quickly took a deep breath of the fresh air released by the mask and slowly came back to his senses.

Luna examined the air and said with a grim expression, "There's no magic or other special substance in the air; it's just the ordinary smell of blood!"

Tyr was also shocked when he heard this. He understood what Luna meant. They had simply been nauseated by the strong smell of blood, which was why they had stopped maintaining the witchcraft.

That stench of blood... how many people must have been killed to create it?!

Tyrell and Luna exchanged a glance.

"This is absolutely not something a mere Grand Knight would do. It must be that Fender was acting on the orders or being manipulated by a wizard," Luna asserted.

"You should leave first," Luna said to Tyr. She was a third-class wizard apprentice, and she should be able to handle anything that wasn't done by a formal wizard. If all else failed, she could always run away.

But Tyre was different. He was just a second-class wizard apprentice who had come with her. Moreover, he was about to go to the center of the continent, and his life could not be compromised.

"I can help too," Tyr said confidently. With the talent bestowed by the Tree of Life, his strength had already surpassed that of a second-class wizard apprentice, and he even had a chance of winning against a third-class wizard apprentice who practiced fire elemental magic.

"All right"

The two continued deeper, and finally, a huge opening appeared at the end of the road.

(Short version: Strange disappearances have recently occurred in the Duchy of Sired, and Tyr and Luna have been sent by the academy to investigate the matter.)

A few days later, relying on the tracking powder and the distribution of missing persons, they finally identified the murderer—Grand Knight of the Duchy, Fender.

So one night, they secretly followed Fender into a cave, and soon...

The two met Fender Corliss standing in the cave.

He stood quietly in the cave with his back to Luna and the other woman; John's body, which he had been carrying on his shoulder, was nowhere to be seen.

Tyrell and Luna quietly approached Fender and entered the cave. Only then did they see the scene inside the cave, a horrifying sight before their eyes.

What Fender was standing on was not a floor, but a pool of blood. It was neither too big nor too small, but it was above Fender's ankles. What was even more terrifying was that the pool was filled with severed limbs and countless heads of Maple Leaf City residents.

The faces of these heads were very peaceful, presumably because they were taken from their sleep. Strangely, these severed limbs were not rotten and were even quite fresh.

John the Leatherworker has been dismembered and thrown into the pool tonight; his head just floated past Fender's feet.

Even though they had witnessed the wizards' cruel experiments, the two were still disgusted by the bloody scene, perhaps because they were close to the source of the blood.

The air here was filled with a thick, pungent, fishy smell that even the protective masks on their faces couldn't block. It had a sharp, rusty quality and pierced deep into their nostrils.

Each breath they took felt like swallowing tiny shards of razor blades, a sticky, cloying sensation rising in their throats. It felt as if warm beads of blood clung to their eyelashes, their entire bodies gripped by the stench of blood, impossible to shake off or wash away, even their breath carrying an indelible, fishy smell.

The two exchanged a glance, no longer hesitating, and were about to deal with Fender when the stench of blood was no longer ordinary. A heavy, rotten smell pressed down on their chests, making it hard for them to breathe and interrupting their spellcasting.

It burrowed into their pores and seeped into their bones like a living thing. The two felt as if their bones were being corroded. The excruciating pain made them unable to endure it any longer, and they collapsed to the ground once again.

Fender seemed to have anticipated their arrival. He stiffly turned around, his legs causing ripples to spread across the blood pool, carrying away some severed limbs that floated slowly.

His face was very pale, and his lifeless eyes stared straight at Tyre. Tyre felt a chill run down his spine from his gaze, and then he saw Fender pull a dagger from his waist.

The dagger has a very strange appearance. Its blade is made up of countless tiny white bones. The rough bone knife makes one wonder if it can cut through the flesh of living beings. The surface also has dark red patterns that look like blood.

The hilt is made of half a withered hand bone, with the finger bones bent into the arc of the handle to firmly grip the bone knife, and the knuckles are inlaid with long-dried dark red blood crystals.

Just as Tyrell thought Fender would kill him with the dagger, Fender gave him a strange smile with his stiff facial features.

He slowly raised the dagger in his hand and forcefully stabbed it into his own neck.

"laugh--"

The dagger pierced Fender's carotid artery, and countless drops of blood gushed out, scattering into the pool of blood. Fender's act of suicide stunned Tyrell and Luna.

But the rupture of the major artery did not seem to affect Fender. He seemed not to feel the pain in his neck and gripped the hilt of the dagger again.

"Sizzle!...Sizzle!...Sizzle!..."

Tyrell and Luna stared wide-eyed as Fender slowly spun the dagger, cutting a deep gash along his neck. It seemed that the previous blow hadn't finished gushing out all of Fender's blood, as the other wounds continued to spew out large amounts of blood.

"Click," "Plop"

The dagger easily severed Fender's cervical vertebrae, and just like that, Fender's head was severed by himself, falling into the pool of blood and creating circular ripples.

Fender's arm fell limply to his side, and his headless body swayed slightly. The eerie dagger fell into the pool of blood, and blood gushed out again from the uneven cut on his neck, forming a crimson column of blood.

As the blood column receded, Fender's headless corpse slowly turned around, and only then did the two notice what was obscuring Fender's back.

It was an altar located in the center of the blood pool. The stone altar was only slightly higher than the blood pool. The most terrifying thing was that there was a circular array drawn with blood on the top of the altar.

Above the formation were left hands, chests, abdomens, thighs... These human remains seemed to come from different people, but they were all neatly arranged into a human shape within the formation, with only the head remaining empty, the meaning of which was self-evident.

Fender's headless corpse bent down, reaching into the pool with both hands to search for something, but seemingly finding nothing, it then picked up Fender's head floating beside it.

And so, the headless corpse Fender, holding his own head in both hands, slowly walked to the altar, bent down, placed the head in the position of the human body puzzle, and aligned it.

Tyr and Luna tried to stop the headless corpse's movements, but they were in so much pain that they couldn't move at all. They both knew that they would die once the flesh-and-blood ritual was completed, but they could only watch helplessly as the ritual proceeded.

After the "puzzle" was completed, the headless corpse seemed to have fulfilled its mission, finally collapsing helplessly into the pool of blood, splattering a large amount of blood.

The next moment, the severed limbs and headless corpses in the blood pool turned into blood foam, completely merging with the blood pool, and the air was filled with scarlet blood mist.

The ritual array on the altar slowly lit up, and all the blood mist flowed into the altar. At the same time, the human tissues within the array began to automatically splice together. At the joints, flesh and blood surged, and the limbs of several different people were thus firmly integrated into one.