Ancient Wizards: A Little Progress Every Day

"All right."

Seeing that Dago's attitude was firm, Evaque didn't say anything more.

The two turned around and stopped in another corner of the square.

It was a huge black wolf statue that exuded a fierce aura.

Dago narrowed his eyes, his mind automatically retrieving data.

He recalled the Wizards draft, when Evaquer used all his trump cards, transforming into a semi-ethereal ghost wolf.

Is this the source of power?

What path to advancement did he choose for the Spirit Witch?

"Wolf Witch Chief".

Evaque broke the silence, "Like the Dragon Witch Master Bahafus, he is one of the three grandmasters of the Soul Transformation system, and it was he who gave me this inheritance test."

Evaqui faced the enormous wolf statue, his hands clasped together.

Once the usual pretense fades away, only an almost fanatical reverence and piety remain.

"Next, I will officially begin the test."

"What do I need to do?" Dago asked calmly, getting straight to the point.

He finally raised the question. In the wizarding world, understanding the stakes of equivalent exchange is more important than blind goodwill.

Evaque flicked his wrist, and the spatial ring flashed with a faint light.

A rough, darkly patterned object, shaped like a millstone, appeared in his palm.

"Take good care of my soul plate as I enter the trial."

He handed the millstone to Dago, his voice slightly tense, "If the Soul Plate is turned upside down, move it back to its original position for me."

"Is it that simple?" Dago didn't immediately take it.

The information was only half given.

The simpler the requirement, the more deadly the hidden cost often is.

Evaque froze.

He shook his head and remained silent for a long time.

When he looked up again, he stared intently at Dago, his expression extremely serious.

"Forgive me, Dago, there's something I've never told you."

"The process of activating the Soul Disc will deduct a certain amount of your soul's lifespan."

"Not many, at most ten years or so."

"Consuming lifespan".

Dago silently recited the words in his mind, and suddenly realized.

The logic is complete.

No wonder this alien wizard repeatedly showed him kindness far exceeding the level of their friendship.

In the cruel wizarding system, every gift comes with a price tag secretly attached by fate. It turns out, what he was after was his own life.

"I'm sorry, Dagger, I'm really sorry."

At this moment, Evaque's face was filled with shame, and he guiltily avoided Dago's eyes.

He completely lost the initiative, turning from a guide into a beggar.

"The Wolf Witch Chief's tests are extremely harsh; he allows me to fail three times in each round."

"The price is that for every failure, someone must sacrifice a certain amount of their lifespan as a margin of error. I have failed many times, and the elders of the Uta tribe have exhausted their lives for this."

"Originally, I did not want to ask foreign wizards for help; I even carefully nurtured the wolf girl."

The image of the girl in the white wolf-skin skirt he had seen in the Uta tribe flashed through Dago's mind.

It turns out it was also an experimental consumable used to consume lifespan.

Evaque appeared to be in immense pain.

"But I have so little time left. I only have this one chance to take the test, Dago, I...I..."

From rambling incoherently to nearly speechless, he looked at Dago pleadingly.

Dago could see the extreme desire for power and survival in his eyes.

Before this, Evaque had repeatedly said, "It's not too late to regret it now," but after the truth was revealed, he stopped saying that.

Dago watched him quietly.

After a long silence, he slowly spoke, precisely dissecting the deal: "Three chances to fail, which means I need to activate the Soul Disc three times for you, consuming a total of thirty years of my soul's lifespan."

"If I can pass it on the first try, you won't need to make any sacrifices!"

Sensing the wavering in Dago's words, Evaque quickly added as if grasping at a straw: "If your soul's lifespan is used up, I will do everything in my power to make amends to you afterwards!"

"It can at least restore twenty years of your lifespan. If you don't believe me, we can immediately sign a top-tier contract!"

D'Ago remained noncommittal.

He simply stared coldly at the soul disc in Evaque's hand, then changed the subject: "What would happen if your soul disc were damaged?"

Due to information asymmetry, he must grasp the other party's true weakness.

Evaqui was startled, and his voice instantly returned to its deathly calm.

"If the Soul Plate is damaged, my test will be immediately deemed a failure, and my soul will suffer irreversible damage."

The power of life and death has been handed over.

"I see."

Dago nodded slightly, his gaze sweeping over the massive black wolf statues radiating an oppressive aura beside the two of them, and said calmly, "Then please hurry."

Evaque didn't say anything more.

He simply said "thank you" to Dago with utmost seriousness, left behind the soul disc in his hand that resembled a rough millstone, and turned to walk towards the black wolf statue.

He walked up to the stone statue and whispered an obscure incantation.

Immediately, ripples of dark water spread from the base of the statue, like the mouth of an abyss. Evaque glanced back at Dago, then walked in without hesitation.

In the vast stone statue square, only Dago remained.

After Evaque entered the trial, the soul disc he left behind, which resembled a millstone, seemed to have taken root and was firmly nailed to the void by some higher-dimensional rule.

Dago tried, but couldn't move it at all.

He leaned closer to examine the surface of the soul plate.

The rough stone mill was emitting a faint, eerie light as it turned extremely slowly in a clockwise direction.

Dago squinted, his gaze deep.

If we take the lifespan of outsiders as the price for making mistakes, what about Evaque himself?

He will be put to the test, and he will inevitably pay a far more devastating price in terms of his soul.

There is no such thing as a free lunch in the world; selfishness is in the nature of living beings.

Especially these spirit shamans who were already on the verge of extinction. In pursuit of power, they had long since become cold, calculating machines.

Having figured this out, when Dago looked at the black stone statues in the square again, his awe and admiration dissipated considerably.

He even felt that those silent stone statues, casting huge shadows, exuded a cold and cruel sense of natural selection.

"Not every wizard is named Melville."

Dago silently sighed in his heart and delivered his verdict on this school of thought.

Evaque left, leaving him all alone.

The Soul Plate was related to the success or failure of the thirty-year lifespan transaction and Evaque, so Dago couldn't be distracted by deep meditation. So, out of boredom, he wandered around the Soul Plate.

Of the eight remaining stone statues in the square, the one that most interested Dago was naturally the statue of the dragon shaman Bahafus.

Secondly, there is a human-shaped stone statue located at the very center of the twenty-four stone statues.

The latter gave Dargo the feeling of being the oldest of all the statues.

Of course, the main reason Dago would occasionally cast his gaze at it was because there were simply too many defects and cracks on the human-shaped stone statue.

He always felt that the stone statue might collapse in front of him at any moment.

If it collapses, then he will have witnessed firsthand the complete annihilation of an incredibly ancient and powerful wizard's spirit.

After looking around, Dago's gaze returned to the enormous black dragon statue.

He couldn't help but recall the conversation he had inadvertently captured in the stone statue inheritance space.

"Two people... one of them is a woman, who looks like Bahafus himself."

"Then who is the other person? One of the other seven chief priests?"

Dargo's mind raced, processing the data.

Judging from the subtext of that conversation, the other person seemed to be inviting the dragon shaman Bahafus to do something with great ambition, but Bahafus refused without hesitation.

Not only did he refuse, but Bahafus's attitude towards him was also quite hostile, seemingly showing extreme contempt.

Dago couldn't come up with any definite conclusion.

In fact, without supporting data, he couldn't even be sure whether the conversation actually happened.

Could it be a hallucination caused by high-dimensional radiation? Or is it some special method used by the Dragon Sorcerer Baháphus to select successors?

He didn't know.

Just as he was immersed in the logical reconstruction, a sudden change occurred.

"Gurgle gurgle—"

A strange sound suddenly rang out in the empty, deathly silent square.

It's like a heavy stone wheel slowly rolling over a rough surface.

Dago's pupils contracted, and he suddenly looked up.

His first reaction was to scan the soul plate left behind by Evaque with lightning speed.

The Soul Disc showed no abnormalities and continued to slowly rotate clockwise. Moreover, it rotated completely silently.

Dago's eyes flickered, and he took a deep breath of the cold air, his muscles tensing instantly.

Now, he is the only living person in this enclosed square.

The massive stone statue of the shaman could not possibly move on its own, and the soul disc made no unusual noise, so...

Where did that sudden sound come from?!