Ancient Wizards: A Little Progress Every Day

The newcomer approached rapidly with a ferocious manner; he was a rather tall and strong man.

His skin was a deathly pale white, as if he had never seen the sun, and he had a bald head with a sinister look in his eyes, like a venomous snake.

On each side of his cheek, there were three jagged, knife-like gashes.

He wore a heavy black robe with wool trim, and savagely broke through the thick fog of the swamp, looking like a vicious night owl that had come for food by smelling blood.

The formidable strength of a peak third-ring wizard!

Nine extremely refined soul crystals shone brightly like stars in the dark night in Dago's mental perception, exuding a deadly sense of oppression.

The bald man in the black robe exuded a thick aura of darkness and the undead.

He hovered abruptly and warily a few hundred meters away from Dago.

His gaze was like lightning, instantly locking onto the girl's mangled body lying in the mud. Then, his murderous eyes were fixed on Dago.

"Did you kill this bitch?"

He spoke coldly, his voice like the scraping of metal, "Where is her ring?"

Dago remained completely unmoved, as if he were watching an insignificant breeze.

He slowly raised his hand and casually spread his palm.

The silver chain ring, stained with blood, slowly floated up from his palm as if it had lost its gravity.

"Is this what you're talking about?"

The bald man in the black robe did not answer.

But the instantaneous tension in his muscles and the bloodthirsty glint in his eyes answered everything.

The atmosphere in the room became dull and oppressive at a visible speed.

A palpable sense of impending doom lingered between the two, creating a palpable tension that seemed to freeze the air around them.

Just as this murderous intent was about to reach its peak and could explode at any moment!

Without any warning!

A chilling silver light suddenly shot out from Dago's fingertips, tearing through the air with a sonic boom!

The bald man in the black robe felt his hair stand on end, and his pupils suddenly contracted!

His body swayed suddenly like a wild leopard reacting to an attack, and with the terrifying instincts of a third-ring wizard, he grabbed the deadly silver light that was rushing straight at his face!

When he opened his palm and saw that the silver chain ring he was holding was completely intact, he froze on the spot.

"Here's your ring back."

From the depths of the mist came Dago's voice, as faint as a stagnant pool: "But in exchange, I need a detailed map of the surrounding seas or continent."

The bald man in the black robe stared blankly down at the ring he had just recovered in his hand, then suddenly looked up and scrutinized Dago in the distance.

A hint of undisguised astonishment and confusion flashed in his gloomy eyes.

Clearly, things had taken a turn for the worse than his cruel logic as a dark wizard had ever imagined.

He had already secretly mobilized his mental energy, preparing for a bloody battle to the death.

But to his utter surprise, the handsome young man before him, who exuded an aura of extreme danger that made him feel extremely dangerous and even caused him to feel a slight chill in his soul, would so casually hand over such a treasure.

The bald man in the black robe remained silent for a full half minute before his tense shoulders relaxed slightly. He suddenly spoke, questioning, "How do you know this ring originally belonged to me?"

"Because your reaction just now doesn't sound like something a third-ring wizard would say when tempted by money."

Dago shook his head slightly.

Without any hesitation, he took out a brand-new dark robe from his spatial ring in front of the bald man in the black robe and slowly draped it over his shoulders.

"Moreover, the ring is imbued with the residual essence of your soul, very strong, which shows that you usually keep it close to your body."

"You actually recognize this as a series of rings?"

The bald man in the black robe had a drastic change in expression, and a deep sense of apprehension flashed in his eyes.

After a moment's hesitation, he pulled a pentagram-shaped runestone from deep within his robes and tossed it to Dago.

Then, his sinister gaze swept across the mangled corpse on the ground like a blade, and he sneered through gritted teeth.

"That bitch spent three whole years putting on a pitiful act to gain my trust. I don't know where she got her hands on that forbidden potion, but she managed to trick me and put me into a short coma."

"She absconded with most of my fortune, and before she left... she even cruelly dismembered one of my magical pets that I had raised for eight years!"

Dago listened quietly to the bald man in the black robe cursing, and sent a wisp of his spiritual power into the rune stone that the other party had thrown at him.

After confirming that it contained a detailed wide-area map, he nodded slightly.

Arajan's earlier cold water wasn't enough to make him completely lose interest in the linked ring that held the secrets of the Silver Earl Goblin's treasure vault.

But in comparison, what Dago needs right now is to find a "local" wizard who is familiar with the environment to properly understand the current situation and coordinates.

"You probably don't want this woman's body anymore, right?"

After venting his vicious curses, the bald man in the black robe pointed at the unseeing corpse in the mud and tentatively asked Dago.

"If you're interested, please go ahead."

Dago stepped aside, speaking casually.

The bald man in the black robe nodded in satisfaction, then with a flick of his sleeve, he put the corpse into a specially made storage bag.

It's likely that he's still seething with anger and plans to use various undead methods to "whip the corpse and vent his frustration" when he gets back.

The pungent smell of the devastating storm still lingered in the air.

Even with the cover of his wide robes, Dago would often unconsciously exude the cold, divine might and kingly majesty bestowed upon him by the "bloodline" of the Stormweavers in his unintentional gestures.

The bald man in the black robe always harbored a strong, even instinctive, fear of Dago.

But Dago's gesture of returning the ring did indeed bring the two closer together.

"Your magnanimity must have come from somewhere else, from another realm, right?"

The bald man in the black robe hesitated for a moment, then suppressed his hostility and slowly introduced himself, placing his hand on his chest: "Jason Franklin."

"Dago Heca".

Dago gave a succinct, standard wizard's salute and said calmly, "I did indeed just escape from the territory of the Emerald Court..."

"The Emerald Empire? That's quite a distance from this quagmire..."

Jason frowned, seemingly having heard of that distant behemoth as well.

He quickly suggested, "Let's go. Since we're not going to fight, why don't we find somewhere else to sit down and talk? The environment here is really disgusting."

"That suits me perfectly."

The bald, black-robed wizard Jason turned and led the way, with Dago following at a leisurely pace.

The two of them, one in front of the other, transformed into two inconspicuous streaks of light and flew swiftly towards the edge of the swamp.

…………

It was afternoon.

Two mysterious figures dressed in wide robes walked along a long street paved with gray gravel.

The leader of the long-robed men stopped in front of a small tavern with an old-fashioned sign.

Jason extended his hand from beneath his black robe; the dark blue veins were prominent, and his hand was as pale as a corpse.

Instead of chasing away the shivering gray stray dog ​​in front of the door, he squatted down and gently stroked the dog's head a few times before pushing open the heavy wooden door and going inside.

"I never would have guessed that a dark wizard like you, who is shrouded in death, would actually have a fondness for small animals."

At the westernmost side of the tavern, at a dimly lit oak round table, Dago took off his hood.

He scrutinized Jason's large, bald head, which reflected a faint light, and the six terrifying gashes on his face that seemed to split his cheekbones, and made a teasing remark with some surprise.

With his keen spiritual perception, he could clearly sense that beneath Jason's sinister and vicious black-robed exterior, there seemed to be an unusually gentle, even somewhat soft, heart.

This extreme contrast amazed Dargo.

No wonder Jason, a top-tier Dark Wizard of the Third Ring, was ridiculously tricked by that born evil girl.

If it were any other unscrupulous wizard, that girl's soul would probably have been extracted and used as oil for lamps a hundred or two hundred times over.

"I actually prefer those fresh and vibrant plants. To be honest, I used to be a plant-based wizard who specialized in cultivating plants, but I later forcibly switched to dark and necromancy."

Jason gave a wry smile, not minding reopening his wounds.

"Why?"

Dago asked casually, his fingers tapping lightly on the rough tabletop.

"For revenge."

Jason's expression instantly turned as still as a stagnant pool, completely devoid of emotion: "More than a hundred members of our family were wiped out overnight, and even their souls were cruelly taken away by our enemies to make magical artifacts."

"My only surviving nephew was hidden inside a cat's body using a secret method."

As a result... because of my momentary weakness and negligence, I was dismembered by that bitch.

Dago's fingers paused slightly. He remembered the lie the girl had accused of—the claim of "189 lives lost in White Pine Town"—and understood. With a touch of guilt, he whispered, "I'm sorry to have brought up your painful past."

"There's nothing to apologize for. That was a long time ago. Even if it wasn't dismembered, that cat was nearing the end of its life and was about to die of old age."

Jason shook his head, seemingly already used to the tricks of fate.

He turned around and snapped his fingers expertly towards the bar: "Bartender! Two 'Creditor's'!"