Wizard's Journey

Chapter 159 Ant Nest Underground Plaza

This is a messy and ugly underground plaza space.

A fierce-looking wizard wielded a leather whip, howling and driving a large group of otherworldly captive slaves.

A group of creatures, seven or eight meters tall, with bodies resembling large gray mantises and covered in soft feathers on their chests, were strung together by a thick, interlocking black chain. Dozens of them walked forward in a row, their eyes filled with hatred, anger, and fear as they looked sideways at the numerous human wizards passing by in the sky.

However, they have lost all means of resistance, including... courage.

Green flew over the group of creatures, watching everything indifferently without any emotional fluctuation. The sound of the slave owner's whip and the clanking of chains as the slaves moved around became the main theme of this small area.

Roar!

A conjoined griffin, a creature with a body length of thirty meters, yawned inside a metal cage, then lay down on the ground like a kitten, its eyes dull and lifeless, as if it had lost all will to resist.

This creature is at least a level two wizard!

Grimm looked at the price tag on the alien slave, sighed, shook his head, and continued flying forward.

Snap, snap, snap...

Over a hundred exceptionally handsome and physically imposing demi-humans from another world stood on a towering circular platform, performing a musical called "The Great Wizard King." This musical, written by a wizard artist, was essentially a celebration of the advanced, brilliant, glorious, and powerful wizarding civilization. It was well-received by a large number of wizards and was frequently featured at social dances by prominent wizards.

However, what is ironic at this moment is that these slaves from another world, conquered by the wizards, are actually praising the wizards. This strange and ironic feeling has attracted the attention of many wizards.

Green also watched for a while from mid-air until the slave auction after the show ended. These slaves who had performed songs and dances took off their costumes and clothes to cover their shame, and stood naked in the center of the stage, trembling as a wizard slave owner promoted their wares, looking at the wizards who were still standing around.

Many wizards seem quite interested in these specially trained slaves from another world.

Green paid no further attention to the upcoming slave auction. These slaves were not what Green needed, and he had no intention of wasting time on such a boring activity. He flew directly to a slave market in the distance that resembled a giant Ferris wheel.

Ok?

However, halfway there, Green was suddenly drawn to several small creatures in a cage held by a slave trader on the ground.

A tiny creature, no bigger than a palm, with a pair of small, translucent green wings, a bee-like body with three pairs of legs, a human-like head with an unusually long nose, and a small flower bud on its head, looked at everything outside the cage with a look of despair and trembling.

"Heh heh, these are the spirits of the Dewdrop Flower, costing 30,000 magic stones each. They can be used to clean rooms, and the fragrance they emit has a calming effect. Of course, this fragrance can't compare to that of Venus, the goddess of love. But... actually, the flesh of these little guys tastes pretty good if you get used to it." A wizard in a black robe introduced them with a sinister laugh.

Green looked at the dark wizard's skin, which was covered with small black holes, like the holes of worms in the bark of an old tree, densely covering his entire body.

The spirit of the dew-covered flower?

As for eating these little guys, Green hasn't even considered it yet.

However, Green was thinking that while it was secondary for his room to need servants to clean it, in the future, the Golden Ginseng in the World Fragment would also need some companion creatures to become the mother tree, and these Dewdrop Flower Spirits would be a very good choice.

Thinking this, Green said, "I need two of these little creatures to clean the room. Give me one of each species, male and female."

As he spoke, Green reached out with one hand and pulled out several high-level magic stones from the dimensional gap, as if several high-level magic stones had appeared out of thin air in his hand.

"Heh heh, you're a newly promoted demon hunter wizard, aren't you?" The wizard said this after hearing Green's request, his dark red pupils filled with a mocking expression.

Green knew he might have made a basic mistake, but he remained calm and asked, "What?"

The wizard shook his head and chuckled softly for a moment.

"Basically, every demon hunter who fights abroad knows that in some other worlds where natural energy and the rules of earth activation are abundant, plant and tree spirits have no distinction between genders. Perhaps some plant and tree spirits have been influenced by other civilizations and have developed a sense of gender, but physiologically speaking, plant and tree spirits can be treated as organisms that divide cells or hermaphrodites." The dark wizard stared at Grimm, his mockery undisguised.

Green ignored the other person's ridicule; such a common-sense mistake was indeed somewhat laughable.

Green had always thought that only elemental life forms were genderless, but it turns out that these plant and tree spirits, born from the rules of the world, also have no gender.

So, do the abyssal dragons of the Wizarding World, as killing monsters catalyzed by a distant, powerful, and unknown abyssal civilization using the alteration of world rules, also lack gender distinction?

In an instant, Green made many connections and felt no shame for his ignorance. He nodded to the dark wizard in front of him and said, "Oh? Is that so... Thank you for your explanation. Well then, give me two Dewdrop Spirits."

Upon hearing Green's answer, the dark wizard was slightly surprised, but then suppressed his mocking smile and began carefully selecting his goods from the cage.

"You're quite decisive, aren't you?"

After saying this, the dark wizard snatched two Dewdrop Flower Spirits from the cage. Ignoring the cries and struggles of the two little creatures, he threw them into another cage and handed it to Green, adding, "Consider this sealing cage a free gift."

Green took the cage, nodded at the creature inside that was only the size of his palm, and handed the magic stone to the dark wizard. The transaction was complete.

The dark wizard took the magic stone and ignored Green, turning to greet the other wizards who were interested in the Dewdrop Flower Spirit.

Green, carrying the cage, took to the air and flew straight towards the towering Ferris wheel a kilometer away.

This is a giant Ferris wheel with a diameter of over 300 meters. What's different is that the creatures inside the Ferris wheel are all bound demi-humans and humanoid slaves from another world. The Ferris wheel cages are labeled with the abilities, advantages, and prices of the creatures inside. If any wizard takes a liking to one, he can simply write down the Ferris wheel number and go to the sales location to make the transaction.

Grimm floated in the sky, calmly examining each "item" in the cage, just like the other wizards, until his gaze finally settled on a green-skinned humanoid creature.

This creature was a race of soul slaves that Peranos had once summoned. This race had a natural talent for food and taste, and their tastes were very similar to those of human wizards.

Green looked at the sign outside the cage on the Ferris wheel.

"The Loken are exceptionally talented in food pairings and flavor adjustments. Although they lack the professional culinary knowledge of gourmets in the wizarding world, they are still considered skilled cooks. They are priced at three wizard essences. Note that the average lifespan of a Loken is only 150 to 170 years. Using honey essence salt can significantly slow down the aging process of Loken."

Ok?

They actually want to trade using witch spirits.

Honey Salt is priced at 100 grams for one high-grade magic stone, and to significantly slow down the aging process of minions, 10 grams of Honey Salt must be consumed every month.

After thinking about it, Green decided to give up the idea of ​​buying honey salt.

After all, in Green's plan, he was merely a delicious captive for the next two hundred years, intended to improve his survival skills in his future conquests of other worlds; he had no intention of cultivating a dedicated gourmet or soul slave. Since he didn't intend to cultivate a gourmet, Green's annual expenditure on honey and salt was somewhat extravagant.

With that in mind, Green made his decision and flew to the trading office to discuss the transaction.

Green informed the slave owner about his demon-hunting castle and signed a transaction contract. Green then retrieved the remnant of his World Heart from the dimensional rift. With a surge of magic, the large, jelly-like block of witch spirit separated into three small spheres, which flew toward the slave owner.

After receiving a badge with an intricate rubber tree pattern from the slave owner, Green turned and left.

After another hourglass of time passed in this enormous slave market, Green headed to another underground space in the Seven Rings Holy Tower called Time and Space Plaza.

This is a quiet and vast underground space.

On the vast plaza paved with pristine white stones, towering altars emanated astonishing energy fluctuations. Every now and then, wizards, filled with excitement, would step onto the Time Gate altars. As the guardians activated the altars to store energy, the wizards standing on them would be enveloped in a powerful beam of energy. After a few moments, or even several hourglasses in length, the wizards would vanish from the Time Gate altars.

These time-space gate altars lead to various alien worlds that have already been conquered by the wizarding world.

Looking at the prices of these portals, Green saw that the lowest price for a single teleportation was thirty witch spirits, while some portals charged thousands or even tens of thousands of witch spirits, which was ridiculously high.

Of course, the portal also marks some unique resources, biological characteristics, and basic world rules that are most different from those of the wizarding world.

At the edge of the plaza, several time-space gate altars are under construction. One of the altars is nearing completion, while the others are only half-finished.

Generally speaking, each Stigmata Wizard has their own unique alien world that they have completely conquered. All the resources, creatures, and slaves in this world are the private property of the Stigmata Wizard and are rarely open to the outside world.

However, if the Stigmata Wizards conquer more alien worlds, or if several Stigmata Wizards form an alliance to conquer a certain alien world and do not have more development capabilities, then they will purchase a Time-Space Gate in each of the various holy towers in the Wizarding World, and then obtain income through teleportation by those Demon Hunter Wizards and Arcane Wizards.

Overall, this can be considered one of the contributions that the Stigmata Wizards made to the development of wizarding civilization.

After touring the Time and Space Plaza, and then the Seventh Ring Armed Plaza and the Wizarding World Teleportation Plaza, Grimm returned to the Food Street amidst a mix of complex emotions. He spent some Wizard Essence to buy the ingredients he had previously liked but had been reluctant to spend Wizard Essence on.

The numerous underground spaces beneath the roots of the Tree of Life resemble a giant anthill, with the plazas closely connected.

On the way back to the Demon Hunter Castle, Green pondered these thoughts.

A highly aggressive civilized world cultivates its own biological communities and constantly extracts resources from the surrounding world. So, to those large and small worlds, is the civilized world just a series of "delicious captives" constantly absorbing higher energy essence?

These worlds themselves are also "passively evolving," gradually moving towards more powerful and mature rule carriers, internally nurturing more "cells" to conquer other worlds in order to enhance their opportunities for plunder and feeding.

Biological groups, in relation to the world, are the relationship between cells and complete living organisms.

In the sky, Green turned into a small black dot and left the hills of intertwined roots of the Tree of Life.

(End of this chapter)