Jie Ming coldly gazed at the two wizard corpses at his feet, their vitality fading.
He felt nothing; in the wizarding world, only the living could claim the spoils.
Raising an arm, he grabbed their cold ankles. With a slight flex of his muscles, he flung the bodies unceremoniously into the eerie, crimson “incubation pool”!
Two faint splashes were quickly overtaken by a chilling “sizzle.”
The blood-red liquid in the pool, with its potent ability to dissolve and absorb, consumed the wizards’ flesh like fragile paper. In a blink, the mangled corpses were completely melted, leaving no trace—not even a sliver of bone.
The pool’s surface calmed, its demonic crimson undisturbed, as if nothing had happened.
Jie Ming watched impassively.
He sensed the forbidden magic field rapidly fading; the energy crystal’s effect had expired.
“Reinforcements should arrive soon. Time to handle this,” he muttered.
With a thought, he reconnected mentally with the scattered rune artifacts.
The powerless rune artifacts and metal floating cannons flickered back to life, trembling as they floated up, realigning behind him into the familiar “Grand Radiance Form.”
Jie Ming didn’t bother scavenging for dropped loot; their value paled compared to the “incubation pool.”
He activated his Alchemy Technique and rune artifact power, precisely and brutally carving out the entire chamber, including the crimson pool and its intricate energy circuits beneath, a rock mass the size of a small house!
The massive stone, bearing the blood-red pool, was staggering in size.
Jie Ming assessed it, regretfully confirming it wouldn’t fit in his internal space.
Fortunately, he had another solution.
He retrieved a spatial expansion bag from his internal space. With a thought, the colossal stone and pool were stuffed inside.
“Good thing I have this bag… and my quota’s just enough,” Jie Ming thought, relieved.
Such spatial gear was special military equipment in the wizard legion, a kind of benefit.
Only after fully analyzing a plane’s spatial laws could corresponding “spatial expansion bags” be crafted.
These were issued to wizards based on their contribution to planar conquests.
As a “logistics” wizard, Jie Ming’s quota was double that of combat wizards his level!
Thus, his bag was large enough to hold this house-sized stone and pool.
A regular first-level combat wizard, even if they could cut it out, couldn’t store it.
After handling these “private” matters and ensuring no traces remained, Jie Ming adjusted his posture, preparing to await reinforcements.
Suddenly, the entire cavern trembled violently!
It wasn’t a mere quake but a terrifying force tearing the earth apart!
The cavern’s dark, fire-element-heavy ceiling suddenly blazed with dazzling light!
Jie Ming’s heart jolted as he looked up.
The sight left him in a daze!
Above, hundreds of meters thick and kilometers wide, rock and soil were… lifted!
Not collapsing or shattering, but as if a colossal, invisible hand had wrenched them from the ground.
The mass floated upward, slowly and firmly, into the sky!
Jie Ming felt like an ant seeing daylight after its nest’s roof was torn open.
Searing, blinding light, laced with Infernal Sulfur’s scent and scorched earth, flooded the previously rock-shielded underground space.
The familiar blazing sunlight poured through the cracked ceiling, alongside the eerie, eye-like spatial rift in the sky.
Jie Ming’s mind reeled from the impact.
This power… this mastery of force…
Coming to his senses, he finally saw the towering figure orchestrating it—Viola!
Her body was wreathed in milky-white light, her hair dancing in an invisible elemental current.
She merely extended one hand, lightly grasping upward.
Yet this casual gesture lifted an enormous crust of rock and soil, along with the complex magma giant nest, into the air!
In another plane, this would be deemed a divine miracle.
“A third-level wizard’s power…” Jie Ming marveled inwardly.
He’d heard of wizard rank distinctions.
A first-level wizard could destroy a street, a second-level a town.
A third-level could effortlessly annihilate a small nation.
Before, Jie Ming lacked a concrete sense of this, as third-level wizards rarely unleashed their full might on the battlefield.
Now, he felt it viscerally, in awe.
Viola could destroy a nation without combat spells.
Her sheer mental force, lifting hundreds of square kilometers of earth hundreds of meters thick to thousands of meters high and dropping it, would generate kinetic and potential energy enough to obliterate a small nation!
“Well done, little Jie Ming,” a soft yet clear voice, tinged with approval, sounded in his ear.
Viola’s figure had somehow appeared beside him from the sky.
Her gaze held a strange scrutiny.
Jie Ming’s heart skipped.
“Senior Viola…” He quickly steadied his emotions. “When… did you arrive?”
“Let me think… probably after you three cleared the first wave of frenzied magma giants,” Viola said lightly, a hint of slyness in her tone.
Jie Ming’s heart jolted!
If Viola arrived after the first wave…
Then everything that followed—the second-level wizard’s ambush, the first-level wizard’s death, his counter-kill, and disposing of the bodies—Viola had seen it all?!
He quickly calmed himself, noting Viola’s attitude suggested she didn’t care about the two wizards’ deaths.
“You… saw?” Jie Ming asked directly.
Viola didn’t answer immediately. With a casual flick, she tossed the massive earth mass aside, stirring a tsunami-like gust.
She waved, blocking the rushing wind, and nodded at Jie Ming with satisfaction. “Yes, I saw the ‘little episode’ that followed.”
Her tone was so casual it seemed she was discussing a trivial matter. “I planned to step in after that second-level wizard attacked, to save you and teach you a lesson about trust.”
“But you did so well, far better than I expected.” Her gaze held unmasked approval, acknowledging Jie Ming’s ruthlessness and decisiveness.
Entrusted by Clark to watch over her junior, Viola had rushed over at top speed upon receiving the distress signal, only to witness this.
“I’m very satisfied. You survived and erased all traces, leaving no trouble—far better than I anticipated.”
“Clark praised you before, and I didn’t believe it. Now I’m sure—you’re a genius.”
As for the dead wizards?
Viola’s eyes didn’t even glance at the now-empty blood pool.
“They weren’t from Noren Workshop anyway,” she said, as if discussing irrelevant passersby, her tone utterly cold.
“In wilderness battles, wizard deaths are normal. They crushed their beacons, and the camp will just log them as fallen here.”
“So rest assured, as long as no one knows what happened, the camp won’t investigate, and no faction will make waves.”
Hearing Viola’s “guidance,” Jie Ming felt a warmth in his heart.
Just then, streaks of dazzling light sped toward them from the horizon—other reinforcement wizards from the camp, drawn by the trio’s crushed terminals.
Jie Ming and Viola “searched” the opened cavern, ensuring no “significant findings” or suspicious items remained.
Then, they joined the arriving wizards and returned to camp.