Chapter 183 (2): Young Mage, You Can’t Protect Anyone

Bourne stared at Megan while rubbing his hands together like a pervert. Obed huffed and ordered, “You did well, Megan. Is Planck’s silver coin in your hand?”

“Sir Obed, I have no such thing,” Megan pressed a hand to her chest and responded respectfully.

“Really?” Obed’s eyes glinted as they shifted to Megan’s chest. “After working for Auston for so long, you’ve gotten better at lying. Give me the coin now. Don’t force my hand.”

“Calm down, Obed. At the end of the day, Megan saved us.” Bourne attempted to mediate, looking at Megan with a smile. “Don’t mind him. He’s furious with Planck. By the way, it’s been a long time since we last chatted. Care to swing by my office?”

“Master Auston is waiting for my report,” Megan said impassively. “The Church of Moonlight’s base seems to be under demonic attack. I’ll take my leave.”

She turned and walked away.

𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

Bourne huffed with displeasure. “That damn Auston is too good at charming women. If I had his silver tongue, Megan would be serving me as a loyal servant.”

“Bourne, stay and watch over Planck. Megan took his silver coin. He’s the traitor!” Obed interrupted Bourne and gave him an order as one of the vice ministers. “I’ll go to the Moonlight base. The demon couldn’t have gone to such lengths without a grand plan.”

“Obed, we’re still grounded. We can’t leave.” Yvette, also a vice minister, stopped him. “Don’t worry about the demon. The angel has rushed over.”

Obed shook his head. “Yvette, an angel isn’t trustworthy. If we worry about the house arrest in this situation, we’ll only be putting Londan in danger. We alone can protect the city.”

“Yes.” Yvette nodded. “But you’re still under suspicion, so you shouldn’t be visiting the Church of Moonlight. The Minister ordered me to take care of Moonlight’s High Reverend. I’ll be the best candidate to make the visit.”

Obed frowned deeply. After a pause, he said, “If you insist, I’ll accept it.”

With that, he walked back to the ministry’s headquarters rather than insisting on heading to the Church of Moonlight’s library. Yvette didn’t rush to the library, either. She would let the angel take the lead. She first discussed with the other legendary mages how they were going to deal with Planck.

“You old crones, I told you I’m innocent.”

Planck refused to admit his crime. He rattled off all the other possibilities, but when his fellow mages asked about his silver coin, he stammered and couldn’t give them an answer. No matter what they said, he just didn’t have it with him today.

His story was so full of holes that no one bought it.

***

Inside the dark domain, a distorted white humanoid figure moved forward in a twisted manner. After the initial discomfort, Wayne was able to reshape his body.

Looking at his naked self, he lamented the hardships of being human. He did have a suit made of the Holy Shroud, which could defend against not only elemental magic, but also bullets. When it was most needed, though, he never had it on for one reason or another.

“Forget clothes. Kristen won’t mind. I’ll let her check the ware first so that she won’t be shocked later.”

Ignoring the

Book of Greed

’s complaint, Wayne quickly weaved through the dark domain. The eerie space didn’t have up, down, left, or right, and without any frame of reference, it was difficult to walk in a straight line. There was such a pitiful amount of knowledge permeating the air that the

Book of Greed

kept grumbling about it, dissatisfied.

Wayne had never been to a space like this. Comparing the dark domain to a poor man’s Astral Plane, he extended his senses to the limit to look for the ritual site.

He was certain that Kristen was here, but it was difficult to find the exact location; there was no landmark to help with navigation, and Dorrin’s description wasn’t concrete enough.

More than ten minutes later, Wayne spotted light with his super vision. The beam of light was constrained to a specific range by some intangible power, unable to radiate further. It was about fifty meters tall, looking incredibly familiar to him.

The obelisk!

He sucked in a breath. The gift practically fell into his lap. Although he knew that the obelisk tablet was hidden somewhere in Londan, he never expected Obed to have picked up his lost treasure.

“No, it’s not Obed’s, but a collection of the Ministry of Magic...”

“That traitor, isn’t he too used to selling out his country?”

Wayne quickly went up to the obelisk while cursing the traitor out, as if he were genuinely devoted to the Queen. He stepped onto the tiled floor around the obelisk.

The platform was forty thousand square meters with the obelisk at its heart. On the tiled floor was a pattern consisting of curved and straight indents, which would reveal itself to be a magic circle from an overhead view.

Obed had somehow drawn the energy of the obelisk to recombine earth, fire, water, and wind elements, filling the indents in a set pattern to activate the magic circle.

With his extensive study in magic, Wayne was no longer the novice he had once been, but a college-level student of the craft. However, he had never seen the magic circle, not even something that bore any resemblance to it. Thus, he could not figure out what the magic circle did.

With no time to dwell on it, he skipped around to avoid the indents radiating energy and found Kristen right before the obelisk. Hovering, she was awash in white light, her platinum blonde hair dancing in the air. Her eyes closed, she seemed to be in a deep slumber.

Not only her, but those Dorrin had adopted were all here, covered by a magic circle with a hundred-meter diameter, separate from the energy magic circle around the obelisk. Everyone within the pulsing circle had become inexplicably linked.

An alchemy circle!

Wayne was more familiar with this circle since he had studied it before. It could forcibly draw one’s life essence, which he had given up using since he had a bottom line.

Inside the alchemy circle, the siblings Kristen shared no blood relation with were turned into human supplements. Every pulse of light extracted their life essence, and after going through the alchemy circle and being distilled, the life essence was streamed into Kristen’s body in a form that she could digest.

Wayne was green with envy, wanting nothing but to take her place. After some hesitation, he decided to interrupt the feeding.

Someone like Kristen would’ve lived with a lifetime of depression if she learned that she had become stronger at the cost of others. It would set a bad example for children!

Wayne stepped into the alchemy circle. The light surrounded him, identifying him as the primary supplement. While the idea wasn’t wrong, he was a taker and never a giver. With the

Book of Greed

controlling his energy channels, he was already generous enough by not bleeding others dry. The alchemy circle was not going to extract his essence from him.

As expected, the alchemy circle quickly labeled him as the dregs of a decoction, worthless. The light pulsed twice before fading.

“Kristen, wake up. The moon’s out.”

Wayne jumped and pulled Kristen into his arms. Once they were out of the alchemy circle, he knocked their thoughts together to wake her from her slumber.

Her eyelashes fluttered, and she slowly opened her eyes. Her frosty aloofness pricked him like ice.

This wasn’t the Senior Kristen he knew.

But wait. It wasn’t entirely true! Wayne had seen the switch flip in Kristen when she suddenly radiated chilling killing intent. He had once suspected that her gentleness and kindness were only an act, but after some testing, it didn’t seem to be the case. She didn’t turn him down even when he asked her to put on a mini skirt; if she were cold-blooded, she would’ve cut him off already.

Her personality was also a little different when she was a cat. So... was it because of the divine blood?

The chill in Kristen’s eyes gradually faded. Like she had just woken from a dream, she asked in surprise, “Wayne, why are you here?”

Noticing their compromised position, she struggled to get up with a deep blush. Once she was standing on her feet, she noticed Little Wayne enthusiastically saying hi to her. She jumped back into Wayne’s arms in shock.

“Why aren’t you wearing clothes?” Kristen chided softly.

“Aren’t you curious where you are?” Wayne asked in exasperation. Was this really the time to worry about his nudity?

That jogged her memory. Her face paled suddenly, her expression stiffening. Dorrin had gathered her adoptive children and taken them here. And...

The woman whom they had seen as their mother put them on this altar, and to activate the obelisk, she allowed a demon to devour the members of the church.

Shaking, Kristen pressed her head to Wayne’s shoulder. She didn’t know about her divine blood, only the fact that she had almost died as a sacrifice.

“Don’t be scared. I’ll protect you.”

Wayne pressed a kiss to her hair and looked at the obelisk at a short distance. It was nice to find what he had lost, but he couldn’t take it right now.

“Kekekeke—”

He looked over at the source of the chilling laughter and saw a blond man serving as a human supplement easily walk out of the alchemy circle. His eyes were pure black, and Wayne could smell a demon’s presence from him.

“Young mage, you can’t protect anyone!”

The Thousand-Eyed Demon looked back at Obed’s plan in derision. Not only hadn’t Obed managed to keep the demon in check, but he had also let a novice mage slip.

“Leave the girl. She’s not yours.”

“Says who? I’m taking her with me!”