Abe the Wizard

The only difference now with the crystal angelic statue was Izual. Other than that, Abel couldn’t think of anything that would make the statue stronger. In fact, the statue was now even stronger than when he was in his dragon form. At least when he switched on the dragon form transformation, he was never capable of staring right into the souls of the dead sacred knights. Now, he could see the white light as it was guiding the soul in.

Abel looked towards the corpses of the sacred knights. They were all dead, and their souls were already gone by the time he arrived. The only one that lived was barely living. Abel only got to see him because of his good luck.

Wizard Hutton was rushed to ask, “So what happened, Master Bennett?”

Abel pointed towards his front, “I did not expect the Nation of Evil to be this prepared. I mean, just look at the shredded pieces over there.”

Wizard Hutton couldn’t help but curse, “Yeah, those bastards knew too much about us already. Everyone except me is clearing out Iron Furnace Fort right now. Don’t worry about it. We’ll find the traitor who sold us in no time.”

The reason the dwarves could stand stronger had mostly to do with how unified they were as a race. That being said, the fact that there was a traitor amongst them posed a huge shame to their identity as a whole. Abel was starting to understand as well. He came here to see that it was only Wizard Hutton clearing up the battlefield. It really seemed like all the other law-defying wizards were busy searching up the traitors within the city. While it wasn’t such an impossible thing to do, it would probably take up a lot more resources than any of them would want.

So for here at the Iron Furnace Fort, there was a city spirit to keep track of every dwarf that was going in and out at a very specific time. It was possible to identify the traitor with this track record, but the number of names on the list was just too much to process efficiently. That was unless the one checking was a law-defying wizard that possessed a strong power of the Will. If he could even connect the city spirit with records of different categories, it’d be even more likely to increase the likelihood of finding the traitor in time.

Abel couldn’t’ help but to sigh, “The dwarves have completely kept the evil knights out now. The Iron Furnace Fort is actually the city that suffered the least in this assault.”

Wizard Hutton smiled proudly, “You have it right, Master Bennett. The sky ships were working terribly well. All it takes is a few rounds to keep these intruders out.”

During the Bay Law City invasion, while there wasn’t a terrible loss happening, the outskirt was actually suffering tremendously, with over a thousand druids lost. As for the barbarians lost in the assault at Battlecry City, the number was even more difficult to calculate. The number of soul lights sparked out could even ignite the whole city. Compared to those two, what happened here was pretty insignificant. Abel knew as well. There was not even a soul light that could be seen here. The most he could see were the corpses of intermediate sacred knights, which indicated that both sides never really committed all the forces they had.

Wizard Hutton spoke as he looked around, “Come sit at my residence, Master Bennett. Bernie’s going to be there as well.”

Wizard Hutton was living on top of a mountain. Very soon, Frankenstein brought Abel and Druid Joseph over towards it.

They came as Wizard Hutton made an inviting gesture, “Master Bennett, Wizard Frankenstein, Druid Joseph, please, come in.”

Bernie walked out and called out cheerfully, “Master Bennet! How do you have the time to be here?’

Abel laughed and complimented, “Bernie, hey! Looking good with your third rank?”

Bernie waved his hand, “Oh, stop with that!”

Bernie knew about how long it took Abel to rank from level one to official wizard. Compared to how long he was getting to where he was now, any compliment would seem out of place.

“Bernie, this is my follower, Joseph,” Abel introduced Joseph, “Joseph, have the present ready.”

Druid Joseph smiled and reached for his portal bag, “A present from Master Bennett for you.”

“A wine flask!” Bernie said happily as he took it over, “It’s not as comfortable-looking as my original one. There’s just too many patterns on it.”

Abel stared and reached out his hand, “Take it or leave it, Bernie.”

Bernie held onto it firmly, “What do you mean? I remember, you know? This is for the gift I gave you before!”

Abel laughed and nodded, “I’ve heard about your meditation training recently, so I’ve got you enough wine inside to rank up to become an official wizard.”

This was when Bernie began to notice the portal wine flask. He reached his power of the Will inside and had his eyes widened big. This was a fifty cubic meter flask. This was too big for even regular portal items. Bernie was starting to wonder what status Abel was now to find something this good. The answer to that was from the elven royal family, but Abel was not going to answer out right away.

Bernie was laughing, “That’s a pool of wine I’m staring at!”

He didn’t wait to open the flask and pour a whole mouthful down. Slowly, he allowed the wine to flow inside his mouth and felt a lot relaxed because of this. It was a very familiar taste. It was even better than the grandmaster’s wine he had over at the Holy Continent. Abel was using ordinary rum as raw materials back on the Holy Continent, but here he was collecting the finest strong drink from the Jadson Family. He didn’t have to worry about the drought reducing crop yield for wine production, either. This was why in terms of quality and taste, the drink he produced here was much more than what’s over on the Holy Continent.

Abel didn’t want Bernie to be a useless alcoholic, “This is for training, remember?”

Wizard Hutton sniffed as well. He knew very quickly that this was unlike anything he’s drunk before. This must’ve been something of a rarity, as far as he could tell.

Wizard Hutton was keen to ask, “Well, what is this exactly?”

Having said that, he activated the telekinesis and took the flashover.

Bernie called out immediately, “Hey that’s mine!”

Bernie quickly stopped as soon as he saw that Wizard Hutton was staring at him. Wizard Hutton proceeded to take a sip into his mouth. He immediately felt a rapid change to his body. The anonymous wine was elevating his senses to a new height. An indescribable sensation was rising from his inside. As a wizard of the dwarven race, his innate liking for alcohol made it very easy for him to tell what the effect was. Very quickly, without caring that the others were watching, he sat on the ground and commenced his meditation. Yes, the flask was still in his arms as he was doing this.

Bernie was frowning, “Master Bennett! Master Bennett! Can you do something about this?”

Abel wasn’t really sure what to do. This was between Wizard Hutton and himself. It’d be a lot easier to intervene if it was anyone else, but he didn’t really know what to do in this situation. Well, Bernie probably had to see if Wizard Hutton was willing to share some space. He could also think of making extras, but that’s going to take some other time. It wasn’t that important, to be honest. The whole point of bringing Druid Joseph here today was to give things out to Bernie in the future. Abel couldn’t do it himself because his status would scare even the dwarven king if he went anywhere by himself.

Abel asked nonchalantly, “What class are you maining, Bernie?”

Bernie seemed interested, “The dwarves main fire, mostly. According to my mentor, we have the most complete fire heritage that can help us reach legendary status.”

Abel spoke and reached for his staff, “Fire, got it. I’ll give you this leaf staff, then.”

Bernie knew about Abel’s other identity as the grandmaster blacksmith. Back in the days, Abel obtained his grandmaster status from forging staff. No, it wasn’t like Bernie was going to be nice by not asking for a staff. He already knew that Abel was an emperor with his own empire. Not taking this staff wasn’t going to influence his whole treasury.

Bernie took the staff and swung it, “Hey, is this a stick? There’s no pattern on it.”

Abel shook his head, “Just, uh, try casting the fire spells you learnt recently.”

The blame wasn’t on Bernie. Bernie just reached rank three. His ability was not yet sufficient to realize how exceptional this staff was. He listened to this and grabbed onto the staff with his right, then drew a firebolt rune pattern in the air. Something quite surprising happened after that. Just when he thought about casting the spell, the spell rune was generated on its own. It made him quite confused, so he just threw the firebolt in a random direction. Wizard Hutton was silenced as he didn’t see how fast it was to learn this stuff.

Bernie called out, “I did it! Firebolt!”

Wizard Hutton roared, “You tried to kill me Bernie?”

Wizard Hutton was still in meditation, but he never really made it far enough. He sensed the firebolt as he blocked it with his power of the Will. He thought that the rank 1 bolt would burst before it reached him, but the bolt had a total buff of six ranks. Combined with the rank 1 Bernie possessed, this was a total of seven ranks hitting him. It did explode on his flesh, and although his fire resistance was enough to take even a max-level bolt, his clothes had a big hole ripped open on the spot.

When Abel and Bernie looked over, they could see for a flash second that Wizard Hutton was changing a whole set of clothes for him. Abel tried not to laugh, while Druid Joseph tried to be polite by turning his head to the side.