The three wizards who were running away simultaneously stopped and looked up.
There was no fear on their faces, not even astonishment, only a blankness that comes when facing an irresistible force.
They raised their shields, activated their witchcraft artifacts, burned their bloodlines, and exerted all their strength to block that strike.
A golden shield, a silvery-white light cover, and a dark red bloodline barrier—three layers of defense stacked together, enough to withstand a strike from a Level 3 Mage.
A black palm descended.
The shield shattered, the light cover dissipated, and the barrier crumbled.
Their figures disappeared in the flames, without even having time to scream.
Though they weren’t turned to ash, they were completely erased, from body to soul, from existence to trace—everything was obliterated by that palm.
No bloodstains on the ground, no scorch marks, not even the place where they stood—they were reduced to a void.
Only three Six-Ring Badges fell to the ground, losing all their luster, becoming three ordinary pieces of magic metal scrap.
Duke, lurking underground, clearly witnessed this scene, with his spiritual power granting him information far beyond visual perception.
The trio didn’t even trigger the protection mechanism of the Broken Land; it was true death, not elimination.
Duke ceased his observations, sand stream coursing frantically underground, fleeing away from the skeleton.
His speed reached the extreme, the sand stream tearing crack after crack in the rock layer, with rubble and soil collapsing behind him, filling every inch of space he passed through.
However, the aura still caught up.
This aura wasn’t wind or energy, but something more abstract—the scent of death.
It surged from behind like a tide over his sand stream, turning rock to ashen gray, draining all moisture from the soil, even halting the flow of the underground dark river.
The moment the aura touched Duke’s sand stream, he felt his life force rapidly draining away, as if something were extracting from deep within his soul.
He gritted his teeth, pushing his elementalization to the extreme, spreading the sand stream into hundreds of strands, scattering in all directions at once.
The aura paused for a moment, seemingly trying to discern which strand was his true form.
Duke seized this moment, transforming his true form into an extremely fine strand of sand, drilling into an underground water vein.
The water vein was narrow, barely allowing the sand strand to pass, with hard basalt on either side.
He raced downstream along the flow of water, moving faster than before.
The aura pursued for a while, then gradually slowed, seemingly distracted by another target.
Duke didn’t dare stop, continuing to navigate the underground for a full hour until the scent of death completely vanished, before surfacing at the base of a cliff.
He leaned against a rock, gasping for breath.
Sweat poured from him, his face pale as paper—this was the result of contact with the aura of death.
The taste of having one’s life force extracted is an extreme punishment, one that no one would want to experience a second time.
He looked up, gazing in the direction where Morris was.
The distant skyline was a hazy gray, nothing visible.
But Duke knew that there stood something once human.
In its eyes, there were no friends, no enemies, only life and death.
The life that came close to it would turn into death.
...
After escaping that gray and white wasteland, Duke ran for hundreds of miles in one breath.
He didn’t dare stop, not even slowing his pace.
Only when the scent of death completely disappeared did he slightly ease his speed.
Morris’s strength was somewhat enigmatic, and Duke felt it was extremely tricky, sensing that Morris in that state was indiscriminate between friend and foe.
He had no grievance with Morris, who had previously warned him to stay away if seen, not to approach.
Under such circumstances, it was natural to not linger, to avoid any meaningless entanglements.
Duke traveled underground for a while longer before surfacing at a cliff’s base.
The moonlight was faint, mostly obscured by clouds, with only a few silver lines barely illuminating the surroundings.
It was an unfamiliar hilly area, the terrain undulating with ravines, scattered rocks, and sparse shrubs badly weathered.
Leaning against a rock, Duke observed the area.
In the following days, Duke’s range of activity shrank considerably.
He no longer ventured into unknown areas, instead exploring relatively safe boundary zones while recovering and searching for new resource points.
His harvests were scarce, totaling just over a hundred points.
He wasn’t in a hurry, his third place standing still relatively secure.
On the evening of the seventh day, while resting in a mountain hollow, he suddenly detected abnormal energy fluctuations from afar.
The fluctuations were faint, as if from deep underground, or deliberately suppressed by something.
Sending his spiritual power probing toward it, he only touched a vague barrier, as if peering through thick frosted glass, unable to discern anything.
He hesitated, deciding to take a look.
The sand stream moved slowly underground, heading toward the source of the fluctuations.
The fluctuations became increasingly distinct, not a tectonic occurrence nor an energy tide, but something more regular, more orderly.
Like someone breathing, or a heartbeat.
Duke stopped behind a hill, surfacing from underground, lying amidst a pile of rubble, carefully directing his spiritual power in a line toward the source of the fluctuations.
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