Wizard: Starting from the Skill Tree

The Duke nodded slightly at the leader, fulfilling his promise not to harm them.

Then he turned around and walked back in the direction of the forest.

After taking a dozen steps, a series of fine, intermittent ultrasonic vibrations came from behind him.

Probably speaking, but he couldn’t understand.

Then there was a more subtle sound, as if those little people were dispersing back to various plants, resuming their interrupted gathering work.

The Duke didn’t look back; he crossed the edge of the slope and re-entered the shadows of the Twisted Forest.

The sound of his footsteps crunched on the layer of dead leaves, sharp and monotonous, echoing with each step in the deathly quiet forest.

The gathering window still had one last section, and the low vegetation belt between the forest and the hills might still yield Nightmare Dust, but he decided not to gather any more.

The Duke didn’t want to linger here too long, not wanting to bring extra trouble upon himself out of greed.

Even though there seemed to be no sign of powerful beings here, at least not recently, that didn’t mean it was necessarily safe.

Soon, the broken silhouette of the manor ruins appeared amidst the twisted black trunks.

By the shrub fence, Panshi still stood in its original spot.

The Duke stepped over the invisible boundary of the safe house, and the feeling of being cut off by an invisible barrier returned, isolating him from the true environment of the Nightmare Plane.

The barrier of the safe house had further weakened, with slight spatial ripples starting to appear at the edges, a harbinger of the impending collapse of the projection.

After some time, this temporarily projected area from the Flower Sea Plane would be completely repelled by the Nightmare Plane and disappear without a trace.

He patted Panshi’s arm, signaling it to follow, then crossed the courtyard, descended the stone steps, and returned to the basement.

Panshi, behind him, re-erected the magic metal door, blocking the entrance.

With a wave of his hand, the Duke stored Panshi into the Light God Court.

The existence of the Light God Court might become a powerful weapon for him in the future.

For instance, the Duke could accommodate millions of slave creatures within the Light God Court, then unexpectedly unleash them at some location, instantly forming an army of millions.

The Duke had anticipated this, though it was not yet time to use such a thing.

He activated the Coordinates Earring, returning to the Flower Sea Plane.

Gray-white light silently gathered above the teleportation point in the basement of the Flower Sea Plane Manor, and the Duke’s feet landed once more on the basalt floor tiles.

The sweet air, mingled with the fragrances of a thousand different flowers from the Flower Sea Plane, seeped through the cracks in the stone steps, forming a stark contrast with the dry ashy smell of the Nightmare Plane, making him unconsciously take a deep breath at the first touch of air.

He stepped out of the basement and paused for a moment in the manor courtyard, allowing his body to completely relax from the constant tension of the Nightmare Plane.

The soft lavender sky of the Flower Sea Plane was slowly transitioning to the colors of dusk, and the hues of the meadow changed from vibrant green to orange-red, with the moon-white halo of the sky flowers shining brighter than during the day.

The spore creatures dancing in the light beams continued their tireless circling, everything just as it had been a few days before he left, as if those three days in the Nightmare Plane were nothing more than a figment of his imagination.

The Duke didn’t linger in the Flower Sea Plane and hurried back to the Wizard Plane, back to the Central Islands.

Upon returning to the dormitory in the Seventh District, the first thing the Duke did was check the accumulated messages over the past few days using the Six-Ring Badge.

Harrison’s daily reports were as punctual as ever, and the newest messages strung together almost formed a schedule for an expedition team.

The last message was sent a few hours before his return, with Harrison’s tone noticeably more upbeat, indicating that things were progressing smoothly on that end.

Oliver from the Star Dome Commerce Association had also sent two messages, spaced apart by some time.

The first message was sent on the first day after he left, stating that there was a minor hiccup in coordinating the Aurora True Liquid, as a small energy storm had suddenly hit the area where the Magic Potion Master’s private observatory was located in the Aurora Plane region, temporarily rendering the teleportation array unusable until the energy storm abated, at which point the samples could be retrieved.

The second message, sent late last night, mentioned that the energy storm had begun to subside and was expected to recover within a few days, after which Oliver would personally travel to the Aurora Plane to retrieve the Aurora True Liquid.

Oliver also apologized: "Sorry to keep you waiting."

The Duke politely replied to each message, expressing his gratitude.

Then he turned off the badge and sat at his desk, staring at the heavily annotated materials list.

The more accessible materials like Space Crystal Grass, Tide’s Tear, and Dragon’s Breath Pollen had gradually arrived before he set out for the Flower Sea Plane, neatly stored in a special compartment of the Space Ring.

There was still a delivery window for Starlight Sand, but based on Oliver’s previous feedback, there shouldn’t be any issues.

The special allocation request for Void Pollen from the Six-Ring Tower had already been approved before his departure, and the sample had been waiting in the intelligent receiving and dispatch Witch Array at the Seventh District dorm for who knows how many days.

There had been no progress in the search for the Silent Heart, but it was an auxiliary material for the Silent Eternal Seal, and a substitute formula could be used.

Now that there was a definite timeline for Eternal Ice and Aurora True Liquid, the acquisition channels for all key materials for the three magic potions were no longer unknown.

All that remained for him was to wait.

The Duke then laid out the resin balls offered by the Glowing Elves in a row on the desk.

The largest one was about the size of an adult fist, and the others were smaller but still substantial, with the amber-colored, semi-transparent resins casting a warm, lubricous sheen under the soft light of the magic lamp in the dormitory, like aged honey sealed for hundreds of years.

The Duke picked up the smallest one, moving it closer to the light for a closer inspection.

The resin layers themselves weren’t completely uniform, displaying traces of extremely thin layers stacked together when illuminated, each layer thin to the point of being nearly transparent, with nearly invisible minute gaps between the layers filled with a slightly darker substance, likely a mix of some natural tree resin and pollen.

This multi-layered composite structure allowed the resin ball to achieve an almost complete spiritual power isolation effect without any rune enhancements.

He carefully inserted a spiritual power probe into the outermost layer of the resin ball.

The probe met slight resistance penetrating the first resin layer, followed by a filler layer, then the second resin layer, each layer’s material ratio slightly different, with the innermost resin becoming purer and the outer layers more resilient.

This gradient material change from inside out ensured absolute sealing of the core area while the outer resilient materials absorbed shocks from external impacts, preventing inner layer fractures.

The Duke then used instruments to conduct a deeper study, discovering that this material was an ideal preservation method for Nightmare Dust, capable of storing it for hundreds of years, as researched by the Glowing Elves.

Meanwhile, as the Duke conducted his research, in the icy realm...

In the depths of the eternal ice layer, there was no distinction between day and night.

The Frost Realm’s sun was a pale light dot so distant it could almost be overlooked, hanging in the center of a cloudless sky, never changing in brightness or position from rise to set.

Its light penetrated thousands of meters of thick ice, becoming a ghostly blue-green glow after countless refractions and scattering through ice crystals, resembling moon fragments sunken to the ocean floor by the time it reached the depths of the eternal ice layer.

The air was so cold that it had turned into a liquid, condensing into dense silver-white droplets on the ice walls, shattering into smaller beads when they hit the ground, producing a crisp, monotonous ticking sound, the only audible noise in the boundless silence.

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