Angele turned his head around and peeked through the gaps in the trees. Two men wearing brown leather armor were grilling meat around the campfire. They also had a pot of white soup sitting by the side. Angele could smell the fragrance of the mushrooms from hundred meters away. As the two men heard the noises produced by the horses, they looked over to check.
‘They’re also leaving the school,’ Angele assumed. He had met many wizard apprentices like then along the way, but he never greeted anyone of them. All of them had different destinations and they didn’t know each other. Trusting others was a pointless task to them.
Angele didn’t stop as he continued to advance through the path slowly. He wanted to let the horses rest a bit. After a while, he increased the speed of the horses but suddenly heard someone coming toward him.
Angele lowered his body on the back of his horse and looked at the road in front of him. A young man wearing a white leather armor mounted on a brown horse appeared. After seeing Angele, he became surprised but tried to hide his surprised by changing his expression before slowing down. Angele slowed down as well.
“Could you tell me how far the Nick Dock is from here?” the man asked.
“With your speed, you’ll arrive in 5 or 6 days,” Angele answered as he smiled. The man likewise smiled and nodded. Both of them started urging their horses to speed up again.
Suddenly, Angele drew his sword. The sound of the sword being unsheathed scared the horses. Angele didn’t hesitate to slash his sword toward the man, which caused the latter to fall to the ground and die in a second. Angele had cut his stomach open, dyeing the mud on the ground with blood.
Angele looked at the body for a while and scrounged through it. He then turned back and left the places as fast as possible. He disappeared in the rain quickly.
**************************************
With a pale face, Angele put his crossguard sword back into the sheath and reached toward his back with his hand. He could feel the bleeding hole there. Angele took out a Hemostasis Potion and removed the wooden plug off the tube. He poured some onto his palm and applied it on the wound.
Green steam rose out of it as the wound absorbed the fluid.
“That guy was a rank 3 wizard apprentice. If I didn’t hear him chanting, I’d be dead already,” Angele murmured. He still felt shocked as he tried recalling the appearance of the wizard apprentice he just killed. The wizard apprentice was wearing a white leather armor suit that had an insignia of a silver ring.
‘It was a wizard apprentice of the Northland Alliance. I didn’t know they were so close. It’s likely that they are trying to surround the college. I need to leave,’ Angele thought. He bit his lips and shook the reins.
“Giddy up!” Angele yelled. The horse neighed and began galloping faster.
**********************************
The corpse of the man in a white armor suit was split in half and was lying on the muddy ground. The brown horse circled the corpse for a while before it left the place, heading to a certain location. The rain was becoming heavier. Around 20 minutes later, a man in a white robe appeared from the forest.
The man seemed old and had no expression on his face. He walked toward the body and squatted by its side. He dipped his finger into the blood and put it on his tongue. He turned and stared at the route that led to the Ramsoda Empire.
The man looked slightly disappointed, but he didn’t speak, only standing up and wiping his hands.
**********************************
Angele was breathing heavily. He lowered his body on the back of his horse. He slowed down before stopping by the roadside after half an hour. He led the two horses into the forest and tied them to a tree. Angele sat down and applied some pressure to the wound using his hands.
He just killed an enemy with but a mere second, but it wasn’t as easy as it seemed. If he had hesitated for even half a second, he would’ve been the one to die.
‘Zero, did you identify which spell the man used?’ Angele leaned against a tree before asking.
‘The possibility of the spell being Launch Bolt is 92.7%. The weapon he used was a metal needle,’ Zero reported.
‘Launch bolt…’ Angele bitterly smiled as he checked the wound. It had already stopped bleeding a while ago. The Hemostasis Potion was a great help, but he needed to take out the needle out of the wound. Angele took off his clothes and began checking his wound. With a dagger in hand, he tried to use it to search for the needle.
‘Zero, can you help me see my wound better?’ Angele asked. Zero quickly showed his wound as a hologram in front of his sight, which helped Angele find the needle’s location within a short span of time. The black, thin needle nearly penetrated his stomach.
Angele bore the pain, cut the wound open, and used his fingers to pull out the needle. He once again applied some of the potion to the wound right after, and it stopped bleeding right after the fluid was absorbed.
Angele’s hand was drenched with his own blood as he grasped the needle he had just pulled out.
‘Zero, can you identify its components?’ Angele asked.
‘Analyzing… Material is unknown. It’s hard and highly conductive. No information on it can be found in the database,’ Zero reported.
‘I should’ve searched his body… but I had to play safe,’ Angele thought as he shook his head in disappointment.
Angele rested for a while. He took some meat jerky and dried veggies out of the bag and ate them with the water he had. He also fed the horses with the horse beans. He didn’t wish to tarry for too long, so he left after feeding the horses.
For centuries, the Ramsoda College and the Northland Alliance had been mortal enemies, but no one remembered the cause for their enmity. The Northland Alliance started the war, yet Angele still had no grasp of the whole picture. He never even figured out why Manas betrayed the school. The man Angele had killed started casting a spell after realizing Angele was a wizard apprentice from Ramsoda College. He didn’t even hesitate.
‘It’s sad how I’m not allowed to look at classified information in the library as a wizard apprentice,’ Angele thought.
Angele knew there were 5 different stages and 3 different ranks for wizard apprentices, but he wasn’t sure how wizards were ranked. He knew that any wizard was much stronger than a wizard apprentice. He had already seen wizards battle but didn’t know the strength hierarchy.
The wizard apprentices’ stage was determined by the abilities they have while the ranks determine the strength and power of a wizard apprentice.
Rank 1 wizard apprentices belonged to the weakest, merely having a higher mentality and better spell resistance than normal people. Knight-level warriors might even be stronger than them.
Rank 2 wizard apprentices were much stronger than rank 1s. They had energy particles inside their bodies, which could help in strengthening themselves. They had also learned basic spells and could easily contend against top knights.
Rank 3 wizard apprentices were the best wizard apprentices. They knew about 5 spells and were capable of using energy particles in blocking incoming spells or physical attacks. Rank 3 wizard apprentices were also capable of improving spell incantations, making them faster to cast. Wizard apprentices rated as rank 3 vastly outstrip others’ strength as they only required seconds of time to slay their opponents with various spells. If they knew physical skills, they could use buff spells and make themselves invincible during battles.
The man Angele met used improved incantation. When Angele heard him chant, Angele drew his sword right away. Angele was already a top-level knight before becoming a wizard apprentice, so he was still a bit faster than his opponent. If he had hesitated, giving the man time to use more spells, he would be dead within seconds.
Every wizard apprentice had their own combination spells. There were a countless number of spells in the world; the Ramsoda College had at least a hundred. Strong spells were usually very difficult to learn, so wizard apprentices would instead combine basic spells to make their combination attack stronger. Wizard organizations were also creating new spells, so it was nearly impossible for a person to recognize every spell.
Angele thought for a while before stopping again. He set up a tent by the tree quickly and covered it with the linen clothes that wrapped the bags. He had gotten all of these from Ansett’s family, yet he didn’t expect to use them so soon.
He put more leaves on the branches above to block the rain and he tied the horses to the trunk under the tree. Angele took the bags off the horses and put them inside the gray tent. The downpour of rain was becoming heavier and heavier.
Angele sat inside the tent with his legs crossed while peeking outside through the small window. The wind was blowing across the tree, causing the branches to shake. No one else was around. It was dark, cold, and silent.
Angele suddenly thought of his father. He knew the baron was already out for a mission on the Anser Plain before he embarked on the ship. Angele never heard anything from him after. He started thinking about everyone he knew as it was getting darker and darker outside.
He wondered what made Manas decide to betray the school, and also thought of Ansett, who returned to her family after he left the school.
‘Master Liliana, Yuri, Nancy…’ Angele didn’t know why, but he kept thinking about everyone he knew. He didn’t know what lied ahead of him and when he would be able to settle. For the first time, Angele felt loneliness and isolation spreading deep in his heart.
‘Damn rain…’ he thought.