When the sword clashed with the stone, brilliant sparks spread out rapidly like a spider web.
A sudden sense of unease filled Blaine's mind, but before he could react, everything in front of him was engulfed by the leaping firelight!
Boom~
The violent explosion echoed through the silent lower town. Lynn, who wasn't far away, was also blown to the ground by the shockwave of the explosion. At the same time, the brain's prompt tone sounded.
[Energy depleted, overload mode ended...]
"Cough, cough..." Lynn clambered up from the ground in a sorry state, then immediately felt a void. The continuous casting had drained his magic power dry.
Compared to Lynn, who was affected by the blast, Blaine, who was in the center of the explosion, looked much more miserable...
As the dust settled, Lynn couldn't help but take a sharp breath. Blaine, at the center of the explosion, looked inhuman. Half of his sword-wielding right arm was blown off, his exposed skin was black and red, his chest armor was shattered and cracked, and one could faintly see putrefied flesh and white bones inside...
Even more terrifying, the intense explosion instantly drained the surrounding oxygen. Blaine's shrill screams lasted only a few seconds before abruptly stopping.
Lynn couldn't help but feel a pang of fear. He had heard of the power of methane explosions on TV news, but it was the first time he saw it firsthand, especially since this time, he had created it himself.
If Blaine hadn't been too far away, and the trajectory of the "Fireball Technique" easy to predict and avoid, he wouldn't have taken the risky approach, using the principle of a methane explosion to lure and kill his opponent.
It was thanks to the wondrous magic power that allowed him to manipulate the flow of air to some extent. Plus, the lower town wasn't lacking in "materials," so reaching a concentration sufficient to cause an explosion wasn't an easy feat.
Lynn picked up the long sword that had fallen to the ground and cautiously approached to check Blaine's condition.
Despite such severe injuries, Blaine hadn't instantly died. The two eyeballs that were barely attached to their sockets stared at him, his mouth making a "clucking" sound, indicating that his vocal cords had also been damaged.
"Let me send you off. No need to thank me!" Lynn said coldly. He couldn't help but hate Blaine for barging into the house and forcing him into a desperate situation, but he had no intention of torturing him. In this state, he probably couldn't extract any information anyway.
So death was the best end for him!
Lynn raised the long sword and precisely thrust it into Blaine's heart, watching as the latter's body trembled violently before once again falling silent.
Perhaps it was the influence of hatred, or perhaps it was Carl's original body's influence. In addition to the psychological discomfort, Lynn didn't feel excessively uncomfortable after personally ending a life. In fact, the aftereffects of casting spells back to back made his brain throb with pain occasionally.
Confirming that Blaine was truly dead, Lynn's tightly wound expression finally relaxed. His body swayed, and he used the long sword in his right hand as a crutch to keep from collapsing.
"071..." Lynn called softly in his mind but received no response. Remembering the earlier prompt, he understood that the brain had likely shut down due to excessive energy consumption.
In response, Lynn had no solution but to wait for 071 to replenish its energy. At this moment, his mind was filled with confusion.
What exactly was the magic power used by wizards, and why could it manipulate chemical elements?
And those strange runes that appeared inexplicably in his mind just now...
What left Lynn most perplexed was that, under the overload mode of the brain, he could even directly convert magic power into hydrogen and oxygen.
Did this mean that magic power could be converted into any other element?
If so, the wonder of this thing would far exceed his expectations.
[Follow me! I will reveal the truth of this world to you!]
Recalling what his mentor Kro had said when they met half a year ago, Lynn couldn't help but tremble.
Perhaps the old wizard wasn't just fooling him back then!
It was no wonder Carl's original body would give up a stable life of food and clothing to become a Wizard Apprentice...
Unfortunately, Carl's original body had studied magic for too short a time. Plus, Kro had more than one apprentice, and teaching time was limited, so Lynn hadn't had access to more secrets.
The aftereffect of overconsuming magic power left Lynn terrified. During the last spell cast, he almost thought his brain was going to explode, and his body felt as weak as if he had just suffered a severe illness, urgently wanting to lie down and sleep.
But Lynn knew this wasn't the time to rest. Though he had dealt with two enemies, the commotion from the battle in the slums would likely be reported to the local tribunal soon, which would surely send more people to capture him.
The immediate priority was to quickly find a place to hide and figure out a way to contact a wizard...
Lynn glanced down at Blaine's corpse, prodded it with the sword, and cut open the damaged pouch at his waist, causing a small pile of coins to spill out.
A Sears gold coin, seven silver coins, and more than a dozen copper coins.
Seeing that these well-crafted coins had not been damaged by the explosion, Lynn's mood improved slightly.
As a noble's illegitimate child, Carl's original body had never been wealthy. After running away from home for more than three months, occasionally funding his mentor's research, he could barely afford to eat...
With this windfall, he wouldn't have to risk returning to that dilapidated house, which was likely a dead end now.
"Hmm?" Lynn bent down to gather the coins and unexpectedly found a piece of parchment that had fallen out alongside them.
Underneath the scorching heat, most of the writing was completely unreadable, leaving only faint characters like [Wuer Town], [Moonlit Day], [Johnny], and [Seventeen copper coins].
"Wuer Town?" Lynn muttered to himself, and out of caution, he didn't destroy it on the spot but instead kept the burned parchment.
He needed someone who could answer his questions. Heading to Wuer Town to find other apprentices might be a good choice.
At least it would be more reliable than him searching alone for those hidden wizards...
As Lynn pondered, he grabbed Blaine's ankle and dragged the body toward the foul-smelling Seep River not far away.
In this medieval world of magic and divine arts, even the dead couldn't be trusted. If the church of this world possessed the Resurrection Technique, his information could be leaked.
The safest method was to dispose of the body entirely!
(PS: Thanks to the readers Bloodstained Underworld Sun, Starstream Maple, and Vast Starry Sky for the reward of 100 wake-up coins.)
"Bishop Anluoke, it's here! I saw that wizard and the witch-hunter lord come out of the house from afar and fought all the way to here..."
A quarter of an hour later, in the lower city, a ragged scavenger, covered in filth, hunched over as he looked at the priests of the church before him, carefully recounting everything he had seen.
Anluoke remained silent, examining the scorch marks on the ground. The fresh blood had turned dark red under the heat, and the upturned soil mixed with shattered flesh attested to the ferocity of the battle.
The severe destruction was likely caused by the second-circle spell, Flame Burst Skill!
"Where's the body?" Anluoke suddenly questioned. There were clear signs of a fight, but Blaine's body was nowhere to be found.
The scavenger swallowed hard and began to speak with difficulty. "After the witch-hunter lord died, that wizard threw him into... threw him into the Yin River..."
"This is blasphemy!"
Before Anluoke could respond, a middle-aged priest behind him burst out angrily.
Over the years, thanks to the "wise" measures of the Duke of Nordland, the entire downstream of the Yin River had truly become a place of filth.
Blaine's identity was not just a simple witch-hunter; he was also a member of the church's divine punishment army, and he had even taken the Divine Grace Elixir, becoming God's emissary on earth.
His frequent participation in witch-hunting operations was merely to pad his resume.
But that wizard, corrupted by a demon, had ruthlessly killed him and thrown his body into the polluted Yin River, undoubtedly a direct challenge to the authority of the church!
The scavenger's body trembled slightly, lowering his head in fear.
Anluoke tightened his grip on his staff, his anger rising. He turned to the trembling scavenger and questioned again.
"Did you see clearly what the wizard who killed Blaine looked like? Was anyone else involved?"
"I only saw a few distant glimpses, Bishop. There should have been no second wizard..." the scavenger replied, trembling. "The person looked just barely an adult, with brown hair, about as tall as you."
"Carl..." Anluoke murmured to himself, contemplating the information.
Previously, he had not paid much attention to this obscure wizard apprentice. After all, the intelligence indicated that the apprentice had been learning for just about half a year and was not favored by Wizard Coru, making him the least threatening target...
But it seemed that was not the case...
Releasing the second-circle spell Flame Burst Skill and killing two witch-hunters was not something a novice could achieve!
Unless the person possessed a powerful alchemical tool, or... was a formal wizard like Coru!
...
Several days later, at the border of Nordland Territory, in an inn in Wuer Town.
Waking from a nightmare, Lynn jumped off the hard wooden bed, quickly moving to the window to observe the scene outside.
Seeing that everything was normal, with no one coming to catch him, Lynn finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Since he killed those two witch-hunters in the slums five days ago, he had been worried about the Judgement Court's pursuit. He took a deliberately longer route to Wuer Town and even falsified some escape traces.
Perhaps his half-baked counter-surveillance techniques worked, or the Judgement Court had no time to deal with a minor wizard apprentice, as he had not encountered any pursuers yet.
Despite this, the journey had been arduous.
Used to the conveniences of modern life, suddenly finding himself in a setting resembling medieval Europe was almost too much for Lynn to bear.
There were no phones or computers, no familiar family or friends, no hot breakfast in the morning, only hard black bread washed down with water...
The only consolation was that he retained all the memories of the original Carl, which allowed him to understand the language and writing of this world. His skills were not too weak, enabling him to deter some petty thieves and avoid dying on the way.
After several days of hardship, Lynn reluctantly accepted the reality of his situation, and this was his second day in Wuer Town!
Out of caution, Lynn had not hurried to find the other wizard apprentices. After discovering the markers they left, he returned discreetly, taking a day to familiarize himself with the terrain and stock up on flints and black bread.
The days on the run had made Lynn paranoid, but after a preliminary understanding of Wuer Town, he realized why Johnny had chosen this place for the meeting.
As a trading town on the border of Nordland Territory, the place saw a mix of people coming and going regularly, with merchant caravans frequently passing through. One or two strangers would not attract much attention.
As he pondered, Lynn reached for a stone mortar, placing the fragmented flints inside, and began grinding them into fine powder with a small wooden stick.
During his time in Wuer Town, aside from looking for markers and familiarizing himself with the terrain, Lynn had devoted the rest of his time to making white phosphorus!
White phosphorus is an allotrope of phosphorus with the chemical formula P4, appearing as a white or pale yellow transparent solid.
There are two common methods of preparation.
First, mixing calcium phosphate, quartz sand, and carbon powder into a mixture, heating it to 1400 to 1600 degrees Celsius. The resulting phosphorus vapor is then passed into cold water to solidify into white phosphorus.
Second, heating red phosphorus to 416 degrees Celsius in the absence of air, sublimating and cooling it to obtain white phosphorus.
However, in this pre-industrial, medieval-like world, gathering these materials in a short time was no easy task.
071 had shown him some ancient and "convenient" methods of extracting materials, but Lynn preferred not to use them unless absolutely necessary.
Fortunately, Lynn soon discovered a surprise: the flints he had used contained traces of red phosphorus!
Given red phosphorus's role as an effective flame retardant, its use in making matches in the last century to improve safety was not surprising.
It seemed the natives of this world had already discovered phosphorus, albeit at a primitive level of application.
As he ground the flint with the stick, removing the impurities, he was left with clumps of red powder...
He lacked professional equipment, but his magic was far more useful than any scientific apparatus!
Mage's Hand!
With a thought, the fine red phosphorus seemed to be summoned, floating up, and under the effect of the Initial Material Decompilation Skill, breaking down into basic molecular states...
(P.S.: Any support for the new book is appreciated!)
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