"How is the him out there doing now?"
"He's already advanced to the peak of Crystallisation, and the curse marks on his face have spread over sixty percent! His mental state seems off!" Leilin was silent for a moment, then spoke the truth.
"The initialisation is complete. He's now at the 'Sacrifice of Flesh and Blood' stage, but he's still far from the final '
Robin sighed. "Can you let me out, or bring him before me? There are some things I need to tell him!"
"The situation is extremely dangerous right now. I'm sorry..." Leilin's expression was dark. "Don't you think it's time you gave me an answer?"
"What answer? Haven't you already figured it all out?"
"Only part of it! Especially — why are you here?" Leilin asked.
"Heh... An ancestor of our family once obtained some information about the 'Mark of Gluttony', and learned that the mark was kept in the Quicksand Fortress of the Forgotten Lands. That's why I was so insistent on inviting you there last time..."
Robin glanced at Leilin, then began to speak slowly.
The so-called Mark of Gluttony was a spiritual remnant of the Primordial Gluttony — Belzebub — left behind in Greenleaf City. Legend had it that any
This Mark of Gluttony had once brought immense suffering to the regions surrounding Greenleaf City. There were even cases where entire cities were consumed whole.
Only under the joint suppression of numerous Wizards was this wave of chaos finally contained, and the vast majority of the marks were destroyed. Only a small number were kept as research samples.
"My ancestor was once a lower-ranking member of the Quicksand organisation. He recorded in his notes that the Mark of Gluttony had been collected by the Quicksand organisation and modified, granting it the miraculous ability to improve and purify one's own bloodline through devouring large quantities of the same bloodline..."
The history of the Komoin Giant Serpent warlocks was naturally very long, dating back to ancient times. But in that era, the Ouroboros Ring did not yet exist, so joining the bloodline organisation Quicksand was perfectly normal.
It was only after the fall of the ancient era that the surviving Komoin Giant Serpent warlocks established the Ouroboros Ring, which had been passed down to the present day.
"So you had your eye on that Mark of Gluttony?" Leilin's voice was cold.
"Yes. As long as I obtain it, I'm confident I can purify our family's bloodline to a level comparable to the ancient Komoin Giant Serpent — and even advance to Dawn Star!"
In Robin's eyes, flames seemed to appear for a moment, only to quickly die out.
"So it really was you who obtained the Mark of Gluttony back then. The one who boarded the Airship with us was the real you as well — otherwise, the teacher would have definitely noticed. The mutation that followed must have occurred after we returned..."
Leilin picked up where Robin had left off.
"Yes! The spiritual contamination carried by the Mark of Gluttony was terrifying. In just a few short months, I was already losing control of myself. I had emotional outbursts several times..."
A bitter smile hung on Robin's face.
"So you stripped it off and tried to find a test subject to weaken its effects. And in the end, you found Luo Ya!"
"No! It was Luo Ya who asked for this on his own!"
Robin roared hoarsely, his body going limp as he collapsed to the ground.
"What a wonderful child he was! I still remember the look in his eyes when he spoke to me — full of hope and determination... Even back then, I felt that only a Warlock like him could hope to subdue the Mark of Gluttony..."
"I already know how it turned out!"
Leilin nodded. Whether Luo Ya's temperament had drastically changed after accepting the Mark of Gluttony, or whether he had harbored deep-seated hatred all along, Leilin didn't want to dig deeper. But the current situation was already crystal clear.
Luo Ya had imprisoned his own uncle and numerous elders, seized control of the family, and even went so far as to hunt down high-level Pure-Blood Warlocks in the outside world, devouring them to purify his own bloodline.
Recently, he had even set his sights on Milantra, only to meet with a fierce counterattack.
"These kinds of relics left behind by higher beings are all nothing but trouble!"
Leilin could deeply relate. Whether it was the spirit entity that had been attached to the Snake Woman's bone joints, or the Spiritual Power contamination he had recently encountered in his Astral Plane experiments, they were all essentially the same situation.
Fortunately, Leilin's willpower was firm enough, and he was decisive enough to eliminate all these hidden dangers.
Otherwise, his current situation wouldn't have been any better than Luo Ya's.
"Using the Primordial Desire of Gluttony to improve one's own bloodline?" Leilin stroked his chin — this was actually a very worthwhile research topic. Just looking at how Luo Ya out there had broken through three successive barriers — Vaporization, Liquefaction, and Crystallization — straight from initial Tier Three all the way to peak Crystallization, was proof enough that this idea was highly viable, as long as the problem of spiritual contamination could be resolved.
"The situation right now is very complicated. I'm afraid I can only get you out of here first, and then see what headquarters has to say..."
Something of this magnitude was daunting even for Leilin. Only those three Dawn Star-rank elders had the authority to make the final decision.
"Chip! Open the Core Confinement Room!" Leilin commanded.
"Crack!" "Crack!" The mass of blood-red lightning bolts dissipated, and the glow of the Restraining Runes inside the room dimmed as well.
"Ding! Foreign Spiritual Power detected — identified as residual Formation Spirit energy!"
The Chip suddenly popped up an alert window.
"A secondary Formation Spirit was planted as well, set to trigger when the Core Confinement Room closes?" Leilin was genuinely shocked. It seemed Roya hadn't completely lost his mind — if anything, he'd shown a meticulous and calculating nature.
"Begin suppressing the Formation Spirit! The target is forcibly disrupting data transmission and sending a distress signal! Initiating interception!"
The Chip spun into high-speed processing, but compared to the opponent's advance preparations, this improvised interception obviously had no chance of a high success rate.
"Interception failed! The target's message has already been transmitted!" The Chip's mechanical voice rang out.
"Damn!" Leilin cursed under his breath, grabbing Robin and rushing out at full speed.
At the same moment, the "Robin" standing in the castle's banquet hall froze, his expression changing sharply.
"What's going on?" Another Leilin stepped forward with a wine glass, smiling as he asked.
"Die!" Now that Roya had received the intelligence report, how could he not realize that the man in front of him was nothing but a puppet? He had been played!
That fury instantly turned his face crimson. A pair of crystalline black gauntlets materialized over his hands, and he drove them straight through the smiling Leilin's chest.
Clang! The glass hit the floor with a crisp sound, and bright red wine splattered in every direction.
The entire hall fell silent in an instant. Every guest stared at the scene, their eyes filled with disbelief.
Lord Robin had just attacked an enforcer at the banquet? Was this an outright rebellion?
"Ahhh!" A sharp, panicked woman's scream pierced the air, breaking the paralysis that had gripped the hall and setting everything back in motion.
The Wizards present sprang into action. The warlocks of the Robin clan gathered together, while Pike moved to shield Sluby and rallied his own men into position.
Two groups of warlocks converged within the surging crowd like a pair of massive reef rocks, utterly immovable amid the chaos.
Opposite them, the panicked musicians, waitresses, dancers, clowns, and the like fled in all directions, shrill cries escaping their lips at intervals.
From this posture alone, it was clear that neither side's warlocks had ever let their guard down — they had been ready to turn hostile, even to draw blood, at a moment's notice!
Sizzle!
Roya stared blankly at Raelin in his grip. At this moment, Raelin's entire body had turned pitch black. Drops of black liquid endlessly oozed from his wounds, dripping onto the floor, where they immediately gave off billowing clouds of white vapor.
"I'm heading out first. Kill all of Raelin's subordinates!"
Without the slightest care, Roya flung the shadow puppet in his hand, and his entire figure dissolved into a dark phantom that vanished without a trace.
After Roya left, the warlocks facing off in the banquet hall fell silent for a moment. Then, without warning, the brilliant glow of countless spells erupted into existence.
A chaotic torrent of particles engulfed the entire hall in an instant…
"Fight the enemy in their own nest — a place they've been fortifying for thousands of years? I'm not that foolish!"
With Robin clamped under one arm, Raelin crushed several armored Knights blocking his path into fragments.
Beneath the gleaming silver Knight armor, there was nothing but empty air — not a single thing inside. These suits of armor, originally lined along the walls as mere decoration, had somehow received some unknown command and suddenly launched an assault on Raelin.
That wasn't all. Behind Raelin, numerous grayish-black, tongue-like appendages had already filled the entire corridor and were surging toward him.
"These Knights are 'Silent Sentinels.' Without finding their core, it's impossible to destroy them!"
Robin, clutched under Raelin's arm, proved quite useful as an explainer, though he made no move to help.
In his current state, he was not only gravely wounded — his Spiritual Power had been ravaged to a terrifying degree, as though a large portion had been devoured, dropping him to roughly the level of a first-tier warlock.
Otherwise, Raelin wouldn't have felt so at ease keeping him close.
"Compared to those Silent Sentinels, what you really need to watch out for are the tongues behind us!"
Looking back at the pursuing horrors, Robin's face changed. "This is a corridor my family stumbled upon by accident. It seems to have undergone some kind of mutation, connecting to an entity of terrifying magnitude. Those gray tongues are a part of that entity…"
"Even a third-tier crystallized Wizard would be in serious trouble if caught by them — they could even be devoured outright. Several of my family's elders died to them…"
Some Wizard strongholds, due to their terrifying radiation, often undergo mutations that produce phenomena even Wizards themselves cannot explain.
And these eerie phenomena were then exploited by the descendants of those Wizards, giving rise to this form of defense.