Chapter 293: Chapter 262: Decision

Jeming stood before Levin Mills, who had completely lost the ability to resist, his gaze icy cold.

As their eyes met, both saw the murderous intent in the other’s gaze.

Without a trace of hesitation, Jeming swung a punch and instantly destroyed his flesh.

The soul of a Third Level Wizard is quite formidable, capable of surviving briefly after leaving the body.

But Jeming wouldn’t give him any chance.

He reached into his internal space and retrieved a special Fourth Level Attack Witchcraft Artifact—sealed within it was a Fourth Level Witchcraft dedicated to soul destruction.

Seeing Levin Mills’ weakened soul attempt to flee from his remaining corpse, Jeming immediately activated the artifact.

Yet, he deliberately altered the angle slightly, allowing the Soul Witchcraft not to completely annihilate him, but rather to inflict critical damage, leaving him on the brink of death.

The outcome was as Jeming had expected; Levin Mills’ soul hovered mid-air, losing consciousness and continuously dissipating.

Witnessing this scene, Jeming extended his hand to perform a “Soul Search” on him.

Following the impact of the Fourth Level Witchcraft earlier, most of Levin Mills’ memories had suffered irreparable damage.

However, based on the characteristics of the soul, the deepest obsessions and most impressionable fragments of memories would still remain.

And precisely within these remaining fragments, Jeming found the information he urgently needed—the truth of the whole matter.

Originally, Levin Mills and his group did take on the camp’s task to search for the missing Wizard Squad.

Though Levin Mills repeatedly called Jeming a genius, his own talent wasn’t lacking; upon advancing to the Third Level, he had also mastered some basic knowledge of the Space Element.

Because of this, he dared to take on such a risky mission.

Initially, everything went smoothly; they successfully found the Wizard Squad lost in this twisted space.

However, just as they were preparing to lead the others out, the squad unexpectedly turned on them and launched an attack!

Fortunately, the squad consisted of only six wizards, with their high-tier combat strength being merely two newly advanced Third Level Wizards, who hadn’t even fully mastered their own powers.

Additionally, the cunning Levin Mills had prepared beforehand, hiding some team members on the outskirts to provide support.

By relying on the stubborn vitality of the “Vitality” rules, Levin Mills narrowly avoided death and led his team to counter-kill several of them with their numerical advantage.

Seeing their assassination fail, the surviving enemy Third Level Wizards recklessly attempted to tear apart the space and escape using their unrefined Space Rules.

This action triggered a chain reaction of space turbulence in an already unstable area, forcing Levin Mills and others to temporarily withdraw and wait for the space to stabilize.

And through the memory extraction from the soul of the slain, Levin Mills discovered an earth-shattering secret: The core area of this twisted space contained extremely valuable free-form “Plane Origin”!

Besides being directly extracted by Seventh Level Wizards with great power, “Plane Origin” can spontaneously condense within certain energy bodies or materials under specific conditions in planes, forming precious resources imbued with origin.

Though this naturally formed origin isn’t as pure as that extracted by Seventh Level Wizards, it still significantly aids a wizard’s advancement.

More crucially, the origin produced here is the rare and precious “Space Rules” origin!

This explained why the Third Level Wizard was so unfamiliar with his own power—he had relied on forcibly absorbing “Plane Origin” to advance, yet hadn’t had the chance to accumulate corresponding knowledge and mastery.

As for why they attacked Levin Mills’ squad?

It is due to the unique characteristics of this area: To obtain the origin, there is the necessity of using special means to “sacrifice” high-quality materials and information.

Due to intense space fluctuations, the Plane Origin here is extremely unstable; through sacrifice, the origin can be “exchanged” out.

Materials are relatively easy to solve, but “high-quality information” is extremely rare.

While information carriers seem ubiquitous to wizards, pure information itself is exceptionally rare.

Besides pure Plane Origin, the best medium to carry information is the soul.

And so-called “high-quality information” implies that the soul of local ordinary beasts is worthless; the suitable sacrifices are intelligent beings—especially wizards, whose souls are highly condensed and accumulate vast knowledge!

Thus, seeing that Levin Mills and his team weren’t particularly strong, the squad launched the attack intending to harvest more souls for exchanging origin.

After all, ordinary wizards generally cannot resist such high-end resources as Plane Origin.

Yet they didn’t anticipate Levin Mills had prepared afterthoughts; their power insufficient, they ultimately failed.

The subsequent developments were everything Jeming personally experienced.

To more efficiently search for remaining enemies and to cover up this earth-shattering secret, Levin Mills’ squad specifically hired a batch of Low Tier Wizards as cannon fodder.

In this way, even if the plan is exposed, they can silence the witnesses at any time, and even turn these wizards into “premium resources” needed for sacrifice, used to exchange for Plane Origin.

The Third Level Wizard who narrowly escaped, after discovering Levin Mills and others continuously blocking the exit, was left with no options.

He had no choice but to sacrifice all his deceased companions, extracting a massive amount of Plane Origin to forcibly advance, hoping to use the level advantage to seize a slim chance of survival.

Browsing through these fragmented memories, understanding flashed in Jeming’s eyes.

He finally understood Levin Mills’ true scheme and also realized why that Fourth Level Wizard was so weak—in essence, he was merely a Second Level Wizard relying on forced level advancement using Origin.

Possessing the intensity of Fourth Level Spiritual Power and a physique, yet lacking matching knowledge and skills, he was naturally vulnerable.

But Jeming quickly turned his attention to the most critical part of the intelligence: the treasure that could exchange “Plane Origin”!

Countless thoughts flashed rapidly through his mind.

After a long time, Jeming made up his mind.

He turned around, looking at the still weak and collapsed Fourth Level Wizard on the ground.

The other side had just witnessed Jeming handle Levin Mills throughout the whole process, at this moment facing Jeming’s sweep of gaze, only bitterness remained on his face.

The Forbidden Magic Domain had not yet fully dissipated, heavily wounded and near death, he chose to submit without hesitation: “Don’t kill me… I am willing to accept judgment and audit from the camp.”

Jeming nodded and without saying more, only condensed a new contract and handed it over.

The Fourth Level Wizard let out a bleak laugh, ultimately imprinting his Spiritual Power on it.

For Jeming, this was the most secure handling method now.

On the surface, Wizard Civilization strictly prohibits mutual slaughter among their kind.

As long as it’s not discovered, naturally there’s no harm, but conversely, if evidence is conclusive, violators will inevitably face severe judgment.

Unless the circumstances are extremely vile, usually they are not executed, but the wizards have methods to squeeze the criminal wizard’s value to the utmost, making him repay his sins with a long remaining life.

And as the accuser and captor, Jeming will permanently enjoy a portion of all the profits extracted from this Fourth Level Wizard—whether it’s resources, knowledge, or military merits.

In other words, this Fourth Level Wizard’s remaining life will become a “living mine” under Jeming’s name.

Of course, the premise of all this is that he passes the so-called “audit”.

Unlike the relatively public “judgment”, the “audit” is more secretive.

It usually only initiates when the camp or higher powers suspect a wizard is experiencing abnormalities such as “mental pollution”, “soul replacement”, or “spiritual incubation”.

This method of forcibly advancing by depending on a single source of Plane Origin is precisely one of the focus review scenarios.

Theoretically, wizards can indeed advance using pure “Plane Origin”, but the precondition is these origins must come from different Planes.

Because the essence of the Plane Origin is the aggregation of information, while consciousness and spirit are also forms of information.

If a High Tier entity is willing to dismantle its soul information into basic Origin and be fully absorbed by others, it can perfectly replace the other’s underlying consciousness without causing abnormal Soul Fluctuation!

In fact, this situation is also the most common during audits.

As long as a world’s Master of the World (the strongest being of this world) has enough wisdom to see through the true powers behind the wizards, he will easily understand he faces only two paths: Death, or becoming “spoils of war”.

Although many with fiery temperaments decide to drag the enemy to death together, there are also many who wish to live that will try to save themselves.

And this method akin to soul possession is very easily thought of for beings who can communicate with Plane Origin.

Thinking of this, Jeming couldn’t help recalling the legendary senior he met before formally advancing, who returned from the Shadow Plane—advancing five levels in five years.

Later on, after learning the inside story of the relevant knowledge, he purposely checked the academy’s archives and found that the name of that “senior” had long been quietly listed in the casualty list.

There’s no doubt, that “Lucky One” had long been possessed by the Master of the Shadow Plane.

But also because of the price paid, the Shadow Plane, originally extremely difficult to handle, was rapidly stabilized by the strong figures from Nolun Workshop.

Thinking back now, the reason his mentor Clark showed such a smile at that time was probably because he received the news in advance, hence smiling so playfully.

“…Let’s go.”

Jeming reined in his thoughts, glanced at the Fourth Level Wizard and the group of still shocked survivors.

He spoke no more, after cleaning up the spoils on the ground, he took the lead flying towards the direction they came from.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep