Chapter 201: Chapter 176: Has the World Been Destroyed?
The sky turned into a sea of fire, the earth was filled with murky darkness, and gigantic fragments broke through the burning clouds and plummeted toward the polluted land. Every second, the entire world was being twisted and destroyed.
In such an apocalyptic scene, a mysterious figure in a dark red gradient trench coat stood on a cliff, gazing at the meteor shower in the distance, holding a wine glass in his right hand, as if the current spectacle was worth celebrating with a drink.
Why had it come to this?
Suddenly, a red-haired woman emerged from the sea of fire in the sky. She wore a black miniskirt, her eyes seemingly wrapped in a blood sea, holding a beautifully engraved long sword. As she stepped out, the sky was split in two by her sharp sword intent, and merely gazing at her figure stung the eyes!
At that moment, the mysterious man seemed to sense the gaze from behind, he slightly turned his head, about to reveal his true face.
Igula struggled to widen his nonexistent eyes, desperately trying to catch any detail of this mysterious person—
“Cough, cough, cough!”
Igula violently pushed away Ash’s hand, wiped his moist lips, and cursed, “What are you doing!”
Ash looked perplexed, he raised the water bottle in his hand, “I was giving you water. Was I supposed to drown your head in the toilet? I’d want to, but unfortunately, there’s not a drop of water in there. If you don’t want it, fine, Harvey, do you?”
“I don’t want to use the bathroom here.” Harvey’s voice was faint; even the dark complexion couldn’t hide his weakness as he sat against the wall.
Ash thought for a moment, tightened the water bottle, and put it away, “Let’s save it then, maybe they’ll bring food later…”
Now, Igula finally had time to assess their situation: the three of them were in a small room about ten square meters, with padded floors and walls, light peeking through the cracks in the walls, and a corner with an integrated toilet with a sink.
The room had no windows, only a vent in the ceiling corner from which warm white vapor was slowly being released, quickly blending with the air in the room.
He checked his gear—small knife, self-defense gun, multifunctional keychain, all gone. However, his metal headpiece was still there, which could be straightened into a metal spike, offering some protection, but it required the enemy to be unguarded and stripped of all protective gear.
Well, it could only be effective when the enemy was sleeping or defecating.
Igula attempted to stand up to block the vent, but found himself completely weak, unable to even stand, and fell right in front of Ash.
“That’s an anesthetic treatment spray,” Ash said lazily. “Haven’t you noticed our weak voices?”
“You always sound constipated. How could I tell?” Igula lifted his sleeve, surprised to find that the sniper bullet wound had started to scab—though it wasn’t comparable to a healer’s work, the healing effect was beyond normal first aid.
“Do you guys know what date and time it is?” he suddenly asked.
Ash responded, “May 2nd, 1:00 AM—we slept for less than an hour. But there might be a time difference between different realms, it might not be 1:00 AM outside.”
Igula didn’t ask how Ash knew the time without a chip or a clock. He pressed his hand on the floor, feeling slight vibrations, “We’re in a moving vehicle, might be a carriage, but I haven’t seen a carriage with such good sound and shock insulation…”
He tapped the collar around his neck, “Have you guys tested this thing?”
“Using magic power triggers a strong electric shock,” Harvey stated indifferently. “You might want to test it by sitting on the toilet without your pants. But even if you test it directly, it doesn’t matter; these soft pads are highly absorbent, any traces of incontinence will disappear quickly.”
Igula looked weirdly at Harvey and Ash, “Given you told me voluntarily, I won’t ask how you got this information… Any other intel?”
After a moment of silence, Ash said, “Before passing out, I heard someone say, ‘I could only salvage three from the Exotic Realm’… This wasn’t an ambush for adventurers; it was specifically for us. They even knew Ronald and Lanna wouldn’t come.”
“A miracle of the Prophetic Faction or Fate Faction,” Igula was not surprised. “What happened to the Werewolf and his prey?”
“Ronald died trying to save Lanna,” Ash succinctly stated, “I didn’t see what happened after.”
However, Igula raised his eyebrows, gave a slight ‘oh’, his face showing no surprise.
Ash suddenly had a strong intuition and asked, “Did you know Ronald would do that?”
“To be precise, I taught him to do that,” Igula smiled faintly. “I somewhat sympathized with him, so I planned to conspire with him secretly, thinking we’d gang up on Lanna after escaping. But he wasn’t interested in that, he wanted ‘real revenge,’ and I just happened to find some intel on Lanna, so I told him the real way to get revenge.”
“Did you deceive him?”
“I never lie,” Igula declared. “I just fulfill other people’s wishes.”
“How funny, another name for a swindler is God, huh?”
The cult leader and the swindler locked eyes with each other, cold and intense. Suddenly, the necromancer said, “Even if Ronald and Lanna didn’t come in, why haven’t the other adventurers arrived? The Hunting Festival won’t stop because of us. On the contrary, there should be an additional bounty task for capturing us.”
Ash spread his hands and said, “You haven’t seen how frightened the other adventurers are… Maybe they are all huddled in the battle zone now, waiting for Gerard to promise not to catch them before they dare to continue participating in the Hunting Festival. With this delay, it would be a miracle if they can work normally by tomorrow night.”
“Or maybe the Void Realm passage has been blocked,” Igula guessed. “Since they could predict our arrival so accurately, maybe they are also prepared to block the passage to the Void Realm.”
Harvey sighed softly, “Does that mean we can’t expect the adventurers to come and save us…”
At that moment, all three of them were overwhelmed by complex emotions—they had gone through great pains to flee the Kingdom of Blood Moon, scaring away the adventurers, deceiving Gerard, and barely making it through the Void Realm passage to a new world. Yet, before they could take a breath of freedom, they were captured in a perplexing manner.
Now, their greatest hope for escape turned out to be the pursuers from the Kingdom of Blood Moon.
Igula shook his head, dispelling the budding regret and resentment, and turned to look at Ash, “What about your ‘Miracle’?”
“I’ve tried it,” Ash said. “But this thing is external, akin to a continuously casting mage. The ‘Miracle’ can clear my negative status of this very second, but as long as I wear the collar, the restrictive status will be imposed again the next second… We must physically remove the collar.”
“I suspect a tool that can electrocute at any moment might possess quite the temper when it’s violently hacked,” Harvey said, slightly tugging at the collar, which instantly emitted a dangerous red glow.
“Restriction Collar, anti-suicide soft-padded carriage, anesthetic treatment spray…” Igula muttered. “It’s not surprising we were ambushed and captured, but what’s strange is how they have such a professional set of transport tools—if they didn’t prepare this equipment specifically for us, it means their regular clients also need to be transported in this manner.”
“Who would need such equipment for transport?”
“Death row criminals, lunatics, slaves?” Ash guessed.
“It could be corpses too,” Harvey said.
“Don’t scare me, isn’t the standard transport for a corpse a body bag?”
“Ash, you being a cult leader and not knowing this? Fresh corpses hold special value, especially the residual warmth; it’s like the last echo of life. Watching a warm body gradually turn into a meaningless lump of meat—that wonderful feeling of witnessing, surely you must understand, right?”
“Who understands that stuff!”
Listening to their endless chatter, Igula, whose mental state was extremely poor, subconsciously wanted to interrupt them. However, he quickly realized something was off—both Ash and Harvey’s complexions were as bad as a makeup-wearing Beastman dancer’s, neither sober nor able to sleep.
This anesthetic treatment spray, apart from causing them weakness and anesthesia, seemed to also have an anti-sleep effect, suppressing their physiological state while keeping them in an insomniac condition.
Compared to direct hypnosis, this sleepy insomniac state seemed better suited for dealing with mage prisoners, as it could brutally exhaust the mages’ spiritual power; over time, the mages might even be unable to maintain normal mental capacity. If an interrogation was necessary, prisoners in this state were more likely to divulge information—knowledge Igula learned from reading interrogation and other Spirit Faction books.
Ash and Harvey might not understand this principle, but after realizing they couldn’t sleep, they subconsciously engaged in intensive conversation to keep their spirits active and maintain their condition as much as possible.
Igula quickly collected his thoughts and assessed their current situation.
Their situation wasn’t actually bad, after all. If they had been ambushed by the military of a foreign realm, by now they might have been forced to have their memories extracted or turned into one of Harvey’s favorite warm corpses—not because Igula judged other realms by the standards of Blood Moon, but because “foreign hearts are always different,” a common understanding.
Although he didn’t know who exactly used the Prophecy Miracle to accurately predict their appearance, it at least showed they were of some utilitarian value, perhaps as research material or as slaves, but ultimately, there was hope for survival.
If this realm was more civilized than barbaric, and societal rules could restrain the powerful, then Igula even felt confident about achieving something here. For a Spirit Mage, rules and human nature were the most potent weapons.
Thinking of the Prophetic Faction, Igula couldn’t help but recall his recent dream. It was the result of the ‘Prophecy’ Technique Spirit acting in his sleep, an irregular phenomenon that Igula could never decipher.
He had also triggered dream revelations several times in the past, but most were meaningless visions.
The only useful one was when he first met Emi in Gambling Apocalypse, and Igula suddenly dreamt of Shattered Lake Prison. He hadn’t paid attention to this revelation at the time; looking back now, it might have been a forewarning of his imprisonment.
But the images in the dream were too exaggerated… Had the world been destroyed?
Igula wasn’t questioning the ‘destruction of the world’ per se; he questioned himself—a Prophet Mage who hadn’t even reached the Silver Realm, who had no right to see such a distant and grand future.
Predicting the fate of the world was something not even a Four-winged Legendary Prophet Mage could necessarily do, right?
And who was that mysterious person witnessing the destruction of the world?
Perhaps the ‘Prophecy’ Technique Spirit had also inhaled the anesthetic spray and was showing him past visions…
Meanwhile, Ash and Harvey’s casual talk came to an end. Although they wanted to combat their depressive mental state, it seemed like the secretion of dopamine was suppressed; the more they talked, the more fatigued they felt, and they just wanted to shut up.
No, they needed something stimulating to do.
Ash silently recited in his mind, and a familiar game interface appeared before him, with the current time displayed in the top right corner.