With no clouds to obstruct its way, a lone moon shined its cold brilliance upon the earth.
Angor used Cleanse to remove all smells and bloodstains from his body before moving away carefully.
The woods were dark. When Angor thought the only thing noticeable was the bright moon, a flock of flying ravens suddenly startled him.
His current path led down the mountainside. It wasn’t long before he reached the edge of the woods. However, he didn’t move on when he saw the empty, barren land outside the boundary.
The wind had stopped. Nothing was making any sound around him. Angor couldn’t sense anyone watching him, but he still felt wrong. His instinct told him to stay put and take a better look at his situation.
After making sure his position was relatively concealed, Angor began to calculate different data using “mind overdrive”.
His calculations helped him notice a series of trails he left behind. The dirt he walked upon, broken tree branches, random objects he accidentally touched… Everything suggested where he was going.
And since he could remember these trails, there was no doubt that a wizard with superior perceptions—Isabella—could notice them as well.
Whether his instinct was correct or not, he decided to calm down and change his destination.
He had to make sure that nothing was left behind in order to avoid detection from the wizard. He proceeded along the edge of the woods with his mind overdrive constantly working
A moment later, he heard someone screaming.
Angor frowned at the familiar voice. It was Shadow.
Following Shadow’s painful yelling was a strange giggle sound that was mixed with mad laughter. “Do you really think you can run from ME?”
Isabella, no doubt. She seemed to be scolding Shadow and warning Angor at the same time.
Next, Shadow let out several more screams, which gradually turned weaker. Combining a tiny trace of energy ripples with his mind overdrive, Angor managed to find something.
Both Angor and Shadow expected that Shadow would get caught soon. With this in mind, Shadow decided to ask Naga to stall, while he ran back to his professor as fast as he could.
As long as his professor was nearby, Shadow was confident that Isabella wouldn’t do anything too harsh.
However, it surprised them that Isabella dealt with Naga so soon.
Angor grew a bit sad at the realization. He didn’t want to imagine Shadow’s condition too much, but it didn’t prevent him from feeling sorry.
He shook his head and forced his mind to regain reason as he kept walking along the edge of the forest.
He never left the woods because his mind overdrive told him that something was waiting for him in the open. There was more danger outside than inside the woods.
He soon heard noises coming from where he just trod on. It seemed Isabella found his previous marks.
Angor glanced back at a certain figure floating under the moon, and his pupils shrank quickly. Isabella was holding someone’s severed head in one hand, and a broken human body in the other.
Angor took a deep breath and walked away silently.
Isabella had arrived at where Angor startled the ravens. As Angor estimated, the woman could easily follow all the traces he left behind.
However, Isabella suddenly noticed the end of the traces. It only surprised her a little bit before she started laughing again.
“He intentionally left a false lead and went somewhere else… Oh, look at you, Diablo. Even a kid sees, runs, and thinks better than you.” Isabella chuckled at the human figure in her left hand.
Shadow was suffering from injuries worse than what Angor went through. However, Isabella didn’t go for the kill yet. The man was obviously in a way better condition than Naga, who only had her head left.
“Heh…” Shadow spat some blood and broken body parts from his mouth. “Do you know who he is?”
“Huh, are you saying he belongs to someone powerful?” Isabella more or less felt that Angor got a special background. Those splendid hiding skills alone weren’t something available to an ordinary apprentice.
“Why don’t you kill him? You’ll see then.”
In fact, Shadow didn’t know who exactly was Angor’s teacher. Every time he asked, Angor would simply smile without speaking. The only thing Shadow knew was that Angor came from Brute Cavern.
However, he heard Greya’s warning to Felicia back in Dark Castle, and he deduced that Angor had a supreme man as his teacher.
From the available leads, Shadow had several possible answers on his mind. Greya was already a “truth finder” wizard, and if she meant to warn Felicia of dangerous people… There were only a few names that would fit the description.
The “Silencer”, “Phantom Master”, “World Whisperer” and “Thunder Wolf”….
Although he wasn’t 100 percent sure of it, Shadow assumed that Phantom Master was the final answer since both Sunders and Angor were illusionists.
Isabella lifted Shadow closer to her face. “I can read your mind, you know. And I know you’re talking nonsense. Besides, I don’t care who’s behind the boy. Bogula is right at Silent Hill, and he can’t stop me from killing you.”
Shadow grimaced. Bogula was his only hope of survival.
To outsiders, Bogula was an extreme maniac, but as his student, Shadow knew that Bogula’s character was quite simple.
And that man tended to protect his students surprisingly well.
Still, Shadow wasn’t sure whether his teacher could save him from another wizard.
This was why Shadow had not taunted Isabella again by saying “I dare you to try”.
On the other side, Angor had returned to the main path among the woods where he and Shadow were intercepted by Isabella.
He could see Talos at the end of the path.
Should he leave through the exit or keep walking along the edge and enter the other part of the forest?
After some more calculations, he reached the conclusion that the main path was safer.
The answer went the opposite way compared to before, but everything including his instinct told him so.
Should I?
Angor felt his brain getting tired. His body had not recovered much, and he couldn’t keep up his mind overdrive for too long.
This meant he no longer had the stamina to search for safety in the woods.
He finally made a decision.
Isabella wasn’t worrying about losing Angor’s track at all.
She might have let Angor slip away if the boy were to hide in the market, but she already saw him personally, and she had fully remembered Angor’s signatures.
At this moment, she could either use Angor’s signatures to locate him or use Angor’s blood in a remote cursing spell.
With these plans in mind, Isabella didn’t care about Angor’s moves. She would gladly play the cat-and-mouse game for a little longer.
11*Cough*”
Naga’s head suddenly “woke up” in Isabella’s hand and started to cough up more blood.
As a puppet, her brain was her core. She wouldn’t die when her head was still intact.
“I failed my mission, Master,” Naga said to Shadow in a sad voice.
Shadow didn’t take a good look at Naga earlier because he didn’t want to see what Naga had gone through because of his own recklessness.
Now that Naga was trying to talk to him…
It looked terrible. Naga had lost an eyeball, and half of her face was covered in blood and scars.
Shadow couldn’t help but feel more and more apologetic. “I’m… sorry, Naga.��
Naga coughed. “It was my own incompetence, Master.”
“Huh… you finally started talking emotions to these puppet things too, eh Diablo?” Isabella scoffed. “Well, I’ve got no time to listen to your sickening mishmash.”
Isabella released a blood-red sphere, which slowly swallowed Naga’s head within.
The sphere slowly solidified, stiffening Naga’s last expression-a determined farewell.
A waxen art piece with a bloody shell.
“Look at her face!” Isabella laughed again. “This is going to be one of the best collections I found these days.”
“You—” Shadow closed his eyes and tried as best as he could to suppress the surging fury.
However, he was still not experienced enough like real wizards. Sometimes, it was just impossible to defeat youthful foolhardiness with sanity.
Shadow managed to hold back most of his emotions, which caused red streams of tears to seep from his eyes. In the end, his tongue still gave in to his rage and let out two simple words.
“Old… hag!”