After finishing the transaction and handing over a black card to Nick, the Void Dealer vanished with black energy surrounding him, leaving Nick alone on the forest road.
Nick let out a breath and smiled.
“With 500,000 Ether Stones, I have a decent starting capital, considering how Blue Tear City works.”
Right now, Nick knew that with the power and capabilities he had, as long as the enemy he encountered was not an Expert Level 1 or Magister Level mage, he would be able to handle the situation.
The leader of the Werfur Base – Anderium was a Magister Level mage and Nick knew that if there were to be a one-on-one fight against him, Nick would have no chance to win.
But this did not mean he could not escape. If a Magister Level or Expert Level mage did not have abilities or spells to block his teleportation skill, there should be no problem for him to escape.
Nick began walked as he looked around in the forest.
—
Within the Werfur Base – Anderium, Rabial had quickly healed up after receiving treatment from the mage doctors. Once he felt fine, he was summoned by the leader and needed to give a brief account of what had happened during the Underbroom Cave mission.
In itself, losing a group is not a big deal for a leader. They are mages and especially battle-mages who cultivated for exactly these kinds of dangerous missions. They all knew and understood that they could be met with sudden death in any mission, at any point.
In about an hour, Rabial told Leader Warin what he experienced and how the others had died. After that, he left the leader alone with his thoughts.
—
Leader Warin was alone in his courtyard at this time; there was much going on his mind, typical of a clan leader’s worries. The current owners of the Underbroom Cave were rightfully the Anderium Werfur race. However, if other factions and races such as the humans found out that there was a realm and a dimensional gate in the Underbroom Cave and its ruins, it could lead to several avoidable problems.
Most of the forces would try everything they could to break down the Anderium Base or even the Werfur race completely to take the place as their own.
Thinking about this, Leader Warin sent a message to Epsilon, asking him to maintain the secrets of the Underbroom Cave and hide any detail surrounding it all. He even appointed some mages who specialized in interrogations and other things such as brainwashing to clean the memory of Werfur members who had any knowledge of the dimensional gate.
Leader Warin’s reasons to exert so much caution was indeed very simple. According to Nick’s words, the place he had ventured into was full of islands made up of rocks and also had some islands that were cultivable and sounded like places with good living conditions.
These islands were ladened with dangers but the Werfur race, superior for thousands of years in its magical power and resilience, was not afraid of them. If they created an exit gate to the other side, with their power, they could enter and exit as they liked. This will grow their power to an extent that nobody could ever expect.
With access to a complete dimension in their hands, the lands could be cultivated for food and the stone islands could be mined for natural resources. All of this translated to power and money in Leader Warin’s eyes — from his perspective, he was presented by an unprecedented opportunity.
Not that these thoughts did not cross Nick’s mind as well. Candidly put, Nick was perhaps shrewder than most when it came to calculating such benefits. However, Nick was aware of the glitch in these thoughts.
Nick’s magical power was regarded at a genius level by the Werfurs. But after experiencing the short battle with the Manifestation of Fear, he realized he was just a frog at the bottom of a well.
There were powers that he could not even stand up against in that dimension. Because of these thoughts, he did not want to go to Stone Dimension for the time being, at least unless he was confident that he had the power to protect himself.
Nick and the Werfur race were on good terms with each other and had a Golden Document agreement between them. But this did not mean that the Werfur race could count him as their own and share everything they had. In actual terms, there was nothing wrong with this way of thinking either. The two were independent of each other after all as stipulated in the agreement.
Due to his high intelligence as a mage, Nick knew that the Werfur race actually hid its true power. He only witnessed the tip of the iceberg. Nick thought that the Werfurs could afford to put their civilization in the Stone Dimension.
As he continued on his journey, he remembered the expression on Leader Warin’s face when he told him about the black cloud of the Manifestation of Fear.
Warin did not show any signs of fear or concerns at all. This meant he already knew there was a way to deal with such forces. The Werfur race was clearly not intimidated by the likes of Manifestation of Fear. This was all Nick needed to know to get a sense of their capabilities.
Nick was still lost in some of these thoughts when he heard the screams of a woman. From the sound of it, the woman was human.
He activated his Mind Radar and sensed that there were two carriages in front of him at about a 300-meter distance. Some bandits wearing leather clothes were fighting against the guards of the two carriages. It seemed that the carriages are carrying some kind of nobles. Nick smiled and directly headed to the commotion.
—
From the insignia on the carriages, one could make out the symbol of the Agriman family. This was a noble family in Blue Tear City, the leader of which, Arol Agriman, was a baron. They were not a large family and their force was not considered much in the eyes of mages and other nobles or businessmen with strong purchase power.
But in the eyes of commoners, they were esteemed nobles who had the power of killing and taking everything from them with just one word.
The Agriman family was returning from a wedding. They had gone to the neighbouring Ferian City for a wedding of another small-time noble like them called the Atrium family. Because of the good relations between the two families, they were invited to the good occasion of the eldest daughter of the family.
But now they were facing a bandit attack.
The Agriman family guard captain was a middle-aged man with grey hair who had a good deal of experience. However, he only brought 30 guards with him for this trip as they were not expecting bandit attacks.
The bandits were unnamed but their numbers were much more. Right now, more than 100 bandits were attacking them, and the Agriman family guards were at a loss on how to deal with them and protect the Agriman family.
In the carriage, there was the Agriman family patriarch, his son, his wife and two daughters. If anything were to happen to these people at this time, it would mean the end of the Agriman family.
