Don't disturb the sorcerer's scientific research

Chapter 168 Jia Xiu and the Adventurers Who Look Like They're Going to Fail
Çachdis town.

The castle bells pierced through the mist and echoed in the valley where the town was situated.

A group of believers, draped in robes, circled the dilapidated stone wall in one direction, chanting strange incantations that did not sound like the common language.

It appears to be some kind of sacrificial ceremony.

Without a doubt, what was being worshipped was not something respectable.

Because any decent god wouldn't need this kind of sacrifice. The faith they need doesn't need to be expressed in such a strange and bizarre way. They can just pray directly, whether or not the gods listen is another matter.

Beneath the ancient castle lies a heavy, ornate, tightly closed door adorned with exquisite bas-reliefs depicting a scene where a strange creature descends during the full moon, bestowing blessings upon its followers.

However, judging from the chains and locks fastened to the door, and the less-than-perfect seal, it's as if the ominousness of what's inside is written all over its face.

A priest touched the door, as if sensing something.

"Have the last batch of adventurers arrived?"

Her voice was a little hoarse and somewhat androgynous, making it difficult to guess her age.

The other person behind him replied.

"It will arrive by tomorrow at the latest, or it might be tonight."

"Very good. After they arrived, the valley was sealed off. Have the adventurers already in town begun trying to complete the quest?"

"Two teams have already explored the dense forest once, and another team set off this morning and has not yet returned."

"It's time to wake the hounds. Starting tonight, wake them up in batches, and use this group to test their condition."

"understand……"

……

Night falls, and autumn nights come earlier.

This proves that there is an angle between the planet's orbital plane and its maximum rotational circumference.

The adventure team in the dense forest clearly didn't think so.

They believed this was the power of the god of the seasons.

"It's getting dark, and the god of autumn is warning us not to linger in the wilderness at night."

The ranger in the squad said warily.

“I don’t think the god of autumn would recognize us, and isn’t it supposed to get dark early in autumn?”

The barbarian in the group answered.

“That makes sense,” the captain warrior said. “Nighttime is the time for vampires, and we can’t take that risk. Although we are adventurers, taking risks doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use safe methods and instead seek out danger.”

"I even doubted whether there were any vampires here. I searched all day but couldn't find any."

After spending the whole day wandering in the woods, the team members inevitably had some complaints.

As a relatively new team, they could only get some minor commissions, while high-paying commissions were in high demand.

Coming here to eliminate the vampire clones is one of the more reliable options.

So they did not hesitate to travel for more than a day to reach a town dozens of kilometers away from Çachdis, because they were unwilling to spend money on teleportation.

The good news is that the people of Çachdis will pick up adventurers in that town and bring them to this remote place by oxcart.

Who would have thought that such a low-priced commission would attract several other teams?

After arriving, they rested briefly before venturing into the mountains and forests where vampire clones were said to roam.

This is the best way they learned to deal with vampires from the Adventurer's General Guide.

It's not garlic, not a wooden stake, and certainly not a sacred blessing.

Instead, they dug them out during the day when the vampires were resting.

The team figured that a vampire clone roaming the wilderness in a remote town couldn't be that high-level; its hiding place would at most be a broken coffin or some wild grave.

Once found, a quick dig and a quick sun exposure solved the problem.

It's much easier than the beginner quests that almost every adventure party has to go through, which involve fighting goblins, or what we call "goblins".

The townspeople could even do this job themselves; they were probably just too timid to do it, so they hired adventurers instead.

However, the team had been searching all day and still hadn't found the target vampire. Instead, they accidentally dug up a real grave, quickly buried it again, and nothing happened. They didn't even see the soul of their ancestral hero from seven hundred years ago.

"Didn't you say you used to be a proper tomb raider? How come you can't even find a place where a vampire sleeps?"

The captain asked the team's main force for this mission, a wanderer who claimed to have been a tomb raider and was now using his former profession to find the vampire's coffin.

Ranger, barbarian, warrior, wanderer.

A very "free" squad, clearly lacking noble spellcasters and with somewhat low intelligence.

This is also a common phenomenon in most low-level adventure teams.

There aren't that many situations where professions are well-matched; once you've gathered a few people, you just set off.

The wanderer irritably brushed the dirt off his hands. "Just tell me if you've found the graveyard or not."

"What's the use of finding someone's grave? You can't just take it back to report it."

As the group was casually exchanging complaints, they suddenly heard a rustling sound not far away, like something moving in the woods, scraping against the branches and leaves.

"There's movement!"

The ranger was the first to react, immediately grabbing his bow and arrow and assuming a defensive stance.

As a novice adventurer, you're actually quite competent.

"It might be an animal."

The barbarians seemed unconcerned.

"Get out of this forest immediately." The captain remained cautious as always.

"There aren't that many..."

Before the barbarian could finish speaking, a shadow suddenly sprang out from the bushes behind him and lunged at his neck.

"careful!"

The ranger raised his arrow and shot, the arrow flying powerfully, grazing the barbarian's cheek and striking the shadowy man's head.

Shadow was hit in a vital spot and collapsed to the ground.

"Hit!"

Before the ranger could even throw a celebratory punch, the thing wobbled to its feet.

As an inexperienced adventurer, he was unaware of the importance of the saying "finishing off is a good habit".

Staring blankly at the monster whose head was pierced by an arrow, yet it could still get up, he stood there dumbfounded.

It is a vampire derivative.

With scarlet eyes, sharp fangs, pale skin, and razor-sharp claws, the Derivative Body is more like a mad beast than an elegant vampire.

It looked at the four people in front of it as if they were four lambs to the slaughter.

He stretched out his hand, with nails that grew into sharp claws, and forcefully pulled the arrow out of his head.

The intensity is a bit off.

Even vampires, with their extremely strong vitality, shouldn't be able to remove an arrow from their brains without any problems; they would need to recover for a while.

Moreover, the body in front of me looks exceptionally strong, completely different from the common, gaunt, ghost-like derivative bodies.

This would certainly be considered an elite among derivatives.

It shouldn't be something that appears in Iron-level adventure quests.

Faced with a sudden and powerful enemy, the team panicked. The captain hesitated for two seconds before remembering the "trump card" he had specially prepared for this mission.

Garlic blessed by the Vatican!

It may sound a bit abstract, but that's how broad the Vatican's business is.

As long as you show enough piety and spend "just a little" money, you can be blessed with anything.

The captain held the garlic as if he had obtained the key to victory. The plant vampires hated most, combined with the blessing of holy light that vampires feared most.

With two major nemesis serving it, how could the effect be anything but good?
With all his might, he threw a handful of garlic, each costing 20 Herts, at the vampire who was pulling out an arrow.

"Suffer to death!"

The garlic cloves traced a beautiful parabola, evenly splattering all over the vampire's body...

Then nothing happened.

At that moment, the warrior captain mentally cursed those who spread the idea that vampires fear garlic, as well as the priest's family and their ancestors for eight generations who blessed garlic.

At the same time, he shouted, "Run!"

……

"Is this the fastest this cow can run?"

In the swaying oxcart, Jia Xiu and his party were on the mountain road heading towards the town of Chachdis.

Running is already a euphemism; the old ox pulling the cart is at most just strolling around in a priority area.

I never expected that this run-down town wouldn't even have a teleportation array.

Now that Jia Xiu can afford to teleport, there's no teleportation system for him to ride.

The group could only travel to their destination by oxcart.

Ram wasn't in the car yet.

He's too heavy; getting in the car will severely slow down the poor cow.

Fortunately, his cannibalistic bloodline gave him superhuman stamina, making it no problem for him to keep up with the mountain trails.

Jia Xiu seriously doubted that having Ram pull the cart would be faster than having an ox pull it.

However, he didn't say that Ram probably wouldn't refuse, but as a classmate, it was a bit too much for him to be responsible for pulling the cart.

"Of course, this is the fastest speed. What's the rush? It's almost night anyway. When you get there, you can't go looking for vampires right away."

The townspeople, rushing to catch the cart, spoke slowly and deliberately.

They completely failed to demonstrate the sense of crisis that a small-town resident should have when threatened by vampires.

Logically, in this situation, the townspeople should be more anxious than the adventurers themselves when they see them coming to do a quest.

After all, one is about making money, and the other is about saving your life.

This place is getting weirder and weirder.

As expected, Mia's prophecy did make some sense.

Thinking of Mia, Jia Xiu took out a towel and used his water-making magic to create some cool water to wet the towel.

Then, the damp towel that had been pressing against Mia's forehead until it was hot was removed and replaced with a new one.

Traditional water cooling method.

Let's cool down Mia's CPU.

Ever since she received a less-than-optimistic conclusion from the Adventurers' Guild about the mission, she has entered "overclocking" mode, determined to get to the bottom of it.

Based on her initial rough calculations, there was only about a 10% chance that this mission would actually involve defeating ordinary vampire offspring.

It's highly likely that the town is attracting novice adventurers by issuing commissions.

As for why he would do this, the prediction is not clear enough, but the initial judgment is that it is not for wealth, but for a bigger goal.

Jia Xiu had anticipated this. The past records of this town were almost enough to reveal that "there is a conspiracy here." He was originally going there because of the conspiracy. If he wanted to get clues to solve the mark on Bubu's body, he would have to be a proper vampire, not just a mere derivative vampire.

He's not afraid of even legitimate vampires.

This is the confidence that two thousand ultraviolet flares gave him.

Mia, however, became obsessed with the outcome of her prophecy, determined to figure out why the town of Chachdis was attracting adventurers and what the specific conspiracy was.

Fortunately, there was plenty of time on the oxcart, and that's how it turned out.

I watched helplessly as a money-grubbing young girl turned into a "living charlatan".

His head was steaming, his eyes were rolling back slightly, and he was muttering something unintelligible while shaking his hand.

No wonder the rumors about the prophetic sorcerer are so mysterious.

The scale of this opening ceremony seemed mysterious to everyone who came to see it.

After replacing Mia's "heat sink," Jia Xiu asked the townspeople who were driving the cart.

How far is it from here to the town of Çachdis?

"It's not too far, only a few kilometers."

"Wait! Stop for a second, I need to use the restroom."

"You're the one in a hurry, and you're the one who needs to stop the car."

"Everyone has their own urgency."

As Jia Xiu spoke, he jumped out of the car, went to a blind spot in the townspeople's sight, and quietly set up a teleportation anchor point.

He wasn't there to let the water flow freely, but rather to take necessary escape measures.

Larvin's two teleportation anchors were temporarily removed by him. One was placed in a small town with a teleportation array before coming to Chachdis, and the other was to be placed on the road.

Just in case that town is also connected to Çachdis.

The plan is that if we encounter an insurmountable danger, we should prioritize fleeing.

He went to the teleportation anchor point, and Bubu used Flash to take Mia away; its Flash could carry one person.

Ram, Ram made it difficult for him to rely on his luck to hold on for a while.

Once Jashu can teleport out, he can start calling for reinforcements. The Radiant Knight goes without saying, and there's also the bored Gillianis.

When the older woman heard that they were about to embark on a potentially risky mission, she instructed Jia Xiu that if he encountered any serious trouble, he must call her, as she, the self-proclaimed number one druid of the Elven Holy Land, would definitely come to his aid.

After anchoring, we got back into the car and continued to sway and rock. By the time we finally arrived in the town of Çachdis, it was completely dark.

"I'm sorry, but you'll have to stay here for now. Our place is small and there aren't many good options."

The townspeople who were pulling the cart led Jia Xiu and his party to a dilapidated little house.

"Although it looks a bit worn, it's still clean."

"It's okay, I can accept it."

"The town can't provide dinner at this time either."

"It's nothing."

After seeing the townspeople off, Jia Xiu activated Dark Vision to take a closer look at the town.

To be honest, it would be a shame if something bad didn't happen in this town.

All the houses were eerily black, and in the distance stood a dilapidated castle that looked like the perfect setting for a ghost story.

Its dilapidated state, placed here, makes it look like an abandoned school and hospital ward in a suburban area.

The doors and windows of the house are reinforced with thick wooden boards. Since they can't be made entirely of metal, they are also nailed with a lot of nails to increase their strength.

This protective measure is clearly not for guarding against wild animals, much less for guarding against thieves.

Well, what's done is done. Let's rest first and go to town to inquire again tomorrow at dawn.

"Sister, stop calculating, or the person will be gone."

Jia Xiu didn't forget to check on Mia, who was still overclocking.

"Mathematics is something you just can't do. You can calculate it until you burn yourself out and still not get the answer."

He was genuinely afraid that Mia would make him sick, since this unfortunate one-sixty-fourth elf was already in poor health, practically a cripple.

Just then, a pitiful scream suddenly came from the street.

"The vampires are here!"

(End of this chapter)