Ancient Wizards: A Little Progress Every Day

And so, he carried out the monotonous patrol duties every day, during which time Dago discovered that Viser's arrogance was ingrained in his very bones.

There was no contempt or even emotion in his eyes, only a deep-seated indifference, as if "meeting a commoner is a desecration of their family's status as wizards."

He always liked to use phrases like "you rats" and "a wandering wizard should act like a wandering wizard."

Every sentence seemed to emphasize that "there is a difference between wizards and I, and I stand at the top of the pyramid," as if bloodline was the only yardstick for measuring everything, and other efforts and talents were worthless in his eyes.

This led to a cold relationship between him and the rest of the team. If it weren't for the fact that the hired wizards in the team were there to earn magic stones, they would have left long ago.

In this oppressive atmosphere, they managed to safely complete ten days of patrol duties.

Around midnight, thick snow clouds began to fall lightly, completely obscuring the light of the two moons.

Dago and two hired wizards, each carrying a torch, walked across the wide field.

He walked at the head of the group, wearing a black heated cloak, with the remaining two young hired wizards on either side behind him.

Dago silently walked along the torch-lit path, using his detection spell, glancing occasionally toward the forest, where he saw that large swathes of fields had been swallowed up by darkness.

As I was walking, suddenly...

"boom!"

A deafening roar, like a hurricane sweeping across the fields, made Dago instinctively look up, searching for the source of the explosion.

The sound came from not far away, in the direction of the watchtower; something had happened.

Dago tossed aside the torch, turned to the two hired wizards, and said, "I'll go first, you two follow."

His physical abilities are now stronger than most wizards of the same level, mainly thanks to the resonance spell's modification of his body.

He suddenly took off running towards the watchtower, remembering that it was Old Marico's group resting in the hut at that moment.

Dago pulled the crystal staff from his storage pocket, silently praying for the safety of his group.

In the direction of the watchtower and the hut, a raging fire illuminated a large area of ​​fields, and figures could be vaguely seen darting about in the firelight, engaged in battle.

As he ran closer, he saw Viser, wand in hand, crouching on the two mangled corpses of black-robed wizards, rummaging for their spoils.

Not far from the burning cabin, old Marico lay on the ground with a broken arm, while a young hired wizard wept beside him, pressing on his wound and sprinkling healing powder.

There were many large and small craters left by the spell bombardment nearby. Dago quickly ran towards the lying old Marico.

Viser spotted him, glanced at him with eyes like poisoned ice shards, and a faint smile played on his lips.

He turned around, but it wasn't a smile; it was the smugness of waiting for prey to fall into the net, the ruthlessness of plotting how to chew up the bones and swallow them.

Dago didn't notice anything amiss. He squatted down beside old Marico and the young wizard, and asked in a trembling voice, "What happened? How did Marico get so badly injured? Where's the other person in your group?"

Dago took out a healing potion from his storage pocket and fed it to old Marico, who was pale and in pain.

The young wizard said bitterly, "Our group was resting peacefully in the cabin when it was inexplicably hit by a fireball spell. One of the apprentices has already been burned to death inside the cabin."

As he spoke, he deliberately looked at Viser, "The team leader and I escaped from the cabin and fought two black-robed wizards outside, one of whom was a high-level third-level apprentice wizard."

"We were attacked too suddenly. We didn't see Viser come out to help, and there wasn't even a warning."

"It wasn't until we killed one of the low-level apprentice wizards, and the team leader had his arm broken by the black-robed wizard while protecting me, that Viser appeared and killed the high-level third-level apprentice black-robed wizard."

"Damn it!"

After learning the whole story of how old Maric was injured, Dago felt an inexplicable fire rise in his heart. He gripped his ice crystal wand tightly under his cloak, wanting to rush up and kill Viser.

But then he saw old Marico, who had opened his cloudy eyes, tightly grasp one of his pale hands with his remaining withered arms.

His lips moved, like two withered leaves wilted by autumn frost struggling to open and close in the wind, each opening and closing accompanied by a visible tremor.

Old Maric's voice was forced out of his throat as he said, "Dago, I know you're furious, but he's a genius wizard of the Academy. If you kill him, you'll be wanted by the Academy and end up as a black wizard. It's not worth jeopardizing your future for the sake of one of my hands."

Before Dago could calm his anger...

However, at that moment, an extremely strong sense of crisis rose from behind, accompanied by a sharp whooshing sound.

As he lay there, old Marico's cloudy eyes shimmered with a deep blue light as he unleashed his last burst of mental energy, pushing the two men several meters away from him.

The gale swept past, carrying invisible blades, and old Marico didn't even have time to let out a complete scream.

The green wind blades were like several thin, transparent knives, instantly slicing through flesh and blood. The blood droplets they created were torn into even finer blood mists before they even hit the ground.

Maric's body seemed to be pulled by invisible threads, and the next second a scarlet crack appeared from his shoulder, the crisp sound of breaking bones swallowed by the wind.

His hair was torn and disheveled by the gale, his eyes were wide open, and a large amount of blood flowed from his body, forming a dark red stain that was quickly dried by the cold wind.

Old Marico died, his body sliced ​​open by the wind blades.

Dago fell from the air, rolled onto the ground, and helplessly watched this scene unfold.

In an instant, the raging anger surging in his chest almost burned away his blue eyes, and the veins on his forehead throbbed as if they were about to burst, but that violent aura suddenly subsided at a certain moment.

It's like a bucket of ice water being suddenly poured over a burning coal fire; instead of extinguishing it, it freezes into ash with ice crystals.

Dargo turned to stare at Viser, who was holding a wand. His pupils, which were brimming with murderous intent, suddenly contracted. The deep blue halo in his eyes had a hint of ink, and he was as still as a deep pool, without even a ripple.

The redness on his face had completely faded, leaving only a deathly pale complexion.

Dago didn't say a word, but simply raised his ice crystal wand, the tip of which remained steady without trembling, as if he were doing something perfectly ordinary—like picking up a fallen leaf.

A surge of violent spiritual energy erupted, and a tiny vortex of icy wind carrying snowflakes formed at the tip of his staff. An ice crystal projectile rapidly expanded and was finally unleashed by Dago.

The massive, deep blue ice crystal cannonball hurtled forward, blowing away the snow on both sides of the ground along its path and creating a fierce hurricane as it was carried by the powerful wake.

The terrifying ice crystal projectile pierced through Viser's protective shield to his astonishment, deviating from its trajectory and grazing his torso.

The powerful vortex broke several of his ribs, sending him flying several meters before he crashed heavily to the ground, rolling several times.

The ice crystal shell exploded dozens of meters behind him, leaving a crater several meters wide, and the raging icy wind overturned the thin layer of snow on the ground.

The icy wind pushed Viser on the ground again, and he finally came to his senses.

Dargo held up his ice crystal wand, the pearl at the tip of the wand shimmering with light, and a large amount of ice element gathered into an energy ball.

Upon seeing this, Viser suddenly went berserk, shouting, "Impossible! Absolutely impossible! I've only been away from the patrol for a short time, and you've become so powerful!"

He lay curled up on the ground, convulsing like a fish out of water, kicking his limbs wildly and kicking up dust.

"I am clearly the genius wizard of the academy, while you are just a rat in the forest. I am the pride of the Helam wizarding family, and I cannot lose to a peasant like you."

Suddenly, as if struck by a thought, Viser activated the communication crystal around his neck and shouted into it, "Help! A wizard named Dago from the Southeast Patrol has betrayed us! Wizard, come save me!"

He laughed at Dago, his laughter sharp as fingernails scraping glass: "You won't dare kill me. I've already called the academy's mobile patrol team. If you dare kill me, you'll die too, hahaha."

But all he saw was Dargo still holding his wand, his eyes filled with an intense, unyielding killing intent, death ticking closer to him like a countdown.

Dago's voice was as cold as ice as he calmly said, "You should have died when you caused old Marico to lose an arm. He saved your life."

"When he died, you were already dead. Even if Jesus came, he couldn't save you. I'm telling you."

"No... Don't kill me... I have a magic stone! I have the lineage of a formal wizard!" Upon hearing Dago's words, Viser suddenly pounced, digging his nails into the ground as he crawled forward, oblivious to the fact that his knuckles were worn raw and bleeding.

His eyes were bulging out of their sockets, the whites of his eyes covered in ferocious bloodshot veins. "I'll give you my storage ring! I'll be your dog! Your slave! I beg you... I beg you, for the sake of the wizarding academy..."

The madness in his eyes shattered instantly into pleading fragments: "Spare me... Please... I was wrong... I was really wrong..."

He would cry and laugh in turns, sometimes swearing to repay the debt of gratitude, and sometimes cursing hysterically, like a puppet whose soul had been taken away.

Dargo ignored all his words and launched the icy blue energy ball from the front of his wand toward his body.

As the beautiful blue energy ball slowly flew towards him, Viser knew that his death was imminent, and the slowed-down time was merely a sign of his final attachment to this world.

His body trembled violently, the chattering of his teeth drowning out his pleas, but his eyes were fixed on Dago, churning with fear, jealousy, and madness.

In the end, they all turned into a pool of murky tears, flying straight towards Dago.

There was no explosion, no strong wind.

It simply froze the limp, clawing fingers of Viser before his death, as if trying to grasp a last lifeline, still in a grasping posture, his eyes wide open, his ugly, half-mad, half-pleading state before death completely frozen, turning into an ice sculpture emitting cold air.