Ancient Wizards: A Little Progress Every Day

Just then, a knocking sound came from outside the room.

"Lord Dago, are you there?"

Linda's voice rang out from the doorway, carrying a hint of tension that was different from earlier.

Dago frowned slightly and tried to deploy his mental energy field to investigate, but the next second he was immediately "forced" back by a massive mental energy field that was at least ten times stronger than his.

A very powerful wizard is right at the door!

"Oh no, oh no, it must be the wizards from the spell training center coming to our door."

Dago was in a panic, thinking anxiously.

"Fine, I'll get stabbed whether I stick my neck out or not," he said calmly, and went to open the door.

"What is it, Linda?"

Linda, like a reserved and docile cat, timidly shrank into the corner by the door, pointed to the person standing next to her, and whispered, "This lord of the Thorn Ring is here to see you."

Thorn Ring!

Dago's eyes flickered slightly, and his gaze naturally fell on the uninvited guest in front of him.

This is a tall male wizard.

With a brown buzz cut and an ordinary appearance, he wore a green robe with a conspicuous thorny ring symbol and exuded a spiritual energy field that gave Dago a slight feeling of suffocation.

He was giving Dago a forced smile, extending his scarred right hand in an attempt to shake hands with him.

"Late-stage first-ring wizard, or a second-ring wizard?!"

Dago made a quick judgment in his mind, but on his face he showed a solemn and polite expression and extended his right hand to shake hands with him, shaking it three times.

"What brings you here, sir?"

"Don't be nervous, Dago. It's just helping the spell training center with some investigations and greetings. You can just call me Lord Campbell."

Campbell casually walked past Dago into the room behind him, looked around like the master of the house, glanced at the silver metal box on the table, and then looked at Dago. "After all, you were in that damaged training room, weren't you, Lord Dago Heca?"

Dago gave Linda a look, and she ran away as if she had been granted a pardon.

He gently closed the door, walked in, put the metal box on the table back into his storage ring, and said, "Some of my little hobbies: deciphering magic boxes."

"As for the spell training room, I am aware of it, but I can only say that the strength of the spell testing wall still needs to be strengthened."

Campbell said calmly, "Indeed, it still needs improvement."

He intended to end the brief conversation, as the recent clash of mental energy fields had already confirmed that Dago only had the cultivation level of the early stage of the first ring.

"That's enough, the investigation is now over. I enjoyed chatting with you, so thank you for your time."

After saying that, he walked towards the door, preparing to leave.

"Lord Campbell, please wait!"

Dargo suddenly spoke, calling out to Campbell, who was almost at the door.

The latter turned around without any expression, his eyes indifferent, his face showing aloofness and coldness.

"Is there anything else, Your Excellency D'Ago?"

Dago looked up into Campbell's eyes and said softly, "I have something I'd like to ask for your help with, Lord Campbell. I hope you can recommend me for entry into the Thorn Ring!"

"Oh? What faction or wizarding family do you come from? Or can you provide me with a hundred mid-grade magic stones?"

Campbell said to him impatiently.

Dago was speechless for a moment, finally managing to squeeze out, "I come from that Enark Wizarding Academy. Could you lower the price of one hundred mid-grade magic stones a bit? My entire fortune only includes a few dozen mid-grade magic stones!"

Upon hearing this, Campbell turned and left, tossing out, "What 'Ke Academy'? Never heard of it. I advise you to stop dreaming. If you have no money and no connections, just go back to your small town and stay there!"

Dargo didn't reply, but simply watched Campbell's figure leave the room.

Only one sentence echoed in my mind: tea needs to be brewed properly, and people need to be open-minded.

Five minutes later, amidst the trembling farewell of the Rose Inn owner and his family, Campbell, dressed in a green robe, slowly walked out of the inn.

The small, exquisite airship was parked outside the hostel, and the short man was waiting beside it. When Campbell came out, he immediately walked up to him with great anticipation.

"How is it, sir!"

Campbell shook his head indifferently.

"He's just a refugee who's only just advanced to the first level and hasn't even condensed his soul seal yet."

"Why"

Seeing this, the short man sighed in disappointment and muttered, "Judging from the time we calculated, this is the most likely one. The remaining two could have already left the city."

Campbell showed no disappointment. He narrowed his eyes and calmly instructed Guvi, "Keep an eye on them. Those two who left might come back."

"clear."

The short man nodded, seeing that Basil had already boarded the airship.

"Lord Campbell, where do we go next?"

"Go and meet that mid-first-ring wizard from the Molten Brotherhood you mentioned before."

"Yes."

The flowing runes on the airship lit up, and like a nimble blue-striped silver fish, it quickly darted into the sky and disappeared in an instant.

From the window of a room on the second floor of the Rose Hostel, Dago quietly watched the airship sail away.

Once the airship had completely disappeared, he withdrew his gaze and looked at the silver metal box he was tightly clutching in his hand.

"It seems there's no time to lose; let's prepare to cultivate the [Winter Star] seal."

Dago thought to himself.

Having made the decision, he no longer hesitated and immediately began his cultivation. He walked to the sofa in his room and chose the most comfortable position to lie down.

He took out the soul crystal from the silver metal box, slowly placed it on his forehead, and released his spiritual power.

The soul crystal, along with the ever-changing incantation within it, slowly merged into Dago's brain and disappeared.

[The system skill Soul Seal [Winter Star] has been detected. Would you like to imprint it?]

The system light screen suddenly appeared in Dago's field of vision, and he quickly selected "yes".

The moment he clicked "yes," his consciousness entered the mental space.

The incantation of permanence had already appeared before Dago's soul, transforming into countless incantation lines that slowly climbed up his right hand.

In an instant, as if Pandora's box had been opened, countless blasts of cold air poured out.

Dago looked down at his right hand; his spirit skin was frozen into a translucent ice shell, which had even frozen his soul.

When he tried to clench his fist, the ice shell made a soft "crackling" sound, and the ice surface at his knuckles cracked with spiderweb-like patterns, but it did not shatter—this mass of ice had become one with his soul.

Suddenly, with a "crack," the soul's right arm snapped off to Dago's astonishment.

As ice shards flew across the broken surface, he felt a pain that penetrated deep into his soul, which made him even more composed.

His soul's right hand was still within his perception and had not been lost.

"It seems that condensing a soul seal will consume a portion of the soul. In that case, I hope you can give me a pleasant surprise."

"Rise," he murmured.

The soul's right hand paused in mid-air, then suddenly clenched into a fist.

The surface ice shell began to peel away, revealing the spell patterns on the ice arms.

Then, a tail of ice-blue energy gushed out from the broken end and shot out towards the gray sun.

The black sphere beneath the suspended gray sun, like a cat smelling fish, transformed into a black cloud and swept towards Dago's right-hand soul.

A small vortex-shaped nebula formed around the frozen hand, and Dago was losing control of his soul's right hand.

After an unknown amount of time, when Dago sensed the control over the severed hand, he saw that the severed hand had transformed into a dark, planet-like object, about one-third the size of the gray sun.

From the center of the gray sun, it looked like a dark glass bead embedded in a canvas of silver sea.

Only upon close inspection can one see the ice-blue cracks spreading across the black outer shell, cracks that seem to have no bottom.

It contained a blue liquid that flowed slowly like lava.

Dago struggled to move Winter Star; the signal was weak and intermittent, as if he were in a tug-of-war with some kind of being.

The stars inside the soul were twinkling, like the stars in the sky blinking.

Through his tireless efforts, he finally moved it near the Gray Sun and regained control of the Winter Star.

As for Mapel's request, it might be a higher-dimensional force watching him from the depths of the spirit world, casting a faint, almost imperceptible gaze.