Wizards begin by accessing the Inspiration panel.

Chapter 169 The Final Encounter

Although both are members of the same team, Donato and Robert are in completely opposite situations.

Not long after Donato was teleported into the Norman Secret Realm, he happened to encounter more than ten wizard apprentices who were hiding in a secluded cave in fear.

If he hadn't happened to teleport nearby and sensed a faint energy fluctuation, discovering an illusionary magic array nearby, he might not have found this group of people!

Donato, skilled in low-level magic arrays, quickly made contact with the wizard apprentices inside.

When Donato appeared before a group of wizard apprentices with the strength of a wizard apprentice at its limit, it seemed to instantly give the many wizard apprentices present a pillar of support!

Among the group of wizard apprentices, there were several second- and third-level wizard apprentices from the North Ring. These people either knew Donato or had at least heard of Donato's reputation.

After these people introduced themselves, the rest of the group looked at Donato with shining eyes.

Especially when Donato informed everyone that the three academies had already sent elite rescue teams into the Norman Secret Realm, the morale of the group, which had been low, instantly soared.

It's like a drowning person finding a lifeline!

This is understandable. Before Donato appeared, their numbers were several times greater than they are now. Led by several other apprentices at the pinnacle of strength, they initially launched a counterattack against the supply depot with great confidence.

But the result was disheartening; not only did they fail, they suffered a crushing defeat.

A series of crushing defeats!

Even the strongest apprentices were killed by the experts of the Spider Knights. The ordinary wizard apprentices also suffered heavy casualties and scattered to escape.

The twelve people are almost all injured and their morale is low. Otherwise, they would not be hiding in a cave, relying on a small, makeshift illusionary magic array to survive.

After chatting with these wizard apprentices for a while, Donato had a fairly clear understanding of the situation within the Norman Secret Realm.

They also learned that the most crucial step in rescuing the group of wizard apprentices trapped in the secret realm was to open a passage to the exit.

That was also the purpose of the previous battles. Among the trapped apprentices were some experts who clearly knew that to escape, they had to break through the Night Elves' blockade, but unfortunately, they couldn't defeat them!

The biggest problem in opening up this passage is that there is supposedly a spider woman with unfathomable power guarding the supply point!

Donato frowned slightly when he heard several wizard apprentices utter the words "high-ranking spider woman".

Donato, though arrogant, was not an idiot; he was not so conceited as to think he could defeat a high-ranking spider woman on his own.

Especially when he heard that Geyorgi had also died at the hands of the other party, his brows furrowed deeply! Although Geyorgi's strength was slightly inferior to his, he was still a master at the peak of the apprentice level, only slightly lower than him.

Therefore, he knew that the only one in the secret realm who was capable of fighting the enemy was his father Gildarts' werewolf clone.

It seems that in order to complete the rescue mission, a major battle with this high-ranking spider woman is inevitable.

To defeat or even kill the opponent, he must first reunite with his father and inform him of the relevant situation.

So Donato led the twelve people along the path guided by the jewel!

But a strange thing happened. After traveling a distance, Donato found that as he went on, the light of the jewel, which had been getting brighter at first, gradually became dimmer.

This means that the teammate holding the orb is moving in a direction away from them.

This is clearly not in line with the original plan!

Immediately, he couldn't help but become somewhat suspicious.

Could it be that I'm holding a fake jewel?

After all, whether the [Mistman Tor Orb] will actually have any effect in the Norman Secret Realm remains unknown.

They only conducted a simple test before setting off, so it's quite possible that their accuracy would be compromised by unknown factors within the secret realm.

If that's the case, then we're in trouble!

With this in mind, Donato abandoned his original plan to meet up with his father as soon as possible.

Instead, guided by several North Ring wizard apprentices, Donato led the group of wizard apprentices to search for other survivors in the vicinity, because they told him that there were quite a few scattered groups of wizard apprentices nearby.

Donato estimated that with his strength and the dozen or so wizard apprentices, they would be safe as long as they didn't encounter a Spider Knights order of more than five people.

If he can gather a larger force, he will be able to put up a fight even against a Spider Knights order of more than ten members.

Therefore, he plans to gather another group of surviving wizard apprentices in the vicinity before going to find his father, which will make the journey safer.

After all, the purpose of their rescue mission was to rescue as many students from the three academies as possible.

Moreover, since he has not yet reunited with his teammates, he first searches for and gathers a group of apprentices, which will make him safer and will also benefit his next plan.

Of course, besides that, there was another small reason: along the way, Donato casually took care of a few ignorant monsters, which made many wizard apprentices even more enthusiastic about him.

In particular, several pretty female apprentices, who had been living in constant fear these past few days, were filled with admiration when they saw the senior students sent by the three academies to provide support. Moreover, these seniors were handsome and powerful.

It's likely that Donato could easily choose and satisfy his primal desires with just a flick of his finger.

This greatly satisfied Donato's vanity!

As Richard emerged from the cave, he glanced at the energy point count on his inspiration panel and couldn't help but smile wryly. He only had a little over 30,000 energy points left. He wondered how much he could improve his meditation technique if he used them.

The new meditation method will obviously be a "money drainer". This conclusion can be drawn by referring to the Rodrigo Meditation Method (Apprentice Edition). At that time, the meditation method was also the one that required the most energy points to upgrade among all level zero sorcery.

However, Richard's decision not to immediately improve his mastery of the new meditation method is not due to a lack of energy points.

The problem is that he cannot choose to improve now. If he improves his mutated meditation technique even slightly, he could break through to the level of a formal wizard at any time.

He would be excluded by the rules of the Norman Secret Realm, forcibly but slowly kicked out of the Secret Realm!

This contradicts his original purpose for coming to the Norman Secret Realm.

After all, his primary purpose in coming to the secret realm was to rescue his senior, Meiluo, and his few other friends.

He couldn't bring himself to become a full-fledged wizard and leave without finding a single person.

He hasn't encountered any enemies beyond his capabilities yet, so Richard isn't in a hurry to break through now.

At this moment, Richard, with Stephanie in tow, continued heading towards the direction where they had previously detected Senior Sister Mero.

However, along the way, images kept flashing through Richard's mind, images of an extremely large and abominable abomination.

However, this abomination's design is a bit different from the usual abominations; its belly seems to be much larger, with a long, vertical seam sewn together in the middle.

It seems that this rather strange-looking abomination is somehow connected to his new meditation method.

Images kept popping into my mind.

Some of the images show the abomination roaring to the sky, and suddenly, a vertical slit on its fat belly bursts open, from which dozens of creatures in spirit form rapidly emerge, like a vast army sweeping across the land.

Upon closer inspection, Richard was astonished to find that almost all of these spirits were vengeful spirits.

In some cases, the leaders are even malevolent spirits!

It is important to know that vengeful spirits are extremely difficult to deal with. Physical attacks are ineffective, and even magical attacks require highly targeted magic to quickly kill them. From a combat perspective, a vengeful spirit is at least equivalent to a level two wizard apprentice, and a stronger one may be equivalent to a level three wizard apprentice.

Evil spirits are even more terrifying!

However, the following scenes depict how to modify the Abomination in order to obtain this rather peculiar-looking undead summon called the Wraith Abomination.

This made Richard stop in his tracks, lost in thought.

Seeing her master suddenly stop, Stephania couldn't help but ask curiously, "Master, did you discover something?"

Richard shook his head and said, "No, I just have a slight understanding. I'll be right back in a moment."

A moment later, Richard basically understood how to create this vengeful spirit.

First, one needs a ready-made abomination, or a large body that meets the requirements, and Richard already satisfies this.

With the Staff of Mutation Summoning, Richard currently has Abominations readily available.

The second issue to address is the collection of spirits, which is more complicated. It requires setting up a spirit-collecting magic array. Richard doesn't find it difficult to understand the array, nor is setting it up. The challenge lies in killing enemies within the array to collect and transform the spirits.

Moreover, the stronger the enemy killed, the stronger the vengeful spirits collected and transformed will be.

This made Richard frown. After all, killing the enemy within the range of this specific magic array was quite difficult, and if he wanted to achieve good results, he certainly couldn't kill ordinary night elves; he had to kill something like a Spider Knight.

In this case, where to set up the entire vengeful spirit gathering array and how to lure the enemy are all things that need to be considered!

An hour later, Richard and Stephanie arrived near a waterfall. Looking at the waterfall, which was over a hundred meters deep, Richard looked around in confusion. Was he supposed to jump in, swim, and then continue in this direction?

"Master, look over here!" Stephania called to Richard from the side, seemingly having made a discovery.

Richard quickly came to Stephena's side and looked at her slender fingers. He saw several footprints clearly visible, among which the smaller footprints should belong to a woman.

This immediately made Richard think that these might be the footprints of his senior, Milo.

But the footprints next to him, which were clearly larger than those of an average human, instantly gave Richard a bad feeling!

Could it be that...

Suddenly, a slender figure appeared out of thin air in the dense forest not far from the two of them.

The subtle energy fluctuations immediately caught the attention of Richard and Stephanie, and Richard was stunned when he saw the other person's figure.

With her long, dark green hair, isn't that Ophelia?

I was looking for Meiluo, but I didn't expect to find Ophelia first.

Ophelia clearly did not notice Richard and his companion hiding nearby. After looking around, she prepared to head east.

"Ophelia!"

Ophelia froze for a moment, then quickly turned around. The next second, her face lit up with surprise and delight: "Richard, you really came?"

"I'm looking for you and Andrea, and there's someone else who's quite important to me."

Richard certainly couldn't say that he came to see Meiluo and also to see if he could help the two of them.

Ophelia chuckled and said, "A rather important person? It wouldn't be someone named Melo Norris, would it?"

"How...how did you know?" Richard looked astonished, as if he had just told a lie and been exposed on the spot.

Logically speaking, in my impression, Ophelia has a rather aloof personality and never cares about gossip or anything like that, so how did she know I was looking for Milo?

"Wait a minute, I'll show you a magic trick!" Ophelia teased.

She suddenly disappeared again, and Richard knew that there was obviously a small illusionary magic array or a concealment magic array set up in advance.

The next second, Ophelia walked out leading a figure that Richard knew all too well.

"Richard!" The moment Meiluo saw Richard, she was overwhelmed with emotion and could no longer control herself, so she quickly ran towards Richard.

Meilu rushed into Richard's arms and hugged him tightly.

"I knew you'd come, but I didn't expect you to come so quickly!"

Richard was taken aback when he saw Meiluo hugging him tightly with excitement. He then gently patted her on the back.

After a while, Meiluo remembered that there were other people around her, and she awkwardly let go of Richard.

However, the next moment, she saw the slender, mature, and beautiful Stephania, and her alarm bells immediately went off. She nervously asked, "Richard, who is this? Aren't you going to introduce her?"

"Um, this is Stephanie, she's mine." Richard didn't know how to explain his relationship with Stephanie for a moment.

"Hello, I am Stephana Knight, a follower of my master," Stephana said with a smile.

This immediately changed Meiluo's expression. She said, "Richard, you are really charming. You found such an excellent follower so quickly."

Ophelia, however, seemed thoughtful; the name Stephania sounded familiar.

Richard smiled wryly to himself, knowing that Melo had misunderstood his relationship with Stephena, and said, "Melo, you've misunderstood."

After Richard briefly explained the whole story to Meiluo, Meiluo realized that she might have really misunderstood the relationship between Richard and Stephena. Moreover, Meiluo actually felt very sympathetic towards Stephena's plight.

He took the other person's hand and offered a barrage of apologies and comfort.

This surprised Stephania. She had thought her master's girlfriend would be a strong woman, but she turned out to be a delicate flower.

No wonder she's so endearing!

If I were a man, I'm afraid I would also like this kind of woman who only has eyes for me.

"Are you planning to just keep chatting outside? Why don't you come in and sit down?" Ophelia, who had been watching for a while, finally couldn't help but tease them.

(End of this chapter)