Chapter 2904 - 1123: The Price of Youth

Chapter 2904: Chapter 1123: The Price of Youth

Peel the skin off?

Just hearing those terrifying words, Zheng Qing felt a suffocating sensation.

"—So, you peeled off Sister Korma’s skin?"

The initially rough and sharp voice of the Edge Type One became even sharper at this moment, seeming a bit distorted as it echoed against the surrounding walls and the dome above: "You killed her?!"

"Peeling the skin?"

The voice echoing above the Stone Cave Square repeated the word with some surprise, then corrected very precisely: "No, no, it’s not just peeling the skin... to be exact, it’s peeling off the skin and flesh, leaving only her bones and organs..."

Zheng Qing, suspended in the air, struggled violently.

He was not afraid of death.

Being taken for experiments didn’t particularly frighten him either—as long as it was like Thomas, borrowing a bit of flesh and blood in a friendly manner, he could barely accept it.

But being stripped of his flesh and blood?

Just imagining that scene made his heart race with fear.

"...Uh, there’s no need for you to be so tense."

The ’witch’ at the center of the altar glanced at him again without speaking, leaving the mechanical voice echoing above to soothe the frightened young wizard: "Firstly, now that you’re operating the Edge Type One, you don’t actually have any flesh and blood for me to strip."

In its voice, there was even a hint of regret!

Zheng Qing thought in panic.

Meanwhile, he stopped struggling.

It wasn’t so much that he listened to Professor Montreya but rather because upon hearing the words ’Edge Type One’, Zheng Qing finally realized that his true self wasn’t present there—he almost forgot his identity today due to the overwhelming news, but regaining his senses, he was suddenly overjoyed and immediately started executing the emergency escape procedure. It was only after his thoughts bumped chaotically within the Edge Type One that he was dumbfounded to discover that those blood-red vines, resembling living nerves, not only tightly bound the body of the Edge Type One but also formed an extremely thin, light red film on its surface, locking his divine thought within this shell.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Zheng Qing immediately began to visualize his Charm Gun in his consciousness.

It was a small technique his teacher had taught him ’long ago’ when his Charm Gun was destroyed along with Satoguya in the Small World and repaired later, in order to enhance his control over the Charm Gun and Forbidden Curse power. This technique hadn’t been used for a long time since his adventures in the Dreamland and Black Prison, and the recurrent loss of control of the Charm Gun.

At this moment, as Zheng Qing’s mind turned, that light blue box slowly resurfaced in his consciousness.

Professor Montreya seemed not to notice the boy’s secretive struggle.

The mechanical voice echoing above the stone cave still spoke those insincere comforting words unhurriedly: "Secondly, to a Big Wizard at this level, just stripping away a layer of skin and flesh wouldn’t be lethal. Especially since what I stripped was just her ’shed residual body’ left in the outside world, not the flesh and blood of her true form."

After advancing from a registered wizard to a big wizard, one condenses their true form—be it starting from a single eyeball, a bone, a bit of flesh, or even a tail, etc.—all based on a profound understanding of a magical concept, materializing from abstract to concrete, and begin condensing from nothing to something.

Once one becomes a big wizard, the true form is where a wizard’s essence and core gather.

Instead, the original body becomes less important.

Of course, before the true form has fully formed at the early stage of advancement, the original body remains a necessary existence in this world. But because the true forms of big wizards are exceedingly large, exposing them outside is inconvenient, so most of the time, they use their original bodies, which were shed before advancement, to walk the earth, while their true forms are hidden in their respective little worlds.

This also means that the original body acts as an anchor point between a big wizard and reality.

Without this anchor, one needs to quickly create a suitable righteous body to maintain their presence in the real world. If one stays away from the real world for too long, only hiding in their little world in pursuit of truth, over time, a wizard may easily lose direction. Most wizards who lose direction will eventually forget what they looked like when they were small, slowly walking the path of the starry sky along the direction of their ever-growing true form, a result unacceptable to wizards on the orthodox path.

"...Lastly, Miss Korma is not dead. I am also just a big wizard, and killing a peer-level existence on short notice is quite a difficult task." The mechanical voice echoing above the altar sounded very humble.

Zheng Qing found it rather amusing.

Difficult?

Is it difficult to kill a person in a short time, or is it more difficult to subdue a peer-level big wizard in a short time, peel off her flesh and skin, and then impersonate her?

"Where is Sister Korma?" The young wizard finally suppressed the panic in his heart, hoarsely speaking again, first confirming the witch’s whereabouts.

"I guess she should be in her own little world right now, trying hard to make contact with the outside." The mechanical voice sounded very patient: "—Given her status and prestige in the North District, this process will probably take about a month."

A month.

This time flashed through Zheng Qing’s mind, implying that Professor Montreya’s target is ’Primordial’, with no intent of long-term impersonation as Korma.

He didn’t even bother to disguise it.

"...Then how did you subdue Sister Korma in such a short time?"

Zheng Qing pursued the question further. Since realizing the ’cat replaces the prince’ storyline happened, he couldn’t understand how Professor Montreya accomplished all this merely using the distraction of ’Solar Eclipse’: "—She’s also a big wizard! And she advanced earlier than you!"

"That’s beyond doubt."

The voice echoing above the altar seemed a bit wistful, but immediately, the tone shifted: "She indeed advanced a year earlier than me. But for big wizards, a year is really too short... When two people’s ’big wizard qualifications’ are quite evenly matched, ’registered wizard qualifications’ become very important. Unfortunately, Miss Korma became a registered wizard not long ago... She was too young, lacking in much needed accumulation of magical knowledge, and understanding of the malice in this world... Of course, more importantly, she also lacks the ability to resist legendary powers."

Legendary powers?

Were other legends involved in all this?

Who could it be? A legend from the school, or from outside? Wizards from the Alliance, black wizards, or... those Fallen Wizards?

A sense of urgency surged within Zheng Qing, striving to speed up his visualization process.

The light blue box slowly revealed a sliver of a gap, exposing a glint of the silver-white illusory gun barrel.