Chapter 39: Confrontation with magic (4)

As the time went on, the night approached its end.

After burying some explosive material in a marked place, the duo commenced their plan, before the night ends.

Having done this kind of thing before, they were familiar with the process. So, the preparations were made smoothly.

The brown clothed-man, as per the plan, was already on the move. He walked slowly and sneakily toward the targets location. His emotions were calm, with not a single fluctuation whatsoever. Even though he was about to put off the torch of five lives, not a speck of hesitation was in heart.

After doing it many times so far… the act of killing came to him as easy as breathing.

The group of five had no idea that tonight was the night… that they will never get to see the sun of the next day. He almost pitied them. But so what! For him to level up his artifact, he needed the gemstones that the magician's artifacts drop after they die.

Although killing magical beasts and getting their magical cores would also do the same. But magical beasts were hard to find. More ever, even if he finds some, they are usually either too weak, which meant that the magic energy in their cores is too little, this type of weak beasts usually gathers in groups, which makes going after them too dangerous, or they are too strong, which would put him and his brother in the face of death when confronting them.

Other magicians in comparison were a different story. Even the magician who hadn't absorbed any core and didn't level up his artifact would still yield a gemstone with considerable magic energy.

This was the reason why the two of them were able to level up this fast.

Now, his brother was rank-2 magician – Lv.1 artifact, while he himself was rank-1 magician – Lv.3 artifact… which meant that finishing of this group might provide him with gemstones enough to upgrade his artifact to become Lv.4.

That would naturally mean that his chances of survival during these dark times would increase by a lot.

For this purpose, those five had to die.

In the first place, them coming here and delivering themselves to him was only due to their own bad luck. Who told them to come here in this timing? This was basically free and easy level up. So, why would he pass on that?

His artifact, was the elemental type, and had the rare grade. As for the class, it was the dark magician class.

At first, he had no idea what that meant, but once he leveled up first, and received the information… He understood immediately that he had hit the jackpot.

His innate spell was Dark element manipulation, and his first spell was invisibility. Although the use of that spell was only limited in the dark, making the nighttime the best time to use it, which was a large drawback to him, but it still gave him a huge advantage, allowing him to escape many situations which would have been otherwise dead ends.

This spell of his was the main reason why he and his brother had gotten this far, allowing him to back-stab other magicians and get their gemstones.

Even after leveling up his artifact twice and getting another two spells, his invisibility spell was still his favorite. As, not only does it hide his figure, but also masks his aura, which allowed him to escape countless hopeless situations, and also helped him to scheme against other magicians.

Thus, he built his entire strategy around the invisibility spell as the core. And it was the reason he was so sure that he could approach them, and throw a grenade at them, without them even realizing anything.

So, albeit it's huge magic energy consumption rate, which made it so that he could only use it for short time, the invisibility spell was still way too effective.

This spell was also the reason why he was almost confident that the summoned beast won't detect his presence.

However, one can never be too sure, which is why his strategy was to not get too close to them, but instead, to maintain a certain distance away from them, a one that isn't too close or too far. Then, he simply throws a grenade at them, and retreats away.

As for the beast, the buried explosives should be enough to deal with it. Afterward, he'd come back to collect the dropped gemstones from their artifacts.

When it comes to the volume of the stored magic energy inside the gemstones, it depends, according to the information, on the magician's rank and the artifact level. The higher, the more magic energy stored in these gemstones.

The brown-clothed man wished that these people had already advanced their artifacts. So that he could have an ample harvest.

Quietly and stealthily, he made his way to the sleeping five.

One of his worries was that one of these people might have an artifact with detecting spells; in which case, he would be in real trouble. However, since he had gotten this close to them and none of the five reacted so far, it naturally meant that this was not the case.

As for his biggest worry, it was the fearsome summon that sat atop the boulder, watching out for them like a guard dog.

As he moved all the way to this point, his attention was focused on the beast the entire time, fearing that it might detect him.

Luckily, since he had already gotten in the attack range, and the summoned beast had yet to react, it meant that his plan was a success.

Letting out a sigh of relief, he shifted his focus on the five: 'Don't blame me… blame your own bad luck for bringing you to this place! … I wonder how many of you are magicians? ...Mmm… I hope all of you are! This way, I can have five gemstones…!'

Thinking to himself, a flash of excitement flickered in his eyes at the prospect of getting gemstones, then it turned to a killing intent as he moved and hid behind a mid-sized boulder 20 meters away from the group, to protect himself from the aftermath of the explosion.

Then, and scanning the five sleeping targets, he took out the grenade… preparing to throw it at them.

…