A Sorcerer's Journey - Chapter 50

Chapter 50: Sorcerer Peranos

Days prior to the interrogation, the Test was still marching on in the Bramble Forest.

That night, Grimm slipped out of his tent and left Lefay with the Bead. His mind was bent on the third mirror parachute and the Desperators.

Grimm’s thoughts and actions had not escaped Lefay’s observing eyes, and it seemed to her that the scale in Grimm’s heart was tilting to gaining power rather than caring for her. Yet, she withheld from intervening. She was assured that love, if taken or maintained through violence, wouldn’t endure.

“Would he choose power over me when the day came?” Lefay forced a smile.

Things that followed had been set forth in previous chapters. When Sun Child was edged out of the vying for the third mirror bounty, Grimm filled in her position.

The key to opening up the mirror house was to enliven the house by a constant transfer of magical force towards the seven pillars bolstering the house. The magical force provider had to have a 30 point energy or more chain mark for the magical force to be effective. And there was a constraint—the magical force must be pumping to the pillars for at least three hourglasses.

Sun Child and the Machine Heart had been deterred by Grimm’s existence after the Machine Heart had sustained his fiasco with Grimm. The prospect of a stealth attack had fazed these two Desperators. So they wanted Grimm dead dearly and intended to terminate him at all costs, but it came to nothing owing to the Black Isotta Desperators’ assistance and Grimm’s growing capabilities.

Now the only student who could pose any real threat to unlocking the house had been cleared. The new seven “Desperators” were going to collude in something great.

The magical force commenced transmitting.

Immediately, the surrounding was immersed in noises one would hear when a flame was doused by icy water. And seven beams of dark blue light were seen hitting on the pillars.

Grimm clung to the intermediate stone in his hand to replenish the consumed magical force; one hourglass later, his forehead had begun to show beads of sweat.

Students around the house were overlooking from the elevated spots. They were disinclined to take a step forward since they considered it suicide.

Another hourglass elapsed. The inscriptions on these pillars moved a little after receiving the energy.

The final minutes came. Grimm had been drenched in his sweat, and the last intermediate magical stone had lost its luster and died out after giving out its last magical force. The other Desperators were worn out too and were pitching in their best effort.

Eventually, the door opened, and the seven of them was pulled into the house. The door was then shut.

The air within the house was gray, as if it was veiled.

“Finally, we’re here!” The Phantom Thief made a sinister grin.

“Where are we?” Grimm sneaked a question quietly to Solumn, who was on his side.

“This is a cubic of space, and the sorcerers out there sealed it. They then stashed treasures in here!” Solumn returned in the same muffled voice.

‘Why do they know everything! How did they know the way to open the house?’ Grimm thought, suspecting that the whole test was laid out in favour of the Desperators by giving them inside information.

The six Desperators walked to the tables which, surprisingly, had their names on it. Grimm got to the last table, the name tag of which read:

“For Sun Child.”

“No kidding! The whole test had been pre-arranged! The lot of innocent students were slaughtered to pave their way to power? I can’t believe this!” Grimm’s suspicion had been confirmed.

The next second, Grimm returned to his senses and concentrated his attention on the little gadget before him.

“A crystal ball? That’s it?” Grimm went into dismay.

But soon Grimm’s frustration diminished as he observed something flowing inside the ball.

“Oh my! They’re split souls!” Grimm almost yelled.

One’s soul could only be spilt by sorcerers, and before reaching level four, a sorcerer could separate souls for a very limited amount. One thing that mustn’t be left unmentioned was that soul-splitting was the very foundation of raising soul slaves.

“The schools were really into this Sun Child! These are a bunch of soul fragments.” Grimm murmured.

Grimm inclined his head and touched the crystal ball with his temple. Snippets of the souls’ information started passing on to Grimm’s brain.

An hourglass later, Grimm had absorbed a tenth of the soul’s information, which made him weary. Yet he had made a discovery.

“There’s a rare fire element!” Grimm gazed.

As illustrated before, the Element Matrix could boost the cultivator’s mental strength, which roughly determined his/her magical force. The Matrix was the set of the permutations of the 26 symbols and signs (the elements) recorded in sorcery books.

When the elements combined, they would be connected and thus would produce power one couldn’t imagine. Apart from the current 26 regular elements, further ones were being tapped in nature or being explored in the lab.

Now, Grimm had obtained one rare element!

As Grimm leaned his head and tried to extract more information from these souls, his head was suddenly sucked onto the crystal ball as if it was pulled to it by a magnet.

Grimm screamed for help. But as Solumn, Brianna and Kyrie were reaching to separate his head off the ball, Grimm’s body twisted and he then disappeared.

Solumn, Brianna and Kyrie were dismayed. The Phantom Thief and the Machine Heart smiled a private grin.

Grimm woke up and found himself in that cold chair of that cold room, being watched by a bunch of sorcerers’ grim eyes. Luckily, he was acquitted of charge by the twelve sorcerers.

Grimm was offered a red metamorphic rock by the Inextinguishable Flame as a compensation.

Better, as the sorcerers had left after the interrogation ended, the door was suddenly swung open. It was the cat.

“Grimm, would you like to take Sorcerer Peranos as your mentor and follow his order willingly until your life ends?” the cat spoke.

“You’re Sorcerer Peranos?” Grimm couldn’t help but ridicule.

“No! I’m not Sorcerer Peranos! He is.”

As the cat’s voice faded, a cloaked man came in.

“Grimm, I am Sorcerer Peranos! Will you be my apprentice?”