Chapter 49: Path of black magician

Without hesitation, the thousands of eager adventurers surged forward, diving headlong into the swirling golden vortex.

Among the rushing tide, Ethan, Lumian, Kael, and Seraphina all crossed the threshold in a chaotic blur of motion. Behind them, mercenaries, guild members, and independent warriors screamed battle cries into the void, shouting ambitions of claiming the ultimate treasures and seizing ultimate dominion over the entire empire.

As Seraphina crossed the horizon of the spatial tear, her expression remained deadpan and utterly composed.

The moment she stepped through, the surrounding world fractured, transforming into an abstract kaleidoscope of shifting colors and warped geometries. This bizarre phenomenon hadn’t existed in her past life.

In this world, Arthur and Ethan’s father is already dead, and Ethan’s behavior is also somewhat different from what Arthur remembers.

Aside from these differences, the Secret Realm did not open in her previous life.

A chilling, predatory glint sparked deep within her eyes.

No matter what has changed, I will rewrite the future for both Ethan and myself. In my past life, we both suffered wretched, miserable ends. This time, I will ensure every single person who ruined our past pays in blood.

With that cold resolution, her physical form dissolved into a pristine beam of white light, hurtling deeper into the realm’s interior.

Meanwhile, Kael stumbled as his feet hit solid ground, his golden eyes blinking against the gloom of a cavernous, torch-lit underground chamber. The heavy scent of damp stone and ancient dust filled the air.

Just behind him, a shadowy, gelatinous slime-monster began to stir from the floor, its amorphous form bubbling with dark ether.

Kael whipped his head around, his voice dropping to a sharp whisper. "Stay down. Someone might be watching."

The shadowy creature instantly sank back into the stone, obeying his mental command. Kael let out a quiet sigh of relief.

As he would later learn during his time at the academy, shadow entities of this caliber were impossibly rare—valued anywhere from hundred to ten thousand million gold coins on the black market, scaling dynamically with the master’s own combat strength. The thought alone brought a confident smirk to his lips.

Before he could take another step, heavy footsteps echoed from the stone corridor behind him.

Kael spun around.

Stepping out of the shadows was Princess Vespera. Though her face remained completely obscured by the shimmering starlight veil, her immaculate posture, flowing white hair, and exquisite gold-and-crimson royal gown radiated an unmistakable aura of majesty.

Kael froze, momentarily breathless at her sheer elegance.

Sensing a lingering presence, Vespera stopped in her tracks.

She instantly picked up on Kael’s intense gaze and evaluated the hostile potential radiating from him.

With a fluid, instinctive motion, a magnificent, golden-runed crossbow materialized in her hand, its polished limbs humming with compressed kinetic energy as she leveled it straight at his chest.

Kael threw his hands up defensively, stepping back a half-pace. "Wait! I’m not your enemy. I have no intention of fighting you."

Vespera ignored his words entirely. Without a flicker of hesitation, she pulled the trigger.

The single bolt erupted in a blinding flash of kinetic force, splitting mid-air into a torrential swarm of a thousand razor-sharp light arrows that screamed toward Kael.

Shit! Kael cursed internally.

Before the barrage could pierce him, the shadowy slime from behind surged upward, wrapping around Kael in a dense, impenetrable dome of living darkness. The thousand light arrows slammed into the barrier with concussive force, shattering into harmless dust against the obsidian defense.

Vespera’s finger twitched, preparing to notch a second bolt, but she paused, her eyes narrowing as she studied the swirling shadow entity protecting the boy.

A shadow monster... so that’s why he has the nerve to stare, Vespera thought coolly.

Lowering the crossbow slightly, she slid another bolt back into place, completely ignoring Kael as she turned and strode past him to explore the deeper chambers.

Fighting him here was a waste of time; his shadow beast made victory uncertain, and with countless treasures waiting across the realm, she had no desire to burn her strength on a random cultivator.

Kael exhaled a shaky breath as she walked away, quickly trailing a few paces behind her. "We should stick together," he called out. "Our odds of surviving and securing treasures will be much higher if we cooperate."

Vespera didn’t even look back, maintaining her silent, solitary pace through the ruins.

Far across the secret realm, in a sprawling, desolate expanse of cracked earth and arid dunes, a blinding flash of light signaled another wave of arrivals.

Dozens of operatives from the Gleam Syndicate slammed into the sand.

Among them stood the syndicate’s elite mercenaries, led by a scarred, balding brute holding an enchanted magitech rifle.

As the dust settled, the mercenaries noticed a lone figure standing a few yards away—a youth wearing a deep black hood that concealed his face, radiating a stable third-rank mage’s mana signature.

The scarred mercenary sneered, stepping forward while leveling his weapon. "Well, well. Looks like your luck ran dry, kid—you got teleported all by yourself instead of with your crew. Hand over your spiritual storage rings right now if you want to walk out of here with your limbs attached."

Ethan stood completely unbothered, his piercing blue eyes scanning the syndicate thugs as if they were nothing more than insignificant insects.

"And what if I refuse to hand over my rings?" Ethan asked mildly, a faint, mocking smile playing on his lips.

The scarred brute laughed harshly, stepping closer. "Are you blind? Sure, I’m only a third-rank mage myself, but look around us! There’s a whole dozen of us and you’re completely alone. Do you honestly think—"

BOOM.

Before the mercenary could finish his sentence, the ground beneath his feet violently ruptured.

A colossal, roaring serpent forged entirely of seething, molten magma erupted from the subsurface sands, snapping its massive jaws shut around the brute’s torso before detonating in a brilliant, fiery shockwave that reduced him to ash.

The remaining syndicate members scrambled backward in sheer, paralyzed terror, staring at the crater.

High above, observing the scene through his monocle feed, the gentleman leader of the Gleam Syndicate frowned. A subterranean elemental trap? Impressive timing, but against a dozen armed operatives, a single trick won’t save him twice.

Before the syndicate members could raise their rifles to fire, however, the feed on the gentleman’s silver monocle suddenly flickered, blurring into a wall of absolute static until his entire field of vision went pitch black.

Back in the desert, Ethan’s aura shifted.

A suffocating wave of pitch-black, chaotic mana began to hemorrhage from his body, expanding outward with such violent force that it instantly shattered every single magitech monocle worn by the syndicate agents into fine glass powder.

The color drained entirely from the mercenaries’ faces. The mana pressure wasn’t staying at the third rank—it spiked aggressively past the fourth rank, climbing higher and higher until it reached the terrifying, oppressive threshold of Peak Rank 5.

"This... this is impossible!" one of the syndicate members stammered, dropping to his knees as his breath hitched. "He’s a fifth-rank grand magus! No no-Look at that corrupt, terrifying mana—he’s a black mage!"

Ethan chuckled softly, stepping forward. In truth, his primary cultivation was still firmly anchored at the third rank, and his newly acquired Black Mage sub-class was only at the first rank.

But thanks to the massive influx of spiritual knowledge, refined soul power, and deep mastery inherited from his past life—supplemented by his intimate alignment with Rose—his combat output and sheer mana density easily matched a peak fifth-rank entity.

Deep within his spiritual sea, two distinct conceptual rings spun in stark contrast: on one side, three glowing red rings representing his standard mage path; on the other, a solitary, massive white ring rotating within a void of absolute darkness.

With a flick of his wrist, Ethan invoked his first high-tier black magic technique.

Instantly, the shifting desert sands beneath the Gleam Syndicate operatives fractured into a chaotic web of gaping black chasms.

From the pitch-black depths of the void, colossal entities lunged upward. They were nightmarish Abyssal Void Worms.

Each worm stretched an incredible fifty meters in height, their gargantuan, cylindrical bodies wrapped in thick, armor-plated hide the color of absolute darkness.

Instead of ordinary mouths, their gaping maws opened into spiraling rings of razor-sharp, obsidian teeth that dripped with a highly corrosive, purple-black acid.

The terror on the merchants and agents’ faces was absolute.