Chapter 802: You Kill Them, I’ll Brew the Potions!

The brass magical eye in Wizard Trajan's left socket rotated within its orbit, and a thin red line shot out from his pupil.

That thin red line seemed to project toward an extraordinarily distant place.

In the wizard world, the planar force would have suppressed his spell models and the material present reality would have worn away his energy, but in the void, with almost no matter, energy, or planar force to suppress anything, every spell model that could be cast using one's internal magical power would manifest on a tremendous scale.

The clockwork mechanical device on the surface of Trajan's brass magical eye began to turn, producing clicking sounds, and then seemed to lock onto something. Trajan's brass magical eye fixed instantly on its target.

"I found them."

An expression spread across his face that said a good show was about to begin.

Locke was mildly surprised.

"Senior, that quickly?"

Wizard Trajan pointed at his left eye and said, "It is all the power of money. This cost me a great deal to have installed."

"With this, finding those black wizards in the void becomes considerably simpler."

"In the near-void orbital track, one can use the relative distance between the wizard world and ourselves, along with the orbital tier, to determine our longitude and latitude."

Wizard Trajan steered the Peach Boat and changed direction.

"But in the void, there is another more commonly used coordinate reference, the star realm."

Trajan recited a spell.

"This is a spell model from the First Circle incantation school, Star Realm Light Guidance."

"I specifically learned this spell model so I could cast it myself, but if you do not know it, you can purchase a First Circle magical artifact that can be used for a long time and is not expensive, only fifty thousand magic stones. If you buy second-hand, third-hand, or even further-used ones, the price can go as low as ten thousand magic stones."

"Below that, quality tends to become unreliable, and too cheap is not a good sign either. In the void, without the ability to channel star realm light, you lose the ability to make simple determinations of your relative position. You would have to rely on whatever sparse objects are nearby to help make auxiliary judgments."

It was evident that Wizard Trajan had accumulated a great deal of experience in saving money.

A ray of starlight fell from a great and distant height, descending onto the Peach Boat. Locke looked up and saw at a point both high and far away a brilliant beam of starlight, behind which there was the vague outline of a strange world.

Locke raised an eyebrow.

"In quite a few texts I have read, it is stated that the star realm contains a vast star realm empire, many races of intelligent beings, and civilizations of all different kinds. The star realm is also called the celestial realm, and it is said to be home to true deities."

"Is any of that true?"

Locke thought of how he had once, through the Secrets of Creation of the World Tree, witnessed the births of many planar deities.

Those planar deities did not appear to be true gods.

Wizard Trajan said, "That would be from the documents in the First Circle wizard section. The review process there is not strict, and there is a great deal of hearsay and mistaken claims."

"Many of the cited documents are nothing more than fabrications. They cannot be taken seriously. Whether the star realm has true deities or not, I cannot say, as I have visited the star realm very few times. Entering the star realm is more difficult than ordinary void navigation."

"Only a Third Circle wizard can enter the star realm normally. For any existence below the Third Circle, entering the star realm will result in a severe price being paid unless a special method is found to circumvent the monitoring. Trespassers will inevitably suffer."

Wizard Trajan used the angular offset between the Peach Boat and the star realm, along with the relative distance to the wizard world, to calculate their current longitude and latitude.

"Let us go. We are heading to find those black wizards."

The Peach Boat harnessed the magical wind, and one after another, fallen peach petals drifted in the boat's wake, then had their spirituality and substance stripped away in the void and disintegrated into shattered points of light.

Very quickly, Locke spotted ahead three large keelboats positioned in the void. They had no sails but had many oars, and those oars moved on their own without any wind, sliding automatically.

These keelboats appeared to employ some kind of special technology that allowed them to move through the void as though they were rowing through water.

At the same time, magical energy cannons were mounted on all three keelboats and were bombarding a transport station that moved rather slowly through the void in a furious and relentless barrage.

The transport station was wheel-shaped, resembling a space station, drifting slowly through the void.

At that moment, a hysterical laughing sound enveloped the transport station from above, and the entire transport station had been turned into a sea of flames by the pirates' magical energy cannons.

The ordinary Second Circle wizard who served as director of the transport station stood there with an expression of utter dismay. Even the control core of the transport station was filled with a kind of hysterical laughter.

"Ha ha ha ha..."

This laughter rang in the ears of every wizard on the transport station.

The Second Circle protective-school wizard director's expression was one of extreme tension.

"It is the wizards from the pirate mothership, no doubt about it. This is an attack method that only those enchantment-school black wizards would use."

"This is the pirate mothership's Madcap Laughing Curse. Those are the void pirate ships from the Chaos Mothership. What dreadful luck to encounter a Chaos pirate ship, the odds are so low, and yet here we are."

"Has our protective barrier already failed?"

This protective-school wizard looked at the true-sight crystal orb before him and saw that the protective barrier had been breached.

"In one minute, shut down the protective barrier, then restart it within thirty seconds of shutdown in order to fully repair it."

"Before shutting down the transport station's barrier, first activate the guardian barriers for the interior core structures."

This Second Circle protective-school wizard, faced with the assault of three pirate motherships, immediately made a sound judgment: shut down the large protective barrier, activate the interior small protective barriers, and use the reboot as an opportunity to repair the large protective barrier.

This was a very reasonable judgment.

The close-down-and-restart method to repair a barrier in one go was also the newest technique recently developed by the protective school.

Ordinary protective-school wizards did not possess this technique.

It was a technique mastered only by the wizards of the Treks Transport Station Void Academy.

The next moment, the academy director of the Treks Transport Station Void Academy ordered the large barrier shut down and said, "Prepare, restart in thirty seconds. Wait... this is bad, I made an error."

The next moment, what chilled the academy director to the bone was this: in the instant that he ordered the protective barrier shut down in preparation for the restart, the effect of the spell model that had been covering his eyes, altering his perception through enchantment-school magic, disappeared.

He abruptly realized that the protective barrier had never been damaged at all.

Those three pirate ships did not have the firepower to breach the transport station's protective barrier in so short a time and without giving them the chance to notify the demon hunter corps.

The academy director cried out in alarm, "Immediately send a distress signal outward and notify the white wizard academy's demon hunter corps."

Boom.

The next moment, all three pirate ships drove straight into the transport station. The bows of the three ships bore massive blades, which descended onto the transport station and crashed into its buildings.

Like meteors falling.

The three pirate ships smashed into the transport station, triggering a violent shockwave, and a furious shower of sparks erupted from the pirate ships.

Then, the laughing sound in the ears of every wizard on the transport station grew louder and clearer.

A surge of fury rose in the academy director's heart, and that fury grew uncontrollable, as though a flame were leaping from within his soul, igniting his entire soul and burning him like a torch.

The ring on the academy director's left hand suddenly shattered, and its fragments fell to the ground.

His expression darkened, because that ring was worth five million magic stones.

Their transport station earned its money through hard labor, so even as the only Second Circle wizard among them, he had never been able to afford much in the way of luxury. The only Second Circle magical artifact he possessed was worth five million magic stones.

And that was a loan purchase.

But now it was ruined.

'Fighting against the enchantment-school pirates, one must keep one's mind under control at all times. If one's mind falls, those enchantment spells will crawl into my head and alter my state. That fury just now was not mine to begin with. It only seized the gap in the instant that I grew angry and planted itself into my mind.'

In that instant, the academy director's thoughts reached further.

At the same time, the pirate keelboats had descended on the Treks Transport Station like chisels. The pirate keelboats themselves were large composite magical artifacts, each of them a super-large magical artifact of the Second Circle or above.

And the vessels of the Chaos Mothership's fleet all bore enchantment-school magic upon them.

With each of the three pirate keelboats as a core, streams of enchantment spells flowed down like water and spread across the transport station, forming a crisscrossing red grid.

In an instant, the laughing sound in the ears of every wizard grew even louder.

Inside the control room, even vapor-phase wizards and ordinary First Circle wizards could not help themselves, and began to double over laughing.

"I am sorry, director, I do not know why, but I find this so funny. I truly cannot stop. Ha ha ha, I am so happy."

"I cannot stop, I am laughing so hard I cannot breathe."

The Treks Academy director recited incantations in rapid succession, casting dispel magic onto their souls and removing the enchantment spell models from their bodies.

"That is the Chaos Mothership's Madcap Laughing Curse. Those afflicted by it will keep laughing until they laugh themselves to death."

"Throughout this process, the enemy's combat strength is undermined. Because it involves a form of joyful emotion, it can easily bypass the soul's defensive mechanisms, leading the soul to mistake it for a beneficial element, and makes us fall under its effect without any awareness."

"This is..."

The Treks academy director felt as though he were stepping into pit after pit, his every move anticipated by those damned enchantment-school pirates.

First, enchantment magic had led him to believe that the protective barrier needed a restart to patch its damage.

Then, after he helped his students and subordinates dispel the enchantment magic, the laughing sound in his own ears grew louder.

"Is the mechanism of this magic such that every time I help someone else dispel magic of the same type, my own soul becomes more susceptible to invasion? That mechanism did not exist before. Has it been newly added? Damn those pirates..."

"Their methods have certainly been pushing the boundaries."

The Treks academy director looked at the true-sight crystal orb and saw how the entire transport station city had been enchanted by the three pirate keelboats at its core.

The originally clean and orderly transport station city, having been enchanted once over, now had a strange rose-red crystalline growth covering the buildings everywhere.

The transport station's power seemed to have failed as well.

The various defensive barriers and magical traps on the transport station's surface had not been destroyed, but because the three pirate ships had enchanted the entire transport station, those barriers and traps had all been displaced and rendered useless.

The Treks Academy director's expression was extremely grim.

Because he knew it was over.

Their academy was certain to be plundered.

In this kind of void encounter, once the enemy had seized control of the flyer, they had fallen entirely to the disadvantaged position.

They were merely the transporters of these supplies, and no one was going to fight a battle to the death with the enemy over goods that were not even theirs.

And so the black wizards of the pirate mothership's approach was to ram the transport station or void warship with their pirate vessels and then enchant the entire flyer in one sweep, thereby indirectly taking control of that flyer.

Inside the control room, a formally ranked wizard's pupils suddenly disappeared, replaced entirely by white, evidently brought under the control of an enchantment-school spell.

This wizard turned and looked at the academy director, saying, "You must be the academy director. I suggest you give up any futile resistance."

"If you continue to resist, every one of you will die, with no other outcome. Your void flyer has been seized by us."

"You have no time to send a message to the demon hunters, and even if you did, we would have time to destroy your transport station and leave ahead of their arrival. Other than death and the loss of all your supplies, you have nothing to gain."

"So give up the resistance. We only intend to take all the supplies on this transport station, and we will also select some promising wizard candidates to bring aboard our pirate ship, so that they may become more capable void pirates in the future."

The Treks Academy director's expression was dark.

"By convention, first-class wizard apprentices are not to be considered promising wizard candidates. They are regular members of our academy."

The controlled wizard stared with eyes entirely white and said, "That is the convention at lower levels. Your Cloud Marsh Wetlands' first-class wizard apprentices are still promising wizard candidates. So all first-class wizard apprentices, meaning all magic-pressure-ranked first-class wizard apprentices, can be considered promising candidates. Ordinary first-class wizard apprentices do not count as people, and therefore can only be considered cargo."

"We are taking all of your academy's first-class wizard apprentices and subjecting them to our pirate selection ceremony."

The Treks Academy director forced himself to remain calm.

"If you take all our academy's cargo and apprentices, what are we left with?"

"This entire shipment was sent by Golden Crown Mountain, destined for the colonial worlds. It is a supply of grain. If you seize this shipment, you will also be making enemies of Golden Crown Mountain."

The controlled wizard let out a cold laugh of indeterminate meaning.

"The void is still too dangerous for your kind."

"It would be better for you to take your entire academy back down to the surface. This place simply is not suitable for an academy as weak as yours with a leader as foolish as this."

"Say another word and I will have every last one of you refined into a human artifact to fight for us."

The wizard's eyes rolled white as he twisted his neck, and a torrent of emotions was forcing its way past his soul's defenses and into his brain.

At the same time, a red crisscross grid of enchantment energy appeared on the ground. With the entire transport station now enchanted by the three ramming pirate ships, the conditions required for enchantment across the whole transport ship had been greatly reduced.

The controlled ordinary First Circle wizard had a mark appear on his face resembling a tear-like tattoo. His entire being was being refined into a human artifact.

A human artifact treated a living being as a completed artifact and then applied enchantment to it. This view in itself had been judged by the White Wizard Association as blurring the distinction between people and objects, and was considered an illegal line of research.

Because for the White Wizard Association, objects could not be consumed, while people could be consumed, and the two were strictly separate and absolutely not to be confused, since any confusion would undermine the economic foundation of white wizard society.

And human artifact magic was precisely the signature style of the pirate mothership.

The current captain of the pirate mothership, known simply as Captain Wizard, had crossed the ethical review committee, forcibly conducted experiments in violation of ethics, and eventually been issued an arrest warrant by the White Wizard Association, which had finally lost all patience. He had then fled into the Chaos Mothership.

The pirate mothership had originally not been nearly as formidable as it was today, but with the joining of this truth-seeker wizard, it had grown increasingly powerful, and today it ranked among the top two of the five great wars.

Contending with the abyss demon gods for first and second place.

The Treks Academy director seemed to be stunned by the evil magic before him. Among the void pirates, only the Chaos Mothership's pirates were the most malevolent, the most organized and systematic.

In his ordinary encounters, he had dealt with small pirates, those who at most harassed and, once they found their targets too troublesome or were offered some material goods, would leave on their own.

Only a few times had he encountered attacks from the Chaos Mothership's black wizards, and those had never succeeded, except for this one time, when he had been deceived by their enchantment magic into voluntarily dismantling the large defensive barrier.

Thinking back now, in those previous close calls with the Chaos Mothership's black wizards, he had very likely already been influenced by their human artifact enchantment magic, gradually enchanted little by little, until this time, when he was completely deceived.

The Treks Wizard took a half-step back and said, "How can magic this evil exist in this world."

The next moment, that person was about to be refined into a human artifact, from which point forward he would no longer be fully human.

That person let out an unconscious scream, and the portion of spirituality belonging to his humanity was being extracted from his soul.

But in that exact instant, the controlled wizard suddenly stopped screaming, his head stopped shaking, and his eyes ceased moving. The sound of what had seemed like endless laughter inside the control room cut off abruptly.

The next moment, the suspended laughter produced one more sound, and that sound shifted from 'ha' to 'ah,' changing from laughter directly into a scream.

The controlled wizard cried out in astonishment.

"A demon hunter? It is that executioner wizard! This is bad, how can our luck be this terrible."

"No, wait, ah..."

The controlled wizard slumped directly to the ground, the human artifact enchant markings fading from his face. He lifted his head and looked around in a daze.

The people around him were still in shock.

The Second Circle wizard thought of something and quickly walked to the true-sight crystal to check on the external situation.

Out in the void, a Peach Boat had appeared, that small and exquisite Peach Boat drifting alongside the three pirate ships.

At the same time, a storm of peach blossoms erupted across those three pirate ships, and large numbers of black wizards were lifted into the air by the peach blossom storm and cast into the void.

Wizard Trajan charged into the three pirate ships first, holding a peach tree branch and using the Peach Bow Thorn Arrow spell model. He first took a thorn arrow in hand and transformed it into a jujube spear, then drove it straight through the star ring wizard who had been continuously casting the Madcap Laughing Curse, pinning him to the pirate ship's wall.

Then with a single peach leaf dart, he pierced the star ring wizard who had been casting the Mind Enchantment Curse.

After that, he covered all three black wizard ships under a single Peach Kill Curse.

An expression of bloodthirsty craving appeared on Wizard Trajan's face.

He lowered his head and looked at the peach blossom petal in his hand, which was as vivid and vibrant as fresh blood.

The sun ring-level Peach Kill Curse was the Three Thousand Peach Kill Curse.

The peach harbors a thirst for blood, and the more people the Peach Kill Curse kills, the more powerful it becomes.

If it kills many who were good, the Peach Kill Curse transforms into a curse of evil.

If it kills many who were wicked, the Peach Kill Curse transforms into a curse of good.

And Wizard Trajan had been entering the void for more than a decade, and he could say with certainty that his Peach Kill Curse carried no wrongful souls.

Wizard Trajan's hand moved in a sweep and his palm passed across the throat of a vapor-phase wizard. Countless peach blossoms flew from his sleeve.

The next moment, a flower of fresh blood bloomed on that black wizard's throat.

That black wizard's soul and permanent defensive force field were destroyed in an instant.

Behind Wizard Trajan, the faint outline of his Grand Magic appeared, a peach tree growing within what seemed like a closing heaven and earth, with lightning and thunder all around.

And with every black wizard he killed, he used the Three Thousand Peach Kill Curse to temper his Grand Magic once.

The black wizards on the pirate mothership gathered one by one, their expressions grim.

"This is terrible, it is a demon hunter."

"And the worst possible case, that is the executioner wizard."

Wizard Trajan did not say a single word to them. He raised his right hand, and a trace of peach tree petals appeared, then in the next instant the Three Thousand Peach Kill Curse was activated and countless peach blossoms flew from his hand.

One wave, then another.

Aimed at the throats of those black wizards.

On the Peach Boat, Locke said with admiration, "Senior, he can actually use the blood of black wizards to temper his Grand Magic. No wonder he is called the executioner wizard."

"The Peach Kill Curse is truly remarkable."

Witch Valerie Quinn looked at Locke and said, "Junior uncle, now do you understand just how mad my teacher is? When he is killing, he does not speak. Only after he has finished killing will he talk."

"So right now we have absolutely no way to hold a conversation with him."

"Junior uncle, if you are interested, you could also learn the Peach Kill Curse. I have recently started learning it myself, though it seems to be a special inherited magic of Golden Crown Mountain. There is a special procedure to follow to learn it, just like your Peach Bow Thorn Arrow."

"Junior uncle, are you going to go down and join the battle? Hmm? What are you doing with that big cauldron?"

Locke hoisted the Bronze Cauldron onto his shoulder, then smiled and said, "With senior helping me harvest the bodies of the black wizards, I have no need to fight myself. I am going to use those black wizards to brew potions."

"I imagine senior will not mind. His Three Thousand Peach Kill Curse only requires the act of killing to be completed, and all I need for brewing potions is the spiritual energy in these black wizards."

"Valerie, would you like to try one of my potions?"

Witch Valerie's face immediately turned to one of horror, and then she watched as Locke jumped down from the Peach Boat and, carrying a Bronze Cauldron, followed behind Wizard Trajan, drawing the bodies of the black wizards into the cauldron.