Abe the Wizard

Translator: Exodus Tales  Editor: Exodus Tales

Truth be told, the process of crafting the “myth” rune wasn’t all that hard. With 15# hel, 11# man, and 4# nef ready, all that was needed to do next was insert the three runes inside the slots. Abel did that, and soon, the texts and armors started emitting a dark golden light. The treant armor was transforming into the rune at a very rapid pace. Of course, there was still a legendary piece inside. It was meant so that it could be used to repair any damage if natural force energy was inserted.

Abel reached his hand forward to generate a black hole in the space in front of him. Following that, the Beamon giant beast, Doff, came out of the portal and appeared right in front of him. Its eyes already locked onto the treant armor he placed on the ground. Inside the portal ring, both Johnson and Jason had their own armor set, and that kind of got it jealous. It knew that its master prepared this for it, and it was very eager to try it on right away.

“Would you just… stop looking. Doff! It’s yours! Just get it on!”

Abel didn’t feel comfortable being looked at this way. No, especially not when it was from a guy five times his size. Doff got very excited because of it. As it went forward, it got the treant armor on one by one.

Abel laughed and spoke, “I didn’t crafted your hat into a rune yet. Wait until my Horadric Malus regains its effect, arlight?”

That was just the first step, actually. Following that, Abel still needed to prepare two more giant swords for Doff. Not for combat, but two “spirit” blades for enhancing Doff’s barbarian skills to boost his screaming and other buff techniques.

One Doff received them. It got them on very quickly, along with the treant armor. Once that was done, a green light was automatically activated to readjust the size of all the parts.

“Great, great!”

Abel looked in satisfaction at the new piece he got for Doff. This was something from the Moon Goddess herself, and he’d really like to praise her for her sense of aesthetic. Functionality aside, this armor piece would, perhaps, be one of the most good-looking pieces out of all the ones out there. Needless to say, Doff liked this new piece very much as well. Before, it used its flesh to fight against the enemies’ weapons, but now it was different. The armor was not very resistant against elemental attacks, but the fact that it could increase life point by 10 was enough to make it worthwhile.

“Let’s go fight now, shall we?”

After bringing Doff to the Demon Gathering Fort, Abel passed through the alley outside and entered into a great plateau. While that was what the name suggested, it wasn’t actually like a plateau. The hell creatures had trampled all the plants on the surface, leaving nothing but ground as hard as a rock. Not just that, the surroundings were dead quiet with no signs of life. All the visible colors were dark. Even without being hunted by any creatures here, spending too much time here would make anyone lose their sense of hope.

Abel could feel that something was different, too. Compared to the three territories before, this location was actually much, much scarier. Immediately, he got Frankenstein, FLying Flame, Johnson, Jason, the grey bear, spiritual guardian knight, and the spiritual guardian wizard out. For the last two mentioned, given the number of buffs he was wearing, he could now increase the total capacity count to eleven. This was pretty much an army he was summoned here. That being said, there was still quite a discrepancy between their fighting strengths.

If Abel had to pick, the spell he wanted the most would be from the holy crusader class. He needed that to optimize the fight capabilities of these creatures. Still, since he couldn’t ask for everything at this moment and time, he started calling them to march forward on the great plateau. Just like he predicted, before they reached even ten meters, thirty vortex lords showed up and immediately howled as they rushed right over towards them.

To counter their horns, strong melee attacks, blades, and wings, Abel reacted by unleashing his chain lightning spell. All his other summoned creatures started fighting as well. Given the speed at which the spells were cast, his lightning chain became the first to hit and immobilized the creatures right then and there.

There. Two streaks of the lightning chain. They didn’t achieve the amount of damage he was thinking. It was almost like these vortex lords were stronger than any of the hell creatures he’s fought before. Anyways, it was the spiritual guardian knights that came to fight them next. Because of the flashing ability, the elven spiritual guardian knights were already in a close encounter with the vortex lords.

As the rune of “steel” slashed at the vortex lord, Abel could see that even its skin could not be scratched. Only the 50% tear activation effect took place, and the vortex lord took no time spitting out a flame which, even with the high fire resistance of the gears that the spiritual guardian knight was wearing, still stripped away a fifth of his life points.

Very quickly, Johnson, Jason, Flying Flame, Frankenstein, and Doff joined the battle. With their joint offense, one of these vortex lords went down fairly quickly. In the midst of the battle, purple flashes of light continued to rise out of the summon creatures. It was the light used to generate the “fully recovery vitality potion.”

That being said, Abel was not happy in the least once he cleared this wave off. The strength of the hell creatures here had already far exceeded his expectations. He had thought that it would be easy to sweep clean this place, but that didn’t seem like the case until the real fight began, just like what happened then. Even Flying Flame didn’t manage to inflict any burning effect. The vortex lords seemed to possess some sort of ability to neutralize fire attacks. Luckily, he had thought in advance to back up with lightning, fire, and freezing.

Very quickly, hollow shadows started flying out of the dead vortex lords and flew towards the Horadric Cube on Abel’s right arm. Following that, all of them started to dry up into mummies. Abel didn’t manage to find any reward from their corpses even after doing a scan. However, while he scanned a tree on the side, he could see that one of the corpses was wobbling on a burnt tree. He could hear its soul wailing in pain with his power of the Will. It was probably the humans that used to live here. The hell creatures would torment them by tying their souls to inanimate objects, simply for the sake of appreciating the horrible scenery of it.

Abel’s body disappeared as he teleported right next to the burnt tree. With the “spirit” sword in his hand, he cut off the rope tying the corpses together, dropping the four human corpses trapped to the ground. Four translucent souls rose out of them very quickly. They bowed to him and disappeared soon after. That’s when Abel felt a close kinship to the land he was standing on. Even if it was just for a bit, this sense of intimacy was definitely sent from the ground itself.

From what it looked like, the underworld must’ve done much more damage to this location than any of the other places he was in. The most he was used to seeing were designated rooms piled up in corpses and blood, but here, everything was burnt to charcoal. That made him look towards the horizon. Everywhere he could see, he saw hundreds of burnt barks with dead bodies tied to them. This was a cursed land with cursed dead men. The hell creatures did all they could to defile this place, and he must do everything in his power to return the peace that used to exist here. Only then would the souls trapped here be able to regain their liberty.

Following that, he began to meet a group of cursed knights and cursed spellcasters. As the names implied, the former relied on melee attacks while the latter specialized in distanced attacks that could lock onto their target. After observing his surroundings, he realized that no forgotten knight could reach him at an extremely long distance. He felt relieved because of that. He wouldn’t want to suck up a terrible spell like the “attack re-absorbing.”

In Abel’s team, there was plenty of close-range summoned creatures a. The ideal solution was to clear them all with long-range spells, of course, but he didn’t forget that the job would be easier if he had a better understanding of the hell creatures. He got better at it the further he went. Most of the creatures couldn’t really withstand his spell attacks, and he just needed to make sure that he switched to an alternative if they were immune to one element. This made the task require a little more precision, but it didn’t really eliminate the difficulty in any case.

Fortunately, there was no hell creature here that was immune to freezing elements. Abel and Frankenstein’s wizard spells would be useless if that was the case. Because of this, they only spent two months on the dead great plateau that was outside. Apart from the human souls he saved, there weren’t really any other rewards he was getting. He sort of expected this to happen, though. Given that there had not been anything alive here for the past ten thousand years, he didn’t think that there was really anything read for him to collect. Even if there existed some underground infrastructure, the mechanisms for opening them would’ve been eroded for sure.

Unless they were dark golden items, of course. That, or some weapons or gears that the hell creatures had on themselves. Abel wasn’t going far to look for them. He’s had enough of spending his time in a miserable, evil, dark place like this one. His mental state was quite exhausted already, and in truth, it’s only been three days since he left the central continent.

Immediately after clearing through the hell creatures beside him, he first used a Town Teleportal Tome to head back to the Demon Gathering Fort. After that, he used a waypoint to head to the Rogue’s Encampment. He felt a lot more at ease after that. Being in an environment he was familiar with made him feel a lot less tired than before. Being able to breathe the fresh air here made him feel like he had regained a sense of control of this place.