"You won!" Staring at the mysterious sorcerer, Sophia waves her fist in the air, feeling rather encouraged. Meanwhile, her brain worked fast to think about how she could persuade the sorcerer to work with her.
However, Lucien did not lower his alert. Grabbing Pale Justice tight in his hands, Lucien looked around at the n.o.bles who were still alive. He concentrated his spiritual power on Ice & Snow Medal to activate Silent Coffin at any time he needed.
Lucien knew it well how creepy and cunning a demon could be, and he believed that Pain was not an exception. It was hard to say if Pain had chosen another host among one of the n.o.bles and was waiting for the opportunity to kill Lucien.
In fact, the best way for Lucien to stay safe was to kill all the living things in this hall. However, as the demons were produced by the most extreme negative feelings, Lucien would easily fall into the trap and get lost in his own desire of killing. Then the demons would possess him!
Lucien used his eyes to check every single of the n.o.bles who were still alive one by one. When his eyes rested on them, the coldness in Lucien's eyes made them s.h.i.+ver and scared. They wanted to stay away from the young sorcerer, but they found themselves not able to move.
After that, Lucien turned to stare at Sophia's face.
Sophia's heart missed a beat when the deep, cold eyes looked at her, but she managed to keep calm as she was already mentally prepared. A sweet smile emerged on her face and her petal-like lips slightly opened, ready to communicate with the young sorcerer. No wonder what he would ask for, as long as there was something he desired, there was still hope.
She was quite confident, as she believed that there was no reason that the sorcerer would see her as an enemy who must be killed. She could leave him with the entire treasure of Thanos, as well as the secret. Also, she was not going to become the inheritor of the Gorse Family anyways, and the sorcerer did not know she was planning on killing Beaulac later.
Instead, as long as she was alive, Sophia could bring him more than what he could find in the underground palace, including the secrets of the royal family, the precious, ancient doc.u.ments, the great wealth, and even herself.
The words for negotiation were right on the tip of her tongue, however, at this time, she noticed that the young sorcerer slightly looked down. She also looked down following him but to see the very obvious wet stain on her dress, and the long, wet trace on the floor left when she was climbing to stay away from the demon.
Sophia's face burned. The sweet smile turned into a distorted grin. She felt that her face was hot enough to cook an egg. She almost wanted to kill herself from the great humiliation.
Sophia annoyedly thought to herself that the sorcerer was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d and he was no way close to a gentleman.
Lucien was not in the mood to care about how Sophia was feeling right now, instead, he felt a bit amused. When lost all she had, Sophia failed to maintain her elegance and intelligence. But if Natasha had been here, she would definitely choose to fight until the last second of her life.
Sophia was not even close to Natasha.
In fact, Sophia had just turned into twenty, and she was already a level five caster, due to the great blood power that she possessed. If one possessed the best blood power and was also gifted, he or she would spend much fewer years than most of the sorcerers to make a great achievement, but most sorcerers could reach a higher level in a shorter period of time compared to the knights. Only a small percentage of the n.o.bles could possess the best blood power. To acquire one top power steadily generation after generation, the ancient sorcerers had killed more than a hundred thousand people for their experiments.
But it was still just a beginning. Their future progress still relied on how they trained their own willpower, while arcanists were able to do so by exploring the truth of the world. And this was the reason why although Lucien was only a year elder than Sophia, he was already a sixth-circle sorcerer. If Sophia wanted to become a senior-rank caster, without any help from the outside, she had to spend at least ten to twenty years working on it.
A light green halo spread out. Many instantly felt very tired and fell asleep. Only Sophia was not affected.
Lucien had left the alert magic on the n.o.bles. Once they woke up or tried to do something, Lucien would be informed immediately.
"Bring me to the secret chamber of Sun's King," Lucien said to Sophia in low voice.
"… No problem!" Sophia was a bit surprised and she hurriedly got up from the ground, "I can do anything for you, sir, as long as…"
She paused, for she had no idea what to say next.
Lucien nodded slightly and responded in Beaulac's voice, "As long as you follow my orders, and if the following the orders won't kill you, I am not interested in killing you neither. We are not enemies, and now you've decided to give up the treasure. Also, I'm not staying in the empire. Is that what you want?"
"Exactly!" Sophia's heart went wild with joy. Sorcerers were really smart!
Lucien also grinned, for he had no idea at all if Sophia could survive later.
Relph was the first one walking to the secret chamber under the control of Lucien's spell, followed by Sophia who was dragging Claire on the floor. And Lucien was the last one in the team, who was being very careful sensing the surroundings in case one of them would suddenly turn into the demon.
Entering the chamber, Relph lowered his body and pressed down a grey wall brick. Taking out a silver dagger, Relph cut open his hand and let the blood run down to the brick.
His blood collected, and then he put his harm on the brick. Dim white light came out of his body and went into the brick.
The brick silently absorbed the blood and a gate painted with the weird, ancient patterns emerged in the wall.
Relph had lost half of his life force and looked rather weak. Although he even could not stand still, under the control of Lucien, he still forced himself to open the gate and walked in the second secret chamber.
Seeing that Relph was quite safe, Lucien double checked again. Finally, he led Sophia and Claire into the energy gate.
Behind the gate, there was an ancient hall, decorated with the many wall paintings and covered with many magic circles. The lines of the magic circles finally led to the creepy sacrificial altar in the middle of the hall.
Different from the other altar that they saw down here, this altar was in the color black and dark red, inlaid with the demon horns drawn with the mysterious patterns. In the air above the altar, there was another similar altar but upside down, blazed with the sacred heat feeling like the sun, and there was a magic staff mounted with a huge Sun Stone.
Lucien took a quick glance at the complicated magic circles and the altars and believed that they were used for constraining and extracting. On the one hand, he had to be very careful with Sophia and Relph, and on the other hand, he observed the wall paintings very carefully.
To his great surprise, the first part of the wall paintings resembled Viken's Summoning Ritual: A man whose face was written with hatred was drawing a puppet, and then he threw the puppet in the fire. Finally, a demon with two special-looking horns was summoned.
And the rest of the wall paintings were even more horrendous. When the man had been possessed by the demon and obtained the great power, he killed everyone he hated. However, at this time, a magic circle emerged and constrained him. A middle-aged man wearing a magic crown walked out of the magic circle and pulled out the demon projection from the body of the man. It seemed that the middle-aged man was Thanos. He turned on the altar, dissolved the demon projection, and then absorbed the power in!
Lucien finally realized how Thanos got his power. Thanos managed to catch the projection of the seven demons and absorbed them like obtaining blood power. He was such a crazy and ambitious man!
Lucien was very impressed and shocked, as most sorcerers when facing the seven powerful demons, would choose to stay away from them as possible as they could or to trade with the demons to gain great power. But Thanos chose to study them and eat them in.
For Lucien, what he wanted to find most were Thanos's experiment records and notes, and then the magic staff above.
Sophia pointed at the small door in the corner of the hall and put on a sweet, pleasing smile, "Sir, there are some left notes in the chamber. Uncle Ulrich told me that before Saint Calendar started, a legendary sorcerer already found the place and took away more of the materials."
Was it Viken? Lucien wondered. Was that how Viken's special summoning ritual was created? Then what about Pain Fable? How could it be possible that the summoning ritual had become so accessible?
To some degree, Lucien knew more about this place than Sophia. Although he had so many questions in his mind, he decided to put them aside.
"Sophia, go and get the magic staff."
Sophia's face turned pale. She had no idea if any curses were attached to the magic staff. But she could not disobey the sorcerer's demand.
She looked around, hoping to find someone else to get the magic staff. But the young sorcerer's cold look ended her hope.
s.h.i.+vering slightly, Sophia walked to the altar and grabbed the magic staff using Mage Hand.
Nothing happened to her. She felt more relaxed and gave the staff to Lucien.
Lucien cast Identification on the magic staff but did not get much information back. However, Lucien was quite excited because that meant the magic staff was at least of level nine. Lucien had to spend a few days to a.n.a.lyze it.
Putting back the magic staff, Lucien walked in the chamber followed by Sophia, Relph, and Claire. Most of the shelves were empty. On the metal desk, several incomplete notebooks were left there.
