Chapter 158: Metamorphosis
Clang! Clang!
A cold metallic sound exploded as the Knights drew their cross swords one after another.
One of the Knights kicked down a table and used the raised table to block the bald man. Two of the Knights hid behind the table and pulled out the short crossbows that they carried with them. The rest of the Knights surrounded the aisle on both sides.
Under the flickering candlelight, the crossguard sword emitted waves of cold light.
“Ah! My G.o.d!”
“Dude, what happened? Can you not do this?”
“For the sake of the Sea G.o.d, please let them stop…”
The customers in the tavern finally reacted. They screamed and ran away. The entire tavern was in chaos.
A fierce battle was inevitable, but at this moment.
“Alright!” A lukewarm voice sounded. It was the bald man.
He glanced at the chaotic tavern indifferently and said in a slightly dissatisfied tone, “Don’t waste my time here for some messy matters.”
“Yes…”
The Knights hurriedly put away their cross swords.
A Knight walked over and bowed to Heath. “I apologize for my companion’s rudeness. I beg for your forgiveness.”
After saying that, he lowered his head and handed over a money bag.
Heath took the money bag casually and did not continue to feel sorry for this group of people. He was in a good mood today and did not want to kill anyone.
The Knight took a detour around the bar counter and asked for a few rooms from the tavern owner. Then, the group of people went upstairs, including the Knight who was kicked away by Heath. Soon, someone helped him away.
The originally chaotic tavern quickly regained its calm.
“It’s that group of Knights!”
“I heard that they have already gotten a boat and are preparing to go out to sea…”
“These are real Knights…”
Hearing the crowd’s discussion, Heath’s face became a little more curious. He gently knocked on the table of the bar counter and asked the tavern owner who was hiding under the table, “Who are these people?”
The tavern owner hurriedly climbed out from under the table, his att.i.tude surprised and respectful. After all, he had seen Heath’s strength with his own eyes.
He respectfully replied, “Sir, these are a group of people who came from the Valin Duchy not long ago.”
“There are rumors that they are sent by the current new Duke of the Valin Duchy. Their goal is to recover the treasure that was taken away by their princess. Not long ago, they bought a boat at the dock and recruited sailors.”
After listening to the owner of the tavern, Heath became even more curious.
The gold, silver, and jewelry of the secular world were worthless to Wizards. However, the bald man in front of him did not make any money out of his windfall. Wasn’t it strange that he came here to buy a boat and go to sea?
Could it be that there were some good things in the treasure?
After thinking about it carefully, it was really possible.
The Valin Dukedom was a Wizard organization in the southern part of the Underdark Treesea. Its strength was almost the same as the Light Cult, and the Wizard Master was only an advanced Apprentice.
However, their relations.h.i.+p with Shadow Tower was very good. It was said that the Wizard Master himself was once an official Apprentice of Shadow Tower, and because of that, he occupied a fertile land in the Underdark Treesea that did not match his strength.
After all these years of management, he should know that he had acc.u.mulated a lot of wealth. Not to mention the many, official-level Wizard tools were definitely indispensable.
Having a treasure and not having the ability to protect it, he should know what would happen. It did not matter if he had Shadow Tower to protect him during peacetime. Now that Shadow Tower had collapsed, it would be strange if an organization like this was not targeted.
If the organization was destroyed, wouldn’t it be normal for the successor of the organization to be forced to flee to the human world with his wealth?
Thinking of this, Heath could not help but become interested. He asked in more detail, “Tell me about the specific content of this gold treasure.”
“Of course, as long as I know…”
The tavern owner was about to speak, but at this moment, a loud noise came from the tavern.
“Gold treasure! Gold treasure!”
“Hahaha, I see them. Gold, countless gold, like an ocean!”
“Sob, sob, sob, don’t, don’t kill me!”
“I don’t want it, I don’t want any gold treasure anymore, I don’t want to die!”
The voice came from the corner of the tavern. There was a man sitting there, like a drunkard, crying and laughing at the same time, talking nonsense crazily.
The tavern owner explained sympathetically, “That’s Shabal. He was an excellent sailor, but his s.h.i.+p went silent during the storm not long ago. He was the only one who survived the whole fleet.”
“After that, he became abnormal. He always said that he found the sunken s.h.i.+p and the gold treasure.”
“But after the storm ended, everyone explored the area he mentioned and found nothing. I guess he couldn’t bear the blow…”
At this time, a man with a mustache walked over with an oak cup.
The man with a mustache placed the cup on the wooden table and said to Heath, “Friend, if you are interested in the golden treasure, can you consider our fleet? We are planning to go out to sea to find it.”
“Believe me, we have the most outstanding sailors, captain, and crewmates in White Harbor. If the gold treasure really exists, it will definitely belong to us!”
Heath said, “Thank you, but I will not consider it for the time being.”
Even if he wanted to search for the gold treasure, he would definitely build his own fleet.
As he spoke, his gaze continued to rest on the drunkard in the corner. He did not know what was going on, but this man gave him a strange feeling.
He did not know what it felt like. This was obviously just an ordinary human male, but his spiritual fluctuations were somewhat abnormal.
The mustached man saw this and persuaded, “Friend, if I were you, I wouldn’t focus on this. Recently, they announced that those who know the clues to the gold treasure can form an army.”
“But he is actually just trying to cheat people into giving him drinks.”
Was he really just a liar?
He would know if he tried.
Thinking of this, Heath walked over with a gla.s.s of wine in his hand. “My friend, would you like a gla.s.s of wine?”
He put [Requiem Gra.s.s] in the wine. It was a material for the soul. With the help of the Requiem Gra.s.s, one could perform many spiritual spells.
“Thank… Thank you. You are such a good person.”
The man held the oak cup with both hands and gulped down the wine.
Heath then asked gently, “Tell me, what did you see?”
His voice had a strange tone. His voice was unusually undulating, and it had a kind of bewitching feeling.
This was a spiritual spell, [Truth]. As the name suggested, it was a spell that could make people speak the truth.
With Heath’s strength as a Wizard, even an ordinary Apprentice would not be able to resist it. The man’s gaze immediately became blurred.
He looked at Heath and muttered to himself as if he was in a dream.
“Island…”
“Island…”
“Man-eating island… It ate us, all of us died, all of us were eaten by it, sob, sob…”
Heath was stunned.
Theoretically speaking, a human who was under the Truth spell would only follow the wishes of the Wizard himself. Whatever the Wizard asked, he would answer in detail, not just a few words like this.
Could there really be a problem?
After thinking for a while, Heath decided to directly use the soul-searching spell to try.
He then used the hypnosis on the man. “Look at my eyes.”
“Yes, look into your eyes…”
The man raised his head and looked at Heath in confusion.
Their gazes intertwined. Heath then used his spiritual tentacles to invade the man’s soul. It was the simplest soul-searching technique. It could directly search the man’s memories and past. It was an ability that only Wizards could use.
The spiritual tentacles easily invaded the man’s soul.
But then, Heath was stunned.
“No?”
After the spiritual tentacles extended into the man’s memory, Heath was surprised to find that there was no scene of the s.h.i.+pwreck in the man’s memory.
“Did the man really lie?”
“No, that’s not right.”
“The memory was forcefully erased!”
As he gained a deeper understanding of the memory, Heath made more discoveries. It was not that the man’s memory was not there, but there was a blank s.p.a.ce. It was obviously a blank s.p.a.ce that was forcefully erased by someone.
“Who did it?”
Subconsciously, Heath extended his spiritual tentacles into the blank s.p.a.ce, intending to investigate this.
However, at this moment, an extremely dangerous feeling suddenly attacked him, as if something had been disturbed by him.
Heath was shocked and hurriedly withdrew his spiritual power.
Even though he moved quickly, he was still one step too slow.
The noisy tavern suddenly became quiet. To be exact, it was not quiet, but completely forbidden!
The customers of the bottle of wine froze, the spilled wine froze in the air, and the dancing candlelight froze. The entire tavern became a forbidden scene, as if it had been hit by some kind of time spell.
And then.
The tavern gradually lost its color in front of Heath, and the originally colorful scene became black and white.
Heath’s expression changed drastically. He realized that he, too, had fallen into a situation where he could not move, and the color of the surrounding scenery also gradually lost its color.
It was as if he was tightly bound by an invisible energy and had fallen into a pool of unusually powerful energy.
At the same time, a ma.s.s of black fog suddenly surged out of the opposite man’s body. The black fog rose into the air and then gathered into a large hand, grabbing toward Heath…