novelThe Apprentice Hall
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Chapter 247: The Apprentice Hall
Translator: Kris_Liu Editor: Vermillion
Seeing the wide-open gate, Lucien, Charlie and Sandra were a bit relieved, because that meant the magic circle of the castle itself had not been activated. Either the core of the castle had been damaged when the summoning failed, or the low-rank demons just had no idea how to control the magic circle.
Either way was a piece of good news for them, as a sorcerer castle with an activated protective magic circle could be one or two levels even more powerful then the owner himself. This castle, designed and constructed by a third-circle sorcerer, could have the power of a fourth or fifth-circle sorcerer, and if the castle's magic circle had been activated, that would cost Lucien, Charlie and Sandra quite a long time to break into it.
However, cautious as Lucien was, he did not directly rush in there, but he stopped in the air, staring at the castle from above.
His left eye covered by the piece of monocle started to use infrared lights to check the whole place through the darkness in the open gate. Lucien could see clusters of red light in there—coming straight from hell, those demons that were raised with flame and sulphur had way more amount of infrared coming out of their bodies, and that couldn't even be hiddden by the castle's thick walls.
Charlie and Sandra also used their own spells to scan the whole castle. After their brief discussion, Lucien had a rough map in his mind of the layout of the castle and those demons' activity range in there. After combing Susan's description, they quickly worked out a plan. Lucien said to Charlie and Susan in a calm way, "We have to destroy the magic circles in the summoning room first to prevent more demons from coming out, and then we sweep away the rest of them down there. So... I'd say that... entering the castle through the gate and getting to the second floor is the best route."
"Agreed." The other two sorcerers nodded.
At this time, lightnings started to gather in Sandra's hand and a long electric spear took shape. She directly threw it toward a magic energy well in the garden and the spear perfectly hit the target. Something in the magic energy well slightly caused a small explosion, but the noise was not too loud. The well, together with more wells in different places of the castle, gathered power that they absorbed from sun and tide to provide to the defensive magic circles of the castle.
They needed to blow up more wells to prevent the circles from being activated after entering the castle.
The black well was now covered with countless magic symbols, as if it was resisting the power from the electric spear.
When Sandra was about to summon another electric spear, she saw Lucien reaching out his right hand and a head-sized fireball showed up above his palm. She instantly felt the contained power in the fireball.
Lucien pushed his right hand forward, and the fireball directly flew toward the energy well. As soon as the fire ball hit it, the whole energy well just exploded, from which rose a small mushroom cloud and dense smoke.
When the smoke dispersed, Sandra saw that the whole well was gone. She opened her mouth a bit but could not say anything. She did know that the school of Element had the most powerful explosive spells, however, what Mr. Evans just cast was simply too impressive, almost like the fifth-circle spell, Great Flame Explosion.
She wondered if it was the Will of Elements or Mr. Evans' exclusive magic, as both Sandra and Charlie knew clearly that Lucien did not use any magic items for that because they were right beside him, a third-circle sorcerer.
After seeing that, they trusted in Lucien's magic power for sure.
"Before the demons gather because of the noise, we shall get in there right now, " said Lucien at a fast speed.
Lucien's Great Fireball, a third-circle level spell, was a attack magic combining the power of explosion, which was the major one, and a burning power. In addition, the magic buff from Lucien's ring, Element, increased the spell power by another thirty to forty percent, and the spell looked almost like a fifth-circle one.
Lucien would have been able to cast the spell more than twenty times consecutively, however, since he also needed to use the sculpt spell for assistance, the number reduced to seven to eight times. Fortunately, the ring, Element, boosted Lucien's spiritual power recovery speed to aproximately that of a fifth-circle sorcerer. Unless he kept casting spells without any interval, he did not need to worry about the fact that he might run out of his spiritual power in a battle that lasted less than thirty minutes.
The ring, Element, was definitely a fabulous magic item, especially for Lucien's level.
Lucien, Charlie, Sandra and Susan landed in the castle's garden in front of the iron gate. They cast Speed and Endurance on her to make sure that she was able to follow them.
As soon as they landed, they formed a standard battle formation. Charlie and Sandra were in the front, and Lucien was at their back. Susan was right in front of Lucien, behind Sandra.
There were spots of blood on the ground of the garden. They could hear the evil roaring from the castle. Obviously, the demons had noticed their arrival.
Passing through the garden at a fast speed, Charlie directly blasted the iron gate away with a fireball, and they rushed into the castle.
In the main hall, incomplete human bodies were everywhere, and on their ripped faces, the great fear was still there. Limbs, guts and blood covered the floor, and the smell of blood was so strong that they almost threw up.
Making sure they were heading toward the right direction, they started running to the stairs, stepping on those guts and chucks of human bodies.
The whole place was filled with light smoke. When Susan saw the black staircase, she was a bit encouraged. However, as soon as they were about to approach the staircase, some kind of buzzing sound came into their ears. From the corridors around the hall, teams of huge hornets were coming for them, and each of the hornets was twice the size of a human being.
Besides being huge, each of those hornets actually had a female human face with white pupils on its head. The female faces looked dreadful, as if they were in great pain. On the top, there were short tentacles, and the chin part was distorted into an arthropod mouthpart. At the bottom of those hornets' body, there was a shining black sting.
Seeing the female faces, Susan started screaming, as if she were in a nightmare, whereas the three middle-rank sorcerers remained very calm.
They were demons called Tiger Hornets. Lucien, Charlie and Sandra knew for sure that they were just of low-rank because they had no yellow, orange or red strips on their bodies.
A powerful streak of lightning showed up out of nowhere and struck one of the demon hornets which was trying to grab Susan, when a bit of its black, toxic secretion was already produced at the tip of the sting.
The demon hornet directly fell onto the ground like a big piece of carbon coke. The lightning on its body extended onto other nearby hornets and paralyzed them. The affected hornets were right now twitching on the floor, while those hornets which were relatively far from them were throwing fire clusters toward them like crazy.
At this time, cold wind was summoned and snowflakes started to fly in the hall. Soon, fist-sized hailstones took shape in the cold wind and fiercely smashed many hornets.
Ice Storm, a fourth-circle spell, from Charlie.
Most demons were immune to common flame and toxin, but they were more vulnerable to acid, ice and snow. Experienced as Charlie and Sandra were, they knew what to do.
Lucien also cast Maskelyne's Acid Arrow. Lots of light green arrows fiercely penetrated the demon hornets.
After this whole round of casting, the more than twenty demon hornets were all killed.
Two years ago, Lucien never expected that one day he would have such power. For a second, the scene reminded Lucien of how scared he was when he was sent down into the sewers at that time, and later when he needed to kill Baron Laurent.
The bodies of the hornets soon disappeared, which meant that they were not entities but projections. Lucien was a bit disappointed as he intended to collect some materials from them, and he also felt a bit suspicious.
However, he could not put too much thought on it right now, as they still needed to move forward and maintain the formation.
Soon, they came to the second floor. They were now in a spacious hall, which was filled with lots of bookshelves and desks with paper and quills on them.
Some desks were on the floor, and those books on the floor were drenched with blood. Some desks in the corner remained standing there as usual, as if nothing ever happened. An apprentice was killed on his own seat, and the demons cut him right open. His guts were still hanging there.
"This is the Apprentice Hall. We used to study here, " Susan said briefly with her trembling voice."The summoning room is at the end of the corridor after the hall."
Although Lucien wanted to copy all the books here, he understood that this was certainly not the right time. The four of them carefully walked between the bookshelves to get to the corridor.
In order to show their respect, they did not want to directly destroy all the books.
When Lucien walked past a bookshelf, he noticed that there was a mirror on the wall beside. In the mirror, he saw himself walking in the end, following Charlie and Sandra, and Susan was in the middle.
As Lucien turned his head to analyze the mirror, his reflection also made the same movement. His reflection was also wearing a monocle on the left eye.
When Lucien was about to look away, he suddenly saw his own reflection in the mirror start to smile in a creepy way. The eyeballs of the young sorcerer in the mirror started to swell, and greenish-gray pimples started to cover his face!
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