Short Story 4 _ The Mage Who Chased the Rainbow (Part II)
After escaping Pisaruta, Nemo proceeded to the location where Wengu had told him to hide the study.
All of Ataro's mages are seriously ill bookworms. They valued the knowledge transmission function of "books" as the greatest invention in human history. Since ancient times, they have a tradition of doing whatever it takes to pass on knowledge to future generations. Whether it is to bring the manuscript into the grave as a burial object and wait for others to dig it, or to hide a set in the wall when building a temple, it is impossible to bury scroll boxes all over the country. Even if the National Library is responsible for the transmission of knowledge, there are still many mages who believe that the collection of books is equivalent to the convenience of destruction (which is based on historical evidence), and it is necessary to make a bunch of copies to hide everywhere to feel at ease.
The place that Wengu told Nemo was probably only one of the book hiding places. But Wengu only told Naimo such a location, and it was clear that Naimo would not help him if he didn't go here, and Naimo could only admit it.
There are some small towns in the country that are far away from the big cities. Because it is so small, it is easy to change due to the general environment, and not a single resident is left, and all of them move. It will become a "ghost town" with only empty buildings.
The location of Wenguqi is one of the ghost towns. These ghost towns have been idle for a long time, and sometimes they become a lair of demons.
Naimo and Lisna took advantage of the daytime when the demon's activity was relatively low and entered the ghost town. After being left for a long time, the things made and used by humans emit a different smell of decay than the forest. Many of the wooden houses look intact on the outside, but if you look closely, the walls and pillars are cracked, and you don't know when the whole building will collapse.
The two walked through the pothole-scarred streets in the sun. There was no one in the town, not even cats, dogs, or birds, nor any demons in sight.
Namo wears a hat made of bronze with a central pointed cone. There are many small holes in the copper shell and many small bells. When the wind blows through those small holes, it rings bells and whistles. These sounds are all demonic nasty audio.
Lisna wears a shirt, leather trousers, and boots. Long hair is coiled and fixed, and he is dressed for good activities.
Wengu said the report was placed in the reading room of the residents' center.
The two of them walked towards the largest building in town. The house had three floors, and a handful of dead grass was stuck in the door. The door was a little stuck, and Namo banged it before it opened.
On the first floor of the house is the office hall, which is now empty. Namo kicked the dust away with his foot, and saw the right-angled dirt on the tiled floor that had been pressed out of the corner of the table over the years. They went down the hall and found the stairs leading upstairs to the reading room on the second floor.
There are a lot of bookshelves on the second floor, and there are still some books on the shelves. Many of the synthetic wood panels on the ceiling were broken, and the debris kept falling when the wind blew it. Naimo flipped through the old books, which were only outdated women's magazines and romance novels, which were really subtle compared to the modern style.
He walked over to the wall with a row of decorative wooden boards, and in the corner of one of the boards he drew with an oil-based pen a pattern of a kitten licking its paws, which was very vivid and cute. Namo grabbed the edge of the plank and pulled it twice with all her strength, but the plank didn't move. Lisna walked over and cracked the plank, seemingly with a casual pull. Except for a few corners that were still nailed to the wall, the rest of the world left the wall with his movements.
Lisna happily stripped most of the wood from her hands, leaving only the cat motif and put it in her bag.
When the planks were removed, a hole appeared in the wall. Inside was a copper box measuring 50 cubic centimeters. The surface of the box is shiny gold, and there is no trace of patina. There are handles on both sides. The lid of the box is corroded with the words "smash him".
That's it. Naimo pulled up the handle with both hands, but only lifted it a little and then had to put it down, it was very heavy! The paper was already very heavy, and the weight of the copper box had to be added.
Lisna leaned forward, like serving a plate, easily placed the copper box on her open five fingers with one hand, and walked downstairs while humming.
"The Seraped Queen of Fire—he is the master of desire, the most beautiful darkness—" Lysna sings the song of the Demon Realm in demonic language: "If you don't obey, pull out your tongue—cut off your hands and feet—the protagonist of the banquet—the head that everyone admires—"
Naimo also hummed along. So far, so good, it seems that I can leave safely. As he thought so, there was a thud over his head, and a large number of debris fell. He looked up and saw that from the shattered ceiling, there were many black, bristly hairy legs sticking out, which looked like large spiders.
"Grab the box!" Naimo said. He pulled out his sacrificial knife in one hand, grabbed Lisna with the other, and used the wall-piercing technique to go straight through the floor and down to the first floor. But the copper box, which was supposed to follow them down to the first floor, got stuck on the floor on the second floor. Lisna's hands and head ran through the ceiling and grabbed the copper box, hanging it like that.
"These archmages, if they have protective spells, they won't say a word!" The copper box had a spell on it to prevent it from penetrating the wall. Namo didn't have time to rush up to the second floor again, he poured the blood vial on the sacrificial knife and pointed to the ceiling: "Uncle Ben is going to be an indoor stargazer today!"
The tip of his sacrificial knife spewed lightning bolts into the ceiling. Immediately exploded where it was touched. He shattered the ceilings around Lisna, and she fell along with the jammed cement, planks, and clutched copper boxes.
Naimo went over to pick it up, only to be crushed and fell to the ground.
Lisna sat on Naimo, supported herself with both hands, and directly broke the cement block, and then swung it to break free. She's a demon, and getting stuck through the wall has no effect on her. She held the copper box in her left hand, patted her hair and dust off her body with her right hand, and looked down and asked Namo under her, "Master, are you okay?"
Namo snorted and said, "Maybe the ribs aren't broken. 」
Lisna helped Naimo to her feet. Naimo's lightning blew up the ceiling on the first floor, and then pierced through the ceilings on the second and third floors, directly to the outside. From the hole, you can see some view of the third floor, full of gray-white cobwebs.
This house can look at the stars indoors tonight, but at this time, it should be blue sky and white clouds, but the sky outside the cave is dark.
Many spiders were swept by the lightning, some had been blown into pieces of minced flesh, and many were still alive and fell to the first floor with the rubble. A dozen spiders crawled out of the pile of concrete debris and surrounded Naimo and Lisna. They were as big as sheep and had cracks on their bodies that dripped, foul-smelling liquid. There was a yellow glow swirling in their eight bright red eyes.
Naimo said the name and purpose of the spider in the true nature of a black market mage: "Feast on the demonic spider. The silk that spit can be sold for money and can be used as a good healing medicine. But looking at the darkness above you, now is not a good time to gather merchandise. Nemo raised an eyebrow and poured a potion on herself, "Please leave us alone. 」
A smell of birds emanated from Naimo. With a wave of his hand, the air shook and the sound of a giant bird flapping its wings. The spiders froze and didn't move. Namo then stomped his foot hard, and the spiders all fled. Naimo and Lisna quickly escaped from the house. What he had just emitted was the smell and sound of a feast spider predator.
They kept rushing forward, out of the shadows and back into the sun, and the darkness that covered the house was like clouds chasing them, and followed them, all the way to them. The problem with the spider was solved, but the thing that darkened the sky wasn't so easy to fix. Behind them came the screams of hundreds of people falling off a cliff together.
This is a very powerful demon, Naimo's hat is not in his eyes! This guy is of the same level as Xike's little ash, and they can't be killed, and this is only on his own territory, he is at the peak of Liliang, Naimo has no chance of winning!
"Don't look back!" shouted Namo.
Lisna nodded vigorously.
Running and running, Naimo began to feel gasping. Lisina bit the handle of the copper box, bent down to scoop up Namo with one hand, and lifted him up with the other hand, holding Namo to her chest in a "princess hug" way, and continued to run wildly, without slowing down at all.
Namo opened his mouth to gasp. His tongue tasted a special smell with a chill, and he immediately cast a detection spell. He saw a hole crack in the ground where the spell was pointing.
"Jump in there!" shouted Namo.
Lisna rushed to the side of the hole, hugged Namo, bit down on the copper box, and jumped down. The space below was larger than the opening, and they fell about twenty meters down, into a wet mass of aquatic weeds.
The light from the hole was gone. The screams passed over their heads and faded away. The sun is shining again.
Naimo exhaled, "Saved. 」
As long as these aquatic plants under his body move, they will waft out a mint-like taste, which is the taste of Nemo's tongue. He knew that this aquatic weed was a special kind of inhabitant species. He waited for the inhabitants to show up.
Naimo was held in Lisina's arms, and the two of them maintained a position facing the sky, half-lying and half-sitting in the water and grass for three minutes, and some grass-green, short and round, twenty centimeters tall dwarfs began to gather.
These aquatic plants are grown and eaten by them. This is a type of goblin, and because they are very weak, they like to live near powerful demons and let them maintain peace on their turf. They possess unique spells that shield the demon's perception, and they will not be detected if they hide in their realm.
More and more goblins crawled out, nearly fifty. A dwarf elf stood on Lisina's shoulder, and a little one climbed onto Naimo's knee, staring at them with small black eyes.
As a black market mage who often has to deal with people from all over the world, Naimo knows exactly what to do at this time. He took out the first aid kit from his bag and took out some of the medicines that were also useful for the elves, "Please accept my thanks, Xiexie, for letting me cross your kingdom. 」
The dwarf goblins gathered around the pile of medicines and sniffed closer. Once they were sure what they were, they grinned at Namo in unison. Those grinning mouths have no teeth, no tongues, not even mouths. There was a whirlpool in there, and no one knew where what went into their mouths would go.
Although the smile was really terrifying, Naimo smiled back professionally. It's done, and he and Lisna are safe.
After that, the goblins escorted them all the way out of the ghost town. It's just that the smell of aquatic plants on their bodies actually deteriorated after a while like the smell of burning rubber, which was very difficult to eliminate, causing them to almost empty the carriage when they took public transportation later.
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By the time Naimo finally got rid of the smell on his body and went to Wen Gu's house, another week had passed. Because his previous hat was rusty with water, this time he wore a fur hat with goggles, fluffy earmuffs on both sides, and a detachable windsock on top of his head.
He went to the village and found that the Wengu family was gone. Originally, all that was left of the place was a bare clearing.
He asked the surrounding residents what was going on, and the incident was as follows:
A week ago, on the night of the week, almost half an hour after Kemio disappeared from Pisaruta, the moonlight was bright when suddenly a dark cloud obscured the moon, leaving only lights in the village.
In the midst of this darkness, a skinny little boy appeared wearing a fluorescent yellow jacket, a tonal cap, canvas sneakers and denim shorts. The boy pressed the brim of his hat low, went from house to house, rang the doorbell, and said to the villagers, "Fix everything, quickly! Take down the things that are high, lower the things that are easy to fall, and find a place where they won't be hit by things!"
The villagers didn't understand what he was talking about, and asked him if he wanted something to eat. When the boy heard this, he raised the brim of his hat slightly, glaring at them with one eye. The villagers suddenly felt creepy. When the boy spoke again, his voice was no longer childish, but sounded like that of a strong, middle-aged man: "You are about to face the battle of the most powerful mages in this country, if you don't heed the warning to protect yourself, disappear into the flames of magic!"
The villager who told him about this was so frightened that he took out the cake and asked again, "Do you want to eat it?"
The little boy's terrifying aura disappeared suddenly, his cheeks flushed, and he shy bent his neck and asked, "Is it okay?"
"Of course. The villagers clenched their fists with one hand and emphasized.
The little boy regained his childish voice and said, "Uncle Xiexie—"
Later, when the cake was eaten, the little boy chattered a lot: "Those two guys, I know from them that it's been almost a hundred years now. They used to quarrel like this. I can even make noise about eating noodles or eating. Sometimes it will be so troublesome that it will be moved. In the past, it was okay to have archmages all around, but everyone saw that the atmosphere was wrong, and the walls were erected, and the channels were set up, and they could be fried as they liked. Anyway, there are a lot of people here, what magic can't be resolved?
"Now that everyone has retired, these two are still doing this. Really, I'm still so naïve at my age. I put down my job and rushed here to deal with it, there are a bunch of people waiting for me to help me find a job! In recent years, the number of middle-aged unemployed people has increased dramatically, and the bureau is busy, but if we don't deal with it here, a big hole will emerge in the national center.
"It's all war, one wants to go and the other doesn't want to go, so they quarrel. Both of them did what they thought they wanted, and they were so angry that they stopped contacting, super naïve, right?
"This time, it seems that a little mage was used to get in touch.,Really.,How can you connect the explosives with the **?"
After eating sesame oil chicken, rice cakes, shrimp wonton soup and other food brought out by the villagers, the little boy ran to Wengu's house, got inside, and never came out again.
A three-degree earthquake struck here in the middle of the night, but fortunately no one was injured. At the time of the earthquake, some people who went outside the house saw colorful smoke from the windows and chimneys of Wengu's house, and then the whole building disappeared.
After learning what had happened, Namo stared at the heavy copper box, feeling that he had been eviled.
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He doesn't plan to give up yet. He and Lisna walked around the ruins of the Wengu House. Naimo stepped on the ground with his feet, listening to the sounds, and he found that the basement of the Wengu family was still here. He found the entrance, covered under a thin plank. Lift the plank and go down with Lisna.
The basement was pitch black. He felt the switch of the light, tentatively pressed it, and it turned on.
The basement is full of books, some on shelves, some in jars, and next to it are stacked with mountain-high scroll boxes, all handwritten books!
Namo turned, climbing the stairs back to the ground. He pushed the thin plank away, but what he could see through the gap was not the bare clearing. He saw the interior of a house. The walls are covered with pink orange pattern wallpaper and yellow-toned flower lamps. The furniture in the room is made of logs.
Wengu and Kemio sat at the large table, only two meters away from Nemo, and looked down at him.
Kemio said, "Oh, here we are. 」
Wengu said, "I know he'll find out. 」
"The 'must' you say often doesn't come true," Kemio said. 」
Naimo flattened his mouth and climbed out of the basement with Lisina one after another. He felt that the temperature was much cooler than before, and with the coolness of the mountains, the air had become thinner. He ventilated several times, and it took a sip of potion to get used to it. He turned his head to look out the window, and was not surprised to see a vast landscape looking down from the top of the mountain, clouds and mist rolling in the valley below.
Naimo grimaced, glaring at the two high-ranking seniors who had come up with this.
Wengu and Camio smiled awkwardly.
Wen Guxian said, "It was purely accidental. We were told not to duel in the center of the country, and we wanted to say that it is always easier to go to a place where no one is around, but it only occurred to us that you couldn't keep up after flying over. 」
Kemio said, "It's a good thing this guy always loses his spells, and the basement is still there, so we set up the basement door as a 'return portal'. 」
The "Turning Back Portal" is a common technique used by mages to hide portals. It is common to use four or more physical doors at a time to make a combination. It is necessary to pass through these doors in a fixed order, direction, and number of times before entering the portal when Zuihou passes through the door once. Until the whole process is completed, it's just going in circles.
Since there is no other exit from the basement, the turning portal is set to pass through the door that enters the basement, and when you pass through it again, it is zuihou, so that people who enter the basement will definitely teleport here.
"I brought the things, and the people found them. Now hurry up and teach me spells!" said Namo excitedly.
"No problem!" Wingu and Camio stood up at the same time, their eyes glaring.
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As a result, Nemo was trapped on the top of the mountain for six months. During this period, he could only survive on health food and wine. Because I don't know where I am, the portal in the basement is one-way, and there is no way to escape at all. Wengu didn't care about what to eat, and Kemio gave up his appetite because he was focused on teaching, and Naimo could only complain in his heart.
Wengu and Kemio are the heads of the department at Master Evansar University, and they are full of enthusiasm for teaching that burns out their students. After many years of not being a coach, their teaching spirit exploded.
The two of them started with the most basic semiotics of magic, whether it was the calculation of micro-motion teleportation points, the intuitive jumping method, or even the cyclonic fall protection, Naimo faced their "complete education in wall-piercing techniques", and trained him to the point that there was no ambiguity in all the places he had been before. The most terrifying thing is that if only one of them is in charge of teaching, because all learning is divided into key and non-focused, Naimo still has a chance to breathe, but these two people have the opposite view of the key and non-focused, so everything has to be learned as a focus!
Half a year later, Naimo had finally survived the two-on-one hypoxic class, and he felt as if he could no longer use a spell and fall directly through the ground into hell. He took the data he had calculated step by step in class (which he had expected Wengu would do for him), collected the spell materials he had listed himself (he had expected Camio to tell him what he needed directly), and prepared to accomplish his original purpose.
The "Hongqiao Mark" of the Smashing School can achieve a complete transformation effect by attaching an already formed magic circle to the caster, and when casting the spell, the human body is linked to the spell to achieve a complete transformation. This addresses the risks of through-the-wall surgery. If you are a mage who specializes in wall-piercing, you can use it to travel through energy, such as fire and lightning, and can pass through bodies of water without getting wet, and when your skills are at your best, you can even pass through spells placed by others without being affected.
This circle must be attached to the caster's back with a tattoo. The tattoo artist himself must be an expert in the tattooing of the circle in order to meet the many difficult requirements of the circle.
When the circle is completed, it will be a complex and gorgeous pattern with a rainbow gradient color, painted with the pillar of shijie and the cycle of all things. It symbolizes the mage's endless pursuit, the pursuit of the truth of shijie and a higher realm, and the pursuit of the limits of human beings.
Nemo and Lisna return to the big city and quickly buy a handful of long-awaited delicacies, eating them as they go. Namo's hood was blown away by the wind on the mountain, so he got a new one. This time it's a classic wizard's hat, with a silk lining and a climbing vine pattern embroidered on the outside. The brim and spire of the golden ratio are not comparable to ordinary bargains.
There were several other materials he needed for the tattoo that he didn't know where to look, but he was confident that he could solve it.
He's a black marketeer, and he believes he can get his hands on anything.