Pillar of Yita

Rolin turned around, finally allowing Fang Hong to see his face clearly—in comparison with his appearance in the tournament with Fanric, he hadn’t changed much, except perhaps due to the lighting, his complexion appeared somewhat pale.

Rolin smiled slightly: ”Okay, I actually don’t care who I ally with. But how can I trust that you will be the final victors?”

”You don’t need to believe,” Pudra replied, ”We are not in a hurry to make you do anything. You just need to watch, I believe you are a smart person, Rolin, you will make the right decisions when the time comes.”

Rolin looked at the old man, asking slowly and deliberately, ”What do I need to contribute?”

Pudra, hands pressed against his mouth, coughed heavily, then raised his head and answered, ”You know what you need to contribute, but it is of no real risk to you, isn’t it? This is foolproof.”

”There is no such thing as a risk-free endeavor in this world,” Rolin said lightly, ”Alright, I understand your point—”

As he spoke, he raised his hand, placed his right hand over his heart, and maintained this gesture, saying, ”You want to see if it’s real, so I’ll show it to you.”

A black light radiated from the gap between his palm and chest.

For a moment, it seemed to overshadow the glow of the magic guided wand in Pudra’s hand.

Fang Hong stared closely into Rolin’s eyes, and when Rolin dropped his eyelids and opened them again, there was a pair of golden glimmers in the darkness.

Just like during the rehearsal at Count Westwood Sibika’s manor, Fang Hong suddenly felt his heart skip heavily. A burning pain surged from the Ring of Golden Flame.

It felt as if his chest was on fire, burning through a hole.

The feeling vanished in an instant, so quickly that he didn’t even have time to reach in and pull it apart, and in the next moment, everything seemed like an illusion—the Ring of Golden Flame remained coldly pressed against his chest.

At this moment, Rolin suddenly froze.

He turned to look in a direction—not where Fang Hong and the others were—the black light in his hand extinguished, and his pupils reverted to their original color. He looked in that direction in the darkness, and asked somewhat puzzled:

”Did you hear anything?”

Pudra evidently heard it too.

The old man turned around slowly, pointing his magic guided wand’s light in that direction.

Next, Fang Hong heard it too—a faint rustling sound, like countless tiny creatures crawling on the ground, the sound gradually becoming clearer, moving from far to near.

Under Pudra’s magic guided wand’s glow, in the southwestern corner of the square hall, a shallow layer of black liquid seeped out beneath the originally tightly fitted floor tiles.

The liquid was increasing in volume, its area growing larger and with increasingly loud rustling sounds—like a swarm of ants, it soon filled one corner of the hall.

Fang Hong hadn’t yet recognized what it was when he heard Rolin’s somewhat surprised voice: ”Ashes?”

”... How can they be here?”

Before he could finish speaking, there was a sudden loud rumbling from beneath the hall floor, like a purple flame bursting forth from under the stone tiles. Under the purple firelight, a giant shadow lunged toward Rolin and Pudra.

Pudra was caught first by the shadow. He let out a scream as his entire upper body burst into roaring flames. The temperature of the purple flame seemed exceptionally high, and in an instant, this Master of Magic Potion Studies was reduced to ashes.

Rolin had evidently not anticipated such an event, but his reaction was quick enough. After taking one glance at what remained of Pudra’s bones—he immediately backed away, then turned and sprinted back the way he came without looking back.

After engulfing the Master of Magic Potion Studies, the purple flame turned to pursue Rolin, but Rolin retreated in time and it only crashed into the entrance of the square hall. Its huge size far exceeded the underground hall’s entrance, yet the seemingly flame-shaped energy form surprisingly appeared to have material substance.

The impact was so forceful that it shook the hall’s structure, with sand and gravel falling over, but it hadn’t managed to capture Rolin.

Fang Hong, observing from the overhead gallery, could clearly see that the flaming creature below looked familiar, and while it wasn’t humanoid, it bore some resemblance to the flaming humanoid figures he had seen sparring with Miss Leia.

He had seen firsthand how terrifying they were, even Miss Leia, a Dragon Knight, was almost unable to fight back against three flaming humanoids. Moreover, this ’flaming creature’ before him was at least several times larger than those three flaming humanoids.

To make matters worse, after this flaming creature appeared, the black liquid previously labeled as ’Ashes’ by Rolin hadn’t vanished. In fact, they were gushing out like black fountains from where the flaming creature emerged.

Suddenly, they ’buzzed,’ taking flight with their tiny wings, directly targeting Fang Hong and his companions.

Fang Hong felt a chill of terror, realizing that those tiny black ’liquids’ were countless dense swarms of insects. As to their intentions in charging over? Surely not to welcome them.

Without hesitation, Fang Hong summoned the Energy Angel, directing it to unfold the blue Absolute Shield.

The black insects swarmed from all directions like sand grains, colliding with the blue shield. The nearly indestructible light blue Absolute Shield flashed with an electric-white brilliance under their impact, akin to lightning.