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”My Lord, brilliant as always!”

”With you leading us, we’re guaranteed to be the strongest among the newcomers!”

The players behind him immediately erupted into a chorus of flattery.

Raine Augustus basked in their praise for a moment before finally raising his hand to silence them.

”Enough. I’ll be training Fire Elementalists here. As for the rest of you, go and gather Gold Coins. You know what to do when your resources run short.”

”And one more thing. Training Acceleration Scrolls. Put out a notice in the World Channel and buy every single one you can find. No matter how many are available, the Judgment Alliance will take them all.”

”I want to see results before nightfall.”

”Yes, sir!”

...

Only after John and the others passed through the archway did they realize something.

The terrain here was almost identical to the basin outside.

The only difference was that the outside world enjoyed clear skies and beautiful weather.

Here, the sky was a bizarre shade of reddish black.

The previously empty basin was now littered with mutilated bodies.

Broken staves, tattered mage robes, crushed skeletal armor...

The remains lay piled on top of one another, stretching as far as the eye could see.

A gust of wind swept through, sending ashes swirling into the air.

From the very first second Raistlin stepped onto this land, he had grown noticeably quieter.

Without saying a word, he jumped down into the basin and walked toward a pile of shattered bones. He crouched beside a skeleton and gently tapped the emblem on its chest with the tip of his staff.

The emblem depicted a set of scales surrounded by flames.

Raistlin stared at it for a long time before sitting down on a nearby pile of corpses, lost in thought.

John sensed that something was wrong. He walked over and stopped beside him.

”Do you recognize it?”

He was asking about both the emblem and this place.

Raistlin lowered his head and gave a bitter smile.

”Recognize it? More than you can imagine.”

He pointed his staff toward the surrounding landscape.

”This was where the gods put our entire mage clan on trial. It’s also where Bladeborne stabbed me in the back.”

John raised an eyebrow.

”So this is your hometown?”

”Something like that.”

Raistlin lifted his head and gazed at the reddish-black sky before slowly continuing.

”My Lord, do you know what makes mages different?”

”Mages belong to the human race, but we’re a special branch of humanity.”

”Not everyone can wield magic or manipulate the elements. That ability is determined by one’s bloodline. Only those born with the appropriate bloodline can become mages.”

”We make up only a small proportion of humanity. Most of us are eccentric and arrogant by nature. We don’t submit to any kingdom, nor do we answer to any king. Even when trouble arises, we recognize only the authority of the Mage Council.”

As he spoke, a complicated expression gradually appeared on his face.

”And I was someone the entire mage clan disliked.”

”I was always getting into trouble. When I was young, I was arrogant and ignorant of my own limitations. I even got caught peeking at forbidden magic and was expelled by the council.”

”But compared with the War of the Gods, those were nothing more than petty squabbles. When the gods unleashed their divine punishment, they didn’t care whether you were an ordinary human, a mage, or a member of the dragon race.”

”As far as they were concerned, anyone who posed a threat to them had to be exterminated. No exceptions.”

”The dragon race was the first to suffer their wrath. By then, I’d already developed a terrible feeling that something was going to happen to the mage clan, so I rushed back as fast as I could.”

In truth, Raistlin had encountered Bladeborne on his way back.

The two of them had spent their entire lives competing to become humanity’s strongest warrior. Whenever they fought, neither treated the other as a human being.

Yet during that particular battle, Bladeborne had done something completely out of character.

He had deliberately dragged out the fight.

Raistlin had already been deeply worried about the fate of the mage clan. His anxiety had left him full of openings, but Bladeborne had deliberately ignored every one of them.

In the end, Raistlin had finally realized something was wrong and fled, shaking off his opponent.

At the thought, Raistlin suddenly closed his eyes.

”I just never imagined that he’d known the truth all along... and had deliberately held me back.”

[Dungeon Notification: Memory Projection is about to begin.]

Hum!

A translucent curtain of light spread outward from beneath Raistlin’s feet.

In an instant, it enveloped John, Ophelia, and Raistlin.

Their vision twisted for a brief moment. When everything returned to normal, the basin around them had changed completely.

They were now witnessing the Ruins of Myriad Spells as they had existed thousands of years ago.

The sky was blue.

Before them stood a factory.

A long line of people stretched outside its entrance.

They weren’t ordinary workers waiting to enter. They were mages chained together with iron shackles.

They wore mage robes of various colors. Some were old, others young. Some struggled desperately against their chains, while others had already stopped moving, their bodies being dragged forward by the people ahead of them.

At the end of the line, the factory doors resembled the gaping mouth of a beast, swallowing the mages one after another.

The scene then shifted to the factory’s interior.

John had heard Raistlin describe what had happened, but hearing about it and witnessing it with his own eyes were two entirely different things.

A mage lay strapped firmly to an operating table with metal restraints.

His limbs had been disassembled, and his bones were being extracted one by one and arranged neatly on a tray beside him.

The missing bones were then replaced with silver-gray metal supports. The artificial structures were inserted through incisions at the elbows and knees and secured in place with rivets.

A bald man wearing a white military uniform stood beside the operating table.

Holding a slender surgical knife, he severed the mage’s hands at the wrists and tossed them into a nearby recycling basket.

He then picked up a pair of prepared metal cannon barrels, aligned them with the wrist joints, and twisted them into place with a sharp click.

A faint blue glow emerged from inside the barrels.

A tiny magical projectile shot out from one of their muzzles.

Satisfied with the result, the bald man nodded and scribbled something on the record board in his hand.

On the other side of the operating table, rows of mages who had already been ”processed” were being transported deeper into the factory on a conveyor belt.

Their bodies had been sewn onto circular metal bases equipped with six mechanical legs.

Their heads were embedded in recessed slots on flying discs, and red crystal lights had replaced their eyes.

Their entire chests had been hollowed out and filled with a continuously operating cube resembling a battery. A layer of iron plating was then welded over the opening to keep the components from falling out.

Each one bore an identification tag.

Just like warehouse merchandise, they were sorted into categories, labeled, and stored away.

At the other end of the conveyor belt stood a massive warehouse.

Finished products were stacked in perfectly ordered rows, ten tiers high, with hundreds of units on each tier.

Some were still moving.

Their fingers twitched intermittently, and their lips opened and closed as though they were trying to shout something.

But no sound came out.

Time accelerated.

The scene shifted to a battlefield.

The modified mages were herded toward the front lines. Their hands, now replaced with metal cannon barrels, rattled as they fired across the battlefield.

Then a figure appeared in the upper portion of the projection and charged into the fray.

It was Raistlin, several hundred years younger than he was now.

His eyes bloodshot, he rushed toward the factory.

Then a white light emerged from the factory entrance.

It was the bald divine emissary, a pair of pristine wings made of holy light unfurling behind his back.

The emissary glanced down at Raistlin and smiled contemptuously.

He raised a single finger, and a golden point of light condensed at its tip.

Then the image abruptly went black.

When the scene illuminated again, Raistlin was already lying on the ground.

A silver-white longsword pierced his chest, its tip protruding from his back.

Standing behind him was Bladeborne. He bent down, hauled Raistlin off the ground, slung him over his back, and turned to flee.

The golden point of light had just left the emissary’s fingertip. It struck the spot where Raistlin had been lying moments earlier, leaving behind a massive, charred crater.

Having witnessed the entire sequence, Ophelia couldn’t help widening her eyes.

Her own race had been among the first to be exterminated.

But she had never imagined that the fate of the other races could be even more horrifying.