“What year is it? Is our….world still here?” Cain asked. He was afraid to ask, but something was telling him that he had to.

Abel tried to be as sensible as he could be, “Honestly, I don’t know how long it has been since the era that you were in. It could have been several thousand years. It could be ten times that. I don’t know, but during my search for the legendary ‘practitioner’s route,’ I have not found a single trace of a living being.”

Cain raised his voice with a strong hint of disappointment, “Not a single trace, you say? Not in the Rogue’s Encampment?”

“Yes,” Abel frowned for a bit, “It’s been a long time since any humans lived there. It’s been completely abandoned.”

“NO!” Cain called out in pain, “My only reason to live is now gone! I have lived in this tree not because I wanted to, but because I needed to pass down our knowledge! Our civilization exists for our knowledge! Without anyone to inherit our knowledge, how can I keep living?”

Abel had too much respect for Cain to let him die in despair, “Mr. Cain, I’m so sorry if you felt… helpless from what I told you, but in truth, I have only done a small fraction of my search in this world. There are a lot of cities that I haven’t visited yet. Maybe, and I’m not willing to guarantee this, but there could be some lives that are still around.”

“Yes, that’s it!” Cain tried to not lose all hope, “Our civilization won’t end like this! There will always be more wood to keep the fire burning! Please, help me find my kinsmen, wo-won’t you? If there’s anyone that’s still alive, bring them here to me. I’ll wait for… ack! As long as I need to! Ack! Ack!”

Cain sounded a little coarse when he was speaking. It had to be a long time since he last spoke this much with someone.

Abel said with certainty, “It’s a great honor, Mr. Cain. I will accept your request, and I swear to you, I will fulfill it to the best of my ability.”

Cain became silent after he sent his last message, “Take away the Scroll of Inifuss, then. There is a sign card in it. You can use it to gain access to the Stony Field. I wish you a safe trip and a successful search!”

Abel woke up from his soulspeaker’s mode. It was very tiring for him to keep using his soulspeaker’s ability like this. To get rid of the exhaustion, he tapped on the self-recovery belt that he was wearing. A purple “soul potion” then disappeared from it and went towards his druid spirit.

After feeling a lot better, Abel switched his conscience back to his main soul. When he did, the first thing he saw was a golden light that was flashing from the tree of Inifuss. A dark-golden scroll was falling out of the tree.

It’s the scroll of Inifuss. When Abel picked it up and opened it, he saw that the content was a rune pattern. It was meant to be his way inside the Stony Field.

After remembering this pattern, a dark-golden light flashed out from the scroll that he was holding. The content of the scroll started changing, and after a few seconds, two potion recipes appeared in front of him.

They were the recipes for the “light healing potion” and the “light mana potion.” They were both recipes that truly came from the dark world. As low-tiered, as they were, they could be used to directly affect one’s health and mana.

Take the healing potions from the Holy Continent, for example. They were meant to repair the wounds that were inflicted. If there was a knife cut, they would repair the knife cut by sealing it up. That’s not the case for a healing potion from the dark potion. In the dark world, healing potions worked by “adding to the health points that were reduced.” If 100 health points were lost because of injury, the potions simply added an extra 100 points to the person who had the injury.

Those were two completely different concepts. The healing potions from the Holy Continent could treat wounds, but it’s something else to make up for the life energy that was lost. People became weak after they became sick or harmed. They could be treated most of the time, but if the damage was serious, they had no choice but to rest for a long time. For the healing potions in the dark world, even internal, “invisible’ wounds were treated. Permanent wounds became temporary, and temporary wounds were treated in a way that they weren’t even there to begin with.

Maybe Abel’s level as a wizard was simply not high enough. For all the time that he’s spent in the Holy Continent, he had never heard of a spell potion that could instantaneously heal someone’s wound. If this “light mana potion” found its way to the world that he lived, wizards would become a much more accessible class to most people.

Abel was not the one for sharing, though. If he was leaked these two recipes out to the public, there wouldn’t be much value in holding them. Besides, he had a lot of enemies to face. He wouldn’t want to teach them how to be better at finding a way to kill him.

When reading the two recipes, he could see that most of the ingredients were already available from his kong kong spiritual beast bag. That being said, two of the materials could be found only in the dark world. Since Cain was a thoughtful man, he remembered to do sketch drawings of these materials, as well where they were supposed to grow at.

Cain’s goal was to prevent civilization from ending. If he wasn’t specific enough in his instructions, the recipes he passed down wouldn’t be useful enough. Since that was the case, he made sure he added enough annotations inside the scroll to make it easy to understand. It was just comprehensible enough for Abel. For a complete amateur on ingredients that were natural to the dark world, he had no idea where to begin if he had no one to help him.

Let’s see. “Nerve plant” and “four-clover flower.” After searching through the notes, Abel realized that they could be found all over the Rogue’s Encampment. They were both common plants, so it seemed.

After picking the two plants in the dark forest, Abel decided that he must leave the dark world. He had to go back to the Holy Continent to catch up with team Lawland. To do that, he needed to find the waypoint that’s located at the entrance of the Black Marsh.

Or, he could walk all the way back to the entrance of the giant forest maze. Obviously, he wasn’t going to do that. After calling back all his summoned creatures, he got on Black Wind’s back and unleashed both his “frozen armor” and combat qi armor.

He then told Black Wind to go full-speed towards the direction ahead of him. The ground was a little hard to see, but Black Wind had no problem sprinting in an area like this. In fact, it managed to run so fast that they went past the hell creatures that were on their way. Yes, that’s none of the hell creatures were fast enough to detect, let alone stop them.

After passing through the long, narrow stone path, Black Wind took about half a day to arrive at the Black Marsh. When they did, Abel saw a bunch of red, stinky crows that were flying in the sky. They were blood hawks, the stronger or “evolved” version of foul crows.

To retaliate against the flesh-eating creatures, Abel called out all of his summoned creatures. It was better if he let his summoned creatures deal against a horde of hell creatures. He called out his four spiritual guardian knights, which, as soon as they saw the blood hawks that were in the air, readied themselves by taking out the Harry Bow that they were equipped with.

To make sure that the arrows did their job, Abel switched on the “fire strengthening mode” of his spiritual guardian knight captain. He did so by giving it his “Raven’s claw” bow, which would add fire damage buffs and explosion effects to the arrows that were fired. Explosions were a must against a bunch of enemies that tend to maintain their distance. That being said, the “Raven’s claw was a perfect tool against the blood hawks.

While the spiritual guardian knights were busy shooting them down, Abel decided to start searching for the waypoint back home. Or, to be more accurate, he decided to let Black Wind and his poisonous ivy start searching. Black Wind had a sharp sense of smell, and the poisonous ivy could help by digging through the ground.

It didn’t take a lot of time for the blood hawks to be killed. After their souls were collected by the Horadric Cube, the poisonous ivy managed to find a giant stone tablet that was underneath the ground.

Abel took out a large sword, which he used to dig at where the stone tablet was found. When he was several millimeters deep, he started feeling a solid rock with the tip of his blade. Then, once all the dirt and grass were wiped off, a waypoint was available for use. To make sure that no grass would cover over this waypoint, Abel ordered his poisonous ivy to spread poison around the area.

After using a perfect gemstone to activate the waypoint, Abel used it to go back to the Rogue’s Encampment. Once he was back, his druid spirit reminded him that it was time for his daily meditation session.

It had been ten days since he was in the dark world. If the calculations were correct, he should be a level five wizard, soon. His level four novice wizard rune pattern was almost completely filled with mana. With a little more time, he was certain that he would make enough progress to reach the next stage.

After setting up a magic circle, he began to sit at its center with one blue-quality gemstone in each one of his hands. He commenced the meditation session when mana-filled vapor surrounded his body. For the next ten-or-something minutes, his level four novice wizard rune pattern kept on absorbing the mana that was pouring out. When it was too full to keep any more in, it began to flash out in white light.