Abe the Wizard

The hungry ghoul probably found Abel by his smell. With a quick glance, it started charging at him. Abel didn’t have to do anything, though. His summoned creatures were already tearing the ghoul into pieces.

When the spiritual guardian knight withdrew its lance from the now dead ghoul, it slashed towards the third barrel. As soon as it did, Abel began to hear the sound of an item dropping on the floor. It was making a crisp sound, which meant that it must be very small.

Abel quickly jumped down from Black Wind’s back. He started crouching to search for where the item was. Once he found it, he discovered that it was a round object, almost the same color as the floor that it was on. If he didn’t hear it drop, he might just take a lot longer to look for it.

Upon a closer look, he could tell that it was a small luck charm. Lucky charms were a special type of item in the dark world. They were meant to be attribute buffs to whoever was wearing them. Nicely for him, they would be in effect no matter where he was putting them. He could put them inside his portal bag for them to work. Most importantly, if his portal bag was big enough, he could put in any number of them he liked inside.

There was a five hundred cubic meter capacity inside the kong kong spiritual beast bag. Abel also had the portal bracelet, a five cubic-meter portal bag, and two smaller portal bags. Space was the least of his concerns. As long as he could find enough luck charms, he would have no problem storing them somewhere close to him.

It wasn’t easy to stumble upon a luck charm, though. Abel knew that very well. It’s been so many days since he was inside the dark world, and he only found one small luck charm so far.

When he placed it inside his Horadric Cube, a text stating “lizard-type small luck charm” appeared.

Lizard-type small luck charm

Description: +3% fast running/walking and +5 mana points.

It was a nice luck charm to have. Abel was pretty satisfied with his luck today. Fortunately, he didn’t have to change its attribute with his Horadric Cube. He couldn’t do that every time he saw a lucky charm that he didn’t like.

For convenience’s sake, he decided to store the small lucky charm inside his portal bracelet. He was worried that it wouldn’t work if he was putting it inside another dimension, but as soon as he noticed how his body was getting lighter, he realized that that wasn’t a concern.

The condition was that the small luck charm “must be placed inside any space close to its wielder.” After doing a few more tests, Abel became more certain of what that really meant. As long as it wasn’t something like his personal storage box or his Horadric Cube, anything that was powerful enough to create a dimension that was completely separate from reality, the luck charm would work in most of his portal storage items.

To test out what a +3% speed bonus felt like, he tried to do some running around the area. +3% might not sound like a lot, but he could see how it could be very beneficial for his fights. Speed was the weakness of knights; after all, so he had to get all the agility that he could. As for the + 5 mana point bonus, he just had to get more of these luck charms for them to really have an effect.

With one more barrel left, the spiritual guardian knight captain raised its lance for another swing. Unfortunately, the last barrel was just a trap that would burn anyone who opened it. After surrounding the spiritual guardian knight captain for a quick few seconds, the fire quickly died down without dealing much damage at all to it.

Abel was disappointed, of course. He was expecting more than just one small luck charm from four wooden barrels. Again, the dark world was a dangerous place.

After getting on Black Wind’s back, Abel proceeded to continue on his exploration. Black Wind was behaving a little strange, though, so he decided to communicate with it with his soul chain. When he asked what was going on, the response he got was that it actually became faster.

Could it be? Abel didn’t expect the luck charm to be so good that it could even buff his mount. After putting the small luck charm inside his Horadric Cube, he tried asking Black Wind what was going on again. The response he got was that the speed increase was gone.

The luck charm must’ve identified Abel as one with Black Wind. That was great to know because with the current speed that Black Wind could harness, it was already very hard to make any real improvement. With a 3% buff when it was so close to its limit, the luck charm could be of great use in any future fights.

Since the area here wasn’t fit for scouting, the five crows decided that they would fly out themselves. When one of them flew past the stone door at the front, Abel started hearing the sound of arrows piercing through the air.

Something was up. After switching to his Jade of Tan Do and crescent small shield, as well as strengthening himself with the “frozen armor” technique and the golden combat qi armor, he called Black Wind to make a charge inside.

The wall that was about thirty meters away from the stone door, and there were about a hundred corrupt archers were shooting at the crows. They were hard to shoot at, though, being flying moving targets that had natural dodge capabilities.

When Abel appeared, the corrupt archers quickly changed targets. They shot him all at once. This made it easy for him to make a defense with his crescent small shield. As a dark-golden light began to cover his entire body, the small crescent small shield became much larger so that it could protect him and Black Wind.

Simultaneously, the spiritual guardian knights and spirit wolves vanished from the scene. They were respawned right in the midst of the corrupt archers. Since the corrupt archers couldn’t fight in close range with their bows, some of them had to keep fighting with their short daggers. For those who were far enough from these summoned creatures, they tried to back away to gain some time to reload.

Now that the first wave of these arrows was successfully blocked, Abel made it so that it was impossible for a second wave to come. With a flash of his portal bracelet, he got his sword of Victory in his right hand and a Blackfire magic staff in his left. He started releasing “charged bolts” at the corrupt archers, and when he was close enough, he would finish them off with his giant blade.

There were thin threads of dark-golden combat qi around his sword of Victory. As unnoticeable as they were, they could be quite scary when he was launching an attack. Whenever they made contact with the corrupt archers, large wounds would start to open up from their bodies. To make it cleaner, he decided to aim for the necks.

Without any other troops to support them, the archers could do no real harm at Abel and his summoned creatures. As soon as he guarded that first wave of arrows, he was pretty much set to take the initiative of the battle. All that was left to do was to massacre the corrupt archers–there was no way that this could be called a fight.

When Abel just finished clearing up the corrupt archers, he began to sense a danger that was close by. There was nothing to be seen around him, though. His summoned creatures were at the front, and there was only the wall that was behind him.

Suddenly, a ghost penetrated through the walls and jumped on top of him. Half of his mana was instantly gone because of it. He tried to resist by sweeping the ghost with his dark-golden combat qi threads, which made it leave after letting out a sharp, terrible cry.

From what he could see, the ghost was surrounded in dim, blue light. It must’ve come from a special place in hell. It had no physical form, so its existence was without a place to belong to. If he wasn’t wrong, it was called a “wraith,” a type of ghost that was driven by everlasting anger.

Since wraiths didn’t have a physical form, they could go through any substance. If they were going through a living being, that living being would have all the life and mana sucked away. Life-draining wasn’t meant for their survival, though. It was more for satisfying their sickly, twisted desires to see another living being die.

When Abel readied his sword, he noticed that more of these wraiths were appearing from the wall. When they gathered, the dim, blue light replaced the light that was emitted from his night pearl.

He had no choice but to tell Black Wind to stay as far away as possible. These wraiths were simply too much to handle. All they needed was a little bit of contact to take away all your mana. Luckily, they weren’t any good in a fight. Since the summoned creatures weren’t afraid of having their mana drained out, it didn’t take much time for these wraiths to be cleared.

When Abel searched the room again, he was disappointed to see that there weren’t any hidden mechanisms. There wasn’t any item to loot, either, so he quickly went to another stone door with his summoned creatures.