top of magic

As Kidge expected, he couldn't pass the assessment proposed by Tina at all, and finally memorized the path from the mage's tower to the gate of the association, but Tina asked him to go to the college's restaurant to buy a dessert.

As you can imagine, Keech went in the wrong direction less than 10 minutes after he went out, and he didn't want to ask someone for directions, so he walked more and more sideways, and in the end, Avella, who had been quietly following him, couldn't stand it anymore. Come forward and take him back to the Mage Tower.

Afterwards, Tina didn't even lose her temper with him, and said directly, "Continue to find your way in the association honestly!" Then she hummed a little tune and went back to her laboratory.

Keech thought about sneaking out, but thinking about the possible consequences of doing so, he quickly gave up this terrible idea.

——Even if he is not kicked out of the Mage Tower, he will be "frozen" for at least three months.

Kitsch sighed helplessly.

Contrary to Amir, who is always threatening him, when Tina loses her temper, it usually means that she is not really angry-or not angry enough-basically, a few reprimands can be called the end.If she is really angry, she will not say a word, at most she will cast a cold glance, and then put the person who angered her into the cold palace, ignoring, ignoring, and ignoring.

One time Keech accidentally broke a magic weapon that Tina had made late at night, and Tina ignored him for a whole week. Later, he made a semi-finished product with supernatural powers and sent it back, which made Tina turn angry. For joy, he scolded him, and it was considered as the end of this cold war.

That night, Keech sadly told Hill that he would not be able to go out in the short term.

After he finished speaking, there was a noticeable silence on the other end of the megaphone, but before Kiki continued to explain, Hill's peaceful voice came over again, smiling and advising him not to worry, listen to Tina's words, and recognize the road first. Let's talk.

"Learn to recognize the way. If you go out alone in the future, I don't have to worry about you being abducted and sold." Hill said half-jokingly.

"This, it's really, really hard." Keech replied helplessly.

He can still recognize the map, and if he can find distinctive buildings to mark, he can use left and right comparisons to determine the direction he should go.But once the direction increases from left to right to southeast to northwest, and the surroundings are full of specious and similar buildings, he will immediately faint and become confused.

"Kiki, just work harder for me, okay?" Hill's tone was not an order, but it was more irresistible than an order.

"...Yeah." Keech could only nod.

In order not to disappoint Hill, Keech thought hard all night, and finally came up with a clumsy method that was cumbersome to implement but very suitable for him-using the method of drawing a magic circle to draw the magic circle that is invisible to the naked eye. Elements of magic are fixed on every road.In this way, when he needs to identify the path, he can use his ability to find the direction he should go according to the text road signs formed by the magic elements.

It took Keech more than a week to complete the job, but the results are well worth the effort.When Tina asked him to go to the association's library to borrow a magic tome, he easily walked back and forth within the stipulated time, and rushed back to the Mage Tower with the book Tina specified.

"Could it be cheating?" Tina looked at Kiki suspiciously.

Kitsch pursed his lips and remained silent.

"Not angry? I must have cheated!" Tina narrowed her eyes immediately, and just when Kiki worried that she would pursue the matter further, she curled her lips, "Forget it, since I didn't catch it, it's considered Success, go tell that boy Hill that he can take you out to play again this weekend."

Kiki couldn't help but his eyes lit up, and he looked at Tina in surprise.

"I'll continue to test you when I come back! Don't think it's over!" Tina stared.

"Yeah!" Keeki nodded quickly.

In the evening, Keech immediately couldn't help telling Hill the good news, and made an appointment with him to meet at the gate of the Magic Association this weekend.

But before Keech could decide whether to follow Hill's suggestion and go to the city for a day, or to go to Rose Manor for a weekend and taste wine according to his own ideas, the sudden return of someone made him no longer in the mood to care about such things. trouble.

On the second night after Keech and Hill talked on the phone, Keech suddenly felt someone slapping his cheek in his sleep, and opened his eyes in a daze, only to find that Amir, who hadn’t heard from him for a long time, had entered him at some point. He was standing in front of his bed in his room, wearing strange black clothes, and his hair was tied into a ponytail.

—I am dreaming?

Such a thought popped into Keech's head at once, but then he remembered that he never dreamed. Of the four Rice children, only Rocky could dream.

"Amir?" Kiki asked tentatively.

"How long have I been away, don't you even recognize my face?" Amir asked displeasedly.

"But..." Kiki looked out of the window full of stars in doubt. Obviously, it was still late at night, and before that, he had never heard the rattle connected to the tower gate ever sound.

"Tina and the others don't know I'm back." Seeing his question, Amir explained lightly, and then urged, "Get up and do something for me."

Kiki had no choice but to grab the underwear that was on the chair beside the bed, which caused Amir to frown again, "Since when did you start sleeping naked?"

Kiki froze, bit his lip, and didn't answer.

Amir seemed to be just asking casually, but seeing Kiki's silence, he didn't ask any more, and turned his hand to take out a thin stick that was as long as his forearm from his clothes.At first glance, it looks like a scepter, but the top does not have a crown symbolizing imperial power, but a spherical crystal half the size of a fist that does not look like a natural gemstone.The body of the two-finger-thick stick should be some kind of metal, but it is covered with mottled spots, obviously having experienced the invasion and baptism of years.

"Can you draw a picture of its structure?" Amir asked.

"...Now?" Kiki frowned, narrowed his eyes, and examined the ancient scepter.

The body of the stick is indeed metal, the surface is plated with a layer of golden composite metal, and the inner layer is high-purity fine gold, which is mixed with a small amount of mithril and other temporarily indistinguishable substances, which are coherently and evenly distributed in the stick , forming a special pattern like a magic circle.The spherical crystal at the top is indeed an artificial compound formed after the day after tomorrow. Its composition is similar to that of amber, but there is a natural magic core hidden in the middle.

"Can the painting be finished before dawn?" Amir responded with another question.

"The structure...is probably okay, but the material...may not be enough for one night." Kiki said indifferently, "There are too many composite components, and the analysis must be done by comparing with real objects."

"Then only draw the structure, and note the different components, without writing the raw materials." Amir said, and stuffed the ancient scepter into Kiki's hand.

Keech had no choice but to get out of bed, walk to the desk, turn on the magic lamp on the desk, take out a pen and paper, compare it with the scepter, and start drawing.

While drawing, Kiki realized that this was not an ordinary mundane scepter. Judging from the embedded magic circle made of mithril as the main material, it looked like a high-level magic weapon with a magic boosting effect. And it is made for earth-type magic, because the materials that make up the top crystals are either earth-type elements or related elements that can attract earth-type elements, and the materials of the rod are also compatible with earth-type elements.

A little over an hour later, Keech finished the first draft and handed it to Amir.

Amir browsed through it roughly, pointed to every composition above, especially the part about the magic circle, and asked Kiki to explain it, and then asked Kiki to check according to the questions he raised, and re- Create a new, clearer picture.

After finishing all this, Amir gathered the final draft and the few sketches he had drawn before into his own hands, and told Kiki, "Don't tell anyone about tonight."

"Are you still leaving?" Keech asked in a daze.

"I'll be back tomorrow or the day after tomorrow," Amir replied, "but right now, there are still some things I need to deal with."

After finishing speaking, Amir opened the only window in the room, cast a wind control spell on himself, and then jumped out lightly.

--what happened?

Kiki closed the window suspiciously, didn't bother to take off his clothes, threw off his shoes, and lay back on the bed.Before he had time to think about it, Keech realized another more important thing: Amir would probably not allow him and Hill to go out and play.

Keech sighed dejectedly, but then another thought occurred to him.

——Perhaps, there is no need to ask for Amir's opinion, anyway, Tina has already agreed.

Biting his lip, Keech decided to take a chance.

The next day, Kiki got up as usual as if nothing had happened, as Amir asked.Tina and Avella didn't seem to notice that Amir had returned to the Wizard's Tower. During lunch, Tina still read the news from Amir, saying that he had finished his adventure and would return to the Magic Association in a short time. .

That night, Amir appeared at the door of the Mage Tower with a suitcase in his hand.

Avella who opened the door immediately called Tina and Kiki down, and several people sat around in the hall on the first floor, lively watching the gifts and souvenirs that Amir brought back.

"That is to say, that is an ancient ruin?" Looking at the various utensils on the table that were obviously engraved with annual rings over time, Tina asked curiously.

"It can't be regarded as ancient." Amir replied, "It should be a tomb built after Ragnarok. There are many magic weapons left in it, but there are no statues, and the typical belief is missing."

"Is it seriously damaged? Has it been visited by tomb robbers?" Tina eagerly asked with her eyes bright.

"You can test it yourself." Amir smiled, "I have already reported this matter to Great Magician Floyd, and at the moment, he is probably negotiating with the General Assembly on this matter— —if I had not spent an hour with him, I should have met you in the twilight, my dearest Tina."

"That is to say, the association is going to send people to dig the tomb?" Tina's mind was completely on the ancient tomb full of magic weapons at the moment, and she didn't even notice that Amir was flirting with her.

"Of course, the person lying inside is a great magician from the golden age. Since we found him, how could we not pay our respects?" Amir shrugged.

"I'll go find my uncle!" Tina didn't care about anything else, she got up and ran to the stairs.

Amir had no choice but to swallow the words he hadn't finished speaking, and shrugged helplessly again.Avella next to her covered her mouth and laughed, but Kiki was a little distracted by the "Twilight of the Gods" and "Golden Age" in the dialogue, and lowered his head to think about where he had seen these two words.

——By the way, a brief history of the mainland.

Keech suddenly remembered that in the prologue of the brief history of the mainland, the author wrote: Thousands of years ago, the mainland was ruled by gods, they were high above, dominated everything, and enjoyed the worship of humans and other intelligent races until dusk fell , the gods disappear, that is, "the dusk of the gods".

The "Golden Age" is the period after Ragnarok.At that time, magic and divinity coexisted peacefully in this continent, the Magic Association had not yet been established, and the Holy See had not begun to eliminate heresies.During this period, great magicians sprung up one after another, and the results obtained shone like gold, and thus gained the reputation of the Golden Age.

But this kind of beauty only lasted for a hundred years. After that, the Holy See launched the "War of Exorcism" in the name of expelling heresy and purifying human beings, massacring and eliminating magicians.Soon, the powerful but few magicians couldn't resist the crowd tactics of the Holy See. They were either hacked to death in their mage towers or burned to death on the Holy See's cross.The surviving magicians also abandoned their magic robes and mage towers one after another, pretending to be ordinary people, so as to avoid the pursuit of the Holy See.

Although the magician did not disappear in the long river of history, the loss caused is far from being estimated by how many magicians died and how many magic towers collapsed. Due to the unnatural death of the magician and the deliberate obliteration of , There was a gap in the inheritance of magic for a time, and many spells and magic weapons were lost.

This situation continued until the establishment of the Magic Association.After the establishment of the Magic Association, the magicians finally avoided the disadvantages in numbers, and gathered together to form a combat force that could fight against the Holy See.At the same time, there was also a rebellion within the Holy See. The first bishop Lucifer, who was second only to the Pope, was dissatisfied with the Holy See's excessive persecution of magicians and the corruption of the Holy See itself, so he led his followers and supporters to rebel. The Holy See joined the camp of the Magic Association as a magician.

Of course, such records can only come from the "Inheritance of Magic" compiled by magicians, and the history books of the Holy See will not sing and praise Lucifer as a hero.Hill once told Keech that the Holy See has not canceled the order to hunt down the Lucifer family so far, although no one would bring the heads of Lucifer family members to the Holy See to exchange for rewards, let alone Not many people will remember this.

Thinking of this, Kiki couldn't help but think of the scepter he saw last night.

— Amir isn't going to let Tina see it?

Keech thought suspiciously.