The Book of Hibernation

The necromancer discussed it and decided to send a hostage to approach the laboratory quietly to see what was going on there.

Now the only "hostages" left are De Lisi and her few caravan members.De Lisi immediately volunteered, saying that she has always been good at sneaking in silently, and now that the fog is still there, she should be able to go and return quickly.

Before the necromancer could speak, the bodyguards of the caravan immediately stood up to object.He said that Doris must not be allowed to go. If she is discovered, the city-state will think that the most important hostage has been released, and may launch an attack here.

De Lisi glanced at the bodyguard.This person is different from other members, not recruited by her, but directly sent by the family to her.He and his brother were both in the caravan, and they had a good conversation with her, and they were very loyal when they performed their tasks, but in the final analysis, they were loyal to the Carlos family, not to Doris herself.

De Lisi smiled as always, but the smile became somewhat stiff.

March came over and asked Delisi directly: "What, want to run away?"

De Lisi smiled and said: "No way. I am really more suitable for scouting. When I was a mercenary, I specialized in scouting, and I also recognized a lot of basic arcane items. Besides me, who else can do it? You guys It’s fine if you don’t want to.”

"You can't go," San Yue finished, looking at the bodyguards just now, "find anyone in the caravan to come over, he doesn't need to be able to fight, and he doesn't need to know arcane arts."

In the end they chose an ordinary merchant, who was very willing himself.He was not responsible for staring at De Lisi, and he didn't know the hooks and hooks in the whole thing. It was simply because he was scared and wanted to take the opportunity to be released early.

Sanyue walked around him a few times, and finally stopped behind him, pressing the back of his neck with her palm.

The businessman felt a little bad, but it was too late.San Yue recited the incantation, a circle of tiny black characters emerged, quickly wrapped around his neck, and disappeared into the skin immediately.

The merchant's body was stripped of strength.He was still standing, his limbs drooping naturally, like a puppet whose standing posture was maintained by silk threads.

In the past few days, necromancers often used this kind of spell to manipulate prisoners to walk.This is not the only spell they will use today.

March took out two tortoiseshell fragments the size of fingernails from the material bag, and began to cast the spell "Bug Eye", also known as "Reflection".She and Wu Yun had also used this spell before.

She pulled the Merchant's lower eyelid back, and slipped one of the shards between the eyeball and lid, and the other into her own.

Another mage next to him offered to cast spells for her, but she refused. After all, the person in the laboratory was Winter Thistle, and she thought she knew him better.

Another mage went to cast an invisibility spell on the merchant, so that he could sneak in more smoothly.Invisibility couldn't cancel the sound, so another mage came to cast the silence rune on the merchant.The duration of these two spells is not too long, and the controlled merchant must start immediately, go back quickly.

If you have a masking agent, you don't have to be so troublesome.It's a pity that necromancers don't know how to prepare masking agents.

The figure of the businessman walks into the thick fog.Gradually, Sanyue could see the pictures around him.Reflection can not only see the situation in front of another person, but also see things within a certain range near him.

The execution squad stood by the river.The businessman passed them silently, undetected.After boarding the river bank, you can see another team of Templar Knights stationed in the woods, among them, people who look like commanders are guarding the bushes very close to the laboratory.

March didn't immediately manipulate the businessman into the door.Although the merchant is invisible, he can be seen opening and closing the door.When she was thinking about what to do, the door of the laboratory opened, and a man who looked like a mage came out, took a small jug of wine, and asked the knight if he wanted to drink something to warm himself up.

Captain Renault declined the drink.He looked around the room and asked how the mage was doing.

The mage shrugged: "We don't know. The refiner and the subject are in the innermost room, and they said that it is enough for him to be involved in the casting process, and we don't want to participate."

"Is this normal?" Renault asked.

The mage thought for a while: "It's pretty normal. In fact, we came here to help prepare materials and so on. We are not allowed to participate in the actual casting process. On the one hand, it is really not good to have too many people, and on the other hand, maybe they There are some business secrets." The mage's tone was obviously regretful.

The door was ajar as they spoke.Taking advantage of this opportunity, March let the businessman sneak into the laboratory sideways.Fortunately, they chose a small and thin person. It would be difficult to deal with a bigger guy.

After entering the laboratory, the businessman first looked around.The temporary laboratory built with plates was not big, and he quickly found the "innermost room".It is said that both the refiner and Kanai are in there.

If you go incognito and open the door, you will be found.But the merchant's body cannot be turned into a void, so what can he do if he doesn't open the door?

After thinking for a moment in March, she decided not to care so much.As long as you can clearly see what the refiner is doing, it doesn't matter if the businessman is discovered next, it's just a puppet for manipulation anyway.

The businessman opened the door directly.When the mages outside heard the sound, they looked up one after another, wondering why the door opened by itself.

This room is not big, and you can see all corners at a glance.There was a person lying on the laboratory table, covered from head to toe with a white cloth, and another person was lying beside the wall, also covered with a white cloth.

There is also a real living person sitting on a folding stool, dozing against a large burlap sack.Now, awakened by the sound, he was looking at the open door suspiciously.

This person is slender, with light-colored hair, and wears a mage robe of plain color but full of protective runes.In dim light, the silhouette does look a bit like a winter thistle.But he is not a half-elf, but a human.

After taking a closer look at his appearance, Sanyue couldn't help swearing - isn't this man Simon.She had been with Bellows and of course knew him.

The businessman lifted the white cloth on the experimental table.It was not Kanai lying here, but a necromancer who was killed not long ago.

The movement of tilting the white cloth was so obvious that even Simon could see the anomaly.He woke up completely in fright and screamed. At the same time, the businessman went to lift the white cloth by the wall again.

This thing is not Kanai, or even a human body, it is just a pile of heavy fur winter clothes, arranged to resemble a human body.When conducting remote detection, the pile of clothes had both the aura of death and the reaction of humanoid creatures. Although it was hard to tell whether it was dead or alive, it did look like a human body.

It was evidently the work of the winter thistle.Who else can do it but him.

Simon's shout attracted other mages.These people flocked to the door of the room, but did not dare to come in, and hurriedly prepared to cast spells.They were not as well-prepared as Winter Thistle, nor were they as quick as Kanai, blocking the door instead prevented Simon from escaping.

As Simon pushed them, a force pulled him back.He was pressed on the experimental table, leaning against the corpse.

A voice came from the air in front of him: "Where are the refiner and Kanai!"

Simon honestly screamed, "I don't know!"

He was horrified to feel that there were invisible cold fingers holding his left hand, and then there was a sharp pain in his heart.The Invisible Man broke his middle and index knuckles.

"Say! Where are they!"

Simon struggled and cried: "We don't know! He didn't tell us! Please don't do this! Why did you break my hand! I'm not a mage at all!"

On the ice of the Khiva River, Sanyue and the other mages around him all had grim faces and gritted their teeth.

The first is shock and anger, followed by strong annoyance, and a little contempt, and then some confusion of "can't you break hands if you are not a mage?"... This kind of emotional experience is really too complicated, which makes people unable to return to it for a long time god.

The old mage next to him suggested: "Should we arrest someone and bring him back to a hidden place for further interrogation?"

"It's not necessary," March shook her head, "They probably really don't know."

"Are you sure he's telling the truth?"

"It's true. I know the man, and he's a hopeless fool who had his brain removed at birth."

After speaking, March lowered her head and pulled out the tortoiseshell fragments from her eyes.Her eyeball had been slightly scratched, tears kept gushing out, and her vision became blurred.

The mirroring technique was over, and the pictures in the laboratory disappeared from her eyes, and she no longer continued to control the businessman, leaving him to fend for himself.

The mages all saw that the situation was not good, and they talked in low voices.Everyone has different opinions. Some people think that we should give up the action altogether and evacuate immediately. We can go to the north bank first, and then we can sneak back later; It will be difficult to get another chance in the future.

There's another looming question: where did the refiner and Kanai go.Find out about this before you can decide how to act next.

While others were discussing, March released two Vengeance Sworn.Old Tarr with the ax was her father, and Amer with the sword was Amer, her love.

She gave separate orders to the two swearers:

Old Tal stayed on the ice, patrolling and guarding in the fog outside the range of the concealment circle.Now that the city-state may launch an attack at any time, they must be more vigilant.

Emer goes to find Winter Thistle and Kanai and brings them back.If others stop, shoot and kill; if the target resists, incapacitate them, but do not cause fatal injuries.

In order for the swearers to find Winter Thistle, March took out the spell scroll written by Winter Thistle.She extracted the core rune on the scroll and embedded it into the body of the swearer, so that the swearer could sense the original caster.

After understanding all the orders, both of the swearers turned into incorporeal bodies and disappeared into the mist.

==========================

At the same time that the mirroring technique ended in March, the mages in the laboratory had just successfully cast the spell.Interwoven spells covered the test bed, and invisibility was finally broken.

The businessman appeared, but did not return to normal consciousness.With an animal growl, he turned and rushed for the door.

Those mages originally wanted to suppress him with a large number of people, but who knew that he was infinitely powerful, and he was not afraid of pain at all, just like a golem out of control.He grabs anything in the room as a weapon, and after catching someone, he will rush over and bite with his teeth... The mages want to hide, help their companions, and protect the materials in the process of cooking. They are completely messed up. group.Simon took the opportunity to get under the bed, curled up and said nothing.

At this moment, the gate was kicked open, and Captain Renault led the escort team of knights in one file at a time.They immediately found the cause of the chaos and drove the mad businessman to a corner.

The merchant was dressed like a commoner, so Raynor tried to communicate with him first, but to no avail.

The businessman howled and fell on the nearest knight, and opened his mouth to bite his head and face. The knight blocked it with his sword, and the businessman bit forward without fear. His neck was caught by the blade and began to bleed. Not only did he not back down, but he became even more frantic because of the smell of blood, and continued to leap forward... until the trachea and arteries were cut off, and he finally stopped moving.

Renault watched this horrific scene, unable to speak for a long time.

More people gathered outside.Some private soldiers from the city-state guard and the chamber of commerce also came.

Just when the invisible man entered the house, the priest in the distance had already discovered the abnormality through the silver mirror.They can only see the fluctuations, but not the real picture, so they don't know if this is normal or if Winter Thistle is doing something.

After carefully identifying it, they realized that it was an intrusion from outside, so they hurriedly informed the knights to act.The pastor and Gerola also rushed over with other soldiers.

When the pastor arrived, Reno happened to come out to look for her.His face was ugly, and he said that he must come in and take a look.

After entering the laboratory, the pastor was also stunned.The most astonishing thing is not the businessman, the businessman's situation is easy to tell, he just got some kind of enchantment spell, which is similar to how the necromancer controlled the escort team last year... What really surprised the priest was that Kanai was not there at all In the laboratory, the refiner was not there, and even the "another corpse used for the experiment" was just a pile of clothes.

If this businessman hadn't broken in, maybe they wouldn't know what was going on in the lab now, just waiting so foolishly.

"Have they already left?" Renault said angrily, "Could it be that the refiner handed Kanai to the necromancer?"

Gerola walked up to him: "If that's the case, the necromancer should leave without a sound, and attacking the laboratory will alarm us instead. Is this reasonable?"

The pastor thought for a while, then looked at Renault: "Anyway, we need to go to the ice to inspect. You go to contact the execution team on the shore."

Renault saluted and left the laboratory.

======================

A scops owl is using a compass.Using this special compass with a lens and a map, the real-time coordinates of the target can be tracked. This is the magic of tracing objects.

Judging from the tracking results, the half-elf has already arrived, very close to them, and is now wandering in a small area.The strange thing is that when the hunters looked for it according to the coordinates, there was no one at the corresponding location.

The trace object spell is not very precise, and occasionally has certain errors.At first, the scops owl was patient and calibrated the tool several times. Every time a new result was corrected, the hunters immediately went to confirm it, but they couldn't find anyone every time.

Judging from the readings on the compass, the holy emblem should still be on the half-elf.If the half-elf dropped it, the hunter's side would be able to detect the anomaly.

Some people think that the half-elf should have really come, because he used the invisibility spell, so the hunter can only see his position, but can't see the figure.But that's not quite right, the half-elves have been "appearing" for a long time, and invisibility spells don't last that long, and don't stack while they haven't expired.If mages are going to cast spells over and over again, they should be able to catch the moment when his spell expires.

After a while, the compass showed that the target began to move to the west.The hunter followed and walked a long way, gradually thinking more and more wrong.

The half-elves were nowhere to be seen, nor were the necromancers.Not only that, but the two hunters who were in charge of following the whole process never came back.

The hunter's patience wears off.They realized that all this was probably a trap set by the half-elf.

After thinking about it, the screech owl blew its whistle and called together the hunters who were scattered around.

They decided to change the original plan, turn back towards the Khiva River, expand the search area, and check all the locations of suspected magical fluctuations along the way.

They are accustomed to running fast in dense forests with complex terrain, and their footsteps are much faster than ordinary people.When the search reached about half of the estimated distance, the scops owl felt that today's fog was a little different.

The temperature, smell, and humidity are all normal, but he just feels that there is something else in the fog, which implies an ominous omen.No evidence, just a hunch.

Just as he was thinking this, a bird whistle sounded diagonally from behind.The scops owl approached the direction of the sound and saw two fellow hunters squatting on the ground, examining a dead body.

The remains were of a hunter they both knew, one of the two who had been tasked with following the half-elves.

Not long after, they found the second body as expected.One of the two was pierced through the back of the head, and the other was strangled to death by a rope. Both were killed by surprise attacks.While they were following their target, someone was following them.

The fog is not conducive to tracking, but the scops owl still noticed something from the traces at the scene.

He handed over the detection compass to another hunter and ordered them to continue to the riverside. No matter they encountered necromancers or city-state personnel along the way, they would be killed.

Their primary goal is to kill the necromancer, and most hunters must continue to complete this task.

"What should I do if I find a sharp-eared mage?" Before setting off, the young hunter asked.

The screech owl replied, "Kill him. We don't need him anymore."

After explaining, the horned owl turned around and turned back.

He had a vague guess in his mind.Because he was not sure, he didn't want to drag everyone to try and make mistakes, so he went alone.

He came back to a clearing he had just passed through.After observing for a while, he knew where he should go - it was not too far from here to the cave where the necromancer lived.