Black Hearted Mage

Chapter 277 Nethergarde Fort 2

"Use your power carefully!"

Lambert's voice echoed through the stone chamber, his fingers gently caressing the walls of Nethergarde. The bricks, engraved with ancient magic patterns, still bore the scorch marks of their past. Caesars noticed that Lambert's eyes had become exceptionally deep, as if he had traversed time and space, returning to the dark ages when the elves were nearly extinct.

"We were once reckless and mad!" Lambert's voice was low and hoarse. "At the end of the First Age, the Arcane Elves, in pursuit of eternal power, built twelve towers deep in the Endless Forest. Each tower was connected to a massive pool of arcane energy. The pools, shimmering with purple light, were breathtakingly beautiful, but they eventually attracted the attention of the demons."

Caesar flipped through the yellowed notes of his ancestors, the faded ink on the parchment recording a deliberately forgotten history. His fingertips suddenly stopped at a page where a simple diagram was drawn: twelve towers arranged in a circle, with a huge energy vortex at the center. Next to it was a note in ancient elven language: "When the last drop of the arcane spring is poured into the pool, the demon invasion plan will quietly begin!"

"That catastrophe lasted a full thirty-three thousand years!" Lambert walked to the control console in the center of the chamber, his hand hovering over a crystal ball. "The demons invaded massively through the dimensional portal we opened, and the Elven Royal Court fell the moment it was conquered. If the Arcane Elves hadn't chosen to detonate the arcane energy pool, our civilization would have long been obliterated in the long river of history."

"The second mistake we made was failing to distinguish between good and evil." Lambert sighed and activated the control console. Blue magic patterns suddenly lit up in the secret room. "The Elven Council at the time ordered the execution of all human magicians without choosing to distinguish them!"

"Lord Lambert, I know this. At that time, some human magicians harmed the elves. In order to gain a long life, they used the elves' flesh and blood to perform forbidden alchemy!"

Caesar had read the bloody history of the elves and knew that period of history was full of darkness.

Kaisas continued his ancestor's story, and the subsequent events became even darker. At the beginning of the Second Era, the surviving elves launched a bloody revenge against the human magicians. All human mages were quickly eliminated, followed by magicians of other ranks, and even magic apprentices were slaughtered.

Written in bright red ink on the ancestor's notes was this: "As long as the other party shows hostility, they can be considered an enemy. When dealing with your enemies, you must launch a violent attack like a storm, not allowing them any chance to breathe!"

The words were so powerful that they could be seen through the paper, revealing the ancestor's intense emotions at the time. All of this had a reason: the ancestor's father was forced to death by the Vatican, so the former Holy Mountain Vatican and the current Holy Church were both considered hostile forces.

Caesars closed his notes and looked up at the crystal inlaid on the ceiling of the small reception room. Through the translucent material, he could vaguely see the outline of Watchtower Square on the ground. It was no longer as prosperous as it once was, and most of the magic gathering circles were abandoned, but the structure still remained intact.

"Lord Lambert, can I use the magic gathering circle?"

"Very few elves are learning dark magic these days," Lambert explained, following Caesar's gaze. "Ever since the demons were slain, the defensive arrays of Nethergarde Fort have basically been dormant, so the magic gathering array can be used at will!"

"Lord Lambert, can you activate ten magic gathering circles?"

"You want to activate ten fifty-fold magic concentration circles?" Lambert frowned, the runes on the console flickering with his emotions. "Even the Great Elder back then couldn't absorb so much dark element at once."

Kaisas pulled out an exquisite metal array disc from his bosom, etched with intricate concentric circles. "I have an elemental crystal array that can store excess energy!"

Lambert carefully examined the patterns on the array disk and suddenly looked up in surprise: "Is this a hundredfold elemental crystal array?"

Kaisa admitted frankly, "Yes, the Great Elder lent it to me!"

Lambert was silent for a long time, and finally only opened three magic circles.

"Three magic gathering circles are enough for you." His tone was unquestionable. "Remember, power is like a double-edged sword. Holding it too tightly will only hurt yourself!"

Kaisas placed the armored leather tent on the east side of the training square. It was far enough from the elven settlement to avoid disrupting the magic. More importantly, the magic circle on the east side had been maintained, allowing for maximum utilization of the magic energy.

As night fell, three tiles in the southeast corner of Nethergarde Square began to emit a dim gray glow. Caesars sat cross-legged in the center of the tent, but he didn't immediately enter meditation. By the dim light of the magic lamp, he continued to study the ancestral notebook. On the last few pages, which recorded the war between the elves and the demons, there was a passage that had been repeatedly erased:

"In the final moments of the siege of the Demon King's City, when victory seemed imminent, the Demon War Priests performed a massive blood sacrifice. They had only intended to summon ordinary lava demons, but they accidentally opened a passage to the seventieth layer of the Abyss. The Demon Overlord's clone descended at that moment, a forty-meter-tall body engulfed in flames, and it instantly slew all the demons..."

Caesars's fingers gently traced the text, noticing a line of almost invisible small print on the margin: "The price we paid was far more tragic than publicly recorded. From the moment the demons invaded Roland Continent, the coordinates of the Roland plane were obtained by the demon world. From the moment the Demon Overlord's clone descended, the demons of the Abyss plane learned of the Roland plane..."

Outside the tent, dark elements surged like a tide, yet became docile upon contact with the elemental crystal array. Caesars took a deep breath, feeling the flow of magic within him. He knew he was touching not only a formidable force, but also a lesson from history etched with blood and fire.

Instead of meditating, Caesars bathed in a high concentration of dark elements. A small magic lamp illuminated the tent as he flipped through the notes of his ancestors. At the end of the war between the elves and demons, a treasure his ancestors had acquired revived.

When the elves besieged the Demon King's city, when the war was about to end, the Demon War Priest performed a blood sacrifice, summoning powerful demons from the Abyss, trying to use the demon's power to turn the tide of the war.

The demon war priests were unlucky; they had summoned not an ordinary lava demon, but the avatar of a demon overlord. The demon, blazing with pale flames, did not aid the demons, but instead burned all the surviving demons to death, reducing the center of the Demon King's castle to sand.

Just when the elves thought they were about to be exterminated, the lava demon didn't take action. Instead, it turned and left, but it left behind a more vicious trick - burying a demon egg deep underground that contained its consciousness. This was not only a demon about to hatch, but also a plane sign.

A two-meter-long purple scale, a treasure from the ancestors' collection, was revived by the appearance of the Demon Overlord. The moment it awoke, it traveled through space and directly devoured the demon egg.

Over half a month passed, like quicksand on a fingertip. Caesars remained entrenched in the training square, never leaving. This rectangular square, surrounded by high walls of black steel, was completely empty, save for a single, small tent.

The elves patrolling the high walls, their long silver-white hair fluttering in the breeze, their emerald eyes always slightly drooping, gazing at the human magicians below with an attitude that is almost pitying.

Kaisas was accustomed to such looks. Whenever an elven patrol passed by, the pointy-eared guards would unconsciously straighten their backs, their gold-embroidered uniforms gleaming dazzlingly in the sunlight. He knew this wasn't a deliberate humiliation—in the eyes of these elves, a low-level mage wasn't worthy of their pride.

The elemental crystal array in the center of the square churned relentlessly day and night, its gray-black energy pulsing like a living thing. Crafted by a master elven craftsman, this array was a true work of art, condensing over a hundred angular dark elemental crystals daily. Caesars caressed the newly formed crystals, the cold touch reminding him of the perpetually snow-capped peaks of the Icecrown Mountains. These gray-black crystals glowed like nebulae in the moonlight, each one possessing energy equivalent to ten high-grade magic crystals.

"Woo——"

A familiar humming sound echoed from the side. The puppy, its fur dark red like congealed blood, trotted over, its paws still stained with the silk thread unique to the elven workshop. Lately, this creature had been frequenting the elven settlements, particularly the elven master's weaving workshop. There, a robe for Kaesus was being crafted using the silk of the Dark Spider, and the final arcane patterns were being woven.

"Damn dog, is the robe finished?"

Caesars lifted the puppy by the scruff of its neck and immediately caught a whiff of an elven scent, a mixture of morning dew and violets. The puppy's ears drooped, two streams of white air emanating from its obsidian nose, and it formed intricate patterns with its front paws—a full forty-eight hours shy of the twenty days of magical refinement required by the Elf Master.

"We have to wait two more days!"

Caesars dropped the pup to the ground and gazed toward the mountains shrouded in morning mist to the north. The elves of Nethergarde were like the fruit trees they carefully tended, forever adhering to a certain, unchanging rhythm of growth. It was said that the thousand-year-old Star Fruit trees on the north slope were laden with fruit this year, and Lambert had granted them permission to pick them.

The puppy suddenly stood up, its snout twitching. It remembered the Star Fruit it had tasted a few days ago. The skin had a cool, frosty texture, and the juice that gushed out upon biting it exploded on the tongue with the fragrance of a feast of flowers. While not as sweet as the fruits from the southern continent, that layered fruity aroma would linger on the taste buds for an entire season.

Caesars looked at the pup's drool, a rare smile breaking through his lips. He looked up toward the workshop, its towering silver spire reflecting the midday sun. In two days, he would be able to don the spider silk robe said to resist ninth-tier magic and leave this beautiful yet cold place with a bag full of dark crystals.

The elves cast a distant gaze from a distance, but at this moment, the dark patterns on Caesar's black robe seemed to glow with the pulsation of the dark elements.

Two days later, in the early morning, sunlight filtered through the clouds, casting a golden drizzle of light on the towering Watchtower. The ancient fortress appeared exceptionally majestic in the morning light, like a guardian of time.

Just then, an oak box arrived. Its smooth surface and faint woody aroma revealed its meticulous craftsmanship. The person who brought the box was Liv, whose face revealed an unconcealable weariness, her eyes bloodshot as if she hadn't slept for days.

"Kasas, try it on quickly and see if it needs any changes!" Liv's voice was a little hoarse, but still full of eagerness and anticipation.

Caesars looked at Liv's haggard face, and a wave of concern surged in his heart. He quickly took the wooden box and gently opened it. Inside lay a dark gray magic robe. This robe was clearly made with elven craftsmanship. It was woven from a single piece, with smooth lines and a faint shimmer of magical light.

Caesars took the robe out of the wooden box and examined it carefully. The dark purple magic patterns on the robe were interwoven like spider webs. These magic patterns were not simply embroidered on the robe, but were integrated into the material of the robe, as if they had grown from the robe.

"Liv, you dyed the spider silk!" Caesars said in surprise.

Liv smiled slightly, shook her head, and explained, "It's not dyeing. The spider silk used to weave the magic patterns needs to be soaked in arcane potions. The arcane energy will seep into the spider silk and replace the original dark elements, so it looks like it has changed color."

Caesar nodded as if waking up from a dream, indicating that he understood. Then he put on the spider silk robe, took out a belt also woven from spider silk from the package, and quickly tied it around his waist.

After everything was ready, Caesars followed Liv's instructions and began to perform a few simple movements, such as stretching, turning, bending, etc. Surprisingly, these movements were very natural and smooth, without being affected by the spider silk robe and belt at all.

"This spider silk robe is very smooth!" Caesars couldn't help but admire.

"Yes, this is the black pearl spider silk, very tough, and my law-breaking blade can't cut it at all!" Liv said proudly.

"Oh? Then how was it cut off in the end?" Caesars asked curiously.

"It was my father who finally cut it off with his weapon," Liv replied.

"Is it the demon fang of Lord Lambert?"

Caesars immediately thought of Lambert's red dagger, which was a very powerful weapon.

"Yes, that's it. But my father didn't name it Devil's Fang, but Scarlet Blade!" Liv corrected.

Caesars nodded, indicating that he had memorized it. He certainly knew Lambert's dagger. It was a fang of the Great Lord of the Abyss, with natural high-level magic patterns on it, making it extremely powerful.