Mystical Journey

As daylight broke, the off-angled sunlight dyed the clouds in a faint gold color.

In the abandoned city beside the Pumpkin Farm.

Countless black buildings were placed beside each other; the place was dead silent. The surface of the buildings were dull and some of the glass doors were shattered with a few glass shards left behind.

At the center of the square field, a sculpture at the center of the circular fountain was slightly slanted with deep cracks at the right side of the floor. It seemed like someone had attacked the floor with a sword nearby and created this crack, as it propagated to the fountain, causing the sculpture to slant.

The grass on the floor was all dark green and dry,wilted. It formed a guardrail as it attached itself to the chain and a short stone column together.

There was a tall man in black armor standing beside the guard rail.

He placed one of his legs on the stone column and carefully scanned the surrounding.

The man took down his hood, revealing a handsome, white and tender face. He had a silky smooth golden hair at shoulder length and also three red dots on his forehead as a birthmark. He was Garen, who was going after the leader of the silver masked man.

He looked around his surroundings as if he were trying to pick up some sound with his ear.

A faint golden halo came from behind and landed on his feet, lighting up the wilted grassfield.

"I have already spotted you, come out." Garen shouted calmly. His voice traveled far and reverberated constantly in the deserted city.

"You have been trying to escape from me for about a day now, and you’ve exhausted all your options. I believe that you do not have the ability to send a message within a short distance." Garen put away his leg as he started to wander around the fountain.

Suddenly, black mud moved at the bottom of the fountain.

Ahh!!!

As someone gave off a deafening scream, the mud spread about and a bloody red figure rushed towards Garen.

Boom!

The air behind Garen bent, as if there was a rigid transparent force pushing back the bloody figure back into the pool of mud.

The red figure rolled a few times in the mud before it got up dizzily, revealing his physical appearance.

Unexpectedly, it was a man with blood all over him. His lower body was no longer there, save for his upper body. He had nothing with him from the waist down below, as if he was cut waist down.

This half bodied man was muscular, and covered in blood. His head was similar to of a locust, long and had two antennas on his head. His body was covered with a series of hard objects, as if he was wearing a layer of armor.

With only his upper body, he was about as tall as half a man. After rolling on the floor for a few times, he dizzily stood up and floated in the air. There was no visible support from his lower body, he was simply levitating off the ground.

He revealed two of his sharp claws and charged towards Garen once more. However, his upper body was bitten by a shapeless mouth as he was charging in.

Chomp!

With a sounding crisp, the upper body man was torn into millions of red pieces. Soon after landing on the floor, the crystals melted and became a pool of blood and seeped into the ground.

"That’s the fifteenth." Garen frowned.

After leaving the Red Team behind, he had been pursuing the leader of the Silver Masked Man from the pumpkin farm to here since last night.

This seemingly dead city was filled with these bloody half bodied creatures. They were everywhere, hidden in any possible spots and would often attacked people.

These half bodied creatures had incredible speed, and any totem users whose main attribute was not agility would definitely barely be able handle them, and at best, could only defend against them. However, Garen was different. His five senses were extremely sharp, and with his terrifying precision from his Secret Techniques, he would be totally safe with only two dragon heads as his defense. Two mouths with the radius of one meter each were like his shield, protecting him at all times.

These half bodied creatures didn’t possess any power strength, and their strength was at the level of a form one totem user at best. It would be an useful option if it was used to fight against a commoner, but if it were to be used against Garen…

Even if he were to stand still and let them attack him, no one would know how many hours they would take to break his defense.

Suddenly, the familiar footsteps could be faintly heard deep in the city. It was fast paced yet tiring. The sound was very weak, and he wasn’t sure how far it is.

Garen obviously heard it and he started grinning as he went towards that direction. Although he seemed to be very slow, every step he took was at least a few meters apart and it was as fast as a commoner sprinting.

The opponent clearly didn’t have any more energy to spare, as the he had deactivated his Acceleration Tactic. Without the support of the totem, he could only use his legs to run.

Garen guessed that even if he were to stop pursuing him here, he would most likely not survive in this city for long, as this city had more than just the form one creature.

The footsteps became clearer in front of him.

The library, which was shaped like a mountain, had three tips at the top, and there were two grey gargoyles standing by the entrance of the library.

As Garen sprinted towards it, his footsteps kept reverberating within the city as if there were many people running at the same time.

Masi!!

A raging roar came from the library. It was so loud that even the ground started to tremble and even the small pebbles started to move up and down.

It sounded like a language and yet it also sounded like a meaningless roar.

Boom!!

As the sound of a glass breaking could be heard, and a person was sent flying out of the library and landed heavily onto a sculpture in front of the library. After a thud, the human figure dropped down from the sculpture and laid down on the ground.

It was the black shirted silver masked man who ran in the library a moment ago.

He gasped heavily as he tried to get himself up from the ground but to no avail. He seemed to have sprained his waist.

Boom! Boom Boom!!

Heavy footsteps could be heard inside the library, as if there was a gigantic monster walking about inside it.

Soon, the footsteps diminished and everything was silent once again.

Garen looked inside the library from afar as he wondered what kind of creature lurked inside it and it seemed to be very strong.

However, his first objective was to capture the silver masked man.

With a stomp from his feet, his motion became blur and leaped a few hundred meters and directly stood behind him

The opponent saw the sudden appearance of a human figure, whose shadows completely covered him from behind.

He was stunned.

"You caught up in the end." His voice sounded very bitter under his mask. "According to the regulations of the nobles, I have the right to pay for actions in exchange for my freedom and life. I hope you, as a noble, would allow me to repay my debt."

"What’s inside there?" Garen didn’t reply him as he looked into the library with interest.

The opponent was stunned by his behavior but immediately reacted. "I don’t know." He laughed wryly.

"When I was here last week, there was no such creature. Now it suddenly appears here. It seems to have come out from the cracks between the stones. We had observed the surrounding before and did not see such huge creatures within the diameter of hundred kilometers.

"You don’t know?" Garen was slightly surprised. "Didn’t you guys create these creatures?"

"That is indeed true. The Silver Masked Man shook his head. "However, everything seems to be out of hand the moment the people from the Black Sky had discovered the Black Copper Mine. I swear that during my time performing experiments in the Black Sky, I have never seen such a creature. Never!"

Garen suddenly recalled the existence of a giant creature in this city. If the giant creature in the city was an experiment created by the Black Sky, no one would have believed it, since if the Black Sky could get hold of such a strong creature, they would have taken over the world already.

"Did you mention Black Copper Mine just now? What’s that?" He questioned again as it was something he had never heard of.

The Silver Masked Man secretly gave out a sigh of relief.

"If you promise not to kill me, I will tell you everything I know."

"Sure." Garen nodded. "I still need you to send a message to the remaining members of the Black Sky. Why would I want to kill you?"

The Silver Masked Man was stunned and couldn’t utter a single word as he looked at Garen’s expression as if it was the natural thing to do.

"I am very regretful at the moment. If only I knew this incident was so troublesome, I wouldn’t have made a move on my own."

"Let’s hear it, what’s a Black Copper Mine?" Garen asked coldly.

The Silver Masked Man tried his best to get up from the ground as he leaned against the sculpture.

"The Black Copper Mine, in a way, is the source of all the aberrated creatures. I once worked at a Senior Workshop in the Black Sky’s experimenting group, so I know this secret very well."

He took out a red liquid from within his pocket.

"You don’t mind if I eat some medicine, right?"

"Go ahead." Garen nodded. "Your body isn’t in good condition. I can catch you even if you run anyway."

The Silver Masked Man smiled wryly.

"It started when we discovered an abandoned altar at the bottom of a ruin. This altar was made entirely out of a metal that was neither silver or gold. It was completely black, and it was a metal that none of were familiar with. As the first surveyor of the Black Sky discovered this altar and this new metal, the whole of the Black Sky community was interested in it. We sent out a large amount of researchers into the altar to study this unique metal."

"The altar itself hadn’t much of a purpose as it was abandoned a long time ago. However, the researchers found something shocking once they cut open this metal that was used to make this altar.

"What did they find?" Garen was caught in the curiosity.

"They discovered that this metal’s properties are very similar to that of copper, so they named it Black Copper. They also discovered that there was a huge amount of Black Copper stored underneath the altar thereafter." The Silver Masked Man smiled wryly once more. "This Black Copper possessed a shocking property."

"Property?"