The warning from his intuition came so swiftly that cold sweat instantly drenched Lin Gui's back.
This was Avalon.
This was his post office, his room.
How could there be any danger?
He hadn't provoked anyone recently!
Or did Morpheus and the others plan to use force?
To snatch the nonexistent divine artifact from him?
As his thoughts raced, his body reacted on instinct.
He kicked off the windowsill with his right foot, planning to use the leverage to flip backward out of the window.
“Crack!”
An ominous splintering sound came from beneath his foot.
The seemingly intact windowsill had actually been tampered with beforehand, and the wooden board collapsed inward.
Lin Gui's body tilted. He instantly channeled Levitation with all his might, barely managing to keep himself suspended in the air.
He looked down at the collapsed spot.
It was an extremely simple physical trap, devoid of any mana fluctuations.
It was crude, yet it had precisely calculated his habitual landing spot.
It was precisely this kind of simple mechanism, entirely lacking any trace of energy, that caught Lin Gui completely off guard despite his reliance on sensory warnings.
It might have been useless against a true expert.
But for a 'rookie mage' like Lin Gui, who relied on spells and had limited physical strength, it was far too lethal.
If Levitation hadn't already become second nature to him, he would have fallen right in just now.
In the split second he paused to adjust his balance, his Shroud of the Gloomy Night enveloped his entire body once more.
Just as his figure was about to fade away,
a dusty gray cloth bag shot out silently from a corner of the darkness.
Lin Gui's reaction was incredibly fast, and he tried to dodge by twisting his body to the side.
However, the moment the bag brushed past him, it exploded in midair!
“Poof!”
A large cloud of choking white powder burst out, instantly filling the entire room.
It also clearly outlined his figure, which had not yet completely faded into invisibility.
“Cough! Cough, cough!”
Lin Gui's vision blurred as he choked on the powder. He didn't even have time to cast Wind Guiding to disperse it.
Making a split-second decision, he lunged toward the window with all his strength!
“Thud!”
His forehead slammed hard into an invisible barrier.
It was flexible, sturdy, and radiated a familiar, gentle, yet irresistible fluctuation.
Was this... a barrier of the Holy Light attribute?
And this intensity... Legendary Rank?!
Lin Gui's heart sank abruptly.
He suddenly looked up, tracing the source of the barrier's fluctuations.
Under the cold moonlight, a figure floated quietly not far outside the window.
Her short, pale-golden hair swayed gently in the night wind, and a holy, soft aura flowed around her entire body.
Behind her, a pair of wings formed purely of light slowly unfurled.
When he clearly saw that tranquil, holy face,
Lin Gui froze completely in midair, his mind going utterly blank.
Eve?!
How could it be her?!
Eve looked at Lin Gui, her expression awkward.
She then said in a low voice,
“I'm sorry, Mr. Lin Gui.”
In the exact instant he was frozen in shock, before he could even utter a single word,
a precise, heavy blow struck the back of his neck.
“Ugh...!”
Lin Gui's eyes rolled back, and he lost consciousness completely.
The sensation of weightlessness lasted only a moment before he was caught securely in a warm, soft embrace.
A familiar, elegant fragrance of sunlight mixed with vegetation lingered at the tip of his nose.
Before his consciousness sank into darkness, his final thought was incredibly clear:
Guard against everything, but you can never guard against a thief in your own house.
Who else could it be?
Who else could have mapped out his routine of climbing through this window every night, knowing even his landing habits down to a tee?
Who else could know the weakness of the Shroud of the Gloomy Night and prepare a countermeasure in advance?
Who else could convince Eve to temporarily ascend to the Legendary Rank and use magic to seal off his escape?
It could only be her.
The white-haired elf who had spent the last few days seemingly casually staring at the back of his neck, secretly 'pre-aiming' where to strike...
Theia.
Theia held the unconscious Lin Gui and landed lightly back on the ground.
She lowered her head, looking at the mage's defenseless face in her arms.
The corner of her mouth couldn't help but curve into a triumphant, playful smirk.
She leaned in close to Lin Gui's ear.
Her warm breath brushed against his earlobe, her voice lowered to an absolute whisper, laced with a trace of sly amusement:
“Sorry for backstabbing you.”
“But...”
She paused, a gentle, tender light flickering in the depths of her eyes.
“I'll make sure to 'compensate' you well, Lin Gui.”
Up in the sky,
Eve withdrew her radiant light, and the phantom wings slowly dissolved.
She glanced at the two on the ground and waved her hand gently.
The temporary barrier enveloping the entire post office vanished instantly, and she also shed her glow.
Her strength steadily plummeted back down to the Low-tier Transcendent rank. A somewhat pale Eve landed beside Theia.
The two exchanged a look and nodded in silent understanding.
Supporting the unconscious Lin Gui from both sides,
they carried him toward the post office's basement.
Meanwhile, on the other side of Avalon,
inside the City Lord's manor, at the foot of the Demon King Pillar,
Morpheus stood silently before the towering pillar that reached into the sky.
His blood-red eyes stared intently at the surface of the pillar.
There, the dim light that usually flowed steadily was now rippling erratically.
Like stones thrown into a calm lake, ripples spread outward in a chaotic wave after wave.
“It has started again,”
the foxkin sage, Kilian, whispered from behind him, his tail drooping anxiously.
“The fluctuations of the veil... are even more pronounced than yesterday.”
Several of Avalon's strongest warriors stood around them.
An orc shield guard, an avian warrior, and two human swordsmen.
Their strength had all reached the Legendary Rank.
At this moment, the same gloom hung over everyone's faces.
“The instability of the pillar means that Lord Gusion...” the shield guard said in a raspy voice, leaving the sentence unfinished.
But everyone understood.
The Demon King Pillar was directly connected to Gusion's life and power.
An anomaly in the pillar meant only one thing.
Gusion's condition was highly likely deteriorating rapidly.
He was in mortal danger.
“We cannot delay any longer,”
Morpheus finally spoke, his voice as cold and hard as iron.
“We must set out immediately to support Lord Gusion.”
“But...”
one of the human swordsmen hesitated.
“Without Lord Gusion's help, we cannot leave Avalon.”
“And as for Lord Crimson Thorn, no one but Lord Gusion can communicate with her.”
“She will not allow us to pass through her territory.”
“Even if she lets us leave, there are other demons outside who are far stronger than Lord Crimson Thorn.”
“If they were physical demons, at least my concealment art could be of some use.”
“But those are spectral demons. Any concealment magic or arts are completely useless against them.”
“No one but Lord Gusion and Shadow Blade Lynn can cross that corridor.”
“Not even the Tower Masters of the City of a Thousand Towers, or the master assassins of the Assassination Hall.”
The atmosphere fell silent for a moment.
The orc shield guard scratched his head and added rather strangely,
“What about those three who opened the post office...?”
“Didn't they cross it?”
The human swordsman who had spoken earlier instantly looked rather embarrassed.
“Cough, cough!”
He cleared his throat.
“That was all... because of the divine artifact.”
“If I also had that ‘Umbral Robe’...”
“I could cross the corridor too.”
He looked at Morpheus, his tone turning a bit more serious.
“So, I think we need to move up our plan.”
“Morpheus, have you confirmed who holds that divine artifact?”
Morpheus nodded slowly, his blood-red eyes calm.
“I do.”
“After interacting with them these past few days, it's not hard to determine who the master of the divine artifact is.”
“First thing tomorrow morning, I will go talk to him.”
He had originally planned to wait a few more days to allow them to build more rapport.
Although Lin Gui's trio had performed exceptionally well in integrating into Avalon, the time they had spent here was ultimately too short.
And a 'divine artifact'... was simply too sensitive a matter.
Throughout the long history of Akara, countless tragedies had been sparked by the struggle for a single divine artifact.
City-states overthrown, lineages severed, and seas of blood and mountains of corpses.
The most famous of all was the fight over the divine artifact, the Omniscient Astrolabe.
Because of it, an entire kingdom had been destroyed.
In the face of the temptation of supreme power, trust was often as fragile as paper.
Especially when the other party's strength was so incredibly weak.
Rate on N.U.
