Being Despised

Having left the mirror house, Grimm sought a hidden place and recovered his magical force to the maximum. Then he checked his crystal ball to see if his teammates had contacted him, which showed that no information had been received.

Grimm headed randomly in the forest since he had been warned by a mysterious force not to touch a second mirror, and his teammates were nowhere to be found.

Grimm's strong signals emanating from his chain mark had kept all the other students along his way off, although he had tried his best to contain them.

After a few hourglasses of wandering in the forest, he bumped into a leopard. The leopard seemed very hungry as if it had not eaten any food for days. Being strong and agile, it still didn't have the courage to hunt the prey in front of it. As the Chinese saying goes, 'A cooked duck flies away,' meaning that the leopard had to let go of a ready meal even while it was starving.

Animals could sense Grimm's signals, too.

When Grimm arrived at a clearing, he sat on the ground for a rest.

As Grimm was meditating to relax as well as to improve his mental strength, he could detect a strong wave of signals not far from him. Actually, whoever had sent out these signals had been stalking even before Grimm met the leopard. Grimm had turned around from time to time to check what was going on in a way as naturally as possible, but he had found nothing.

"Invisibility Sorcery?" Grimm could not help but murmur. "That's why I couldn't see him."

The student following Grimm was indeed invisible because of the Invisibility Sorcery, and had been taking extra caution by staying 50 meters away from Grimm. That was a distance from which Grimm couldn't locate him/her. Overhearing Grimm's murmuring, the follower immediately ran away.

"Who was that? Which academy does the guy come from?" Doubts invaded Grimm's mind.

An hourglass later, Grimm's crystal ball received a message. It was Nina. Grimm was excited, and he sped up towards Nina. He had been rambling in this woods for almost a day and had finally contacted one of his friends.

Soon, Grimm came before an expansive mushroom land. Mushrooms abounded in this forest, and there was nothing worthy of mention about it. Grimm took notice of these fungi, but he could not care less when he cut across the land. When he accidentally stamped on a mushroom, its cap (pileus) exploded and the spores on the underside of the cap were spurted out and then pervaded the air.

Grimm's head became completely dizzy, and everything around him faded and became twisted as though they were unreal.

"Sh*t! I have been attacked by fantasy sorcery! It was triggered by scent." Grimm was panicked. "And the effect was amplified by my enhanced sense of smell."

The fantasy sorcery was not initiated by any students. The mushrooms did it. It was a trap devised by nature. Grimm's necklace was supposed to defend fantasy strikes like this, but this time, it failed to be effective possibly because this psychedelic worked out a magic through Grimm's advanced olfactory system.

As Grimm became dizzier, he recalled how his symbiotic insects - the Gadflies - could fight against curses and other fantasy sorceries. He then stimulated the Gadflies in his body, and the insects moved and hummed, producing unbearable noises in his ears. The penetrating buzz brought Grimm to sobriety in a few seconds.

"That was close." Grimm felt relieved.

He had endured the dizziness for only less than a minute, but in that minute, Grimm was extremely vulnerable to attacks, since he was stripped of his defense power completely. Luckily, when he was struggling, his chain mark released large amount of power which, in a sense, deterred potential invaders.

Grimm stepped backwards and carefully navigated away from the mushroom land.

Grimm was fortunate when the Gadflies saved his life by helping him regaining his consciousness. When the insects were acting in his belly to fight against his vertigo, Grimm felt that part or parts of his body were responding to the Gadflies. And the reaction affected Grimm in some strange way.Yet, he could not articulate how.

"Did the reaction relate to the special abilities of the Gadflies as mentioned in the books?" Grimm asked himself. "Does it have something to do with the Life Code?" Grimm packed a piece of the exploded mushroom, thinking that it may be used in later experiments for the Life Code.

Grimm was hungry now, and he took out two bars of compressed meat to satiate his hunger. When he was half full, his expression suddenly became intense.

"A chain mark that has over 30 points of power? Who could it be?"

At the time, Grimm and the mysterious man who both had over 30 points of power were sending out vigorous waves of signals that formed an unusual space.

"Who are you? Your chain mark has over 30 points of power— the first one I met here with such ability," Grimm asked.

The other student looked horrifyingly pale. He ran his eyes through Grimm but did not reply. Instead, he played with a mouse that was standing on his shoulder.

"A mouse? The arrogance? Could it be Kyrie?" Grimm thought.

Grimm saw Kyrie back on the ship twice. The first time was when Kyrie and Brianna coming to the deck to watch the pirates who escaped. The other occasion was when Kyrie fought with Sorcerer Dior against the giant octopus. Ever since the students set their feet on Black Isotta, Kyrie and Brianna — the two geniuses — had been taken away by the wrinkle-faced witch, and Grimm had never seen them, and vice versa. And the student looked extremely pale. That was why he could not recognize Kyrie in the first place.

"Kyrie?" Grimm attempted a question.

"Are you from the Black Isotta?" Kyrie reacted to the question.

"Ye..."

Grimm was interrupted. Kyrie didn't care where he was from or it could be said that he was afraid of meeting a school fellow because he had been told by his mentor to not to kill anyone who belonged to the Black Isotta. It would not be a sin if he was not aware of the sin when he committed it.

"You have a strong chain mark. Hope you could be a rival!" Kyrie's pale face turned vicious.

When Grimm heard the word "rival", his body shook. He had witnessed what Kyrie was capable of

back on the ship. In the academy, he had been "taken care of" by the designated best sorcerers as a talented student. God knew how many powerful sorceries he commanded.

A creaking sound broke.

It turned out that Kyrie had forced an attack on Grimm. Grimm responded quickly by generating his Shield. The shield sagged greatly as if it was hit by something blunt.

The offense came quickly and went quickly, too. After the attack was retracted, the shield reverted to its original state.

To block the offense, Grimm had consumed a large share of his magical force.

"How powerful was that attack! It must have contained 80-90 points of offense power." Grimm sweated.

80-90 points of offense power was a value that Grimm could not achieve!

"Haha, the shield worked good. Try this one!" Kyrie smiled.

Grimm did not have the time to take a preemptive strike, and the second assault came.

Undoubtedly, Grimm produced the shield again. This time, Grimm was attacked as if by a ramming rhinoceros. When the invisible force slammed the shield, Grimm's magical force was immediately depleted. As a result, he was pushed 7 or 8 steps backwards before he could steady himself.

"The offense power exceeded 100 points. Even with the help of my magical ring, I can't take any more such attacks." Grimm was now in a dire situation. His life was in severe danger.

"That magical tool of yous is powerful. Receiving such a tool from your mentor will get you and your mentor punished, don't you know that? You violated the Seven Rings' rules," Kyrie sneered.

Seizing the moment, Grimm produced the Firebird by consuming the magical force offered by his magical ring to take the initiative.

Kyrie pointed to the Firebird, and the bird then spun fast and was gone. Seconds later, it exploded about 200 meters away.

"No wonder he was reputed the most talented student in the last 100 years. Lilith Sorcerer Academy was right. He is way powerful than me." Grimm sighed.

"Now, let's try the physical attack." Kyrie pulled out a dagger and threw it towards Grimm.

Grimm knew that the shield would not block the dagger since it had such low level of magical force. So he created the Vine to track and hopefully entangle the dagger.

Surprisingly, the vine ensnared the dagger and pulled it to the ground.

"Haha, interesting." The same smile appeared on Kyrie's face.

"You are good. You have a powerful magical tool. More important than that, you are able to use it. Magical tools are levers, and you made good use of them. That is what is great about you." Kyrie continued while Grimm was standing there, pretending to be fine.

"Still, you and your mentor have breached the Seven Rings rules for the trial. I will tell my mentor about it, and you will be punished."

Kyrie finished the appraisal and the threat and then left.