Fatal Encounter

The three stages of law magic proficiency are Manifestation, Manipulation, and Transformation.

Manifestation is the basic foundation of all forms of magic whereas Manipulation is bending the laws of magic to one's will. Finally, Transformation is the peak of all magic... a stage all practitioners dream to achieve.

Salancans

Hade, Wil, and the professor were standing outside a large multistorey building that was located in a secluded part of the city.

The place had an eerie deserted feeling to it... such that even beggars seemed to stray away.

Hade could not help but wonder what business Novin had in such a place as this. That said, a small part of him was also grateful.

A city as big as Salancans, most areas turned out to be extremely crowded, with over 500 people at almost every instant. This place was one of the very few areas that wasn't and Hade felt like he could finally breathe.

In all honesty, in the few twenty minutes they had been in the city, he had been overwhelmed.

For a boy who had spent most of his life shielded in the high walls of Greycastle, the big city was akin to a pandora's box... and Hade could never guess what good or bad thing he would see next.

From endless merchants selling endless goods and artifacts, to brazen thieves stealing in the open... From both male and female prostitutes actively selling their bodies in public, to tramps clamoring for food from pompous aristocrats who walked around like they owned the place... Hade felt like he was peeling an onion with infinite layers.

"Wait for me here," said Novin.

"I'll only take about thirty minutes. Also, don't wander too far away such that I won't be able to find you. Salancans is as marvelous a place as it is dangerous."

Hade nodded, heeding the warning, before the professor disappeared into the mysterious building.

As he was staring boredly into space, Hade suddenly felt Wil's piercing gaze on his person.

To his dismay, the brute was looking at him with eyes that were a tad bit larger than usual. He clearly had something he had wanted to say for a couple of minutes now.

'Wait a minute,' Hade froze.

Were these supposed to be... puppy eyes?!'

"What is it?" he asked.

"Uhm..." Wil muttered as he scratched his hair sheepishly.

"Can we go look at some swords I saw at a stall a while back? I do not think any of them are better than the one Dedric gave me but you know..." he faded into mumbles.

Hade wondered just how much willpower that had taken his peculiar friend but in the end, he agreed, obviously. It wasn't like he had anything better to do while they waited for Novin anyway.

It took them a few minutes to walk to said stall that was located a few hundred meters back and as if he had hawk-like vision, the owner of the stall noticed their interest from nearly a mile away.

He then proceeded to blast towards them like a child on steroids whilst the other merchants could only look on hatefully from the sides.

Two minutes into the conversation and Hade was literally speechless at how the shameless man oversold all of his goods.

Everything he sold was either rare, crafted from expensive raw materials, or had once been owned by a Sage class or Supreme class expert.

"What about this one?" Wil asked while referring to a Sidonian longsword.

"Oh, this one is priceless," said the two-faced merchant.

"It was the last work of the legendary blacksmith who crafted Taman Savtron's Worldbreaker. They say the smith died shortly after that from a lightning strike atop Ugo mountain while crafting this very sword and as you can see right here... the sword has a peculiar magical blue luster to it," he declared unabashedly.

'What peculiar magical blue luster?!' Wil wanted to retort. That was just common paint!

"However, you are in luck!" the merchant flashed a sly, toothy grin.

"Because you seem like quite the decent fellow, for you, I'll lower the price down to a fair two thousand kril!"

"T-two th-thousand kril?!" Wil nearly collapsed from shock.

Bear in mind that two thousand kril were more than enough for a small lower-class family of five to live lavishly for at least a whole decade!

Hade, upon witnessing the ridiculous exchange between Wil and the merchant, chuckled to himself, shaking his head.

Unable to tolerate any more of the man's nonsense, he decided to wander around... lest his ears bleed.

Once he was out of earshot, Hade took in a deep breath as he regarded his surroundings. Honestly, this whole thing still seemed like a pipe dream...

It was just this morning that Bartholomew had woken him up by inserting burning embers into his bed...

Just this morning, he had enjoyed a fulfilling breakfast with his parents and just this morning, Dedric had tried to coerce him into having one last training session.

Hade was still struggling to come to terms with the fact that it would be months or even years before he saw all of them again.

Glancing up at the invisible barrier high up in the sky, Hade immediately sighed. Although he could not see it, he could sense the force field's presence... protecting the city like a warm blanket.

In this day and age, magic was the only way to protect one's loved ones. Maybe, just maybe, one day Hade would also be able to cast spells of such magnitude.

As Hade was drowned in his thoughts, all of a sudden, something hard and frigid rammed into his back!

Hade, who had strength nearly triple that of a normal adult male, was sent tumbling to the ground!

Slowly, Hade looked up to see two men, one shorter and one taller, standing over him.

The shorter man wore a black cloak and hood that covered his whole body and somehow, left the part where his face was supposed to be shrouded in total darkness.

However, Hade was too distracted to even notice this bizarreness. His focus was on the other man... the one who had bumped into him.

Standing at a height of about six feet, the man was handsome beyond all measure... the epitome of perfection. He had long, shoulder-length black hair,l and sharp, chiseled facial features.

He wore a simple set of clothes- a black long-sleeved shirt, black slacks, black boots, and black gauntlets that covered both his hands.

What distracted Hade was not the man's flawless looks... nor was it his unique attire. Rather, it was his... eyes.

Ever since Hade could remember, he had been taught to never look strangers in the eye. If he did, situations like what had happened during his first meeting with Novin would occur.

This was the reason why Hade did not have any friends and why he always wore lenses whenever he traveled away from home.

However, for the first time in his life, as he started into those golden reptilian eyes that resembled a serpent's, Hade felt to his bones and with all his being... EXTREME FEAR.

#Ten Minutes Later#

Two men, one wearing a black cloak and the other, a very good-looking man with golden irises walked side by side in the crowded streets of Salancans.

At first glance, everything about the two seemed ordinary, however, it wasn't until you took a closer look that a couple of things seemed out of the norm.

One, not only did the cloaked man have his face completely obscured by the shade of the hood, but, he also did not seem to touch the ground when he walked. Instead, he sort of hovered above it!

Two, no one besides the cloaked man seemed to actually see or even notice the golden-eyed man's presence. To everyone else, it was as if he wasn't even there... like he was invisible!

What was even more unsettling was how the man seemed to phase through the crowd and people whilst not actually touching them. What was he? A ghost!

As the two walked at a pace that was neither slow nor brisk, a constant frown adorned the golden-eyed man's handsome face. Interestingly, the frown did not affect his beauty even in the slightest.

The man's mind kept going back to the boy with the dark red hair and brown eyes he'd bumped into earlier. There was this weird feeling he just could not shake.

Suddenly, a voice emerged from the darkness under the cloaked man's hood. The voice was raspy and it croaked like that of a man who had never uttered a single word in his life:

"What is on your mind? You have not spoken for a while now," the cloaked man croaked.

"That kid," the handsome man replied with narrowed eyes.

"He saw me. No," he paused.

"He actually... felt me."

"Wait, could it not have been a mistake?" the cloaked man asked. Only just now had he realized the irregularity of what had happened earlier.

"No, it wasn't just me," the handsome golden-eyed man replied.

"Vazral also... stirred," he said, his voice barely a whisper.

"What?" The cloaked man sounded confused.

The handsome man briefly stared at his companion but he did not reply. Very soon, they resumed walking in total silence.

No sooner had they moved on that the golden-eyed man completely stopped in his tracks.

"Nobu," he said.

"Yes, master," replied the cloaked man as he bowed his head down in respect.

Consequently, more and more people distanced themselves away from him but the cloaked man could not care less about what they thought.

Just one spell... that was all it would take for him to wipe out all lifeforms within a one-mile radius.

"All the millennia I've lived in this world, do you know the one lesson I've learned?" asked the golden-eyed man.

He did not wait for his subordinate to answer, but instead answered his own question:

"It is that there are no such things as coincidences in life, there is only fate. So whether it was a mistake or not, I will not leave anything to chance..."

He paused.

"Go take care of it... That redheaded boy... kill him."

"With pleasure," Nobu croaked as he grinned sinisterly within the darkness of his hood.