The Son of Grugor was a level-15 boss. His speed was extremely fast, and could be regarded as the killer of spellcasters. There was no chance that Xiao Ling could withstand his attack.
Xiao Ling chose resurrection in the graveyard. He reckoned that the Son of Grugor should be gnawing at his corpse by now. The thought of how his corpse was treated badly like that depressed him.
Fortunately, he only lost 7 gold coins and a few pieces of ore.
He had twenty reasons to delete his character, but his expectation for the future made him stay.
'I seem to have dug up an iron ring just before I died. I wonder what it is?' Xiao Ling took out the ring.
Iron Ring – Unidentified.
It was the first time he had obtained an unidentified item, and that somewhat comforted his wounded heart.
'Come to think of it, I haven't even visited the Appraisal Hall. The server has been opened for more than a month, and other players are all dressed in Uncommon, Rare, and Epic equipment, but I haven't even seen any unidentified equipment until now. How ironic!'
'Are my skills worse than others?' If truth be told, Xiao Ling was very proud of his gaming skill, and confident that he was no worse than anyone. But, he was like a dragon stuck in shallow water now, and there was nothing much he could do to change the situation.
As he pondered, he walked into the Appraisal Hall.
It was a tall tower with a conical roof. From the ground level, a staircase spiraled upward to the top, where the appraisers could be found.
It took Xiao Ling ten minutes to walk up the stairs to the top of the tower. There was a small room with windows, from which the whole Eddins could be seen. 'Look at all the huge buildings that stand tall and mighty! What a spectacular city!'
Then he saw two people in the room, an old man in a warlock's robe and a beautiful young female apprentice. At the sight of such a combination, who he knew had to stay together all day long, Xiao Ling could not help but think of something wicked.
The apprentice was responsible for identifying low-level items, and most players' items were identified by her, while only equipment above the qualify of Epic was identified by the old man.
The elder was leafing through a well-thumbed book with a glass lens in his hand. It was an advanced magic book.
"Hello, do you need to identify items?" The female apprentice came up to Xiao Ling. She had a charming face; her white appraiser's robe could not quite conceal her slim and curvy figure, and her hands were unusually fair from years of bathing in holy light.
"Yes." Xiao Ling took out an antique ring from his pouch. It was obviously very old, with traces of rush everywhere on the surface. He really could not find anything unusual about it, and he guessed that its level was not high either. But, it was always good to identify and learn about its attributes. "Please help me identify this ring."
"Alright!" She took the iron ring and held it in her hand, then a holy light lit up in her palm and enveloped it. Suddenly, a black light burst out of the ring, and it was ablaze with a black flame in the blink of an eye.
"Ouch!" The female apprentice cried out and hurriedly threw away the ring, but the scorching black flame had already left a burn mark on her hand, stark against the fair skin that surrounded it.
The iron ring fell to the floor with a chink, and as it kept spinning, the black flame slowly faded away. Soon, it lay quietly on the floor, looking ordinary.
'What happened? Could it be that this iron ring is unidentifiable?'
"Are you all right?" Xiao Ling asked. He wondered what the iron ring was exactly and why it had just emitted a black flame. Hearing his concern, the apprentice covered the wound with a hand and shook her head. "I'm fine. I can't identify this ring."
The noise stirred the old warlock. He shot a look at Xiao Ling and the apprentice, then turned his gaze to the iron ring on the floor. The seemingly ordinary item had caught his attention.
He rose to his feet and picked up the iron ring.
"This is the item this customer wishes to identify," said the apprentice hurriedly.
After briefly examining the ring, the old warlock turned to scold the girl, "I told you to study hard and you didn't listen. Now you've learned your lesson! How can a demon item be identified with holy light?"
"I'm sorry!" The apprentice answered meekly and stood aside.
The warlock glanced at Xiao Ling again. The sudden flash in his eyes made the latter's heart tremble. "Are you the one who wants to identify the ring?"
"Yes." Xiao Ling felt that the old man was not an ordinary warlock. Just the way he looked at him had already sent a chill down his back.
Warlocks were actually a branch of mages. Mages were divided into Frost Mages, Fire Mages, Thunder Mages, and other elemental mages, while warlocks specialized in mind spells. In the era of Erathia Empire, warlocks were as noble as mages, but because their mind spells were too strong and some evil warlocks even used their spells to spread evil everywhere, they were boycotted by all the mages and eventually expelled from Erathia.
Every warlock was very good at mind spells. Although this warlock looked ordinary, Xiao Ling knew that when warlocks reached a certain level, they would restrain their power and recover their original simplicity.
'The NPCs in the Alchemy Tower and the Mage Tower of Eddins are indeed very strong.'
The old warlock nodded. He took the iron ring aside to study and carefully examined it through the lens in his hand, then rummaged for the information on the bookshelf.
Xiao Ling was curious to see the old warlock so busy. 'Isn't it just an iron ring? Does he need to be so serious? Could it be something extraordinary?'
'But, since the apprentice can't identify it, that means the ring should at least be an Epic equipment!'
'Is this really the case?' Xiao Ling could not help but feel a little excited, and his previously depressed mood was swept away. If the ring were indeed an Epic item, then it was surely a stroke of luck to him!
The price of a high-level Epic item was at least thousands of gold coins, and even the worst one could sell for hundreds of gold coins. Xiao Ling could not help but wonder what the attributes of the ring were.
The old warlock found an ancient book from the bookshelf, quickly turning to the last page where he finally found a drawing of a ring, which was exactly the same as the iron ring!
'Does this iron ring have its own name? Only Epic and Legendary or above equipment have names!'
With a restless heart, Xiao Ling looked forward to the old warlock's answer.