Grimoire: The manual of forbidden magic

Just as she saw the greenish yellow eyes, Katty diverted her gaze towards something else. She knew that she shouldn't look into the eyes of the beast in front of them for more than five seconds. Otherwise, there was a chance of her being hit by a Petrification ray coming from the beast's eyes.

Yes, the beast in front of them was a Nekismis Python she had read about. It was a terrifying magical beast which could use earth elements. Petrification ray was just one of its five elemental abilities.

This snake which had a length of about twenty meters and width of more than four meters was strong enough to kill a normal rank one without its spell like abilities. With its hard scales and even that dangerous poison it could spit, this beast could give a hard time even for those veterans. Of course, it may not be much of an opponent for rank 1 mages but for apprentices, they still had to careful when fighting with it.

This applied to even those with high aptitudes.

Katty could see that Chauv's expression had turned serious when he saw that the beast that had came their way was a Nekismis Python.

However, she didn't know that this was a facade he had put on the outside.

'Good, that Mary is doing as she was told to.' Chauv's expression and thoughts didn't match at all.

Before coming to this test, their family had made a plan on how to make Katty reach the Ogre settlement ''on her own accord''. Using the privileges given to the major family which let them know about the location of one large moonspring, their family had decided to know about the moonspring located near the ogre settlement.

The order he had given Mary was to somehow bait the Guardian of the large moonspring towards their way.

As for the reason to do this, it was to let Chauv ''hold back'' this Guardian while Katty goes ''towards the moonspring''. But actually, she would be going alone straight towards the Ogre settlement while he would back away. It might be difficult for him to defeat this Python alone but he could still get away from it.

He could have just let the python kill this brat but with him being in the surroundings, there was chance for him to get found out so to be safe, the family had made this plan.

As for the moonspring left without a guardian, it was nothing if katty could be killed.

For now, he still had to ''seriously fight'' with this Python.

Holding the black curved dagger, Chauv poured some of his spiritual power into it. Then, around the edges of the dagger on his hand, darkness elements started gathering, quickly forming a black flame which seemed to devour the light around it.

This was a magical fire formed of darkness elements!

However, instead of using fire elements, the flame used negative energy in the surroundings to keep burning. The negative energy could be anything, physical or even concepts and emotions like hostility, rage and envy etc.

So it also had another name. The Abyssal fire.

Of course, it was not the true Abyssal fire but instead a copy of it. But even so, for a Dark Sorcerer at his level, it was more than enough.

With dagger's magical fire now activated, Chauv rushed forward while casting haste on himself.

Katty also casted a water spear at the python when she saw that the smelly guy initiate the attack. However, like the last time, her attack was not effective enough.

While Chauv saw how the spell just only managed to scratch the scales on the body of Python, he thought inwardly.

'Heh, this brat doesn't even know which spell to use in which time. It would habe been easier for me if she had cast a Binding spell like water sphere.'

As he came before the snake, he nimbly dodged the tail swipe coming towards him and slashed the snake with his dagger covered in flames.

"Hiss..."

Although the slash was not forceful, the unusual flames on it managed to hurt the snake which made it hiss in pain. The Python retracted its tail and cast several earth spikes towards Chauv, who with great skill managed to dodge and block them with his dagger.

Other than being an apprentice, he had also learned combat skills. Although, he hadn't reached rank 1, his skills with the dagger were as good as those of rank 1 assassins.

Yet, as he continued remaining unharmed from the spells, more and more earth spikes came thrusting towards him. Before he could even dodge oned batch of them, another batch would come towards him. He now appeared to be in a difficult condition with those numerous earth spikes.

At this moment, Katty's voice sounded as she took out a silvery-white scroll and tore it apart, activating the spell enchanted on it, which prevented him from casting a spell to protect himself.

"Lightning shield!"

Rumble~

With booming sounds of electricity flowing, lightning elements gathered around Chauv, forming a bluish-white shield of lightning.

The large number of earth spikes that came towards him were all disintegrated the moment they crashed with the violent lightning.

"Such power..." Chauv was amazed with the spell's power which nearly reached that of rank 1 spells. Yet, just as the shield was gone a barrage of stone gravel was already on its way towards him. This type of gravel fromed of hard stones which were like a huge swarm of wasps was not to be underestimated.

Other than the rain of small, hard yet sharp pebbles which could puncture countless holes in his body, this gravel attack also had shocking elemental damage. There was no was he could fend these off like the earth spikes, using his dagger.

However, he was not without any spells either. For this type of attack, he had a specific spell to deal with it.

Chauv immediately stopped pouring his spiritual power into the dagger and sheathed it with the flames gone.

The next moment, a spellbook appeared on his hands. But the spellbook was not like the usual normal in white colour.

Katty who was preparing to cast another spell, noticed that the spellbook in Chauv's hands was in dark-red colour. It was also thicker than other apprentices' spellbook. Though she couldn't read what was written from her distance, she could see that the characters written on the spellbook's pages were in bright red colour as if written by blood.

Seeing those, she got the confirmation that she wanted. This was a unique type of spellbook exclusive to dark mages. Otherwise known as Grimoire, the manual of forbidden magic.