Chapter 293: Confirmatory Offensive Test

Saul leapt out from between the trees, landing steadily with Little Algae’s help, and at the same time, flung two black tentacles at Cadis once more.

The latter responded with the same high-penetration yellow bullets, then advanced instead of retreating, looking like he intended to engage Saul in close combat. But simultaneously, the grease-like substance on one of his palms receded, revealing a seed gripped tightly in his hand.

Saul froze at the sight of the seed. Then, to Cadis’s surprise, he turned and bolted, flinging two more black tentacles backward to cover his retreat.

Cadis was momentarily stunned. He hadn’t expected Saul to be wary of the seed in his palm.

“Did he recognize it? That’s impossible…”

The Soul-Devouring Flower seed was one of the top-level secrets of the Land Drifters. Had Cadis not been entrusted with this mission, he wouldn’t have been qualified to know what it looked like, let alone its function.

“He must just be overly cautious. No matter—now that he’s seen the seed, he’s not getting away!”

“No matter how unusual your methods, before the Soul-Devouring Flower, the schemes of a mere apprentice are useless!”

Cadis let out a vicious grin and crushed the seed in his palm. With his other hand, he once again fired yellow bullets, which quickly shattered the oncoming black tentacles.

A pale green sprout emerged from Cadis’s palm, while a yellowish-brown root dug into his flesh.

Just as Cadis was preparing to witness the Soul-Devouring Flower’s power, something caught his eye—something gray and shapeless emerging from the shattered black tentacle.

Confident that he had dealt with Saul’s final gambit, Cadis had continued charging forward. Only now did he notice the semi-transparent shadow hanging in the air, and it was too late to stop.

Gritting his teeth, he shot out another yellow bullet with one hand, while raising the sprout in his other hand as a shield. There was no way Saul’s concealed trick could withstand both physical and soul attacks at the same time!

But in the next second, Cadis’s eyes widened in disbelief.

The gray-white shadow emerging from the broken tentacle completely ignored the yellow bullets, letting it pass through its non-corporeal form as it pressed forward toward him.

Cadis had no choice but to raise his right hand to meet it.

He recognized Saul’s attack as a soul strike, but how could a quasi–Third Rank apprentice’s soul attack ever pose a threat to the Land Drifter’s treasure?

Then, unexpectedly, the semi-transparent gray shadow that was about to collide with the Soul-Devouring Flower’s sprout suddenly twisted, curving around Cadis’s hand and lunging straight for his wrist.

Cadis hadn’t expected Saul’s soul attack to be so agile.

Soul attacks were driven by mental force, but once the energy left the body, it was notoriously difficult to control—often even more rigid than physical attacks.

This was because a wizard apprentice’s mental force couldn’t truly leave their body. At most, it could be used to sense external magic or soul energy via vibrations.

And yet, Saul had just pulled off a mid-air turn on a Soul attack over ten meters away from his body!

This was far beyond the scope of what normal wizard apprentices could do.

Gritting his teeth, Cadis refused to retreat. One misstep would lead to another—he had to correct his earlier mistake before Saul escaped. Even if his arm got damaged by the soul strike, he was determined to deploy the Soul-Devouring Flower.

At the final moment, he twisted his wrist so the sprout in his palm faced the oncoming gray shadow. He pretended to reach forward recklessly, but in truth, he was maneuvering the sprout to make contact with Saul’s magic and mental force.

“I just need to complete the marking. Even if I get hurt, I’ll lie back and enjoy watching that brat get ravaged by the Soul-Devouring Flower!” Cadis’s lips curled into a smirk.

The next moment, the gray shadow landed on Cadis’s wrist.

At the same time, the green sprout in his palm made contact with Saul’s soul attack.

Cadis braced himself for pain, but when he looked down at his arm, he was dumbfounded.

“What… what am I even seeing?”

A storm of question marks exploded in his mind.

He watched, in utter disbelief, as the gray shadow pulled something out of his arm.

That’s right—quite literally.

He saw a semi-transparent arm being dragged out from his still fully-clothed, fully intact physical arm!

In that instant, Cadis finally understood.

This was a piece of his soul, being forcibly extracted from his body!

“GAAHHH!!” Cadis let out a scream, his face going deathly pale.

He had seen soul-targeting magic before, but never anything that ripped someone’s soul out!

And he wasn’t just some ordinary person—his soul form was supposed to be exceptionally stable.

Then, he saw the gray-white shadow twist again and yank even more of his soul-arm out of his body. Only now did Cadis clearly see: the thing pulling on his soul wasn’t a claw or hand—it was a gray, semi-transparent octopus tentacle.

Tracing the tentacle back, he was stunned to find that it extended from Saul’s sleeve—his actual hand nowhere in sight.

Another strong tug rocked Cadis’s entire body. His mind went hazy, his vision doubled, and Saul’s figure swayed back and forth, splitting and merging as if reality itself was coming apart.

Cadis had never experienced this before, but he knew what it meant.

This was the precursor to having his entire soul ripped out alive.

His eyes darted desperately to the corner of his vision. Now, all he could hope for was that the Soul-Devouring Flower would kick in. If it couldn’t seize control of Saul, at least it might block his next attack!

But what Cadis didn’t know… was that the Soul-Devouring Flower was already trying its best to attack Saul!

The moment the sprout touched Saul’s soul form, he felt a strange mark appear within his consciousness.

But before he could even begin to analyze what it meant, the diary floating silently within his soul core suddenly opened, swooped down to the mark, and then—

SMACK!

It clapped shut on the mark like a book crushing a mosquito.

Saul stared blankly for a moment, then resumed his assault on Cadis’s soul body. His arm had transformed into a tentacle, which now tightly ensnared Cadis’s soul.

With that complete, it was time for the next step—just like pulling a stubborn turnip.

“Gotta admit, he really is a Third Rank apprentice,” Saul muttered, gritting his teeth as Cadis’s expression turned more and more dazed. “If this were a Second Rank, I could’ve yanked the soul out in one go. But with a Third Rank, I had to…”

A vein bulged on Saul’s forehead as he gave another powerful jerk. Finally, a fully transparent figure separated from Cadis’s body, flying straight toward Saul along the tentacle’s momentum.

Cadis’s physical body trembled, then collapsed limply to the ground.

“…Four times. It took four pulls to rip his soul out.”

Watching the stunned, half-bewildered expression on the soul flying toward him, Saul raised his other hand. In the air, he grasped a dark red diary between three fingers and brought it before his eyes.

The next moment, the soul was sucked into the diary without the slightest resistance, vanishing into its pages as a streak of black.

Saul lowered his hand, flipped the diary over, and with a flick of his thumb, the pages rustled until it stopped on a brand-new black page.

“Not bad. The first confirmatory offensive test on the mental realm produced a satisfactory result.”

Saul gave a faint smirk and snapped the diary shut with a smack.

(End of Chapter)

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