Chapter 489: Deliberation

All the wizards still alive froze in place, their faces etched with absolute terror and despair.

Attacks—ineffective.

Close combat—instantly killed.

Even their most vicious curses were somehow “absorbed” by the enemy in a bizarre manner, then instantly reflected back to annihilate the caster…

How were they supposed to fight this?!

This wasn’t even a battle anymore!

It was… slaughter!

One-sided, utterly hopeless, complete and total slaughter!

“Mon… monster…”

“Run… run now…”

“Scatter! Get his intelligence out!”

Finally, one wizard broke.

He spun around and frantically activated every life-saving spell he possessed, desperate to flee this hell.

But…

Hum.

The dark-golden radiance lit up once more.

This time, Jie Ming did not sweep in a fan pattern.

Instead, he delivered precise “point kills” against each fleeing target.

Puff. Puff. Puff. Puff…

Soft sounds rang out like the footsteps of the Grim Reaper, echoing across the wasteland.

Each sound marked the complete annihilation of one fifth-ring wizard.

A few seconds later.

The light faded.

Jie Ming slowly lowered his hand. The dark-golden glow at his fingertip vanished.

Thirteen fifth-ring wizards—wiped out entirely.

Not even corpses remained.

Jie Ming stood silently for a moment.

Then he let out a soft sigh.

“These people… were even weaker than I expected.”

The one-sided “battle”—if it could even be called that—replayed in his mind.

Thirteen fifth-ring wizards, with well-rounded professions and what appeared to be a perfect hunting team, had been reduced to nothing in the blink of an eye.

“Either I’ve misunderstood the fifth-ring level entirely… or these people were simply mediocre even among fifth-rings.”

He furrowed his brow slightly, feeling the latter was far more likely.

Their coordination had actually been quite good, but they clearly lacked any real combat habits for facing superior opponents. They were still fighting with the mentality of ganging up on the weak or bullying the inferior.

Many wizards suffered from this problem—most of the time they faced native creatures far below their own strength, so they simply never developed experience against truly strong foes.

Elite combat units, however, were different. To secure greater benefits, they always took on more danger than average wizards of the same rank, and thus accumulated far richer experience fighting powerful enemies.

More importantly, true elite wizards rarely operated in such large groups—the path of the wizard was inherently solitary, and only those sharing the same ideals could truly walk side by side.

But the number of such true comrades was always extremely limited.

A group like this banding together for safety looked more like people aware of their own mediocrity, compensating with numbers.

“Willing to gather so many just to hunt already shows they’re not the elite type.”

Jie Ming sighed softly.

He had voluntarily joined the outer reconnaissance precisely to temper his combat system through real battle.

After advancing to fifth-ring, much of his arsenal was newly developed. Simulation and deduction alone were far from sufficient—he needed actual combat to verify everything personally.

But if his opponents were all of this caliber…

“It seems… there’s no real value in testing myself against them.”

It would be like using a starship to bombard a primitive tribe—aside from the foregone conclusion of “winning,” there was nothing to gain.

Suddenly, he recalled the desperate roar of the monocle-wearing wizard: “…the sixth-ring wizards will arrive soon…”

Jie Ming’s eyes flickered slightly.

“A sixth-ring stationed nearby?”

That made sense. If this was a hunting zone formed by so many wizards, naturally there would be high-ring oversight.

“Then… should I fight a sixth-ring?”

The moment the thought arose, Jie Ming’s heart involuntarily quickened—not from fear, but from the instinctive excitement of facing an unknown powerful enemy.

But rationality immediately suppressed the impulse. He couldn’t help shaking his head.

“No.”

Jie Ming thought of the sixth-ring wizards he had encountered. Even setting aside Mentor Clark—an anomaly—even Senior Sister Viola, whom Mentor frequently criticized as “too weak” among sixth-rings, still left Jie Ming without any confidence of victory.

After all, there was a qualitative gap between fifth-ring and sixth-ring.

Sixth-ring wizards had begun to “solidify” their laws, moving from “borrowing” to “mastery.”

The disparity in their command of technical knowledge was like a chasm.

“With my current combat power, a direct confrontation against a sixth-ring in perfect condition… would most likely end in a very miserable death.”

Even if he relied on Return to Ruins Armor and Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light to prolong the fight, the most probable outcomes were either escaping heavily injured or mutual destruction.

Without sufficient intelligence—without knowing the opponent’s primary law, signature witchcraft, combat style, and forbidden techniques—rashly challenging one was far too costly.

Moreover, who said there was only one sixth-ring wizard in the vicinity?

The first principle of wizards was rationality.

Risking limited resources on a high-risk battle with uncertain returns?

That wasn’t bravery—it was foolishness.

“However…”

Jie Ming lowered his head and looked at the two data crystals inside his inner cave—the payment given by the two Noren Workshop wizards earlier.

“This trip wasn’t entirely fruitless.”

The core knowledge of two fifth-ring wizards represented the foundation they had honed over centuries—their very means of survival.

Such “unique” knowledge was often priceless, something military merit alone could not purchase.

“I’ll go back and analyze them thoroughly. The Multi-Layer Barrier Nesting Optimization Algorithm might allow Return to Ruins Armor to add another defensive layer; the ‘compression’ concept in the Water-Element Shaping and Energy Compression Technique could perhaps improve the energy accumulation efficiency of Trigram Fire Annihilation Divine Light…”

Thinking of this, his mood eased slightly.

He raised his head and looked out over the boundless gray-white wasteland. His hands formed seals, and his figure faded like ink dissolving into water—completely vanishing.

Great Void Step—in stealth mode.

Flying openly in a battlefield like this was no different from being a living target; hidden enemies could strike at any moment.

Roughly one minute after Jie Ming’s figure disappeared.

Above the lava basin where he had fought, space rippled faintly.

A figure in a dark-purple robe and silver mask appeared.

He hovered in midair, gray eyes sweeping across the environment below.

Magma still roiled. Fragments of witch tools lay charred. Several pools of curse residue evaporated with a foul stench. But beyond that, there was almost no further intelligence to be gained.

“Wiped out? In such a short time?”

He raised a hand and pressed lightly downward. Perception ripples spread outward.

A high-grade battlefield reconstruction witchcraft analyzed the lingering energy traces, law fragments, and information echoes.

A moment later, the brows beneath his mask furrowed tightly.

“At least eighteen fifth-ring energy signatures. From elemental decay patterns, there were two rounds of combat. The first round involved only four people; the second involved fourteen. The first fight was relatively normal, but the second… ended far too quickly.”

According to the residual elemental energy spectrum analysis, the time from the first attack to the disappearance of the last energy signature was shockingly brief.

Most of the energy remnants showed signs of “violent erasure,” indicating overwhelmingly superior destructive power on the enemy’s side.

“The energy intensity resembles sixth-ring… yet the fluctuation essence remains firmly fifth-ring in pattern.”

“A single fifth-ring instantly slaying thirteen elite peers? Does Noren Workshop actually have such a genius?”

He fell silent for a moment. Then his figure twisted and vanished once more.

“I must report this to command.”