When A Mage Revolts

In the end, Benjamin gave up that thought.

At that very moment, escaping from the Kingdom of Helius was no longer their priority. The secrets of Skyfall, the spirits hidden in the abyss... Those were worlds that had not been explored by the people in the past. Moreover, as compared to an unknown shortcut, a detour would certainly be much safer.

As he maneuvered the ice ball and flew about the bottom of the abyss for around half an hour, he saw countless rifts and spirits along the way. Occasionally, some creatures were thrown out from the rifts and became food for the spirits nearby. They gradually become used to seeing these images.

"I... How long do we have to stay in this place? Can’t we just fly out?"

Dick calmed down eventually. However, as he watched those weird souls flying around, especially the images of preys hallucinating and being sucked into a mummy, he still felt afraid instinctively.

"We’ve just discovered a new place, it will be such a waste if we leave just like that," Benjamin shrugged and answered.

With such a huge habitat for the spirits, according to usual analysis, there would be some kind of creature around here that could be the boss. He wanted to see if there was something like a "Lord of All Spirits" or something.

For the research of the undead creatures, that would be an important information.

Yes, they had embarked on yet another new research.

The mage world had zero knowledge in the research of the undead; they were also unaware of something similar to undead magic. Benjamin thought that it could be due to the limited exploration by humans.

Now that he had discovered a habitat for a big group of undead creatures, it meant that he found a stable source of research materials. With his existing magical skills, Benjamin might not be able to handle those souls. however, in the future... the samples of those spirits would certainly derive a series of brand new systems.

Magic, psychic powers, runes, magical instruments... Honestly, how much more potential was there in the world that had not been developed?

There must be a lot more hidden secrets in the abyss as well,

Nonetheless, after searching for a long time, Benjamin did not discover any new undead creatures. The spirits were the only "creatures" there. They had no self-consciousness, they seemed to have no specific emotion or purpose, and they would just drift about the place endlessly, dragging other animals into hallucination through their sounds and relied on their instincts to consume food.

Due to that, it seemed like there was no ringleader among them as well.

After some thoughts, Benjamin finally decided to leave.

The realm of the unknown was too huge that he could not explore everything alone. He would definitely need help from professional explorers to carry on any plans. Furthermore, since the mountains had become an abyss, what, then, happened to the world on the side of the abyss?

That was a mainland that was split up sideways!

He had to go take a look or two.

Thus, he could only abandon the exploration in the abyss and prepare to leave. Before they left, he decided to bring something out of that place.

"Capturing a spirit? You’re thinking too much," After listening to Benjamin’s thoughts, the System was speechless, "Their bodies are mostly made up of spiritual energy, do you have tools that can trap a soul?"

"Of course not."

"Then how do you plan to capture it?"

Benjamin touched his chin and said with some considerations, "As for this... their intelligence is quite low, so I think I’ll definitely have an idea."

"For example?"

"For example... a bait."

With that, Benjamin started flying upwards and flew out of the abyss in no time. Without the influence of hallucination, the other side of the abyss became crystal clear. It was a vast and boundless wilderness, the further side of that was still unknown. However, Benjamin did not feel an urge to go there yet.

He returned to the territory of the Kingdom of Helius instead.

"What are you trying to do?"

Although they left the abyss, when Dick watched as Benjamin flew into a forest and started hunting for all kinds of birds crazily, he felt nothing but confusion again.

"If you want to raise a pet, you’d have to first prepare their food," Benjamin threw all the frozen birds into a sack, then turned around and said, "I plan to make some rations for the spirits."

Dick’s eyeballs almost fell out: "You... You plan to raise those ghostly things?"

"Not really raising them, just capturing one for research purposes," Benjamin shrugged and said, "Don’t worry, I don’t have a weird hobby like raising a spirit."

"..."

Dick was speechless for a while, he was probably going to faint from the shock.

In the unmanned forest, there were quite a number of birds. In just a blink of an eye, Benjamin managed to capture at least few hundreds of birds. Once in a while, he would use Elemental Order - Heal to carefully preserve the lives of those birds. All the birds were kept in a gigantic ice ball as he flew them back to the abyss.

On their way back to the abyss, the System could not help but complained, "You’re really inhumane."

Benjamin said with a straight face, "Birds live and die. Among them, most of them will probably die an insignificant death in the forest in the end, other will die in the mouths of some beasts. However, because of me, they will be sacrificing for science. I’m the one who saved them from their unexamined and mediocre lives, they should be honored."

"..."

Instantly, the System became speechless for a long time. Benjamin nodded with a poker face, acting as if it was subdued by his great theory and rendered speechless from feeling touched.

After more than ten minutes, two ice balls, one large and one small, carried Benjamin, Dick and the few hundred birds back to the bottom of the abyss.

"How do you plan to do it?" The System regained its energy then and sneered, "As soon as you release those birds from the ice ball, all the spirits will be gushing up. Are you going to bring hundreds of spirits to attack Havenwright?"

Benjamin shook his head.

"Just watch and see."

First, he controlled the ice ball that carried the birds and separated a small ice ball which carried one bird in it. Then, he manipulated the small ice ball towards the outside of the spirit’s habitat. Suddenly, he removed the magic.

At that instant, the small ice ball disappeared and the bird started hallucinating as more than ten spirits nearby drifted over as well.

Therefore, Benjamin immediately summoned a water vapor holding the bird to fly upwards to avoid being captured by the spirits as much as possible. As they faced a moving prey, those spirits suddenly froze on the spot instead, as if they had not seen anything that could fly even after hallucination.

Upon seeing that, Benjamin raised his brows.

Those spirits seemed to be more intelligent than he thought they would be.

Nonetheless, their thinking ability was nothing more than that. After the bird started hallucinating, formlessly, an energy wave emitted out of the bodies of the spirits and surrounded itself around the bird before bouncing off from its body again, like how bats echolocate. The energy waves that kept going back and forth stimulated the instincts of those spirits, allowing them to continue pouncing towards the bird after a short pause.

Their speed also increased as time elapsed.

Benjamin was shocked too. He did not think that spirits that normally drifted leisurely could potentially be faster than a normal mage when they hunt for food.

Watching as the bird was close to being wrapped up by those spirits, Benjamin immediately performed magic to create another soundproof ice ball, dragging the bird out from its hallucination.

Accompanied by the bird opening its eyes and flapping its wings, outside of the ice ball were spirits that suddenly stopped after accelerating halfway. They drifted around the bird, but could not find anything at all.

Although spirits had no emotions, Benjamin felt that they must be really stunned there and then.