Lillian, who had collapsed on the ground, gasped for breath violently a few times before slowly standing up. Only then did she have the energy to swiftly shift her gaze to Colin and his companion not far away.
And the battle over there...or rather, the silent battle was almost at its end.
"Parde...be careful..."
Lites lay on the ground, on the brink of death, his lips quivering as he struggled to mutter, wanting to tell Parde that the Wizard in front of him was not the First Rank Junior he thought he was—based on the attacks alone, he had even touched the threshold of the First Rank Peak!
He wanted to call for help, hoping that Parde would come to support him.
This time, unlike before, his voice was not blocked, but clearly transmitted out... In order to conserve Magic Power, Colin had already removed the Silent spell after Summoning the Fire Element.
This time, it was also his last... No, his penultimate cry for help.
Bang!
An orange-yellow flame was lightly tossed from Colin's hands, landing precisely on Lites's body, suddenly swelling and expanding, engulfing his entire body within.
"Ah...aaaahhh!"
The intense burning pain made Lites scream in agony, which gradually weakened until it finally disappeared.
"Lillian senior, are you okay?" Colin breathed a sigh of relief, quietly put away the Foolishness Scepter, and then turned to look at Lillian.
"Just some minor injuries," Lillian shook her head, "But you really are a dark horse, Colin."
Colin merely tugged at the corner of his lips, feigning an appearance of excessive Magic Power consumption, and did not engage in conversation.
Having said her piece, Lillian did not speak further. Previously in the Elf Garden, she had a faint sense of Colin's strength, but she did not expect that Colin's true strength would far exceed her imagination!
She withdrew her gaze, turned around and took out a withered brown branch, as long as a forearm, from Parde's severed arm and handed it to Colin.
"Lillian senior..."
"The main credit for this battle lies with you, Colin," Lillian interjected, pushing the brown branch into his hands, "This piece of loot is rightfully yours."
She glanced over at Parde's corpse, her tone calm yet serious as she continued, "Not only that, you can also take at least sixty percent of the remaining loot from these two."
"Having this branch is already a great advantage, there's no need for the rest of the loot…" Colin quickly interjected.
"Let's see what else they have on them before discussing," Lillian said with a smile, softly.
"...Okay," Colin paused, then nodded.
The two bent down together to search Parde's body.
"Fortunately, this Tree Elf hybrid hadn't begun reinforcing the foundation of his body; otherwise, we might not have been able to kill him so easily," Lillian said while searching, thankful.
'The foundation of the body...' Colin paused in his movements, having heard this term for the second time.
Seeming to notice Colin's confusion, Lillian looked up and took the initiative to explain:
"The so-called reinforcement of the body's foundation actually refers to the transformation of the body. It is specifically for the body reinforcement required to advance to the Second Rank Wizard, usually starting at the First Rank Intermediate, or Advanced...
The earlier the reinforcement of the body's foundation begins, the better, with some Wizards coming from better circumstances even starting at the First Rank Junior level!"
Pausing, she continued with a heavy tone, word by word, "The strength of the body's foundation is extremely important and can even influence the strength of the second Talent acquired after advancing to the Second Rank Wizard to a certain extent!"
"Moreover, after advancing to the Second Rank, in this world filled with Tainted babbling, the balance between body and Spirit becomes particularly important..."
'Balance between body and Spirit, huh...' Colin took note internally.
By this time, Lillian had also finished searching, and slowly stood up, examining the only thing she had found—a Storage Ring. She shook her head and said:
"This Storage Ring is just the most common kind, with not much space... It seems he really was just a Wandering Wizard, and that branch must have been a fortuitous encounter."
Colin nodded slightly, not minding it, and continued to search the body of Lites with Lillian.
As for the Storage Ring, of course, he would wait until all the loot was gathered before taking the time to unlock it.
"Lillian senior, what exactly is the foundation of the body... How is it reinforced?" halfway through, Colin curiously spoke, wanting to continue the previous topic.
"Considering your current progress in training, there's still a considerable amount of time before you reach the First Rank Intermediate level, so there's no need to know so early…" Lillian said instinctively but seemed to think of something, paused, and then added:
"However, with your Talent, knowing some of the knowledge related to advancing to the Second Rank Wizard in advance should be no harm."
Colin nodded.
However, in truth, with the aid of the Golden Paper, advancing to the First Rank Intermediate Wizard was no longer a distant task for him... The progress on the Golden Paper was already close to halfway.
"As I said before, reinforcing the body's foundation is actually about strengthening the body. The so-called foundation of the body is more about the basis for carrying the Soul and Talent."
At this moment, they had arrived next to the body of Lites. Lillian continued to organize her words while searching the body, explaining to Colin:
"The criteria for determining the strength of the body's foundation is very complex. If you have undergone transformations like bloodline grafting, then the strength of the body's foundation is linked to the intensity of Life Force..."
"If you have undergone a basic Elementalization Transformation, then the strength of the body's foundation represents the activity of your Element.
Likewise, Mechanical Transformation operates under the same principle, it is just more specialized, mainly depending on the quality of the metal used..."
"However, unless you have obtained especially high-quality transformation metals, it's usually not advisable to follow the path of Mechanical Transformation... The flesh is the best vessel for our own Spirit, and Elemental Transformation is the same; in general, it's also not as good as common Bloodline Transformation."
"So you can see that the second rank wizards we usually see in daily life, most of them undergo bloodline transformations like body augmentations, and seldom element transformations, even rarer mechanical transformations..."
"And for other types of modifications, they basically belong to a niche, along with paths that don't strengthen the physique but exclusively cultivate the spirit, have long since faded from the world as we know it. Only some naturally spiritual beings, like ghosts, would do so."
When Lillian finished, she slowly stood up. Lites's body had also been searched—just like Parde, he too only had an ordinary storage ring.
"Alright, now let's see what exactly is inside these two storage rings of theirs."
She handed over one of the storage rings that belonged to Parde to Colin and sighed a turbid breath.
Whether they could escape the Elf Kingdom smoothly now hinged upon whether they could find a possible "pass" within these two storage rings!
Afterward, the two quickly dealt with the traces of the bodies and found a safe place, then they began to decrypt the two storage rings.
As for the so-called treasure vault gate that Lites had constructed, after the battle ended, those faint golden lights gradually faded, and at some point, patches of dark red had crept up on it. The traps set up on it were probably also decayed and defunct, rendering it indistinguishable from an ordinary stone wall.
Perhaps this was also the reason Parde and his partner had no longer continued to lie in ambush... that false door to the treasure vault was about to fail.
Time drifted on, with Colin focusing on cracking the storage ring to the extent that he didn't even have time to examine a strange withered branch that originally belonged to Parde.
Just like that, in the once magnificent palace, there was no sound for an untold period until Lillian let out a turbid sigh and opened her eyes.
Then she waved her hand.
Whoosh, roughly one square meter of the ground in front became sparsely covered with a pile of oddly shaped items.
A little while later, Colin too successfully cracked open the storage ring in his hands.
"Lillian, senior... take a look at this." He opened his eyes but instead of removing everything like Lillian, he took out a thick notebook with a black cover.
"**Bloodline Extraction and Grafting?"
The hard cover's script was somewhat blurred, Lillian took it and frowned, trying to make out the letters, but the first few words remained hard to decipher.
After briefly flipping through it, Lillian couldn't help but raise her eyebrow.
"So that Tree Elf hybrid wasn't a real Tree Elf hybrid?"
The front part of the notebook was actually normal wizardry knowledge, describing how to extract bloodline from a Demon Beast known as the Frost Spike Mouse for one's own modification and grafting.
But the latter half, which was presumably written by Parde himself, recorded some of his research practices.
And finally, it detailed how he successfully extracted the Tree Elf bloodline from a Tree Elf hybrid and grafted it onto himself.
"No wonder his Tree Elf bloodline concentration was so low," Lillian said, pulling a face. She closed the notebook and handed it back to Colin, and continued, "Next, we need to look for a possible 'pass' in their storage rings."
Colin nodded, casually setting the notebook aside, but he felt somewhat emotional about the challenging lives of mixed blood families.
That tree elf hybrid whose bloodline was extracted was a youth from a family that had been destroyed by enemies, also Parde's long-time friend... It's just that in the end, the tree elf hybrid's own talent attracted his friend's covetousness.
Perhaps that dry branch too was obtained in such a manner from a Tree Elf.
Colin gathered his thoughts and then removed all the items from Parde's storage ring.
The number of items in Parde's storage ring was about the same as those in Lites's, and they appeared to be of similar quality, with nothing particularly noteworthy, not even the Magic Stones amounted to more than thirty to fifty thousand, which really wasn't much considering Parde's status as a First Rank Advanced Wizard.
The two examined the scattered items on the ground, returning each to the storage ring after inspection.
As time went on, with the number of items on the ground decreasing, the expressions on Colin's face grew heavier.
"Lillian, senior... take a look at this."
Fortunately, it wasn't long before Colin spoke up gravely, picking up something from the chaotic pile.
It was a metallic green leaf with clear pale golden veins, emitting a faint luminous glow.
Most crucially, the fluctuations from this green leaf were very similar to those from the pass bracelet on Lillian's wrist!
However... whether Colin used spirit probing or infused it with Magic Power, the green leaf showed no response whatsoever.
Lillian looked it over carefully, took it, felt it again for a moment.
After a moment, she opened her eyes, smiling with affirmation, "This is indeed an exit pass, I can feel it guiding us vaguely to a location!"
But quickly, Lillian's brow furrowed again, her tone dropping a bit as she said, "However, this green leaf, like my bracelet, seems to require the user to possess Elf Bloodline."
Colin's heart sank, about to ask if the green leaf was only for individual passage or could carry another person along when out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of an item among Lites's belongings—
It was a delicately made wooden hammer, with pale golden tree patterns that were mysterious and profound, exquisitely shaped, inheriting the meticulous style of the Elf Clan.
He instinctively picked it up, and after feeling it for a moment, he exclaimed delightedly:
"Lillian, senior, this is also a pass to the outside world!"
Hearing this, Lillian's heart eased, and she exchanged a look with Colin and smiled, as if by mutual agreement.
Now that they had the passes, the abandoned Elf Kingdom was no longer a dead end to them; having a way out gave them leverage.