Exploring Technology in a Wizard World
Chapter 500 - 499 Florence

Chapter 500: Chapter 499 Florence

Darkness surged toward Richard. Along the way, it rapidly morphed into skulls with moving jaws, ready to tear into him upon contact.

Richard, being cautious after seeing this, prepared to dodge, but just as the thought occurred to him, he felt something move in his arms.

"Hmm? Could this be...?"

Just as Richard had this thought, a bright light burst through the seams of his clothes and slammed into the skulls.

In an instant, like pouring a bucket of boiling water onto a snowman, all the skulls exploded with a "poof" and dissipated rapidly, vanishing without a trace in the blink of an eye.

"You... What is this!" The old man stared with eyes wide in disbelief, "You... boy, how did you do that?"

Richard didn’t speak. He slowly reached into his arms and took out the White Feather, watching its barbs tremble continuously.

"What is that?" The old man wondered.

"You guess." Richard spoke out but was not in the mood to explain the principles to an enemy, besides, he himself wasn’t entirely clear yet.

The old man was furious, "Cursed brat, go to hell! Don’t think I only have one way of attacking. Now, I’m going to turn you into a sieve!"

With that, the old man waved his hand again. This time, instead of a surge of darkness, the air rippled, and the moisture in the air rapidly formed into icicles the size of fingertips, shooting toward Richard and Pandora like bullets.

Before this physical attack, the White Feather didn’t shoot out any light, and Richard made no defensive moves. The Non-Newtonian Fluid beneath his clothing hardened, turning the fabric harder than plate armor, causing the icicles that hit to shatter quickly.

As for the icicles aimed at Pandora... She didn’t even blink as she easily blocked them with her skin, casually grabbing an icicle and chewing it with a "crunch, crunch," frowning as she said, "Still not sweet."

The old man: "..."

A second of dead silence fell within the thatched cottage.

In the silence, the old man’s entire face contorted, turning as black as the bottom of a pot, his body trembling as he glared at Richard and Pandora and spoke out, "You... What on earth are you people?"

"Let me return the question to you—what on earth are you?" Richard asked, "Judging by your appearance, your strength seems to lie somewhere between that of a Third-level Wizard Apprentice and an Official Wizard, which is not something a village chief should possess.

What exactly is your identity, and what is the deal with the castle? Where have all the people who once lived in the castle gone? Tell me the truth about these questions, and I can let you go."

"Hehehehe!" The old man let out a ghastly laugh upon hearing this, "Boy, you want me to reveal information? You’re dreaming. I’d rather die than give you anything."

"But there are many things in this world far worse than death," Richard said.

"Oh? You want to torture me?" The old man said with scorn, before seriously enunciating every word, "You can wait for your next life!"

As he finished, the old man’s body inflated like a balloon, swelling rapidly with extremely unstable energy waves emanating from within, ready to explode at any moment.

Richard’s expression changed slightly, and he quickly pulled Pandora behind him, retreating toward the door.

Beneath his clothes, two types of Non-Newtonian Fluids rapidly flowed out, forming in front of him a "lattice-style, self-reactive, multi-layer composite Non-Newtonian Fluid form shield," which was also known as the "Fourth Form Shield."

The next moment, as Richard withdrew outside the thatched hut with Pandora, there was a "boom," and the entire hut exploded, throwing up a massive fireball. The high-temperature flames and the powerful blast wave slammed into the shield fiercely.

The destructive force first smashed into the air barrier, then triggered the magic salt on the shield’s surface, and finally was blocked by the main body of the shield.

After a moment, Richard lowered the shield and looked at the leveled thatched cottage in front of him, shaking his head involuntarily. He was now one hundred percent certain that the old man was dead.

The fact that the other party would rather die than reveal crucial information gave him quite a headache—just like that, the lead they had was gone, and he didn’t really know where to go next.

As he was thinking this, Richard suddenly saw something and swiftly turned his head to the side.

He saw the rest of the villagers, as if having heard the commotion from the thatched cottage, walking over in groups of two or three. Each one of them did not seem like mere onlookers. Their faces showed both shock and joy as they slowly approached, then suddenly kneeled on the ground and began to kowtow.

"Bang, bang, bang! Bang, bang, bang!"

This!

Only after the group had kowtowed more than a dozen times did Richard react. He hastily stopped their abnormal behaviour. He pulled up a man in his sixties, helped an old woman in her seventies to her feet, and called out to the many young people, asking, "What are you all doing?"

The many villagers looked at each other, and a middle-aged man in his forties was pushed out from the crowd.

The middle-aged man who was pushed out took a deep breath, looked at Richard, and said, "This... revered sir, it must have been you who helped us, who killed the demon in the house, right? Right now, we are... thanking you."

"Demon? Thanking?" Richard listened to this, his eyebrows moved, and he asked, "Who are you?"

"I am the village chief of Alubak Village, well, the former village chief. After the demon came here, I became the former village chief. Both I and the people of the village were enslaved by him," the middle-aged man said with a hateful expression. "If it had not been for you killing him, we wouldn’t know how long we would have been enslaved."

"What exactly happened?" Richard asked.

The middle-aged man began to recount, and before long, Richard got a completely different truth from what he had heard from the hunched old man.

According to the middle-aged man, the old man had come here around three years ago and took over the castle immediately upon his arrival. Then, he made the villagers prepare various things from time to time, small items such as food and candles to larger things like timber and stone, and frequently ordered the villagers to do hard labor.

Naturally, the people in the village would not comply at first, but after the old man killed two of the strongest young men with magic, no one dared to resist. They obediently followed his orders and endured day by day, until today.

After listening, Richard pondered for a moment and then asked, "Then, do you know what’s going on in the castle? Like... who lives in the castle?"

"I’m not sure about that," the middle-aged man shook his head. "I just know that it’s not only that demon living there; there are other people because the demon would occasionally demand things that clearly would be used by a woman.

Moreover... the castle often held banquets, and every time they were held, we had to prepare a large amount of stuff. Those were the hardest times for us."

"I see..." Richard asked again, "Now that the castle is empty, are you aware of that? And where did the other people in the castle go?"

"This..." The middle-aged man hesitated for a moment before saying, "Indeed, there have been people in our village who saw those from the castle leaving by carriage. It should have been a little over a month ago, and they saw the carriages heading west."

"West?" Richard asked, "What’s out west? Or rather, what famous cities are there to the west?"

The middle-aged man’s eyes widened as he looked at Richard with a slight hint of surprise and said, "Revered sir, do you not know that not too far to the west lies the largest, grandest city in the world?"

"The largest city in the world? Which one?"

"Florence!"

...