Chapter 69

Chapter 69

"Cut my miracle, cut my miracle..."

Igor paced back and forth in the room, unconsciously biting his nails, and couldn't help asking: "Are you sure you can use the Miracle Slash without arcane energy output?"

"I'm not sure," Ashe said calmly. "And I definitely can't do it now. I'm still missing a key spirit to form the Miracle Slash."

"Then how did you—"

"I told you, I have secret ways of obtaining spirits. I don't know when I'll find that key spirit, but it's just a matter of time."

Igor opened his mouth but then closed it again.

Since Ashe didn't elaborate, Igor naturally couldn't guess what that so-called "secret channel" was. But he didn't doubt the authenticity of this matter much.

Because of the Balance spirit.

If Ashe had the Balance spirit a few days ago, he wouldn't have been unilaterally bound by Igor's contract spirit back then.

Although it was also possible that Ashe was just pretending to be weak to catch Igor off guard, Igor was the one who provoked him first that time. How could Ashe have set a trap targeting Igor specifically?

Compared to believing in this conspiracy theory that only existed in probability, Igor was more willing to believe in Ashe's potential.

It wasn't because Igor was naive, optimistic and cute, but because Ashe had already demonstrated miracle after miracle with his own hands.

In the fight with Igor, he went from a complete martial arts novice to a skilled fighter in just minutes;

In the deathmatch with Valcas, he went from not even being able to hold a sword properly to a master swordsman in minutes;

During the Blood Moon Tribunal, he was somehow immune to the searing pain of the Purgatorial Flame, even though he was the death row inmate with the deepest sins.

Plus the sudden appearance of the Balance spirit, Igor felt he had no reason to doubt Ashe, even if the "secret channel" Ashe mentioned sounded preposterous under the prison's surveillance. In this world of mages, miracles were the most common inevitability.

Moreover, Ashe Heath was the leader of the Four Pillars heretical cult...

Igor's expression was constantly changing. He gritted his teeth and stamped his feet, "Screw it!"

"But we can't escape with just the two of us. I have to recruit a few more people."

"Of course," Ashe smiled. "The reason I came to you first was because you must know the profiles of other death row inmates. After all, I'm not familiar with this place and need a cunning 'local' to help assemble the team."

"Thank you for the compliment. As a con artist, information is my weapon." Igor bowed elegantly.

"So who should we look for?"

Perhaps it was a young girl's longing for adventure, or perhaps the hints of arranged marriage from her parents' recent visit home, or simply not wanting to chicken out in front of the person she hated most. In the end, Iris agreed to the tea party invitation.

As Iris's follower, Adele didn't think much before agreeing to come along too.

However, after getting in the car, Iris's raised guard gradually lowered. Not only because many students saw them get into Felix's silver car, but also because the car was heading towards Cailleach's villa district. There were surveillance Eyes all along the way, and it was impossible for anyone to commit crimes in the core area of Cailleach.

The silver car drove into a luxurious villa. Adele looked around and asked, "Where are the servants?"

"There are no servants," Felix said lightly. "Only when I'm away will housekeeping staff be hired to maintain the villa. Otherwise, no one else is here."

Adele foolishly asked again: "No servants? Then how do we have the tea party? Are we going to brew tea and make snacks ourselves?"

Iris showed an awkward expression and pulled her little follower aside to explain.

Felix walked ahead, leading them into the villa's great hall, then under everyone's contemptuous gaze, summoned a scantily clad single-winged beauty spirit.

As if triggering some mechanism, the fireplace suddenly opened, revealing a spiraling underground passage leading down.

Sonya complained: "Do you have to make it so creepy and scary? Do you usually have other hobbies too, like kidnapping girls, murdering them, dissecting corpses, skinning them?"

"Secrets are always associated with fear, darkness, and murder — not because secrets are inherently so, but because secrets are too weak and need to posture threateningly to protect themselves," Felix said impatiently. "Or do you want me to change the location to the school cafeteria at midnight?"

Sonya muttered something, then followed Felix into the spiral passage, with Ingritt close behind, wooden sword taken out of her sword bag. Iris and Adele looked at each other, hugged each other tightly, and nervously followed at the end.

Iris was starting to regret this a little.

Not that she was afraid of being harmed, she even believed she would benefit. But every gift came with a price — in exchange, she sensed that she would be tied to Sonya and Felix, becoming a community of shared interests and stakes.

She suddenly recalled what her merchant father once told her:

"Interests are the most stable relationships, secrets are the strongest constraints, accomplices are the most genuine friends."

After walking for about thirty seconds, they arrived at an underground training room.

Shockingly, instead of civilian gas lamps, the lighting system here was the artifact 'Daystar', illuminating the vast underground hall as bright as daylight. To think that even the training halls at Swordflower College only used one 'Daystar' for night lighting — the extravagance was evident from such details.

Upon arrival, Felix seemed to have shed burdens and masks. He uncorked a bottle of wine from the corner fridge and blew into it directly, his unhappy face saying: "I've fulfilled my promise and satisfied your request. Handle the rest yourself."

Ingritt stood at the stair entrance, holding back the two behind her, and asked: "Sonya, you can explain now, right?"

"No problem," Sonya smiled. "To put it simply —"

"Felix has a treasure and wants to split it fifty-fifty with me. But encountering something so good, how could I forget my dear roommates? So I brought you here to share this treasure!"