2 a.m.
Iris's estate.
As an elf diplomat dispatched from the Holy Land, Iris of course received certain privileges.
This estate was a large house personally gifted by Holsha IX—twelve bedrooms and four halls, with wide corridors, huge rooms, and elegant furnishings.
The front courtyard was lush and immaculate, with flowers and greenery enclosed within towering walls, creating an enormous private space.
Those high walls were also embedded with detection, anti-scrying, and defensive magic—high-end work.
At this moment, Iris stood at the entrance in a mage robe, staff in hand, waiting tensely.
It had been thirty minutes since she cast Light Radiance at the west gate of Prince Abrahla's estate to draw the guards' attention.
She knew she lacked stealth and infiltration skills, and couldn't interfere with Leon.
Suppressing the urge to act alongside him, she returned to the rendezvous point immediately after completing her assigned task.
"Leon won't run into trouble, right?"
"But he's never made a mistake… he should be fine. Abrahla isn't there, and the experts were taken away. It should be safe, right?"
The longer she waited with no news, the more anxious she became.
At one point, anxiety twisted into self-blame. She'd known Leon for less than three weeks—if he got hurt because of her, what would she do?
Amid those tangled feelings, she finally saw a figure sprinting like a shadow from the distance.
It was Leon.
Iris let out a long breath, her expression instantly brightening.
Only then did she realize: the moment she saw Leon, she felt relief—even though she still hadn't seen her mother Hamla yet.
As the figure drew nearer, she saw Leon was carrying a long, slender body wrapped in a mage robe—pale-blue hair visible.
In a few swift bounds, he landed in front of Iris.
"Don't wait outside. Hide inside. My move was stealthy, but until we're truly safe, we can't be careless."
Whoosh!
Leon carried Hamla swiftly into Iris's estate.
The operation had gone smoothly. With many guards distracted, Leon used Shadow Leap to infiltrate, slipped into a lazily guarded dungeon, and brought Hamla out without stirring any extra commotion.
Iris hurried in as well, seeing Hamla in Leon's arms—limp and unconscious.
Hamla's face looked like a human woman in her early twenties. In other words, she was basically a mature version of Iris.
Her cheekbones were slightly broader than Iris's youthful beauty; faint tear tracks clung to the corners of her eyes; her eye sockets were a little sunken. She carried more mature allure and beauty—plus the fragile brokenness of unconsciousness, and the fatigue of someone trapped by something for a long time.
Her pale-blue short hair lay in messy strands. Her skin was like jade porcelain, her figure balanced and well-proportioned.
Even with eyes closed, she still had an otherworldly presence.
At first glance there were no obvious wounds—only the marks of shackles on her wrists and ankles.
But something was wrong: her aura was clearly weaker than that of a normal person.
Normally, the higher a powerhouse's tier, the stronger the body, and the deeper, longer their breathing becomes.
Hamla's breathing, however, was short and frequent, as if she had suffered some severe internal damage.
Following Iris's guidance, Leon laid Hamla on a soft bed in an empty room.
"Iris—don't you have servants to handle daily life?"
"I'm not used to being looked after. I handle everything myself."
"Then what about caring for your mother?" Leon frowned. "Looking at her… even your Light Healing might not fix this."
Leon didn't try his own water healing.
Because Hamla clearly wasn't suffering from external injuries—this was illness, and most likely a curse.
For a sixth-tier powerhouse to become this weak couldn't be explained by "injury" or "serious sickness" alone.
It also made Leon think of the corruption incident coming two months later on Easter. The two clearly had causal links.
Perhaps Hamla had been resisting a curse all along, until something triggered at Easter—or she reached her limit—and then she fell completely.
And the "wrong" Hamla Iris saw earlier was likely the curse severely interfering with her state.
Beginner water healing wouldn't help.
Light Healing was powerful, but it focused on awakening life potential and strengthening vitality.
Beginner Light Healing likely couldn't cleanse a curse that even a sixth-tier couldn't suppress.
"Let's try and see."
Iris raised her staff. Mana gathered. She began chanting.
White light fell onto Hamla.
Hamla's breathing grew even shorter, as if her lungs had been pierced. Her face twisted in struggle and pain, as if enduring an indescribable torment—yet she still couldn't wake.
Leon hurriedly pulled Iris back.
"Looks like it really is a curse—and a curse type that reacts to healing."
"So we can't cast healing casually anymore?" Iris stared at Hamla's suffering face, anxiety and guilt surging. "What do we do now?"
"From how your mother looks, she can hold on for a while, but probably no more than two months." Leon raised two fingers. "Iris, we have two options."
"First: you learn intermediate Light Healing and Light Purification as soon as possible. Together, they should work. Second: find someone with curse-removal skills. As for the second option, the person who most likely can…"
"Brellita?"
Iris finished the sentence, naming the person her subconscious treated like a natural enemy.
Leon nodded. "So you thought of it too."
Brellita, as a Holy Supplicant, could pray for divine power—she absolutely could solve this curse.
Iris took a deep breath and said slowly:
"I'll push to advance as soon as possible and learn intermediate Light Healing and Purification… as for Brellita, I'll—"
Leon took Iris's hand.
"Iris, don't rush to her. We still don't know why Hamla was imprisoned by Prince Abrahla. If we don't know the cause, we can't casually involve outsiders. If we ask help from someone who turns out to be an enemy, you could harm your mother."
"Then…"
"We'll probe Brellita later when we have a chance," Leon said. "She told me there's training in a week."
Leon explained the Paladin Selection training plan.
It was a perfect opportunity to bring Iris along—and Leon still needed advancement items for Phantom Walker and Elemental Mage. And experience had proven that dungeon adventures made affection rise easily; he should press the advantage and push Iris's affection to max quickly.
He also couldn't yet confirm whether Brellita was connected to Hamla's situation. This was all pre-main-plot territory, and Leon's information wasn't complete.
[Side Quest "Fallen Dark Elf" progress +20%. Current progress: 35%]
The quest progress rose, but Iris's affection didn't.
Before, a rescue-your-mother event would've boosted affection by several points.
So it seemed he'd need more intimate "events" with Iris soon.
…
A while later, Leon left the room, leaving Iris alone with Hamla.
The groundwork and layout were set. Now his priority was strengthening himself.
Having just advanced and class-changed into a second-tier Elemental Mage, he was in a high-growth period.
He entered the empty room next door and closed the door.
He didn't plan to leave tonight—he would meditate here all night.
Meditation could partially replace sleep, giving him far more time to train spell imagery.
He took out the Kraken brain core and the Ice-Slow Horn, holding one in each hand, and began meditating.
If not for Hamla's emergency, he would've started experimenting the moment he bought the Kraken brain core.
Splash…
Perhaps due to the Kraken brain core, he entered meditation extremely quickly.
After only a brief adjustment of breath, his consciousness sank like diving into deep sea. He even vaguely heard an eerie sound like surging water.
This time, deep in his mind, he clearly saw the spell images he had mastered:
vivid, almost real fireballs, firebolts, gales, and more.
The chantless, high-frequency spell images floated sharply around his awareness—his four elements, plus the three shadow spells he'd trained for Phantom Walker.
As for the spell images he only vaguely understood—those he had tried but could only cast with chanting—they were blurred, only outlines, drifting at the far edge of his deep consciousness like translucent jellyfish.
Under the Kraken brain core's influence, he found his comprehension of ice spell imagery was stronger than usual.
So buying it had been the right call.
Rather than turning it into a potion, using it to assist meditation was better.
He began trying to resonate with the spell imagery hidden inside the Ice-Slow Horn, using its complex resonance patterns to search for that unique "Ice Deceleration" imagery.
…Huh?
He found it this quickly?
~~~
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