Chapter 146: Black Wizard

"When do you plan to prepare the reincarnation ritual for me?" Mavis, having thoroughly satisfied her eyes, began to press him about her reincarnation ritual.

"Can your current soul strength support the normal progression of a reincarnation ritual?" Shus glanced at Mavis. He could sense that her soul body was already extremely fragile. Although he didn't know why it was much better than before, at this level, a normal reincarnation ritual was simply out of the question.

"Heeheehee, I was just reminding you! If you let me have a body sooner, wouldn't I be able to help you?" Knowing that Shus meant well, Mavis floated up to him, writing something on a piece of paper.

"By the way, can this reincarnation ritual actually revive you?" Shus was a bit uncertain about the ritual's efficacy; he had only heard of it and had never operated one in practice.

"Of course it can! Don't worry, I've studied it thoroughly!" Mavis had done nothing all these years except master the principles and procedures of this reincarnation ritual.

"Alright, take this!" Mavis handed the paper across the table right in front of Shus.

"The Wail of the Undead—what is this?" Shus picked up the paper and examined the contents written upon it.

"You could consider it a combination of a ritual and a potion. What it produces can restore soul energy. Of course, the items inside your dimensional storage could also help me recover, as long as you're willing to part with them!" As she spoke, Mavis's gaze fixed intently on Shus's chest.

"Hah! Don't even think about it!" Shus flatly rejected her. Although he hadn't carefully inspected the contents of his spatial storage yet, anything collected by a Level 3 wizard could hardly be simple.

"Tsk, I knew it! Such a miser." Mavis knew Shus wouldn't be willing, which was why she gave him this formula for the Wail of the Undead to repair her soul instead.

"Can't this setting—allowing souls to freely enter and exit the space within the Guiding Guard—be changed?" Shus stroked the cold surface of the Guiding Guard and asked Mavis. A spatial magical artifact was extremely precious, but allowing a soul body to move in and out freely posed a major problem.

"What, what? Are you already starting to be on guard against me?" Hearing this, Mavis grew displeased. Wasn't he doing this precisely to guard against her?

"No, I just feel it's inconvenient!" Shus said, his face neither red nor pale.

"Tsk, hypocrite! This space has already merged with your soul origin, though not completely yet. After a little while, I won't even be able to get in!" Mavis said petulantly, floating aside and turning her back to him.

"That's good then!" Hearing Mavis say this, Shus felt reassured. After all, letting a soul body come and go entirely at will was somewhat inconvenient.

"Let's set off tonight. A small number of undead certainly won't be enough, so we'll have to venture outside the Holy Circle City for a few days!" Shus decided to complete Mavis's reincarnation ritual first; as for the task concerning the Silver Rose, there was no immediate rush.

The potion known as the Wail of the Undead did not incorporate any ordinary materials; it relied entirely on undead gathered through ritual refinement. Therefore, the required quantity would certainly not be small. Since Holy Circle City was a gathering place for White Wizards, collecting undead here would undoubtedly be courting death. They had no choice but to venture outside the city to gather them.

"Really?" Mavis turned around in pleasant surprise. As the person most directly concerned, she naturally cared deeply about her own reincarnation ritual.

"Mhm!" After a brief rest, Shus went to a restaurant to dine. Inside the Guiding Guard, Mavis could only watch longingly from the side; as a soul body, she had almost forgotten the taste of food.

Night fell swiftly. Once properly dressed and equipped, Shus prepared to leave Holy Circle City once more to hunt down undead for brewing the Wail of the Undead.

The night in Holy Circle City was bustling, yet the streets were quite sparse. Shus wrapped himself in a wide white cloak, rented a horse, and rode out of the city.

Under the illumination of the pale red moonlight, two figures continuously wove through the dense mountain forests.

"There aren't many undead around here!" In a remote mountain forest, Shus held a crystal ball the size of a human head, searching everywhere for undead.

The crystal ball was specially purchased by Shus to store undead; a single crystal ball could hold five hundred undead entities, and he had specifically bought a few spares before setting out.

"Let's head somewhere else; there are none left nearby!" Mavis floated leisurely over to Shus's side and said.

Shus and Mavis had been out of the city for two days, and the number of undead they had managed to collect in all this time was barely over a hundred—not a very optimistic yield.

"To support the completion of the ritual, we need at least eight hundred undead. If you ask me, we should travel a bit further from Holy Circle City; there might be more out there. After all, this is a gathering place for White Wizards, so it's normal for undead to be scarce here," Mavis suggested. Earlier, she had heard Shus explain the division between Black and White Wizards in the Lost Domain.

After listening to his description, Mavis had summed it up with just two words: "Hypocritical." In her view, White Wizards were nothing more than a bunch of hypocrites.

"Indeed!" Shus had been planning the same thing. This place wasn't very far from Holy Circle City; hopefully, the situation would improve elsewhere.

Shus remounted his horse and galloped at full speed for a whole day until he finally discovered a promising location.

"There are definitely plenty of undead here! I can feel it!" Mavis cried out in pleasant surprise.

"Quite likely!" Shus had arrived at a fractured valley, where thick particles of negative energy danced through the air. Judging by this, a considerable concentration of undead had indeed gathered within this rift.

"We'll know for sure by nightfall!" Looking at the setting sun, Shus found a relatively clean spot to sit down, retrieved dry rations and water from the Guiding Guard, and began to eat slowly.

As night fell, the fractured valley began to stir with activity. Countless bizarre sounds echoed through the ravine, chilling to the ear.

Yet Shus knew that these undead were merely putting on a facade; aside from their capacity to bewilder, their other abilities were hardly worth mentioning.

Shus and Mavis materialized directly at the very center of the fractured valley. Mavis hovered with a crystal ball floating before her, ready at any moment to harvest these undead.

"Kill!" Seeing Shus appear, the grievances within the undead seemed to find an outlet, and hordes of them lunged frantically toward him.

"I've been waiting for you to come!" Watching the swarm of converging undead, Shus brought the crystal ball to his chest and channeled his mental energy into it.

The crystal ball began to emit a powerful suction force, pulling every single undead that approached Shus directly inside. Trapped within the crowded crystal ball, they struggled violently, beating against its surface in a futile attempt to escape.