Mage Adam

Adam studied the scene closely, roughly calculated the nodes where the four elements were entangled with each other. With the pinch of his finger, he sent a bolt of electricity towards the node. He descended in front of the four of them, and with a snap of his finger, all of their magic exploded violently, falling upon the monster without hurting the four apprentices.

"You! You\'ve been hiding around for so long... were you trying to steal our points?!" The four didn\'t know who Adam was, but their bracelets had already told them of Adam\'s position. They didn\'t expect someone to intervene.

"Be careful, he dispelled our magic. He must be powerful."

"I\'ve never seen electric magic this powerful before..."

Adam simply hovered and said apologetically, "I\'m sorry, but this..." he scratched his head, pointing towards the monster. "...this is my soul slave. My experiment got out of control and disturbed your siege on the city. I am willing to compensate in terms of points."

Their faces softened immediately upon hearing this. Of course, upon seeing Adam\'s power, they didn\'t want to offend him anyways.

"But this... monster seems full of negative energy. Are you sure it\'s your slave?"

Adam stepped forward and sprayed fire out of his hands, roasting the monster to a crisp as it shrunk back into the devil\'s unconscious, amorphous form.

Since the devil was bound to the contract, he knew that they wouldn\'t die.

Besides, the devil was a creature from the abyss, which had long been conquered by mages. Since mages decided to let creatures from the abyss stay, they must be powerful. Adam faintly feels that after his promotion, more surprises would reveal themselves from the devil.

The four apprentices stared at Adam, and Adam introduced, "This is my soul slave, a devil."

The four of them breathed a sigh of relief, "Since this is your slave, you can leave. We don\'t really care about the points."

Adam took the devil back into his mind, letting them rest.

"No, I must compensate you. I do not mind."

One of them scoffed, "72 points in total -- I don\'t think you have this amount. Forget it."

Although it was true that 72 points was a big number, it meant nothing to Adam. There will be many opportunities for Adam to earn these points.

"I have 72 points. I just don\'t know how to trade it."

The four stared at Adam, dumbfounded, "But headquarters had just told us to wipe out towns in batches today! How could you already have that many points?"

Adam looked away, but he heard an apprentice murmur, "Electricity... thunderstorms..."

The apprentice clapped his hands together and shouted, "You\'re the one who started the first battle!"

\'That\'s specific,\' Adam thought. He wasn\'t sure why he was being addressed as such.

"Anyways, as long as both parties\' consent, you can transfer your points, but..."

"...ten points is enough! We don\'t need 18 points each."

The transaction was complete, but Adam was still confused, "Why did you address me as such?"

One of them replied, "Do you want to continue venturing alone, or follow us back to headquarters?"

Adam thought for a while, thinking that it was better to acquire more information from other apprentices, "I\'ll follow."

"Then, you have to be on guard. Some apprentices back at our headquarters are very dissatisfied with you."

"Why?"

"They come from prestigious mage towers, so they had already obtained the list of apprentices participating in the trial. We\'re just following their orders to try our luck to pass the trial since they already formed a full battle plan."

"You mean..."

"Yup. They think that you acting alone destroyed their plan -- your display of magic last night put the antimages on guard."

Adam narrowed his eyes at this ridiculousness and asked, "Are they going to kill me? Surely not!"

"No," one of them reassured. "Killing one of your own deducts a lot of merit points -- once the trial is over, those with zero points can still live on, but those with a negative score will be struck down by the Tower Mage. I assume the apprentices are going to force you to submit and order you to obey them."

"And how are they going to do that?"

"Maybe isolate you... break you..."