At first, what Roland sensed in this town was simplicity.
But now, he felt that something wasn't right.
People often came to that sealed area to dig things up, and from time to time, they could dig up something.
Like pottery.
Like copper coins and other valuable items.
That wasn't normal.
In Roland's mental probe, there were indeed these things in the sealed area. But to be fair, the sealed area seemed to have been excavated decades ago, and it was reasonable to say that the things inside had been excavated long ago. Just like a tomb, no matter how large it was, after being dug upside down for thirty years, there would be nothing left of it.
But … this place still had things.
Moreover, in the sealed area, some of the holes looked relatively new!
It seemed that someone had been "maintaining" this place, throwing things down from time to time?
Roland felt that this conjecture was really unreasonable.
Besides, there was an elf that ran out of here, which was even more strange.
Had the elf been locked up for so long that no one had discovered it?
More than two months.
But thinking about it, there were ways for a Mage to lock someone up and make it impossible for ordinary people to find them.
It was just that Roland really couldn't figure it out. If this place was really the place where Jabezo was sealed, then shouldn't the first thing Jabezo did after escaping be to run away?
What the hell was he trying to do by throwing things in here and capturing elves to make longevity potions?
Wasn't he afraid that Mystra, the Goddess of Magic, would come after him?
Or was he fearless?
The more Roland thought about it, the more he felt that things were a bit mysterious.
He took out the small stick he had prepared in his Backpack and stuck it into the ground again.
Indecisive Benediction!
This was the old Mage's trick.
Now he finally understood why many books said that high-level prophetic Mages with high mental resistance didn't bother to play any tricks.
They took turns using Minor and Minor Benediction.
You weren't as strong as him, and you could never beat him.
Fortunately, there were very few prophetic Mages, and until now, the Prophecy Magic Tower was only in name.
There weren't many people, and there were only a dozen prophetic Mages before the Master level.
Pitiful as hell.
But there were still no Mages who wanted to mess with them or find trouble with them.
After the small stick was stuck into the mud, Roland mobilized the mental spell.
"Make a wish, point to the direction of Mystra's nemesis, Soberso."
Half a second later, the stick suddenly broke into several pieces.
Roland grunted and spat a mouthful of bloody saliva to the side in an uncivilized manner.
He bit his tongue.
Lesser Benediction had backfired on him.
However, it could also be seen that, as Mystra said, Jabezo's strength had indeed declined greatly.
Otherwise, the side effects of Lesser Benediction wouldn't be as simple as biting one's tongue.
He was probably slightly stronger than Roland in terms of mental power.
After all, he was someone who could compete with Mystra for the Divine Spark back then, and even after being sealed for hundreds of years, it was normal for him to still have this strength.
But how was he supposed to find this person?
Was he sealed in this place before?
If that wasn't the case, then who was the one who had used Alternate Plane Traversal?
Even Roland didn't know that special spatial spell.
The more Roland thought about it, the more he felt a headache.
He guarded the sealed area for another night, but to no avail.
The next day he told his guide, Beckrum, that he would visit the surrounding towns.
As a guide, Beckrum naturally had to follow Roland.
Before leaving the yard, Roland saw the old woman happily drinking a glass of red fruit wine.
He really doted on his woman.
Roland was somewhat impressed.
Wine was actually quite expensive for ordinary people.
Beckrum didn't drink it himself, but he was quite generous to his old wife.
The two of them set off again in the handcart.
After nearly seven hours of walking along the road through the sea of pink flowers, they finally reached a nearby town.
A town much larger than the previous one, one that could almost be considered a city.
Roland arrived in the middle of town, found a hotel to stay in, and then first asked old Beckrum to help find out who was the most well-informed in the city.
He, on the other hand, went to the Guild of Mercenaries in this town.
After all, it was a large town with a population of more than a hundred thousand, and although there was no Guild of Assassins, no branch of magic, and no Magic Tower where Mages were stationed, there was the most popular and commonplace Guild of Mercenaries.
Roland went to the chairman of the guild and, after paying several gold coins, was able to read the quest records in the city.
He then asked the clerk to pick out all the quests related to the neighboring town.
This was a big project that couldn't be done without a few days.
For this, Roland paid an extra ten gold coins.
When he returned to the tavern, he found that there were two more greasy-looking men in the tavern.
Old Beckrum, on the other hand, said, "Master Mage, can I go home first? It looks like you'll be here for a while, but I'm worried about the old woman at home."
"Okay."
Roland nodded.
When Beckrum left, Roland gave each of them a silver coin and asked them about the neighboring town.
These two men weren't young either, both over forty, and they answered every question.
Of course … they didn't dare lie to Roland.
Ordinary people didn't dare lie to Mages.
Because in the folklore of all countries, Mages could detect lies.
The intelligence on these two men tended to be more gossipy.
For example, someone in this town had an affair with a woman in the neighboring town.
Or it was about some creepy ghost story.
But something one of them said caught Roland's attention.
"When I was a child, I used to hear that every year a few outsiders would disappear in the neighboring town, where it was rumored that there were vampires. But there have been no signs of this in recent years. "
After Roland heard this, he said thoughtfully, "Oh, how many years ago was that?"
"It seems that there have been similar rumors as long as I could remember."
After that, the two men talked about some nonsense rumors, and although they didn't get any more important clues, Roland still gave them another silver coin as a reward.
After that, Roland stayed here for two days.
On the third day, the Guild of Mercenaries sent someone to invite him over.
It turned out that the mission records about the neighboring towns had been selected.
Roland thanked the staff for their hard work and then turned the newly copied records page by page.
He found that the missions about the neighboring towns were mostly about finding people.
There were three or four orders every year.
Although it didn't match the number provided by the previous intelligence dealer.
The intelligence dealer said that there were at least ten people every year.
Perhaps … there were many relatives of the missing who didn't have enough money to list their names in the Guild of Mercenaries?
Furthermore, none of these missions had been completed.
Roland read them one by one, carefully checking the timetable.
Finally, he found a record from ten years ago that a male elf had disappeared in the vicinity and wanted the Guild of Mercenaries to help find him.
Of course … this mission wasn't completed either.
Roland looked at the time … June of the Starfire Year of Fareins!
The Starfire Year?
Roland's eyes lit up.
The calendar in Fareins was a ten-year cycle, and the male elf he met was also captured in the Starfire Year.
He wasn't captured for two months, but for a whole decade?
Roland thought again. The intelligence dealer said that in recent years, fewer people had disappeared from the neighboring towns.
He read the records one by one.
The records made by this guild were very detailed.
There were records for about seventy years.
Roland found that the records about the search missions in the neighboring towns that started appearing more frequently were from fifty years ago.
Ten years ago, the number of visitors gradually decreased.
It matched the clues provided by the intelligence dealer.
Roland's brain worked fast.
If these data were correct, Jabezo had already escaped from the sealed land fifty years ago.
Why was it brought forward?
Because a town had appeared near the sealed land … It should have been a village at first, and then it slowly developed into a town.
When Roland was looking for clues in the neighboring town, he accidentally learned that the town had a history of less than seventy years.
Farming activities in the countryside, or other activities, caused the seal to be opened, and Jabezo escaped from it.
As for why people kept disappearing at that time?
Roland took out the Magically Modified Elven Blood from his Backpack.
The effect of this thing was to increase a person's lifespan.
Since elven blood could do it, so could human blood … but the effect was probably not very good, and it needed to be collected and refined in large quantities.
So a lot of outsiders disappeared every year.
The murderer didn't do it to the people in the town.
Then in the last Starfire Year of Fareins, Jabezo accidentally caught an elf, so there was no need to use human blood anymore.
The male elf was in a half-sealed state, and his perception of time in the outside world was quite poor, so he thought only two or three months had passed.
He even misled Roland.
But now that the intelligence was in front of him, a lot of things could be found out by following the clues.
Roland closed his eyes and thought for a while, and finally opened them. He had a candidate in mind.
Teleporting back to the previous town, Roland once again came to old Beckrum's yard.
The old guide was pouring a cup of red fruit wine for his old lady.
Roland pushed the door open and went in.
Old Beckrum turned his head to see Roland and smiled cheerfully. "Master Mage, why are you back so soon? Didn't you say you were going to stay a few more days?"
"Things are almost done, it's time to go back." Roland looked at the flagon in old Beckrum's hand and smiled. "There's wine to drink, and I happen to have a little to drink. Can you give me a glass?"
"Of course, no problem. This is my homemade wine, and while I wouldn't say it's particularly delicious, it's not much worse than outside."
As he spoke, he poured a glass and placed it in front of Roland.
Holding the glass, he looked at the clear red wine inside, as bright as blood.
Roland opened the system view and saw the description of the glass of wine.
Item: Potion heavily diluted with wine (Superior)
Description: A potion of magically modified elven blood, diluted with wine to reduce the medicinal properties and effects so that it is suitable for ordinary people to drink. The taste is no different from real wine.
Effect: Slightly increases the drinker's life limit.
When Roland finished reading, he smiled slightly, then pointed his finger at old Beckrum.
"Prismatic Spray!"
A rainbow ball of light instantly formed on his fingertip.
Old Beckrum stood blankly, as if petrified.
But Roland was completely unmoved, not worried that he would kill the wrong person.
Prismatic Spray shot out, and the moment it was about to hit old Beckrum, it was blocked by a blue film of light.
Then old Beckrum turned into a halo and disappeared.
Teleportation!
Roland immediately turned around and teleported after him.
Then he saw two halos flash wildly, and in the blink of an eye, they had disappeared into the horizon of the grassland.
Both of them flashed far away, and the flagon that old Beckrum had been holding fell to the ground.
The wine inside spilled out and splashed everywhere.
The old woman walked over, picked up the flagon, and stroked it gently, a gentle smile on her face.
Back on Roland's side, the two flashed away at great speed, and in a short time, they were more than fifty kilometers away.
Seeing that he couldn't get rid of Roland, old Beckrum stopped where he was, and his body began to fade.
It was the spatial spell Planar Walk again.
But Roland was prepared this time, and the same trick wouldn't work twice against a Golden Son!
In fact, Roland wanted to shout that, but he held back.
He just quietly threw out the Spatial Anchor scroll.
Several transparent spatial chains appeared out of the void and took root in the earth, locking the surrounding space.
Old Beckrum's planar infiltration was abruptly halted, and his body went from translucent to solid.
He even suffered a certain amount of magic backlash.
Clutching his chest, he looked at Roland, his face a little pale.
"If you keep using Blink, I may not be able to catch up to you." Roland looked at him indifferently. "Jabezo, I didn't expect you to take the appearance of an old man and put a powerful illusion on yourself. Not to mention the average Mage, even I can't see through it."
Old Beckrum looked at Roland, and then the space around him twisted slightly, and his whole person changed.
The old man's appearance disappeared, and he turned into a handsome blond man.
"Looks like you're the hound sent by Mystra." Jabezo chuckled. "I didn't expect her to not forget me, her enemy."
Roland twitched his eyebrows and didn't refute.
Instead, he asked curiously, "You should have woken up fifty years ago, why didn't you escape this place? If you escaped, with your illusions and concealment skills, I don't think anyone could find you again. "
"The most dangerous place is the safest place." Jabezo looked at Roland. "I'd like to say that, and I thought so before. But now it seems that it's just a hurtful joke. "
Indeed!
A truly smart prey never returns to a dangerous place, and the most correct thing to do is to stay away from the hunter's search circle, the farther the better.
So Jabezo's approach was actually foolish, and completely inconsistent with the image of a powerful and wise Mage.
"A lot of people used to disappear in this town. You did it, didn't you?"
Jabezo froze for a moment, then understood. "I was wondering how you could find me, so it was because of this clue. I've already integrated into this town, and it stands to reason that I shouldn't have been discovered, but I didn't expect … a hundred things to go awry. "
Roland admitted inwardly that without the data of those missing people, he wouldn't have suspected Old Beckrum at all.
"So you admit it?" Roland's clothes fluttered without any wind.
"Let's make a deal," Jabezo said with a smile. Jabezo laughed. "Let me go, and I'll give you all my spell models and magic insights over the past few decades. I'll get the hell out of here and never appear in front of you again. "
"Over the past few decades, no less than a hundred and fifty people have been 'eaten' by you, most of them teenage girls," Roland said coldly. "You scum, go to the Netherworld and make a deal with them."
Countless Hands of Magic descended from midair.
The domain of extreme cold spread out rapidly.
The surroundings quickly turned silvery-white, a vast expanse.
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