Max felt goosebumps all over her body and wrapped herself with her arms. The stories about terrifying warlocks, that her nanny told her back when she was a child, had always lingered in her mind. Stories about evil warlocks who waged war against the great church, but were brutally defeated and exiled to the north… fear gradually grew in her stomach as she realized that those were not mere legends, but actually existed.
She spoke in a shaking voice.“Does that imply that the exiled warlocks…were the ones leading the war from behind?”
“Nothing is certain just yet. Although it is true that they found traces of the existence of what is believed to be warlocks, it seems that they left the place a long time ago. However, records and various relics that they left behind remain. The great church wishes for us to investigate them ourselves. They think that it will lead to clues where the monsters could be hiding.”
“This is a very grave matter.” Calto said bitterly. “If it turns out that warlocks are indeed behind the war, the persecution of wizards may just begin again. In order to prevent that from happening, the World Tower has decided to actively cooperate with the great church.”
“Why would a trainee like me… be recruited to s-such an important mission? It would be better… to form a dispatch team involving veteran wizards.
“As you already know, high-ranking wizards have restrictions on leaving the tower. Right now, there are only three high-ranking wizards in Urd who are allowed to leave the island: that is me, Celic, and Anton. Other than us, the rest of the high-ranking wizards are either too old to withstand the journey to Pamela Plateau or they are vehemently refusing to leave the island. The three of us are not enough to form a team to investigate and so we decided to recruit a few skillful ones among the trainees.”
“And in particular, we need a wizard who has affiliations with the earth element.” Landon heaved a heavy sigh. “Earth element wizards who are currently living on the island are all from the Umli tribe. Unfortunately, Umli wizards are strictly reluctant on going outside Nornui and I highly doubt that the church would be willing to accept wizards coming from a different race.”
“And so… you want me, an ordinary human, to join the dispatch team.”
Max nodded her head understandingly. She didn’t want to undermine her skills, but there were several wizards in the World Tower who were far more superior than her. That was the reason why she did not understand why such an offer was being given to her.
“If I had deemed that you are lacking skills and ability, I wouldn’t have suggested recruiting you.” Landon said in a disappointed tone as if he was offended by Max. “I have thought of giving the opportunity to another trainee, but I have decided that you are best fit for this mission. You are one of the best trainees of Gnome Hall.”
Max’s face turned red. Joy and surprise welled up inside her for being valued so worthy. Although she was not able to present her magic formula for creating Golems, Landon appeared to be deeply impressed with it.
“Now, how should we move on from here? Will you be joining the dispatch team?”
Calto asked, leaning his back against the chair as if he was exhausted from the long conversation. Max hesitated to utter an answer. It was a very dangerous mission after all, the journey alone to Pamela Plateau would take at least a couple months. However, if she didn’t grab that opportunity, she would have to stay another year and a few months more on that island. Max bit her lips. She thought that it was too selfish of her to go on a very grave mission because of her intention of seeing Riftan much sooner. However, she longed to return to him even if she had to swim across the sea. As time passed, it felt like his feelings would go further away from her and she felt more and more anxious.
