Netheril’s Glory - Chapter 89: The Illusion inside the Jungle.

Elenka’s grandfather left a map for the route to the Spider Cave. The old mage, who had a keen interest in adventurous exploration, had some skill with map drawing. So, even though the map he left with the Dokdo family was just a backup map, it was still fairly detailed.

Punk was now in the lush Jungle, and the area under his feet was actually the central area of the lush Jungle. This Jungle was a forbidden place for ordinary people, as there were magic beasts with great power walking everywhere, and here even those ordinary fierce beasts were just snacks for the magic beasts living at the bottom of the food chain. But most of these magic beasts only had apprentice-level strength, so after sensing Punk’s official-level aura, no beast dared to approach near him.

After rubbing the parchment map gently, Punk stopped and ordered No. One wearing a grey robe to guard him, but as it had low intelligence and inadequate discernment ability, all objects, including the leaf that approached Punk, would be torn apart by the claws of the No. 1. Punk after seeing such hyper-alertness of No. One started to check the map left by Elenka’s grandfather again.

On the parchment map in his hand, many subtle and mysterious ink lines were drawn. It would be hard for an ordinary person to believe that a person could draw such horizontal and vertical lines on paper.

Punk carefully injected some mana into the magic formation engraved in the parchment. After receiving energy, this seemingly inconspicuous parchment began to emit faint blue brilliance, and the ink-drawn lines actually flew out of the parchment paper and formed into a 3D map in midair.

The map depicted nearly half of the lush Jungle’s iconic terrain. From the tall cliff to the small stream, everything was clearly visible, and its quality was not even inferior to some well-made 3D presentation from the earth.

Punk zoomed in on the 3D map, and through some prophetic spells, he easily found out his exact position on it.

According to the map, he was already very close to the Spider Cave, and it was even possible that he was standing right beside the cave,

but…

Punk quietly put away the map, then frowned and looked around. There were only trees and vines around him. There were a few bird chirps from time to time in the Jungle. Because almost no one ever visited this deep inside the Lush Jungle, the ground was covered with a thick layer of green moss.

So now the question in Punk mind was,

“where is the spider cave…?”

Punk didn’t find the spider cave, but he also didn’t think that he was in the wrong place. The prophesy spell clearly showed that he was very close to the spider cave, but he couldn’t see a single trace of the spider cave for some reason.

“Illusion! Or it is located in a different plane!”

Punk guessed. First, he excluded the option of hiding in another plane; after all, only a master level mage could open a channel to other planes, as, unlike the Abyss, another plane wasn’t welcoming to alien visitors, and if the owner of the spider cave was already a master-level mage, then they didn’t have to hide in this remote forest and do thing in such sneaky manner.

So…Illusion was almost the only conclusion!

Knowing the root cause of the problem, Punk now wanted to solve this problem of deciphering the Illusion as soon as possible.

And he knew that if One wanted to crack an Illusion, they must first correctly distinguish the source of the Illusion. If it was a mental illusion, it could be resisted by a mental defence spell, and if it was an illusion spell, then the “True vision” would be very useful to see through it.

To be on the safe side, Punk first blessed himself with a mental spell, “Mental barrier.”

A large amount of mana was quickly transferred into mental power, then these mental powers, outside Punk’s control, created a barrier around his soul.

But even after that, everything was the same as before in front of his eyes, so Punk rechecked the Mental barrier, but he didn’t found any corrosion of any external energy.

So now…………

“It is an illusion created by a spell…”

Punk took the staff out of his back expressionlessly. The emerald green staff was now connected with his soul, so as soon as he held it in his hand, the emerald ball at the top staff began to emit a clear emerald halo…

Although Punk still seemed to be indifferent on the surface, but as soon as he suspected the existence of the Illusion, his heart immediately became very alert, because he knew that the enemy was most probably already preparing for a surprise attack under the cover of the Illusion.

“Since you are so insisted on hiding, then I will have to force you out.”

Punk whispered coldly.

But there still no other sound around but the rustles of wind blowing through the leaves! But somehow, a tense atmosphere was formed automatically.

As a mage, Punk was not good at this kind of sneaky confrontation, and the unknown factor of the enemy was also very unfavourable to him. But Punk had a little experience when it came to dealing with this type of hidden enemy.

Since the enemy was so determined on hiding, it proved that the enemy’s frontal combat ability was not strong enough. So as long as they were forced into revealing themselves, the situation would be reversed immediately.

After deciding on his following actions, Punk ordered No. One to continue its guarding, then he quickly took out a handful of some kind of powder and chanted a spell in a low voice in a focused manner.

“Official-Level Spell- Cursed Fire.”

As the spell was quickly chanted, the powder also turned into hot green sparks with high temperature and formed a small cluster of green fires on Punk’s hand.

At this time, the average enemy would choose to attack the mage who was preparing his spell; because a mage’s most vulnerable time was when they were preparing an unfamiliar spell, and at that time, even a slight distraction could lead to the spell crashing inside their mind palace, which could injure their soul.

Punk was secretly very alert when he was preparing the Cursed fire’s spell model. On the surface, he was struggling to control the spell that he was not familiar with, and his movements were full of flaws, but in fact, he was secretly prepared and could disperse the spell model at any time. And if the enemy really wanted to take advantage of this situation, they would be mercilessly attacked by an instant kinetic energy burst spell.

But… the enemy did not appear…

“Since you haven’t come out yet, you don’t have to come out anymore”!

A cold light flashed in Punk’s eyes. As he still wasn’t entirely sure if it was the enemy who was playing tricks or the source of the Illusion was a magical item, he especially chose “Cursed Fire” because although it was an extremely mana consuming spell but it was also enough to destroy any Ordinary magic items or kill any Assassin without some powerful trump card.

With the high-speed rotation of the brilliant blue mana in Punk’s pupils, the green flame swaying in his palm violently formed a massive green ring of fire. The fire ring then started to spread and burn everything around Punk and the No. 1. The cursed green flames slowly spread across the Jungle. The giant trees turned into a dark green torch and started to make a crackling sound. The high temperature instantly evaporated the moisture from the tree leaves.

The Cursed fire spell covered an area of about 400 square meters and actively burned for fifteen seconds.

The flame created by this spell did not have a very high temperature, just a little more than 700 degrees, which was not even comparable to some trainee-level spells.

But there was one characteristic of the cursed fire that had a huge impact on the battlefield: extremely difficult to extinguish.

The curse fire that could ignite almost everything was more difficult to put out than the white phosphorus incendiary bombs. Once it was stained a little, the terrible flame would continue to burn on the skin until it slowly burned the person into flying ash.

On the one hand, using such a spell, One could carry out a continuous blow to the enemy, and on the other hand, it also could be used as a mark on the opponent’s body!

but…………

Punk’s pupils shrank, and he looked around again, but except for the raging green flames, nothing unusual could be seen. And there was still no trace of the spider cave!

“Then is it really not here?”

” Underground maybe!, no, then No. 1 would have found it…”

“So then……the sky!”

The moment this thought appeared on Punk’s mind, a shadow suddenly appeared above him, and a feeling of danger became very clear in his heart.

But instead of panicking, he was filled with joy. Because the enemy’s ability to hide was outstanding, and If he didn’t show up, he could only rely on some risky moves to find him, but now… this guy wasn’t able to hold his breath after all and decided to carry out a sneak attack while he was “confused!”