The Moon Thief

When Heinald and Towsak entered the rift, they continued on a straight road for a while. Towsak showed him the traps hidden in the road, one by one. However, Heinald had already noticed the traps before he had told him; it was hard for anything to escape his eyes.

"The hums and tremors increased ..." Heinald said.

"As I said, we are getting closer and closer to magic formation." There was tension in Towsak's voice.

"It's a pretty straight road, will it always be like this?" Heinald realized that the road ahead of him curved in no direction.

"No." Towsak shook his head, "We're already about to reach the formation.

"Is the formation you're talking about some kind of security formation?" Heinald asked.

"No, it's more of a test formation to me." Towsak replied.

"Test formation? What do you mean?" Heinald's brows furrowed slightly.

Towsak pointed ahead, "You'll soon find out."

Ahead was a semicircular entrance, but inside it was completely dark. When he saw Towsak step inside without hesitation, he followed.

The moment Heinald stepped inside, he realized that the energy around him had completely changed. The Elemental Energy Particles around him were almost half suppressed. This meant that any elemental magic he cast would be 50% less effective.

All of a sudden, dozens of torches were lit, illuminating the surroundings completely. He looked around and saw that Towsak was not with him. While he was trying to figure out what was going on, a large black hole appeared in the air and many insect-like creatures emerged from it. Energy waves were not emanating from these insect-like creatures.

Heinald waved his hand and a silver light emanated from the ring in his hand, turning into twin swords. The twin swords began to absorb the Dark Energy he had.

The swords were covered with black flames.

Heinald stabbed both swords at the same time into the insect-like creature that was jumping towards him. Swords covered with black flames quickly overcame these insects' defenses and skewered them completely.

He parried the attack of the insect-like creature coming from his right side with black sword which made entirely of Dark Energy. Then, he performed a horizontal slash with the original sword.

*Criiik!" The insect-like creature let out a pathetic cry before being cut in half by the sword.

He twisted his swords on his wrist and slashed at them against the attacks of two insect-like creatures, who were simultaneously heading towards him.

*Triinn!* A high-pitched crash resounded.

These insect-like creatures were gray in color and had an oval body. They had four short legs, two small eyes, and a large mouth full of sharp teeth.

This creature's tongue was like a flexible sword, able to curl and dash forward, adding great agility to its attacks.

Heinald realized that these creatures' bodies were pretty solid, but they didn't stand a chance against him.

After repeating the same process for several minutes, all the creatures that came out of the black hole were destroyed by him.

The black hole got smaller and smaller within seconds and eventually disappeared completely.

"It can't be that simple...There has to be something different behind it." Heinald thought this test was too easy. As far as he could tell, Kawtils had failed to break through this test formation.

A large door opened automatically at the back of the large square room in front of Heinald. The space behind this door was invisible, all that was visible was darkness.

As Heinald approached this door, he first poked his finger in. Then, when he inserted his whole body, he found Towsak staring at him.

"What's going on? Where have you disappeared to?" Heinald asked.

Towsak said, "Look behind you!"

Heinald turned and saw the semicircular entrance. He had come back to where he entered the formation. The Elemental Energy Particles around him had returned to normal again.

"I went up to the same place again…" Heinald was looking towards the entrance with a serious expression.

"It looks like we're subjecting to some kind of illusion..." Towsak said.

"But how? It felt so real!" Heinald shot him a glance.

"Dreams feel real too." Towsak shrugged.

"Not as much as what I just experienced."

"Of course! It's an illusion after all, much stronger than your dreams." Towsak sighed.

Heinald trained three more times and tried to pass the test, but without success. Each time he came back to Towsak.

"We've lingered here long enough, we'd better go back now." Towsak sighed.

"Mm. You're right." Heinald nodded, a thoughtful expression on his face.

The two of them returned to Kawtil City together.

After considering helping them with the relic for a while, Heinald decided to decline. While he wasn't afraid of the traps of the relic area, he was afraid of the formations there and a possible Ulltemol attack.

However, that didn't mean he gave up on that relic site!

He wanted to single-handedly capture that relic. A collaboration with Kawtils meant that he had to surrender half of the resources he was going to capture, and that the Ulltemols considered him as an enemy.

Moreover, if he acted alone, he could move much faster and unnoticed.

So even though he agreed to exchange information with them, he would refuse to help them with the remains.

Heinald spent a few days just wandering around Kawtil City. One day he sent word to them to hold a meeting with the council. His proposal was accepted by the council.

Even as he wandered around the city, he had noticed that he was being watched by the council's observers. They obviously didn't trust him, just as Heinald didn't fully trust them.

"Heinald, do you intend to help us with the relic area?" Avnr asked him.

"I haven't decided yet. I will definitely make that decision if we can pass that test formation for sure. But I will help you to pass it." Heinald was not sincere in his words. If he rejected them outright, he might not be able to exchange their inherited knowledge.

So he was trying to buy time.

"Oh! That's good to hear." Avnr nodded lightly.

"Besides, I would love to exchange information with you." Heinald added.

"Then we can make our offers to each other." Avnr agreed and continued, "First of all, I would like to present a few very valuable pieces of information we have inherited from the Great Ainsar Grildar.

"Information about what?" Heinald asked.

"Information about Level 3 and Level 4." Avnr replied.

Heinald's eyes suddenly opened and his heart started beating fast. Despite reading all the sources he found all these years, he had not been able to come up with the slightest knowledge theory about Level 3 and Level 4.

Such knowledge would be absolutely jarring for the Ainsar World. Information about level 3 was only available to a few of the most powerful families and clans.

"The recipe for a Protection Formation I created that can easily stop Level 2 Ainsar, and some high-level knowledge of the Runes."

Heinald made his offer.

The eyes of the council gleamed. For them, this information was information that they did not need much. After all, they did not have different communities that they could rule using this information. It wasn't a very important piece as they all knew this information.

However, what Heinald offered would undoubtedly come in handy for them. After all, although they had some legacy of knowledge left by Great Ainsar Grildar, their general theory of formations and runes was minimal.

Heinald immediately began to copy some of the information he knew and the description of the security formation onto the papers given to him.

It worked non-stop for a few days. However, it was worth it; he would get information about Level 3 and Level 4 after all.

The exchange was completed when both sides met the requirements. Heinald immediately began to read the information about Level 3 and Level 4 in the sources given to him.

The Kawtiller, on the other hand, began to study the runes and formation description given to them by Heinald with excitement and admiration.

When Kawtils started working on the runes, they couldn't understand how he had memorized so many runes. There were tens of thousands of copies of runes on the papers given to them. Moreover, all of these runes had been drawn flawlessly.

Heinald, on the other hand, was about to have a heart attack with excitement. The information given to him was important enough to start a great war in the World of Ainsar.

Great families and clans kept information about Level 3 as their greatest treasure.

Level 4 was something else entirely!

Heinald wasn't sure, but maybe 3-4 people in the entire Ainsar World should have known about Level 4.

The information he obtained contained the requirements and directions to become Level 3 and Level 4. It was very easy for him to learn the requirements about the first two levels because his grandfather was already a Level 2 Ainsar.

However, he had chosen the path to follow as a result of his own research.