Warlock Apprentice

At such an extraordinary speed, forget locking onto its eyes—keeping up with its pace alone was an extravagant hope.

Faced with this situation, they were almost completely helpless. They could do nothing but watch as Toby swatted them away one by one, sending them plunging into the depths of the Void.

Everyone had fallen into despair. Their emotions, already stretched to the breaking point, now completely collapsed into a chasm of hopelessness.

What occupied their minds now was not battling Toby, but finding a way to escape from his grasp.

The only one who hadn’t given up the will to fight was Hailey. However, even her expression grew increasingly grim as she watched the others being taken down one by one. If she failed to come up with a way to ward off Toby soon, she knew she’d inevitably become just another lamb for slaughter.

Hailey’s hand, hidden within her sleeve, silently clenched into a fist.

”Master Priest, perhaps we should retreat for now—” A black-robed man trembled as he approached Hailey, summoning every ounce of strength to voice his suggestion to her.

Hailey turned her head and stared directly at him, speaking with deliberate slowness: ”As a Profound Believer, are you attempting to defy the commands of the Deity?”

”I’m not...” Before he could explain whether he meant ”I’m not a believer” or ”I’m not trying to defy,” Hailey had already spun around to his back, grabbing the collar of his robes.

In an instant, Hailey’s hand bulged with veins, and with a loud *bang*, countless strands of black feathers sprouted, even her nails transforming into sharp, hooked talons. With one forceful motion, the man was hurled into the air, flying in an arc straight toward Toby.

Under normal circumstances, as an Official Wizard—albeit a fake one—he wouldn’t have been so easily tossed aside. But now, his heart was gripped with panic, and in such a nervous state, he was cautiously dealing with enemies without ever expecting to be thrown by an ally.

Toby sensed the whistling wind as the man approached. Without hesitation, Toby flicked his tail, the unsettling crack of bones shattering echoing through the air. The man, his body reduced to a twisted mess, was smashed away.

Toby paid no mind to whether the man was dead or alive, already preparing to target the next individual. However, as Toby turned his gaze, he noticed that the movement of the wind behind him had suddenly changed. Suspicious, he whipped his head around.

Before he could assess the anomaly, a figure flashed before him.

It was Hailey!

Her act of hurling the man served two purposes—first, a visceral expression of disdain toward his pitiful plea, and second, a cunning strategy of using his flung figure to obscure her movements. Sure enough, Toby hadn’t detected her presence. While his attention had been focused on the airborne man, Hailey had concealed herself in his shadow, emerging at the perfect moment to strike at Toby’s head.

Hailey had targeted the back of Toby’s head intentionally, knowing he would sense her attack. The moment he turned his head, her strike would naturally align with his eyes!

Hailey’s clever gambit paid off. Toby, without suspicion, turned toward her.

As Toby turned, Hailey’s bloodline-transformed hands—a horrifying amalgam of hooked talons shrouded in black feathers—already glimmered with a chilling light, mere inches away from his eyes.

Hailey could already picture the moment when she shattered Toby’s eyes in a single strike. She firmly believed that, no matter how incredible Toby’s speed was, he couldn’t possibly dodge such a fierce attack delivered from so close a distance, carried by the wind itself.

Hailey noticed a flicker of surprise in Toby’s gaze, clearly astonished by the rapidity of her strike. Yet, what puzzled her was that Toby’s expression showed no trace of fear.

Could this wretched, featherless beast escape even now? Hailey refused to believe it.

The reality affirmed her doubt: Toby, despite his transcendent speed, couldn’t execute a flawless reaction in such a minuscule timeframe.

He didn’t flee, but Hailey’s attack still failed to reach him.

Hailey’s grotesquely transformed hands, barely centimeters away from Toby’s eyeballs, suddenly froze in mid-air.

It wasn’t Hailey who stopped herself—her movements were arrested by a familiar yet weighty force.

Hailey’s initial confusion gave way to shock as she sensed the source of this power, her expression twisting in incredulity: ”This... is the Law of Gravity Meridian?!”

While Hailey reeled in astonishment, Angel, watching from afar, was also taken aback.

In Angel’s calculation, even though Toby might fail to dodge Hailey’s sudden attack, with the power of the Gravity Meridian, he should have been able to rapidly shift his center of gravity, at the very least tilting his head away. If Hailey struck, it should have landed only on his scales, nullifying her attempt to blow out his eyes.

This was the reason Angel hadn’t intervened to assist Toby, instead quietly waiting for the outcome he had envisioned.

Unfortunately, Angel’s prediction didn’t play out as expected. Though Toby did use the Gravity Meridian, the situation took an unforeseen turn.

Toby had deployed the Gravity Meridian around his body. When Hailey’s attack entered the field, it acted like a repelling force, blocking her strike from landing.

In the past, Toby, like Angel, could only utilize the Gravity Meridian internally. Now, while Angel remained stagnant, Toby had achieved the ability to extend the Gravity Meridian externally.

He had even evolved it into a long-range offensive tool.

In that instant, Angel’s heart swelled with emotion. Toby’s Gravity Meridian was the fully-fledged version, while his own... was merely a buy-one-get-one-free crippled edition.

Hailey, caught in her own disbelief, couldn’t fathom why Toby possessed the Law of Gravity Meridian.

At last, she understood why Toby’s speed was so astonishing. This Gravity-aligned Meridian drew upon immense laws of nature—speed of such magnitude seemed inevitable with its power.

Still, what Hailey couldn’t reconcile was how a Magical Creature had grasped something that countless wizards failed to comprehend. And not only that—it wielded it with such mastery!

Hailey’s long-maintained composure finally cracked in that moment.

A flicker of resentment glinted in her eyes, and jealousy surged through her like wildfire: she had endured multiple Witchcraft Garden trials without ever perceiving the Laws of any Meridian—yet this beast had obtained the Gravity Meridian? Why?!

Blinded by the haze of jealousy, Hailey failed to consider the origin of Toby’s Gravity Meridian. Had she reflected further, she would have realized that in the Southern Domain, only Sanders’ Illusion Demon Island and the Gravity Forest possessed intact Gravity Gardens.

While it wasn’t impossible for Toby to have acquired the Gravity Meridian elsewhere, the likelihood was exceedingly slim without the guidance of a Gravity Garden.

If Hailey had come to this realization, she might have exercised more caution. But for now, her heart was consumed entirely with envy.

The fire of Hailey’s jealousy, under normal circumstances, would never have ignited to such an extent. But unfortunately for her, she now faced a master manipulator of emotional jealousy.

Even the faintest spark could be fanned by Toby’s influence into an inferno that engulfed entire expanses.