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"It was the relic of the Twelve Sages, the 'Ice Mark—Sacrifice,' a medium essential for casting the ice-attribute forbidden spell 'Tears of the Firmament,'" answered not Lansino, but Mr. Pang, who lifted his black cloak, revealing his gaunt and true appearance. At this moment, he stood at the edge of a large magic array, inside a smaller one constructed purely from gemstone magic crystals. The two circular magic arrays were partially connected, forming a shape resembling a gourd, except that one circle was as large as a watermelon, and the other as small as a walnut.

At this moment, Mr. Pang did not appear cold at all. Although his straw-like white hair and wrinkled face looked quite terrifying, the flush on his face and the fervor in his eyes made it hard to associate him with the usually calm or even indifferent mage. Now divested of his black cloak, he wore a robe embroidered with intricate patterns, and the magical equipment on his body and hands were clearly top-tier treasures. Above his left hand, a thick magical book floated in the air, and in his right hand, he tightly grasped a bone-white magical staff, both exuding the brilliance of epic-grade treasures.

"The Twelve Sages, with their demigod-like power and wisdom, crossed the plane rules to find the singularity of the World Tree, thus creating the forbidden spells. To mark these loopholes in the world's laws, they created the magical treasures known as 'Marks,'" said the anonymous forbidden spell caster, who was nearing the end of his life, unable to stop talking. "Fortunately, these treasures have been passed down; otherwise, we incompetent descendants would never have been able to find these exploitable loopholes within the elusive laws of the World Tree. Among the twelve 'Marks,' the 'Mark of Fire—Courage,' 'Mark of Water—Compassion,' 'Mark of Wind—Spirituality,' 'Mark of Earth—Sincerity,' and 'Mark of Thunder—Justice' are held by those five old fellows. The 'Mark of Time,' 'Mark of Space,' and 'Mark of Illusion' have never been recorded, and the 'Mark of Light—Glory' and 'Mark of Darkness—Humility' were destroyed in an accident, while the 'Mark of the Underworld' is in the hands of the Lich on the Isle of the Dead."

"Why do the names of the eight marks—Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Ice, Thunder, Light, and Darkness—match exactly the eight virtues of the knights?" Lansino, hearing this secret for the first time, couldn't help but ask.

"That's not quite clear. No one has ever discovered any connection between these names and the use of forbidden spells," Mr. Pang shook his head, a hint of shame on his face. As a fervent admirer of the Twelve Sages, it was a shame that he had not found the answer to such an important matter.

Afterward, Mr. Pang wasted no more words and began to fully activate the forbidden spell. Meanwhile, Lansino quietly informed me that the floating magical book was called the 'Ice Grimoire.' It was the centuries-old notes and magical artifact of the Ice Sage. The other bone staff was a spoil of war obtained by the Temple in battles against necromancers. Forged from the old and dead bones of an ice-attribute white dragon and its dragon core, it was an epic-grade ice-attribute magical artifact known as 'Roar of the Ice Dragon.' Together, they provided the user with the magical power equivalent to two level-ten mages.

As Mr. Pang chanted obscure incantations, the streams of light in the magic array began to undulate, converging and rising from the plane. When the magical formation finally solidified, I was astonished to find that the magical structure resembled the topography I had seen while flying over the northern ice fields on Winter Night. This three-dimensional map represented an area of hundreds of kilometers around the Hurricane Fortress. Countless multicolored light points flickered among the mountains and hills.

"Those light points represent life within the area of effect. The brighter the light, the higher and more vigorous the life force. Green represents plants, red represents animals, humans, and orcs, and white represents the ice-blooded barbarians. Unfortunately, the two Beamon are not here," explained Mr. Pang, who had paused for a breath after a temporary lull in the incantation. Mentally, I sighed in relief. Having learned from Winter Night that the forbidden spell would lock onto life forces, I devised a plan to deceive it. I used half-orcs to replace the orcs, connecting their life forces with the Shaman's divine spell 'Life Binding' and making them huddle together to simulate the massive life force of an orc warrior.

Now, there were no orcs left in the orc camp, only six hundred thousand secretly reinforced half-orcs. Among them, a half-orc warrior whose will I had controlled maintained order, but their command had been handed over to the lion-folk girl Katherine. From the results, the plan had worked perfectly as intended. With a hundred meters of magical map simulating a hundred kilometers of land, the information the light points could display was quite limited, ensuring no risk of my plan being exposed.

As the map above the magic array took shape, the clouds in the sky, thousands of miles away, began to churn like boiling water. Yet, following a special pattern, when the magical map was complete, the countless clouds had formed a gigantic vortex in the sky, except over the Hurricane Fortress, where a circular area several kilometers wide was clear of clouds for dozens of kilometers, allowing the sunlight to shine straight down, casting a brilliant glow over everything.

The time had truly come to activate the forbidden spell. With a solemn expression but eyes brimming with boundless fervor, Mr. Pang raised his hands high above the magic array and poured his magic power and life force into the 'Ice Mark' at its center, chanting aloud:

"When endless time becomes a memory, and the desperate cries knock on the gates of hell, whose repentance wanders among the ruins? Let the tear frozen in the ancient temptation melt into the sea of the Arctic Ocean, this deep blue love for tens of thousands of years, pouring down from the high heavens, from the peak of the Starry Abyss—"

A blue-ice light shot out from Mr. Pang's forehead, straight into the floating 'Ice Mark' in the center of the magic array. The mark absorbed the blue light, gradually spinning faster and beginning to rise.

At the same time, in the sky, the channel within the rapidly rotating vortex of clouds grew thicker and taller, as if reaching for the firmament. As Mr. Pang continuously poured his magic power and life force into the 'Ice Mark,' the channel in the sky endlessly extended towards the heavens, until—