Unsealing Emptiness

Although everyone else who had seen Ozul for the first time was only curious and probing him to the best of their abilities, Lammert was only raging inside.

He was a fairly smart man and could easily connect the dots with Luthien leaving yesterday and in front of him, the man who was supposed to be missing two arms had his left arm without a scratch!

‘That idiot! After all his reassurance that the hand was in safe hands, this brat just goes and fetches his arm back like it was nothing!’ Lammert cursed Luthien in his heart.

Although he considered Luthien as also someone with high enough ambitions and smart thinking, they now had lost another one of those ‘devil’s limbs’ which made him feel like his heart was bleeding.

‘Urgh! Everything was going as planned, and now everything is messed because he couldn’t even take care of an arm!’ Lammert blamed Luthien, unaware of the fact that the latter had already died a gruesome death.

The Church of Light’s alliance with the Silverbird Kingdom was unlike that of the other organizations. Luthien was good with words, and he had somehow made Lammert actually have a good impression of him.

.....

Lammert who would only look for bad in people saw Luthien as a valuable tool and the latter was fully aware of it. However, Luthien also saw Lammert as an important means to complete his plans.

In short, both were just trying to use each other.

After Luthien had learned these limbs’ true value, he had started forcing Lammert to hand over the arm that he had sent him. Even when Lammert refused flat out, Luthien still did not break their alliance because he found it a huge loss to lose an ally just as or even more shrewd than him.

Although he hadn’t been able to get the arm back from Lammert, Luthien still managed to convince him that the Silverbird Kingdom would be getting half the profits the Church made of the Healing liquid.

Enough talking about that, Lammert at the moment couldn’t help but ground his teeth while glaring towards Ozul sitting far away from him. In his mind, he continued to curse Luthien nonstop.

Just at that moment, as if sensing his gaze, Ozul turned his head in his direction and made eye contact.

The moment their eyes met caused chills to run down Lammert’s spine.

From that single moment of eye contact, Lammert could tell that unlike he thought, he was far from being a match to this devil, ‘H-he is strong!’

Only then did he remember that this kid in front of him had obtained another one of his limbs back, ‘Did he get stronger because of that?!’

A slight fear rose from his heart as he thought about how this ‘kid’ would try to seek revenge and look for the arm that was with the Church now.

Lammert hatefully gnashed his teeth but still evaded Ozul’s eyes. After a while, his furious expressions morphed into a contemptuous smile as he muttered, “No matter what, he would never be able to get that arm back.”

Even when he felt that Ozul had somehow gotten beyond his league, Lammert didn’t worry that he would be able to snatch the arm because of her presence.

‘Anyway, who is that old man... he gives me a strange feeling,’ Lammert squinted his eyes at the old man who looked just like an average old man who didn’t even have enough money to buy proper clothes.

. . .

At this time, Raven, Blaze, Irvin, and even Haley were surrounding Ozul’s seat. All of them looked at his left arm which looked more than human now.

None of them said out aloud anything since they were out here in public.

Ozul looked at Raven’s staggering appearance and said, “Go and fix yourself.”

Then he turned to Blaze. “Rest. Recover your Mana, you are up against that man over there?” he asked while pointing at Mikol standing near Lammert’s seat.

Blaze nodded his head and before he could confidently assure Ozul that he would secure the victory, he heard the latter say,

“You would most probably lose. Don’t let your guard down.”

Blaze couldn’t even refute the words because it was Ozul who said it. Nonetheless, he was more than determined to prove him wrong.

On his side, Haley brought him somewhere so he would recover quickly. He only had two hours after all.

Meanwhile, Ozul continued to stare at Mikol for a few moments, making the latter uncomfortable under his scrutinizing gaze.

‘He is unusually strong for a middle stage Rank-8...’ Ozul thought inside his mind as he probed Mikol.

Even without his improved abilities, he could have easily noticed the odd air surrounding Mikol. Even with Blaze’s abnormal talent, this Mikol seemed to match the raw Mana both of them had, and Ozul found it strange.

‘Hm. I will just watch the match then. I can test my limits later,’ he decided to wait till the end of the tournament since it concerned Blaze.

When all the other Rank-9 Mages probed him except for Alver, Ozul also gave all of them a brief look. His eyes paused at Lammert for a couple of seconds and felt those raging emotions inside him.

‘Just you wait... you will be the next,’ he thought inside his head before sweeping his gaze towards the woman with an icy cold look.

She was the sect leader of the Nine Petals Sect and still held the grudge that he had taken her best disciples in her sect’s entire history.

Ozul’s gaze didn’t linger on her for another moment. He didn’t look at Alver who was actually staring at him with such an intense gaze that he had a hard time ignoring it now.

Just then, Ozul remembered something and turned his face to his right.

There he saw the old man standing on one foot and scratching his leg with the other one. He was still barefoot, but when he focused on his feet, they didn’t have a single speck of dirt.

Taking a moment to arrange his words, Ozul spoke, “You said you wanted to find those candidates here in the Neutral City? What are you doing here then?”

“Hoho~? Are you that ashamed that such an uncultured old man like me is standing beside you?” Old Gu answered with one of his hands scratching his back like he was a monkey.

Ozul could at least tell that this old man was deliberately doing that to test his patience.

“You can stay with me all day, I wouldn’t care as long as you keep your mouth shut. I am just reminding you to hurry up your task. You still have to give me an explanation,” he answered without a change in his expressions.

“Haha! Young man, you sure are impatient. Alright, I can at least tell you that it will take around five years before things start,” Old Gu revealed how much time he would actually take to tell him his identity.

“What are you doing here then? Don’t you have work to do?” Ozul asked this question after carefully thinking about it for a while.

He wanted to probe if this old man was acting independently or doing things on others’ orders. Though he leaned towards the former possibility, and it might not help him in any way. He thought that it wouldn’t hurt to try it anyway.

“I have as much time as I want, young man,” Old Gu also answered in a way that didn’t reveal anything.

“But I am here because now I don’t need to find all the candidates again. A couple of them are already here, haha! I am lucky!” Old Gu laughed in delight, attracting quite a few eyes because of his loud voice.

“Who is this old man?”

“He is just an ordinary man, I can’t feel any Mana from him.”

“But he was also flying with the leader of the Three-Eyed Strangers earlier!”

“If I can’t sense his Mana... does that mean he is actually stronger than me?!”

...

Even the high ranking officials from the other factions started muttering while some even blatantly pointed their fingers at him.

“Hehe... It seems I attracted quite a lot of attention, huh? Alright, as an apology, I will give you a piece of advice. Start training those two under you with all they have got, things might get difficult later on~” Old Gu apologized, but Ozul felt that he would have given him this ‘advice’ even if he hadn’t done anything.

“Can you at least tell me if... you have anything common with me?” Ozul asked even though he wasn’t able to word it correctly.

“Haha? What? Do you think I am your grandfather, young man? Hoho~? If you crave grandparents’ love so much, I might actually just adopt you. However, I am very strict, I tell ya!” Old Gu continued to tease Ozul who by now was glaring at him with cold eyes.

“Ooh. Don’t get so serious young man. I thought you finally had learned to appreciate the humor. Geez, the young generation so cold these days,” Old Gu hurriedly waved his hands and shook his head in a disappointed manner.

By now, Ozul had realized that he wouldn’t get any answers from this old man no matter how much he tried to probe.

Not willing to put up with the old man’s nonsense any longer, Ozul shifted his focus to Irvin who looked dumbfoundedly at the old man’s interaction with his young master.