After Locke spoke, he immediately detected slight mana fluctuations coming from somewhere in the valley. He immediately swung the Sea Gold Sand in his hand. The Sea Gold Sand transformed from a golden spiral staircase into a long spear and fell in that direction.

First Circle magic: Flowing Gold Fern Spear!

A golden-green long spear pierced through that rock. At the instant of penetration, Locke used another First Circle botanical magic: Flowing Gold Sand Waterfall. Using the spear transformed from Sea Gold Sand, he summoned a large amount of golden sand storm and launched attacks in all directions.

Locke frowned slightly. "He escaped again?"

The Large Green Leaf Dragon Sparrow behind him trembled, riding the magic wind, and arrived at that location in the blink of an eye.

Locke observed carefully. "He should have used some kind of spirit realm invisibility, or etherealization ability. It's also possible he used some kind of illusion technique to escape my attack."

"Bloodline wizards' methods are too varied. Every bloodline wizard has dozens of magical creature bloodlines in their body. In terms of breaking situations, bloodline wizards indeed have more methods."

The Sea Gold Sand's spore powder entering a wizard's body would magnify pain tenfold, so Locke initially just wanted to use Sea Gold Sand to force out Nidhogg's position.

Locke said, "Even so, some of my Sea Gold Sand should still have entered his body. According to the conversion between my current magical pressure and his magical pressure, the magical pressure gap between us is extremely small. Then the only way he can relieve his pain is just one—use ritual magic."

"Thus escaping my Sea Gold Sand's torment of him. But that happens to be what I want to see."

Battles between wizards were battles of information gaps.

Whoever mastered more information would be more powerful.

Currently, the Hydra could still be used for about twenty minutes.

In the exchange just now, Locke had already confirmed that without using ritual magic, the opponent couldn't defeat him through normal magic, and would even be suppressed by him in turn.

After all, he had barely stacked his magical pressure to 9000 due to poison pool body tempering and abyssal energy. Although there was still a magical pressure gap with the opponent, it hadn't formed a stage-level difference.

The opponent's only advantage lay in the First Circle crystallization characteristic—ritual magic.

That was the only thing he didn't understand. Ritual magic was extremely strange. Even if current him faced the Ghost Sacred Order's Female Hierarch's past ritual magic, Locke couldn't bet that Myst's Power could definitely resist that ritual magic.

So in this wizard secret realm, forcing Nidhogg to use ritual magic early was the key to victory.

And the opponent currently avoiding battle with him obviously also discovered this matter.

Locke searched the valley. Ten Shadow Eye Grass frantically detected the area within 10 kilometers around and continuously expanded the search range to completely find the enemy.

"He's quite good at hiding." Locke said calmly. His eyes occasionally showed golden vertical pupils. Unfortunately, the mysterious dragon bloodline was very unstable, so the side-effect-free super intuition ability that appeared earlier hadn't appeared now.

The current mysterious true dragon bloodline only brought him the Immortal Dragon Scale and strengthened his body surface skin's defensive power.

After all, the mysterious true dragon bloodline only reached the First Circle vaporization stage. For true dragons, this stage was actually only a young dragon.

Moreover, he still couldn't figure out what kind of dragon this was.

In a sense, his current self was in a maxed-out defense state, while normal attack magic was seriously insufficient.

Myst's Power could currently only be used for thirty minutes. After all, the Hydra wasn't a solo magical plant. He couldn't drive it for long periods.

Locke raised his right hand. Immediately, magical pressure transformed into a wave sphere, spreading in all directions. The negative energy particle field was all being read by Locke.

At the same time, he chanted the incantation softly. The negative energy particle field gathered and transformed into black smoke.

Locke pointed forward with his left hand. "From the past five hundred years, borrow a departed king!"

A Book of Dragons appeared beside him. This Suzerain shot a historical document carrying large amounts of negative energy particle field information toward that black smoke. Immediately after, that black smoke transformed into the image of a skeleton king wearing a crown and holding a sharp sword.

This was First Circle archaeology magic—Summon the King of the Dead.

Essentially, this wasn't ordinary necromancy magic. The essence of necromancy magic was forcibly keeping someone else's (or artificially created) soul or spirituality through magic in a body crafted by a necromancer, or in someone else's body.

Some of these souls came from spirits wandering the world, some came from afterworlds created by necromancers, some came from other planes like [Styx Plane], [Ghost Plane], those afterworlds summoned from.

Some undead creatures even existed naturally. For example, the ninth, seventeenth, and twenty-first layers of the Endless Abyss were all planes occupied by the undead. Necromancers could summon undead creatures by signing contracts with the abyss world masters of those three layers.

These neither-living-nor-dead beings belonged neither to life nor to death. Their existence always simultaneously desecrated both life and death.

But the spirits summoned by archaeology spells essentially weren't spirits, or rather weren't spirits in the conventional sense.

For example, the King of the Dead summoned by Locke using archaeology spells fundamentally didn't have a body, and his soul never existed. It was just that Locke used the surrounding negative energy particle field, combined with death energy, plus the information carried in the [Suzerain] Book of Dragons in his hand, forcibly recombining an undead.

It didn't belong to the neither-living-nor-dead, but was part of the past.

So it didn't violate life and death. Also, because it would naturally disappear after an hour, it wasn't listed on the White Wizard Association's prohibited magic list.

Information had power. A single historical document alone was just ordinary information, but large amounts of historical documents stacked together were enough to deduce history, interfere with reality, and evolve the future.

Archaeologists utilized this mechanism to create Suzerains, then created large amounts of power generated based on historical documents.

At this moment, the King of the Dead before him bowed slightly to Locke. Although it could only exist during the spell effect's duration, at this moment this King of the Dead looked at Locke, and the soul fire jumping in his eye sockets seemed to see Locke's image overlapping with the Book of Dragons.

Locke was the Book of Dragons, was the [Suzerain] that created it.

The King of the Dead raised his sharp sword. "The departed king salutes the great dragon."

In this King of the Dead's soul fire, Locke's image was fundamentally that of a dragon.

Was it Locke's own bloodline power, or the image brought to him by the Suzerain Book of Dragons?

Locke nodded slightly. "Tell me the location of the second wizard here." 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Summoning the King of the Dead, this magic didn't just summon a large-scale version of the advanced undead [Death Knight], but could also simultaneously collect the negative energy particle field on the surrounding ground, allowing this death knight to master much information about the surrounding ground at the instant of summoning.

And Locke was preparing to use this mechanism to find the fleeing Nidhogg.

Soul fire leaped in the King of the Dead's eye sockets. He raised the sharp sword held in his skeleton arm and pointed in one direction. "Dragon, he is there."

...

On the other side, Nidhogg endured intense pain, using the Clear Cricket's bloodline spell [Shrinking Technique], running frantically all the way. He finally dodged two attacks from Locke's botanical magic Scorching Gold Sand Flow series spells and escaped into a stream in the valley, shrinking to the size of a leaf, hiding in the stream, gasping violently.

Pain was interfering with Nidhogg's normal thinking. Nidhogg hid between pebbles in the stream, using the Withered Leaf Moth's bloodline ability to disguise himself. "Damn outside wizard, what a miscalculation."

"I didn't expect his combat power to be so strong. This Eye Demon Wizard from outside is a ruthless person."

"Pain... what kind of magic is that? Hitting me is actually so painful, cutting to the heart, with absolutely no way to weaken this pain. No, I can't stand it anymore. I must find a way to stop this pain."

"At least first use Clear Cricket and Withered Leaf Moth's abilities to create some breathing time for me. After I remove this pain, then find a way to suppress that Eye Demon Wizard."

Nidhogg hid between pebbles, gasping. What shocked him was that a Shadow Eye Grass like a shadow eyeball was coming toward his location.

"How is this possible? He can find me even like this?" Nidhogg felt extremely uncomfortable. "Not even a moment's breathing time. I've never had fighting a wizard be this difficult."

"That Eye Demon Wizard is truly too terrifying."

Nidhogg sensed Locke's magical pressure rapidly approaching. The last bit of luck in his heart disappeared. He immediately removed his disguise spell and used the Clear Cricket's bloodline ability again to flee in one direction.

"No, I'm in too much pain. The pain is completely unbearable."

"If it really doesn't work, I can only use the Blood River Plane's power to remove this pain."

"The special power in that wizard's hand shouldn't be usable for long periods. I should delay a bit more. I shouldn't risk a direct confrontation." Nidhogg's heart was in turmoil at this moment.

"But he's only a liquefaction stage wizard after all. Even if his spell pool is rich, there's still a stage gap between us. Direct confrontation... isn't impossible. I'm in too much pain now. As long as I can summon the Blood River's power, my pain will be removed in an instant."

A trace of confusion flashed through Nidhogg's eyes.

For a moment, he couldn't distinguish whether it was based on his judgment of the situation or because he wanted to immediately stop the pain that he wanted to use his trump card ritual magic early.

In his lifetime, except for suffering a bit when researching certain difficult problems and advancing to official wizard, he basically hadn't suffered much.

So at this moment, facing the pain caused by Sea Gold Sand, his tolerance was extremely poor. He could hardly endure it at all.