When A Mage Revolts

In the night sky over the Kingdom of Helius, Benjamin brought Dick flying speedily forwards over the vast territory, rushing toward the huge mountain ranges near the border.

About halfway there, Benjamin suddenly turned his head, glancing at the space behind him.

"...Annoying flies."

With a wave of his hand, he suddenly began to descend rapidly with Dick. Beneath them was a thick forest; hiding in the midst of the wood, they covered themselves up quickly. After a few minutes, a group of priests flew over them in the sky. They stopped above the forest and looked around for a few moments before flying off into the east.

Benjamin had a grave expression as he watched all this in the dark.

"How many batches of priests have we encountered in the past three hours?" He turned his head to look at the cowering Dick, "What secret do you have on you that is causing them to chase after us so relentlessly?"

The process of bringing Dick out of the kingdom was a lot more troublesome than he had imagined.

Half an hour after they had started flying, they had already encountered the pursuers from the Church. At the time, Benjamin planned to get rid of this bunch of people quickly, but before he could act, the pursuers had begun to run away, using all sorts of methods to stall for time... a few minutes after the delay, he spotted more waves of pursuers appearing in the distance.

At that moment, Benjamin realized that something was wrong.

Because of this, he gave up the idea of killing all these people and simply dragged Dick along as he changed his direction, constantly looking for opportunities to shake off his pursuers and using a more careful method to travel.

He was very clear that the result getting continuously delayed would be Grant eventually catching up to him.

Benjamin knew that a battle between them was unavoidable, but definitely not under such conditions— the priests just kept surging towards them like swarms of mosquitoes, doing their best to exhaust Benjamin’s spiritual energy. In this scenario, would Benjamin be able to fight Grant with everything he had?

He could only escape the radar of these people and silently wait it out.

But, he was beginning to doubt himself.

The Church definitely wanted the lives of all the members of the Fulner family, but did they really need to go to such great lengths? Dick was only the good for nothing son of a rich man, and was not capable of much; it was impossible for him to cause trouble for the Church like Accius had. It was completely unnecessary for the Church to expend so much energy to chase after him.

Of course, these people might be rushing after Benjamin. To have so many priests and Cleaners dying in an instant, the Church definitely would have guessed who had arrived. But, Benjamin still felt that they were hiding something.

This plan to entrust the now orphaned Dick to Benjamin, while Accius thought of a way to send Dick out... Benjamin felt that this was not all just to preserve the bloodline. There had to be other reasons.

Because of this, he started questioning Dick.

"W-what secret? I don’t know." Dick was stunned for a moment.

"Don’t give me that crap." There was not even a hint of warmth on Benjamin’s face, "If you dare lie to me, I will immediately toss you out and see what the priests outside will do to you."

"Don’t..."

Dick’s forehead was sweating profusely, possibly due t his fear of the priests, or his fear of Benjamin.

"Are you going to tell me?" Benjamin’s eyes became colder, "The Church has mobilized a few thousand priests to capture and kill you. Don’t think that you can fool me with some stupid lie."

Hearing this, Dick lowered his head, both his hands trembling aggressively. Under the threat of death, he finally gave an answer that Benjamin had not expected.

"It’s... the key."

"What key?"

"The key to a secret door in St. Peter’s Cathedral." Dick took a deep breath, saying, "Before everything was exposed, my father had secretly stolen it from the Church. He did not tell this to anyone, even his comrades who had planned to revolt against the pope did not know about this. If things did not happen so suddenly, perhaps even I would not have known."

Benjamin was extremely perplexed,

"Secret door? What secret door?"

Dick shook his head, "I don’t know... Father only told me that behind that door lies the Church’s greatest secret, the source of all its power, hiding the stairway to the spirit world."

Hearing this, Benjamin was very bemused, but was still unable to figure out what that secret door represented, and why Accius had gone to such great lengths to steal the key from the Church.

But, this did not affect who the key should belong to now.

"Give me the key." He said coldly.

"No... I cannot give it to you."

"If you don’t give it to me, I will throw you out right now, and let the priests cut out your tendons and skin you alive."

Dick’s face was full of despair.

"Then... alright."

Finally, he reached his hand into his pocket and pulled out a strange piece of ceramic shard.

Benjamin furrowed his eyebrows.

The ceramic shard looked extremely ordinary, faded in color and dull; it was like someone had picked up the pieces off the ground after a plate had been smashed, and it looked nothing like a "key".

He took the ceramic piece and scanned it. Unexpectedly, he detected a strange leaf inside the ceramic piece.

Because of this, he immediately smashed the ceramic piece. A delicate green leaf, the shape of a fan, dropped out. Benjamin pinched the petiole and held it to his eyes, before seeing that it was a gingko leaf.

In other words, this was a leaf from the Tree of Time.

"Wait..." The System suddenly said, obviously very interested "This thing must be almost a thousand years old, and yet the activeness and vitality of the cells are still in perfect condition. This is very interesting."

Benjamin was somewhat surprised.

A thousand years?

To be honest, the fact that the key to the secret door was a gingko leaf had already startled him enough. But, even though the leaf he had with him from the past had gone through a specimen preservation process, it was already dry and dying. This leaf, however, was fresh and healthy even after a thousand years.

Benjamin suddenly realized that this was not a simple gingko tree leaf.

Taking a closer look, in the midst of the green and tender leaf veins, it looked as though something red was flowing, like there were veins sprawled all across the back of the leaf, and the blood was slowly flowing through it.

And, in it... There was a weak magical oscillation.

"Do you understand this thing?" After some observation, Benjamin asked in his heart.

"Not really." The System said, "Its original form should be a normal gingko tree leaf, but after some special processing, it... seems to contain an unimaginable force."

Benjamin could not help but take a deep breath.

In this world, the gingko leaf had been imbued with the power to travel across time and space; this was something he had personally experienced before. But, what was up with a secret door requiring the use the power of the gingko leaf, and even more so, a gingko leaf that had undergone a special process?

Was there another dimension behind the door?

Suddenly, Benjamin seemed to have thought of something.

He remembered that before, in the elemental plane, the System had used the all-knowing perspective to spy on the Church’s secrets, but had said that there was a room which it could not pry into, no matter what. At that time, Benjamin had guessed that the room had something to do with the elemental plane.

Could that be the so called secret door?

Benjamin did not dare believe that a door which led straight to the elemental plane could be build in St. Peter’s Cathedral. Every time he had entered the Pure Blue World, he had done so in a spiritual state. To enter it directly in the flesh, was this even possible?

Furthermore, connecting the elemental plane and the real world together was a thing of fantasy.

"Director, sir, are you satisfied? Do you still intend to throw me to those priests?"

While Benjamin was still thinking, Dick had spoken out hesitantly, snapping him back to the real world. He came to his senses and, after glancing at the shivering Dick, checked the situation outside.

In the skies, the group of priests had already left.

Forget it... He would not be able to sort out this matter immediately, so might as well think about them slowly later.

"Your life is preserved." Because of this, Benjamin packed away the fresh but ancient leaf and walked out from the thickets, turning his head to say, "Let’s go, we need to escape to a safe place as quickly as possible."

Startled, Dick nodded vigorously, and scrambled to chase after him.