When he noticed a white dot coming to this room, as a precaution, he had cast the Body Double skill which he had just learned the night before. Luckily the five minutes duration of the spell had not expired. He managed to switch place at the last second with his fake body which he had hidden on the other side of the room, thus avoiding Winston’s killing blow. The fake body produced by his spell cannot attack, but it possessed the same equipment and non-attacking ability, thus it could also use the Cloak of Shadow’s concealment ability.
Furious at being tricked, Winston swore to tear the nosy adventurer apart. Yet he noticed captain Salem and Duke Alfredo had started to take action. Captain Salem and his retinue of guards were advancing at him, while Duke Alfredo started to form runic symbols with his hands. The Cardinal of Phobos’ phantom apparition above Winston made a piercing shriek, a ring of dark aura radiated outwards and crashed onto everybody in the room. It stopped everybody on track and disrupted the duke’s spell chanting.
Jack was also affected by the aura. A voice notification informed him that he had been afflicted by a Dizzy status effect.
Dizzy (Negative status effect)
Stunned for 1 second
Impaired vision, duration: 5 seconds
But this negative mental status effect was soon negated by his rare necklace, Purifying Pendant. The necklace could negate any mental status effect one time, it will enter a cooldown period of one hour before this ability could take effect again. Even so, this one-time negation had been extremely helpful. As he could still move and react while the captain and the others were stunned and impaired.
However, it might not make any difference for his current opponent. With the power of a level 60, even a small touch from the being would kill him, as had been proven a moment ago. Winston lunged at Jack again after stopping the captain and the duke.
Jack was panicking. His trump card of the Body Double spell was no more, he had hoped that one-time escape from death would be enough time for the Captain and the Duke to come to his aid. But it seemed that he was still unable to escape his fate.
During this moment of emergency, he instinctively activated Dragon’s Eye. His surrounding abruptly slowed down. He watched the scene in front of him moving at a snail pace as if he had turned on the slow-motion button of the world.
However, despite the slow-motion perception, Winston’s speed was still fast, he had covered half the distance already. Jack tried to move his body, but it moved too damn slow! Only his perception was accelerated by the skill, while his body maintained the same speed. At this rate, he would simply see Winston reaching him without being able to do anything!
“Movement magic scroll!” During his moment of helplessness, he heard Peniel’s voice reverberating in his mind. The suggestion instinctively sent his mind into his inventory bag and retrieved the Wind Jet magic scroll. Since it was executed using his thought instead of body movement, the scroll materialized instantly on his hand. With the same speed of thought, he activated the scroll, it asked for a direction, Jack pointed with his mind in the direction of the windows. His first choice was to the duke’s group but he would need to pass by near Winston. It was too risky, he didn’t know if Winston was fast enough to catch him mid-flight.
The scroll vanished and the spell stored within was cast instantaneously. It created an explosion of wind on his back which propelled him with an insane speed towards the window. He realized he had grossly underestimated the movement speed produced by the scroll. He tried his best to move his hand in front to shield himself as he crashed hard onto the window. The glass shattered on impact and he was sent flying out of the workroom.
He still had the chance to look back during his flight and saw Winston forming a spell formation, it consisted of many runes but the speed he was casting was terrifyingly fast.
With the fresh experience of using a magic scroll a moment ago, he needed not being reminded again by Peniel this time. He immediately took out another of the magic scroll in his bag. It was the Magic Wall scroll. He activated it without hesitation.
A blue rectangle wall formed entirely of light appeared in front of him, right on time when Winston finished casting his spell. A thin line of yellow lightning shot out with blinding speed at Jack and smashed at the light wall in front of him.
The Magic Wall vibrated heavily from the impact and finally shattered with a deafening bang. For a second, Jack thought Winston’s spell had overwhelmed the limit of the Magic Wall’s defense and would continue and pierce through him. But the yellow lightning ended with the disappearance of the wall.
Jack exhaled a relieved breath after realizing he had again managed to elude another assured demise. But he immediately tensed up again when he saw Winston abandon casting another spell and instead jumped out towards the window.
The Wind Jet spell had expired and the force that was propelling him was no more. He could feel gravity had again pulled on his body. He started to fall.
Jack was still looking at Winston. The butler was about to come out of the window before a familiar blue Magic Wall materialized between Winston and the window. The butler smashed onto the Magic Wall but it remained intact. Jack looked further and realized the Magic Wall had been cast by Duke Alfredo. The strength contained by his spell was completely different from the one he had conjured using his magic scroll.
The last scenery he could see inside the room before it went out of sight due to his continued falling, was captain Salem and his guards resumed at enclosing the butler and his phantom apparition.
Now only he allowed himself to look down, and realized that falling from the third floor was scary. After all, it was not something that was advised to be done in the real world. He tried to adjust his position as best as possible before he crashed onto the ground below.
Luckily it was not a hard cemented floor, but a slightly soft soil suitable to grow crops. Still, the fall hurt like a motherf***er. He lost almost half of his entire HP bar. Considering his large pool of HP, if this had happened to a normal Ranger or Magician, they would most likely die from the fall.
He picked himself up despite the pain, and looked up at the tower. He could hear noises and sounds of things crashing from the window up in the tower. Some flashes of light were occasionally seen from the window, they were exceptionally glaring in the backdrop of the night sky.
Jack shuddered when he thought about how he had managed to escape Winston’s sure kills again and again. It was lucky that he had bought the magic scrolls, learned the Dragon’s Eye and Body Double skills, and possessed the Purifying Pendant necklace. If any one of those was missing, he would have been a goner.
“Thank you, Peniel,” he did not forget to thank the fairy. If she had not shouted the advice on using the magic scroll, he wouldn’t have remembered about them. It was his first time using them after all, under such a sudden and precarious situation, it was difficult to think straight.
“What can you do without me?” Peniel said back with pride.
He ran to the nearest door to go back into the mansion after calming himself. He continued running inside the mansion as he made his way back to the Duke’s workroom. When he arrived at the stairs that would bring him up to the door of the duke’s workroom, it was surprisingly quiet.
Jack’s heart was filled with apprehension as he ascended the stairs slowly. He had just escaped death by a hair breath, several times! And now he was rushing back to the danger? It was indeed a reckless decision, he admitted, but he could not just leave after progressing this far. He could see in his radar that Winston was still alive up there, along with the others, but why was there no sound? If there was a big fight, he should hear something by now.
Both his hands were gripping on his sword and magic staff tightly. When the open door to the workroom was within sight, he did not immediately rush through. He sneaked to its side, before carefully peeking in.
