The headquarters of the Imperial Magical Council was located in the northwest of Aurelian. It was a square, grand building made of off-white marble. Six thick stone pillars stood at the front, and four ever-burning torches were embedded under the portico. Their flames—red, yellow, blue, and white—burned day and night without ceasing.
In an office at the end of the fourth-floor corridor, Olen Olius sat behind his dark oak desk, reviewing the documents in his hands. From time to time, he would lift his dip pen to leave neat handwriting on them.
He had been working here for twelve years. Of the three hundred and seventeen exile cases he had handled, not a single mistake had been made.
The light streaming through the window fell diagonally across his profile, illuminating a face that was quite well-preserved.
At forty-five years old, he looked no older than thirty-five or thirty-six. His light brown hair was meticulously styled, and his temples were shaved extremely short, revealing a sharp hairline. His dark gray eyes and expressionless face gave him a cold, detached appearance, like a finely crafted porcelain doll.
Just as he marked another document, a shadow gradually approached outside the window.
Its bat-like wings extended from its waist. With a cat-like body, it reached out with two nimble hands to hold a document, its hind legs standing firmly on the windowsill as its eyes locked onto Olen.
A yaolo—a delivery familiar used exclusively within the Council.
Seeing the yaolo, Olen quietly hid the documents he was working on, stood up, and walked to the window. He took the file from its hands and opened it in front of the creature.
At the very top was a serial number written in the Council's specialized encrypted ink, followed by a brief, concise description:
Exile: Shane Leynas.
Location of Exile: Golden Sea.
Reason: The Ring of the Exiled detected an abnormal trigger event; suspected damage to the instrument of punishment.
Action: Field inspection.
Olen's gaze swept over the document, finally pausing at a certain spot, his brow twitching imperceptibly.
Shane Leynas. He remembered him. It was a very ordinary sentence of exile for illegal necromancy experiments. While such charges weren't extremely common, they weren't rare either.
“Go on back,” he said to the yaolo on the windowsill. The creature immediately spread its wings and glided backward out the window.
Olen then turned around, took a deep purple robe from the coat hanger, and put it on. Pinned to his collar was a silver four-pointed star badge, symbolizing his status as the Fourth Seat among the seven seats of the Magical Council.
He then pushed open a small door beside his desk and stepped into the preparation room.
The room was not large. Three of its walls were lined with cabinets, which held categorized potion bottles, scroll cases, alchemical devices, and several spare sets of clothing.
Olen selected a few slender glass tubes and placed them into the pouch at his waist, then took out several alchemical devices and some special potions.
His movements were calm and unhurried, clearly showing he was highly accustomed to this routine.
He knew the Golden Sea all too well. Mages could hardly display any of their true strength there, and the coordinates of the teleportation array were chosen at random and were strictly one-way.
Therefore, he had to ensure he could leave that place intact in order to return here.
Finally, he picked up a special handbag and packed it with a compass, a dagger, some dry rations and drinking water, and an off-white orb about the size of an adult's fist.
After confirming everything was correct, he left the room and walked down the corridor. He nodded slightly to his colleagues as he passed them, continuing without pause until he reached the teleportation hall on the east side of the first floor. He presented his identification to the execution knight on duty, then registered, verified, and signed his name.
Although the entire process did not take long, every single step was executed strictly according to regulations.
As he stepped onto the center of the teleportation array, the execution knight behind him recited the standard blessing in a businesslike manner: “May the Eye of Justice watch over your journey.”
Olen did not reply. He closed his eyes, feeling the vibration of the magic circle beneath his feet and the gradually brightening white light, before his body sank.
When the hot wind brushed against his face, he opened his eyes once more.
An endless, undulating golden sea of sand lay before him, with almost no boundary between heaven and earth. His field of vision held nothing but rolling sand dunes and blinding sunlight.
Olen frowned. No matter how many times he came here, he always felt a sense of discomfort.
But instead of immediately taking out a cooling potion, he retrieved the off-white orb from his bag. A crimson fire flashed momentarily, and the off-white orb transformed into a ball of flame that shot into the sky.
In the sky, the orb continued to morph, quickly turning into a falcon with bright red feathers. After circling above his head for a moment, it began flying toward the southeast.
He had already locked onto the coordinates from when the convict's incident occurred. Now, he only needed to get there.
Olen took an alchemical device from his bag and threw it onto the ground. Following a series of mechanical clicking sounds, the device quickly transformed into a metal lizard.
It was about three meters long, with a seat on its back and a stirrup-like pedal appearing on its flank.
Olen stepped onto the pedal and sat down. With another series of mechanical sounds, the metal lizard began to sprint across the desert.
About three hours later, he arrived below the ridge of a sand dune, and a splash of green that was completely out of place with its surroundings suddenly appeared in his field of vision.
Seeing one or two green plants in the desert was nothing unusual to Olen, but this was not just one or two plants—it was a whole stretch of green.
He stood there, his gaze sweeping across the greenery. He could clearly detect traces of artificial cultivation, and the plants were growing exceptionally well, evidently having received meticulous care.
“Someone is planting trees here?”
This absurd thought flashed through his mind for a brief second, but Olen quickly suppressed it.
It wasn't as if he was ignorant of the conditions here. With the chaotic magic elements, the dry soil, and the sand spirits that appeared from time to time—not to mention the quicksand that followed them—let alone a stretch of greenery, even a large-scale oasis was impossible to form.
Yet, the green before his eyes did not seem like an illusion.
To dispel his confusion, Olen looked up and saw the falcon circling continuously in the sky above a certain spot. Clearly, that was his target location.
Thus, he withdrew his gaze and set off once more.
However, the further forward he walked, the denser the green became. Neat rows of seedling belts grew right on the sand dunes.
When he finally climbed the dune and looked a bit further ahead, he froze.
The first thing that caught his eye was a pool of water, several dozen paces wide. Its surface shimmered with clear, bright ripples under the sunlight, and a dense ring of shrubs grew along its edge.
Radiating outward from the pool was land covered in orderly rows of plants. Though they still looked somewhat sparse, they were growing even better than those on the sandy slope.
Not far from the pool, several tents were pitched. They were uniform in style, made of high-quality fabric, and arranged neatly. Looking at the people busying themselves around them and the uniforms they wore, Olen could recognize at a glance that they were noble retainers.
“Nobles?”
Olen narrowed his eyes in thought.
There only seemed to be one noble currently in the Golden Sea.
And since this was the location of the incident, did that mean that exiled lady had gotten mixed up with this convict?
Thinking of the documents he had hidden before his departure, Olen lowered his eyes, his thoughts unreadable.
A very faint light flashed across his dark gray eyes, and by the time he looked back toward the camp, his expression had returned to its usual detachment.
He set off once more, walking toward the oasis camp.
Rate on N.U.
