She sat cross-legged in a spacious treehouse in the heart of the sprite city, fiddling with a light red ball-shaped object in her hand.
Beneath her black robe, her long, fair legs were enough to make one's imagination run wild.
The dark caster didn't seem to mind the fact that she might've exposed herself as she continued fiddling with the object.
Inside the treehouse, Parlina and Kayla were also sitting in different spots in the room.
"So, more than two thousand sprites have escaped?" Parlina's wrinkles deepened by another two.
"Yes," Locke replied.
A city of nearly ten thousand animated fairies. This was the largest city of animated fairies they had encountered since entering the 17th warzone. After this battle, everyone's harvest was bountiful.
"Forget it. So what if they escaped?" Parlina sighed. They were still short on manpower, and they'd been fighting in a three-man encirclement. Losing two thousand sprites was within her expectations.
"What are our losses?" Kyla asked. She was a rare Light Magician in the Sanctum, and was mainly responsible for the recovery of the Magicians in the team.
"Five of the apprentices were unfortunately hit by the sprite's slime. Another dozen suffered varying degrees of mana depletion and are now in a weakened state," Locke said.
Parlina and the other casters didn't ask what happened to the five casters who were hit by the sprite's green slime. Locke didn't mention it either. It was obvious that the slime, which could pierce through the scales of major monsters, was as fragile as a sheet of paper to the casters.
As for the remaining dozen or so apprentices, it was because they weren't in the wizarding world. There wasn't any elemental energy in the air for them to replenish their mana. Without sufficient energy crystals, they immediately fell into a weakened state after releasing all their mana.
Most of them were intermediate apprentices. Only these pitiful fellows didn't have enough energy crystals to replenish their mana.
Just like how Locke needed wind energy crystals for his training, casters needed energy crystals that matched their main attribute to replenish their mana.
Fortunately, they'd gained quite a lot from this battle. All casters would receive a portion of their rewards, and they could exchange some energy crystals with others to replenish their mana.
After talking about the Mages' losses, it was time to talk about the slave creatures.
A total of 400 slave creatures had died in this corner of the world of the living fairies. They were either killed by the numbers of the living fairies, or corroded to death by the mucus. Some of them were unlucky enough to die from the accidental damage caused by the magic explosion.
These slave creatures were pitiful. They worked hard for the mages until they died in battle, but in the end, they became feces for the other slaves.
The Sanctum mages did not have the time to deal with the slave creatures that had died in battle. After harvesting the remaining valuable items from the dead slave creatures, their flesh and blood were mercilessly rewarded to the surviving slave creatures.
Compared to the corpses of fairies animated by fruits and plants, the slave creatures preferred other lifeforms of flesh and blood.
By devouring the flesh and blood of their own kind, they could quickly recover from their injuries and avoid becoming food for other creatures after the next battle.
The death of four hundred slaves was nothing more than a string of numbers to Parlina and the other magi.
The Three Western Isles still had plenty of low-level-one slave cannon fodder left. Once the Void Fortress returned, they would be able to bring the slaves over.
"Hmm, not bad." Parlina praised Locke in an appreciative tone. "You deserve it." She handed him a green bead.
Locke carefully took it. At first glance, the orb looked very similar to the one in Ashar's hand. However, upon closer inspection, the energy waves emanating from the orb were far weaker than the one in Ashar's hand.
That was the core of a level-one animated fairy, containing the essence of an apple-man's entire body.
The core of an activated fairy was even more valuable than activated essence, but it only existed in the bodies of level-three and above animated fairies. The core of this level-one apple-man only contained activated essence of a higher purity, about four grams.
The one in Locke's hand was probably the core of an activated fairy that was close to level-one, which was equivalent to a quasi-Knight-rank creature. There were only a handful of activated fairies that could reach this level in the entire city.
Locke left the place after thanking Parlina from the bottom of his heart. He planned to find a place to absorb the activated essence.
If he absorbed activated essence of this level, his strength would increase by at least ten to twenty percent, which would be of great help to him in improving his cultivation.
In the previous battle, Locke had followed the slave legion and picked up quite a few leftovers. Among the more valuable ones were two activated fairies that had the strength of high-rank Knechts. Locke had used half of the Swift Dragon Potion he'd obtained in the Sanctum and a few other slaves to kill them.
The Swift Dragon Potion, which was made from the blood of level-one creatures, was indeed very effective. Now that Locke had killed two high-rank Knechts, he finally had a precedent of killing a high-rank Knecht.
A quasi-Knight-rank could take on three to five high-rank Knechts at the same time. Locke knew that he still had a long way to go before he could reach that level.
The cores of these three activated fairies were a shortcut to shorten the time he needed to work hard.
Sure enough, fighting was the fastest way to improve his strength. Locke sighed in an empty treehouse as he calmed down and consumed the three cores.
In fact, he could only completely absorb the activated essence in the body by eating the whole activated fairy. Firstly, Locke didn't have a big appetite, and secondly, he was too lazy to waste time on the extra essence, so he only consumed the core that contained most of the essence.
Mages who prided themselves on being civilized and elegant rarely ate an animated fairy whole. At most, they would remove the heart core of the animated fairy and toss the corpse to the slave creatures to deal with.
Perhaps it was because he'd been around casters for too long, Locke had unknowingly picked up this habit that was considered a 'bad habit' by knights.
Angelina's objection was also another reason. She was still unwilling to directly consume the core of an activated fairy to obtain the activated essence.
It wasn't that she couldn't get used to eating raw flesh and drinking blood, but she subconsciously thought that these activated fairies were as cultured and rational as humans.
Even if she absorbed the activated essence, Angelina, like most casters, was currently using an extraction device.
Perhaps Angelina didn't know that the process of extracting the activated essence with a magic device was a hundred times crueler than eating the core raw.
It was the result of gathering countless activated fairies together, mashing them, squeezing them into juice, and finally extracting them.
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