Wizard: Starting With Synthesized Gems-Chapter 223: The Wall of the Faithless and the Nibelung Astrology System

Two weeks later, the mortal vessel had endured a long voyage in coastal waters and was finally about to reach its destination, the Thebes City-State.
Over these two weeks, the mortal nobles who had initially boarded the ship with great enthusiasm had become extremely exhausted by the end.
Locke discovered that apart from himself occasionally consuming some mortal black bread, Captain Andy seemed to have undergone certain modifications to his digestive system, as he hadn't eaten a single meal or slept once in two weeks.
Albert, on the other hand, simply brought a large amount of delicious food in his astral ring, secretly taking it out to eat each time, then putting the remains back into his astral ring, believing this wouldn't leave any traces.
Two weeks later, as the mortal vessel was about to dock at shore, Witch Sophia and Witch Gabriel came directly to this cramped cabin.
Witch Sophia said in a low voice within the cabin, "Everyone has worked hard during this time. Because we couldn't expose our identities, we could only use mortal means to reach our destination, wasting quite a bit of time."
"Please note that starting a week ago, we entered Blood Curse Court's territory in these waters. Soon, we will land on Blood Curse Court's heartland, the Blood Raven Wasteland. That is a cursed highland region."
"Please prepare in advance, as the power of curses will constantly invade our bodies and contaminate our magic."
Witch Sophia continued, "But that's not the most troublesome part. The most troublesome is that Blood Curse Court has a curse patrol officer system, just like our wizard lords."
"Each region and city-state has curse patrol officers and senior patrol officers patrolling different areas. Our goal isn't to kill these patrol officers, but to prevent them from discovering us."
Witch Sophia said, "So we need to be extra careful."
"Additionally, everyone knows that Blood Curse Court's heartland has many magical traps, curse sources, cursed items, and monsters created by out-of-control experiments that have infiltrated among mortals."
"Therefore, we must be extremely careful during infiltration."
"Killing those monsters is relatively simple, but it might expose our identities."
"Also, there's the most important thing. Blood Curse Court recently acquired five sets of large-scale defense systems from the fellow black wizard organization Bone Court, the Wall of the Faithless."
Locke showed a confused expression.
Obviously, among the wizards present, only he didn't know what the Wall of the Faithless was.
Witch Sophia explained, "The Wall of the Faithless is a comprehensive defense system created by Bone Court, which specializes in the combined direction of Abjuration and Necromancy schools, mobilizing their entire wizard organization's power. It ranges from resisting large-scale wizard enemy invasions to strategic spell bombardments and discovering invading enemies. Its functions are very comprehensive."
"The most troublesome aspect of the Wall of the Faithless is that it can detect magical pressure reactions from invading formal wizard-level beings over a wide range."
"Even formal wizards who hide very well will be detected by the Wall of the Faithless defense system if they relax for even a moment. Similarly, among us, only Locke is somewhat safer because the Wall of the Faithless prioritizes detecting wizards with mana above 700."
"And Locke, your current mana is in the five hundreds."
"Albert and Andy, you two are also easily detected, though with the Thousand Faces Potion, detection will be somewhat more difficult."
Witch Gabriel sneered, "After all, one set of Wall of the Faithless costs 100,000 magic stones. Five sets cost 500,000, which made Blood Curse Court bleed heavily. If not for the wizard war, they wouldn't have purchased such expensive large-scale magical defense systems from Bone Court."
Gabriel said mockingly, "Too bad the highest control authority for that system still belongs to Bone Court, not Blood Curse Court. So Blood Curse Court can't upgrade and modify the system themselves, nor can they use that defense system against Bone Court."
"However, Bone Court is a black wizard territory and the main seller of large-scale magical weapon systems, considered the top-tier black wizard force in the southeastern quadrant. So those vampire elders of Blood Curse Court can barely accept this condition."
Witch Gabriel became serious and said, "Back to the main topic. We can hardly determine the detection range of the Wall of the Faithless. So once we land, we might already be within its detection range. Therefore, you absolutely cannot use any subtle magic along the way."
"Including Locke."
Witch Sophia seemed hesitant to speak.
Witch Gabriel said, "This is just in case. What if Blood Curse Court's wizards lowered the priority detection range from 700 to 500? Although that would temporarily increase magical resource consumption, it's not impossible."
"But on the road, you can use magical items, potions, magical plants, and so on... as long as you don't use your own spells."
Witch Gabriel said, "We've conducted many tests and confirmed that the Wall of the Faithless system can only detect magical fluctuations produced when using one's own spells. Even the bloodline passive spells you can use due to the Thousand Faces Potion won't trigger the Wall of the Faithless detection mechanism."
"Similarly, to further prevent accidents, you'll also need to wear this."
Witch Gabriel took out three colored gold rings, "These are Astrology Rings, sub-connection devices for our academy's astrology system, the Nibelung system."
"Wearing them, you'll be protected by the Nibelung Astrology System. This can further counter the detection accuracy of the five Wall of the Faithless systems in Blood Curse Court's hands."
Locke, Albert, and Andy all received the seemingly ordinary colored gold rings. Only on the inner side of the rings was a brief line of text, "All decisions you borrow from time will become fixed when the hourglass reverses."
This text only flashed briefly on the inner side of the ring before disappearing without a trace.
Witch Gabriel looked at Locke with certainty, "Locke, wearing it, you can temporarily access a self-developed astrology system that our academy invested at least 300,000 magic stones in. This is also the highest magical achievement of our academy's Divination school astrology magic sub-direction."
Witch Gabriel smiled slightly, "Currently, the person responsible for operating this system is my student. Although they're in the rear for this operation, they'll provide us full support through the Nibelung Astrology System."
The moment Locke wore the ring on his left middle finger, many illusory scenes appeared before his eyes. He looked up as if seeing the top of a dark room above, with countless special devices releasing weak points of light, each representing a star in the sky.
The patterns formed by those stars at the room's ceiling kept changing.
At the same time, on chairs floating in mid-air throughout the room sat first-class wizard apprentices and even second-class wizard apprentices who were still learning. They were all waving at him, indicating their presence. There were actually over twenty people, obviously all the first-class and second-class wizard apprentices from Lilith's Cottage's astrology sub-direction.
What caught Locke's attention was that within this system, Lady Morgana was also present. Although she wasn't responsible for main operations, she was clearly one of the main planners of this operation.
Lady Morgana's voice appeared simultaneously in the ears of all five people in the mortal cabin, "Sophia, Gabriel, Albert, Andy, with you four taking action, I think killing a formal black wizard should be a small matter."
"Locke, you can learn well from them. These four are all my students."
Lady Morgana's warning voice appeared, "Gabriel, an unexpected situation has occurred. Someone is using divination spells to search in your direction."
"Interesting, it seems the Wall of the Faithless has falsified some of its performance specifications. Its actual search performance is probably more than double the stated data."
Gabriel and Sophia exchanged glances. Fortunately, they had given the Nibelung Astrology System's sub-circles to the three in advance.
Of course, this wasn't really luck, as Gabriel controlled this timing.
Gabriel had a First Circle passive magic as her permanent defense field, Arcane Divination.
So Gabriel could always sense danger before it occurred.
As a price, her permanent defense field wasn't a direct defensive type of magic, making her considerably more fragile than typical First Circle wizards.
Lady Morgana's warning voice appeared beside them, "The Wall of the Faithless detection is coming, and there's a black wizard ship patrolling at sea ahead. Don't show any flaws."
"Sigh, this astrology system from the academy certainly cost quite a bit of resources, but the result after completion can only be called mediocre."
"After all, our academy isn't good at this type of magic."
Among those present, Witch Gabriel, as a senior prophet, obviously didn't look pleased. After all, something she was proud of was directly criticized by Lady Morgana as merely mediocre, which naturally made her unhappy.
Witch Gabriel could only say to her students operating the system, "This can be considered your project. Do this well and you can publish countless high-quality papers. Don't you always complain that I don't find resources for you?"
"Astrology has no practical combat application and shows obvious undervaluation in various comprehensive assessments, with unreasonable resource allocation."
Witch Gabriel said coldly, "Now is your chance to perform well, seize the opportunity, and publish papers on wartime astrology applications."
"Let those laymen see the superiority of the Nibelung Astrology System."
The first-class wizard apprentices in the Nibelung Astrology System, who were Witch Gabriel's students, immediately expressed that they would seriously operate the astrology system to help Teacher Gabriel and Witch Sophia.
Next, the cabin fell into silence.
Locke clearly sensed something passing overhead, making his heart uneasy as if something bad might happen around him.
"What is this?"
Locke didn't use any mana, but with his current ability to read Mordor language, he saw crystal skulls floating in mid-air. These crystal skulls seemed invisible to everyone except himself but the First Circle witch, along with Albert and Andy, clearly sensed something had entered the air.
Locke's mind raced, "These are invisible skulls, or spiritual manifestations, or projections? Hmm... feels more like projection plus necromancy school spiritual manifestation spells. The main bodies of these crystal skulls shouldn't be here, they're just conducting patrols."
"Not good, I can't appear to be watching them." Locke immediately pretended his gaze was on Albert and took out dice from his pocket, pretending he wanted to gamble with Albert.
Albert was stunned for a moment, then his eyes actually showed genuine interest, "Playing dice? What's the bet? Let's gamble with the goods we have on the ship. I want those female elf slaves you have."
Albert licked his tongue with a lustful expression.
For a moment, Locke couldn't tell if this was Albert's true personality but their acting was excellent. The crystal skulls circled overhead for a while, seemingly making judgments, then turned and passed through walls to investigate other cabins.
Fifteen minutes later, a crystal skull suddenly passed through the wall back into the room, only to see Locke and Albert frantically gambling at a table, obviously getting carried away with increasingly large bets.
Andy and Sophia were trying to persuade them to stop gambling, while Gabriel looked very angry with Albert.
Only then did the crystal skull dissipate completely, and the unease lingering in everyone's hearts finally disappeared.
All five paused briefly, but Witch Gabriel used eye signals to indicate they should continue without stopping and not say anything unnecessary.
Because even though the Wall of the Faithless had left this area, there was still a black wizard ship outside, and they might have magic capable of hearing their whispered conversations.
And if they used magic to shield themselves, they would be detected by the opposing curse patrol officers using special methods.
Of course, Blood Curse Court's detection methods were generally mediocre unless purchased from outside.
Organizations like this black wizard group were typically only very skilled in their specialized magical direction. After all, having low moral advantages allowed them to conduct human experiments freely, which certainly had merit.
Everything else was truly mediocre.
In the depths of a curse academy on Blood Raven Wasteland, Blood Curse Court's heartland, a group of black wizards stayed inside a sealed stone chamber, surrounded by countless crystal agate skulls floating around their heads and sides, forming an invisible wall.
This group of black wizards was communicating with each other.
"Previously detected suspected formal wizard magical pressure signals in that area, but when using the Eye of the Faithless to investigate, we found no suspicious personnel."
"Was divination magic used for investigation?"
"Yes, we've connected to the source of the Wall of the Faithless, obtained countless information from the ocean of millions of faithless undead souls from the past, thus gaining divination resources, but no abnormalities were discovered through divination spells. Hmph, those Bone Court guys' divination magic is just so-so after all, they're not professionals."
"Should we raise the attention level for that area? Or murder all outsiders in that region?"
"Wait, this is bad. We've fallen for a diversion tactic. There are formal wizards from Lilith's Cottage attacking us from another direction. They've deployed an advanced magical plant in our southwestern city, a Whale Demon Flower! Wherever that magical plant appears, ecological-level disasters occur! That must be paired with the supporting First Circle spell Ecological Destruction!"
"What! There's an important project of ours in that direction. Immediately notify nearby senior curse masters to go stop it."
...
Meanwhile, a black wizard ship in front of the mortal vessel carrying Locke's group originally wanted to intercept these smuggling ships.
After all, regardless of whether these smuggling ships had problems, since they'd already seen them, they could easily take them but at this moment, the black wizard ship suddenly changed its mind, raised sails, and began sailing in a different direction.
On deck, many black wizard apprentices were running frantically, "An advanced one-time magical plant, a Whale Demon Flower, has fallen in our heartland. Hurry back to support that area!"
"My god, another one of those terrifying things. Wherever that thing lands, it will completely drain all valuable things and nutrients from that land in a short time, then explode all at once, producing countless flower seeds. When the seeds fall in that area, they'll grow various flowers, completely destroying the magical ecological environment and draining all magical tidal energy."
"Those hypocritical white wizards, we only kill their people, but they want to turn our territory into complete ruins!"