Before the dark mages could recover, the lone cultivators, Blackthorne family, and the rest of Drake’s party also shot their attacks at the dark mages.

“We can’t stay in the same place, let’s get moving!” one of the dark mages yelled.

Having no choice, the dark mages began walking towards the herb garden while doing their best to block and dodge everyone’s attacks. There were traps everywhere, but the dark mages didn’t have the time to check a spot thoroughly before stepping onto it. This caused them to trigger numerous traps, which they would dodge or block at the last minute. Still, they quickly racked up multiple injuries.

“We can’t keep going like this!” one of the dark mages complained while blocking a dozen attacks.

The dark mage who had summoned the poison ivy spirit seemed to be the leader and everyone looked at him for a decision. While blocking another half a dozen attacks, he stepped onto a new spot. Immediately, the ground split open revealing deadly spikes underneath. He was almost about to fall but the other dark mages caught and brought him back to safety.

Seeing this situation, the dark mage bit his lip.

“Okay, let’s retreat,” he made the choice decisively.

All the dark mages internally sighed with relief upon hearing his decision. They immediately turned tail and ran. Since they had already explored the area behind them, they knew the safe locations without traps and were able to quickly run towards the gate.

“Oh no you don’t!” Blaze exclaimed furiously as he began to activate dragon step. However, Sylvia grabbed his arm and held him back.

Blaze looked at her, slightly surprised, but she just shook her head, implying that he shouldn’t chase after them. Blaze was furious. Images of Helen flashed through his mind once more as rage built up within him. However, Sylvia held him firmly, making him confused.

‘Doesn’t she hate them? How can she let them escape so easily? Has she moved on already?’

‘No… wait… she must have a reason,’ Blaze decided to trust Sylvia’s judgement and calm himself down before focusing on the herb garden again.

Drake noticed this interaction, but he was unwilling to give up so easily. Hence, he gathered all the mana he could and poured it into his right hand. Fireballs began forming in front of him one after another – ten, twenty, thirty… almost forty large, scorching hot fireballs formed in front of Drake.

“Go!” Drake ordered, panting for breath.

Immediately, the fireballs shot forward. The dark mages who were busy retreating were not able to put up defences in time. Looking back at the fiery death approaching them, their faces paled.

However, at this moment, one of the Blackthorne family members called out from behind.

“Water assault!”

A large number of water balls shot towards the dark mages. Seeing this the dark mages smirked.

“NOOO!” Drake screamed, but it was too late. The water balls collided with his solar barrage, neutralising most of them. The rest were easily blocked by the dark mages’ defences.

“Haha, it seems even fate is on our side. We’ll see you losers later!” the dark mages laughed as they exited the herb garden and fled.

Drake was enraged and turned around.

‘Who was it?’ Drake screamed in his mind. That was when he noticed a familiar face again – Cyrus Blackthorne!

He was holding a seashell artifact in his hand. Drake recalled that Cyrus’s seashell artifact had the ability to summon water balls.

‘It was you!? … again?’

Drake’s mind flashed back to the time he clashed with Theo, along with Blaze and Cyrus when he first entered the inheritance. Even at that time, when Blaze was about to land a critical hit on Theo, Cyrus had launched a water assault at the exact same time, neutralising it.

‘Could it be…?’

“Aaahhh… sorry about that,” Cyrus gave a dry chuckle as he rubbed the back of his head.

However, Drake didn’t respond.

Instead, he became wary and glared at him.

‘I’ll deal with you later,’ he thought, and turned back to the herb garden.

Drake took out a couple of mana and stamina recovery pills and consumed them. Within a few seconds, he felt the mana he expended return to him.

After a moment of rest, Drake’s party began moving forward. Sylvia summoned a couple of imp spirits and ordered them to walk forward to try and trigger the traps, but that didn’t work.

‘That’s a shame,’ Sylvia sighed.

Drake also attempted shooting the ground with solar barrage and water bullets, but they didn’t activate any traps.

‘The traps must only trigger when stepped on by a human,’ thought Drake.

However, Drake then came up with another idea. He activated acute sense and then summoned a light barrier to cover himself completely. Afterwards, he slowly stepped forward. Drake’s acute sense picked up danger signs immediately, causing Drake to step back in an instant.

A plume of fire shot out of the ground where he was about to step into. It had appeared so rapidly that he might not have been able to dodge without acute sense. And, even with acute sense, the fire would have still burnt his hand, but it was blocked by his light barrier, allowing him to remain safe.

One second later, the floor stopped spewing fire and returned to normal.

Drake smirked.

Relying on his increased reflexes from acute sense, and light barrier for defence, he began walking through the traps bravely. Blaze and the others saw his methods and followed him gratefully.

Seeing them make quick progress, the Blackthorne family and the lone cultivators cursed. They began using their own methods to try to quickly cross the traps and reach the arch.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Despite his best efforts, some traps were too hard to dodge or block, causing Drake to suffer injuries. He would then consume some pills and take a few moments to recover, before continuing. In this way, even though the arch was physically close, it took him almost an hour to reach it.

“Finally!” Drake gasped as he crossed the final trap and reached the arch. He leaned against the arch and gasped for breath. Staying on full alert for almost an hour was incredibly, mentally taxing. Luckily, he managed to make it in one piece, however, the same wasn’t true for everyone else.

Drake glanced at the Blackthorne family and noticed that one of them was severely injured, while the rest carried numerous bruises. He then looked at the lone cultivators and saw that two of them were dead, while the rest were covered with various injuries as well.

However, they were both extremely close as well. Part of the reason why the groups had so many injuries was because they were trying to keep up with Drake which had caused them to rush and become careless.

“Let’s go! We’re almost there!” one of the Blackthorne members yelled, jumping over the last trap and landing next to Drake. He was soon followed by the rest of the Blackthorne family as well.

At the same time, the eight lone cultivators also arrived on the other side, and walked up to Drake, gasping for breath.

Drake’s party ignored them all and walked into the herb garden.

If the outside could be described as carrying a dense, medicinal scent, the air in the garden felt like it had transformed into a spiritual and herbal nature. It was so rich with the aroma of the various herbs that it was indescribable.

‘This… is amazing!’ thought Drake. His eyes scanned his surroundings and noticed a large variety of herbs, many of which were extremely rare if not extinct, at least on their part of the continent. If he could, Drake would take all the herbs for himself, but unfortunately, he knew he couldn’t do that.

However, there was one thing he was most interested in. Drake stared straight ahead and noticed the large Celestial Willow tree towering over the entire garden, emitting an ancient and majestic aura.

Drake walked up to the tree and observed, open mouthed. Seeing him, the other cultivators also jogged up to the tree, not wanting to allow Drake to take the treasures for himself.

Seeing the other cultivators, especially Cyrus, Drake snorted.

“There are enough leaves here for everyone, let’s all split it up,” he announced.

Indeed, there were hundreds of leaves growing in the tree. Drake only needed three to refine one pill. He wanted to take twenty so that he’d have enough leaves for a number of tries. Taking more than twenty leaves would not be very useful for him, since he didn’t have sufficient quantities of the other materials for more than six or seven tries anyway. Given the recent improvement to his alchemy skills, Drake thought he should be able to refine the pill within those tries.

Seeing his willingness to share, everyone else, especially the lone cultivators, heaved a sigh of relief. They first plucked all the leaves from the Celestial Willow and shared it equally amongst everyone. After that, they began splitting up the rest of the herbs.

No one here apart from Drake was an alchemist. Furthermore, many of the herbs here were very rare and old, so most of the cultivators didn’t even recognise a lot of the herbs. They simply chose herbs based on the strength of their aura, allowing Drake to pick the best and most useful herbs for him very carefully.

Drake was delighted.

Once they finished splitting up all the herbs, the ground started shaking as usual, and the walls began collapsing. The lone cultivators left without waiting for anyone else, and the Blackthorne family followed quickly. Blaze and the others were also about to leave but Drake told them to stop.

Puzzled, they paused and turned around, but Drake didn’t explain. He looked at the large Celestial Willow and sighed.

‘It’s a shame to just leave it here,’ Drake thought. However, it was impossible to move the entire tree.

‘But… there might be something that I can do,’ Drake smirked and started walking around the tree, looking closely at the ground next to its base.

Blaze and the others shared a glance, confused, but decided to not interrupt him. However, as the enclosure started to collapse, debris began flying their way, making them worried about getting out in time.

Just as they were about to tell Drake that they needed to leave, he made a move.

‘There!’ he screamed in his mind. There was a small opening at a particular point at the base of the tree.

Drake attacked the opening with finger thrust, creating a mini explosion. Blaze and the others coughed as dust filled their vision. When the sight cleared, Drake was holding a large, white object, in the shape of a pear, glowing brilliantly.

“Is that-!?” Sylvia gasped, but a large boulder shot towards her, forcing her to block.

‘Let’s get going!’ Drake exclaimed and began running out of the garden. Everyone followed, wondering if they had imagined it.

‘Did he actually get its seed?’ Sylvia wondered.

The Celestial Willow would take a long time to produce an intact seed – no less than a thousand years! And, it had to grow in perfect conditions for those thousand years, to form a single seed. If the tree wasn’t looked after properly over that time, it would not produce the seed.

This difficulty in harvesting a seed from the Celestial Willow was one of the main reasons why it had become extinct.

Not many people knew this about the Celestial Willow, especially given that they had gone extinct for a long time. Being a dryad, Sylvia knew a lot about plants, herbs, and trees, even if she wasn’t an alchemist, but she was surprised that Drake, not only also knew about this, but was lucky enough to find a seed in that tree.

Struggling to contain his joy, Drake dashed out of the herb garden and entered the outside world. He was met with rays of the hot sun, forcing him to squint his eyes as they adjusted to the brightness. The dust storm was fiercely blowing through the inheritance grounds and muffled the loud collapse of the large stone walls.

Sylvia and the others quickly joined Drake outside the herb garden. Further away, to their right, Drake noticed the Blackthorne family standing together and discussing something. He focused particularly on Cyrus and observed him deeply.

Cyrus felt a chill run through his spine and turned around. He noticed Drake who was now talking to his party. Cyrus thought it was just his imagination and returned to discuss their next move with the rest of the Blackthorne family members.

Drake looked at Sylvia and asked what had been on his mind for a while.

“So, you did something didn’t you?”

Sylvia looked at him innocently. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” he replied. “There’s no way you’d want to let the dark mages go so easily.”

Sylvia’s lips curled into a smile.

“Indeed,” she replied. “I have some of my pixie spirits trailing them. The dust storm helps them move almost undetectably so I can see exactly where they are.”

“You genius!” Blaze exclaimed.

“Ha,” Sylvia chuckled. “They’re not too far from here. They’re moving slowly due to their injuries. If we run, we should be able to catch up to them soon.”

“Great, then let’s go!” Blaze exclaimed. However, Sylvia shook her head.

“No,” replied Sylvia. Blaze looked at her confused so she explained. “We are getting closer and closer to the main inheritance in the black structure. Hence, there aren’t a lot of other inheritances left, and those that are there, are being quickly taken up by the other cultivators. So, I think we should split up again.”

“Are you sure?” asked Farisa. “Those dark mages aren’t weak. It might be difficult for just two of us to be able to take down all four of them. Plus, the demon hordes are also becoming larger and more troublesome, and navigating them would also be difficult as just a pair.”

“I know, but what choice do we have? Unless you want to let the dark mages get away? Or give up on the inheritances?” Sylvia asked plainly, looking at Farisa.

“I…” Farisa became quiet before sighing. They couldn’t let the dark mages go. If they regrouped with the dark grand mage, along with Theo and the others, they’d become an absolute nightmare to deal with. But, giving up on the inheritances wasn’t an option either. “Very well, I agree we’ll do it your way.”

“Okay, in that case, Drake and I-” Blaze began to say something but Sylvia interrupted him.

“No, I’m going to go this time,” she said. Her voice carrying a dangerous undertone as she imagined all the things she wanted to do to the dark mages.

“I see…” Blaze replied. “Okay, in that case, you and Drake can go after the dark mages, while Farisa and I move on to the next inheritance.”

“Good,” replied Sylvia. No one had any complaints.

Coming to an agreement, Sylvia pointed Blaze and Farisa in the direction of the next few inheritances from her map.

“Okay, we’ll get going then,” Farisa said.

“Be safe you two,” Blaze spoke with a bit of worry. He wanted to go with them, but he couldn’t leave Farisa on her own. Hence, he knew this was the best option.

However… if that grand mage shows up again…

Blaze didn’t want to think about that. He hoped nothing like that would happen and they’d return safely.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine,” Drake reassured him. After hearing that, Blaze nodded and began walking into the distance with Farisa.

Drake turned to Sylvia who looked at him meaningfully. After a moment, he spoke in a deep voice.

“Let’s avenge our friend.”