unyielding

It wasn't that the casters were stingy. Most of the Sanctum's intermediate and advanced Lehrlings weren't as well-off as they seemed.

Experimenting, cultivating, meditating, and studying all required money. Many intermediate Lehrlings would take on multiple jobs in the Sanctum in addition to being their mentor's assistant, just so they could earn more money.

In the past, a high-grade energy crystal wasn't a small sum of money for intermediate Lehrlings. They had to think long and hard before using it.

Now that they were in another plane, the mages and knights' consumption of magic power and combat aura had greatly increased due to the constant suppression of the activated Fairy World. In order to maintain their peak state at all times, they could only constantly replenish themselves with energy crystals or magic cores.

It was precisely because of this that many Mages were reluctant to exchange their energy crystals for a mount.

Of course, Locke only arranged a mount for them to use as a means of transportation. The protection provided by the mounts didn't change much.

That was because the primary job of these 1,000 slave creatures was to protect the mages. In a chaotic battle, if the hundreds of slave creatures at the front could not stop the enemy's attack, then having a mid-level magical beast as a bodyguard would not make much of a difference.

Locke's mood didn't change much after earning a small fortune. He walked towards Angelina and Parlina.

The team was moving as fast as they could, but they still didn't arrive within the time limit set by Parlina.

The frail physique of casters was questionable. These Lehrlings who were less than level-one couldn't fly like casters, and they didn't have a strong physique like Locke either. This seriously slowed down the team's speed.

Parlina wasn't in a position to reprimand Locke. She knew the reason behind it all. The Sanctum had made numerous calculations regarding the planar war, and the weak constitution of the apprentices was also within the calculations of the higher-ups.

But there was nothing she could do about it.

At around two in the afternoon in the Sorcerer World, the team finally arrived at a city made of greyish-white rocks.

Like the other casters, Locke examined the building curiously. It was the first building he'd seen in the activated Fairy World that wasn't made of wood.

Animated fairies were a race that loved the wood element. Most of the known animated fairies' cities were made of wood.

The mages were very satisfied with the liking of the animated fairies. Apart from the fact that the wooden houses were close to the architectural style of the Sorcerers World, allowing them to move in directly after occupying them, the other reason was that the wood was flammable.

Mages who were good at using fire magic were the main nightmare of the Animated Fairies.

These sprites, who looked like fruits and plants magnified dozens of times in the Sorcerer World, had an inexplicable fear of fire elements.

A mid-level Apprentice Fire Spellcaster would normally be able to deal with two animated fairies of the same level.

Thousands of Sanctum Mages and slave creatures surrounded the city from three directions.

Parlina's order was to surround them with three and leave one out.

It wasn't that she didn't understand war. She'd participated in several planar wars and had lived for so long. In terms of experience, she wasn't much worse than Locke.

This was mainly to prevent the animated fairies from having the will to fight to the death.

The casters and knights wanted the animated essence, not the corpses of the dead animated fairies.

As long as they'd been dead for more than sixteen hours, the animated essence in their bodies would dry up along with their blood, turning them into a pile of worthless waste.

This wasn't what the casters and knights wanted.

At this stage, all they had to do was defeat the living forces of the animated sprites and eliminate all the animated sprites that were above mid-level Knechts. This world was like a skinned lamb, completely at the mercy of the Sanctum and the Hall of Knights.

It was just like how the majority of humans in the Sorcerer World were ordinary, powerless people.

In the World of Animated Fairies, ordinary animated fairies were also the majority. Ordinary animated fairies that were less than a meter and sixty centimeters tall might not even be as strong as the average farmer in the Sorcerer World.

These fragile animated fairies were the main targets for the casters and knights to plunder in this planar war.

Their bodies contained very little animated essence, but there were thousands of them. Even a Level-2 or Level-3 powerhouse would be tempted by their numbers.

Inside Gray Cloud City, there were nearly ten thousand animated fairies crowded together.

There were so many living fairies, and not all of them were natives of Graycloud City. At least two-thirds of the living fairies had recently fled to this place.

Gray Cloud City, located in the northeast of the Forest Plains, had gone from being unknown in the World of Animated Fairies to being overcrowded.

The lord of the city was a Mountain Bamboo Folk animated fairy. Because he and his people liked to suck the special mineral elements in stones, the lord of the Mountain Bamboo Folk transformed his city into a stone city.

Today, the lord of the Mountain Bamboo Folk was in a very bad mood. In the gloomy lord's mansion, a few stalagmite maids invited a red-skinned apple-man into the hall.

"Sam, what do you think we should do?" The apple-man was an old Animated Fairy. He had just escaped here not long ago. As one of the only two Level-1 Animated Fairies in Gray Cloud City, the apple-man sat in the Castellan's Mansion to discuss with Castellan Sam when the enemy appeared.

Mountain Bamboo Man Sam sighed. This was probably the most he had ever sighed in his life.

"What else can we do? Fight them!" The difference between the Mountain Bamboo Folk and other kinds of animated fairies was that the animated fairies of this race were very straightforward and unyielding.

It was also because of this that the Mountain Bamboo Folk were not very popular in the World of Animated Fairies.

Thinking of its destroyed home, the apple-man's face darkened. In the end, it nodded. It was too old and did not want to move anymore. Dying in battle here was not a bad choice for it.

"Yes, I'll go back and make some arrangements. See you later!" The apple-man left the hall after saying this.

It did not matter if it died in battle, but the apple-man had to think about its descendants. At the very least, it had to send away its grandchildren who did not have any strength. It could not let them be buried here with it.

"Yes." Sam nodded. It had a rough idea of what the apple-man was going to do.

Unlike the apple-man's plan, Sam did not send away its descendants and relatives.

All the natives of the World of Animated Fairies knew that the Mountain Bamboo Folk would not bow in front of a strong enemy, even if it meant death.