“Is he Jupiter?” Sanders asked softly.
Angel shook his head vigorously, “Not Jupiter, he is Popota! The apprentice that went missing in the Twilight Mountains before!”
Sanders furrowed his brows, this answer was completely unexpected to him. But if he followed Angel’s words… Sanders recalled Popota’s appearance. His memory was extraordinary; as long as he wished, he could remember the appearance and clothing details of an unnamed passerby even from a hundred years ago.
And Popota was indeed the only apprentice from the Barbarian Cave who had come to the Watchguard Fortress, so Sanders actually had a good impression of him.
The aberration in front of him looked nothing like Popota, but the chain, as well as the contour of its eyes, were exactly the same as Popota’s.
“How did he become like this? Why is he here?” Sanders wondered.
However, his questions could not be answered at the moment, because the flame chain suddenly stabbed towards Sanders.
Sanders and Popota began to fight in the narrow corridor.
Meanwhile, Angel retreated to the corner, pulled open the palm-fire statue, and temporarily hid in a narrow and empty room.
After entering the room, Angel took a moment to catch his breath, then heard intense noises from outside; the entire corridor seemed to be shaking.
The only relief was that the materials used to construct the Void Tower were very sturdy, so Angel was safe hiding there for the time being.
While Sanders and Popota were clashing, Angel pondered Sanders’s question.
Why had Popota turned into what he was now? Angel actually had a guess in his mind. Previously, when he had used the Scouting Puppet, he saw Popota kill a Purgatory Flame Slave by the Magma pool. However, when the Scouting Puppet was discovered, he did not see what happened afterward.
But when he went back to the Magma pool, he could no longer see the slain Purgatory Flame Slave, only its weapon remained on the ground. Furthermore, the rest of the area around the Magma pool was covered with Purgatory Flame Slave weapons. If Popota had been seeking profit, he definitely would not have left those weapons and only taken the bodies.
Thinking back on it now, maybe Popota’s power surge was related to those missing bodies?
Perhaps through devouring or sacrifice.
However, regardless of the method used, if Popota managed to reach nearly the level of a great demon from being an apprentice in such a short time, it was almost certain that his end would not be pleasant.
A collapse was inevitable.
Even when Glarke from the Dusknights’ Blade, after his physical destruction, possessed a new body to become “Spiwey,” he could not immediately transition from an apprentice to a wizard and still had to progress step by step.
Nevertheless, when exactly the collapse would happen, that was difficult to say.
As for Sanders’s second question: Why was Popota here?
Angel, in fact, had a flicker of insight when he first saw Popota, but he had been too preoccupied with how to escape and had not thought it through.
Now, delving deeper into the analysis, it seemed that the answer was gradually becoming clear.
Why did Lassudral collapse?
Because an uninvited guest had intruded into the Void Tower and destroyed the Inscription nexus in the underground hall.
Angel had already encountered Jupiter and Yadasai in the Void Tower, so aside from them, who could the intruder be?
At this point, the answer was very clear: Popota was very likely the intruder, and his purpose here was probably to destroy the Inscription nexus.
But if this line of thought was pursued further, it became truly horrifying.
What would be the purpose behind Popota’s desperate attempt to destroy the Inscription nexus?