To be precise, Herag cannot place his hope in others.

Parker might be able to help him, but at most, it would only be to ensure Herag's safety. As for the others, Parker surely wouldn't care, so Herag would have to figure it out himself.

As Herag thought about these issues, he infused his magic power into the teleportation ring.

A flash of light, and he vanished from sight.

...

Twilight Temple.

"Lord Bannings, the people in the X-617 world are becoming fewer, but not a single person has been teleported out."

Beside the teleportation altar, a wizard named Lares reported to Bannings.

Lares was in charge of managing the teleportation altar and could sense how many people were still inside.

Bannings looked gravely at the teleportation altar, already sensing something ominous.

During this period, no one had been teleported out.

They knew how many people were still inside, but they couldn't tell the specifics of the situation or what was happening in there.

They had sent people in to investigate, but no one returned, each person disappearing one after another.

The number of people in the X-617 world was slowly decreasing, yet no one came out.

This suggested that the people inside might have died in there, leaving them no chance to teleport out.

At first, this seemed normal, as wizards dying is quite a common occurrence.

But gradually, the wizards guarding outside the Twilight Temple felt something was off.

Not a single person teleported out, clearly against reason. Could it be that they all died instantly with no chance to escape?

Upon hearing the news, Bannings sent people in to investigate, but those sent in never came back.

That's when everyone realized something might be seriously wrong in the X-617 world.

As they were trying to figure out what was happening inside, a mutation occurred.

The number of people inside the X-617 world rapidly decreased, but none of those reduced numbers came out.

Within just a few hours, there were only a little over thirty wizards left inside that world; the others were all gone.

Disappearance meant two things – death or teleportation out.

Since no one had teleported out, it indicated they all died in there.

"What kind of situation would lead to such a massive death toll, without anyone being able to escape..." Bannings mused over the possible scenarios.

Suddenly, something came to his mind, and he said to Lares, "Let me see the teleportation ring."

Lares immediately handed over a teleportation ring.

Holding the ring, Bannings rolled it between his fingers, scrutinizing it.

After watching it for a while, he asked, "Have these teleportation rings been tested?"

Lares bowed his head and said, "Every teleportation ring has been tested many times. Both in accuracy and stability, all tests showed no issues; they should teleport back to this point just fine."

"Are you sure? Maybe not," Bannings continued to inquire. "Who crafted these teleportation rings?"

"By the witchcraft artifact crafting master, Mr. Alannis," Lares replied.

Bannings rubbed the teleportation ring in his hand, whispering, "Alannis... I should go see him."

"Sir, do you mean there's a problem with the teleportation rings?" Lares asked.

Bannings replied, "It's only a hypothesis, but for so many people not to come out is too unusual. I don't believe they all just died in there; if the issue lies within the rings themselves, then everything makes sense."

"Problems with the teleportation rings..." Lares understood the possibility but felt a chill down his spine.

If the teleportation rings were indeed faulty, then those wizards who entered the X-617 world might as well be dead.

He knew the chaos within plane space very well, and if one were teleported into a chaotic spatial torrent, even crystallization wizards had little chance of survival.

More importantly, these wizards were promising talents from various factions.

If something happened to them...

Just the thought of it made Lares break out in a cold sweat.

Holding the teleportation ring, Bannings made a few space jumps to arrive outside Alannis's blacksmith shop.

He glanced at the old shop sign, adjusted his monocle, and stepped inside.

The inside of the shop was clean and tidy, unlike the disorder seen in many other blacksmith shops.

Bannings suddenly remembered this was a place for making witchcraft artifacts. He nearly mistook it for an ordinary blacksmith shop.

Walking through the narrow shop, he didn't see anyone and moved further inside through a small path.

Arriving in a dimly lit room, Bannings saw Alannis lying peacefully on a recliner.

"Something's wrong..."

Bannings noticed something amiss; he couldn't hear Alannis's heartbeat.

He quickly approached the recliner and, upon inspection, discovered that Alannis was indeed dead.

Alannis had no wounds on his body, seemingly having died of natural causes.

Moreover, it appeared he'd been dead for some time.

Since Alannis had no family or friends, no one knew he died at home.

If not for the fact that a wizard's body is more resilient than an ordinary person's, decomposition would have already set in.

"Dying right at this time, it's too much of a coincidence."

Bannings realized it was highly likely the teleportation rings had malfunctioned.

The timing of Alannis's death was too coincidental to be chance.

Hurriedly, Bannings returned to the Twilight Temple, informing the others of what had transpired and expressing his suspicions.

Soon, this matter reached various factions, and people began arriving at the Twilight Temple to start an investigation.

The craft of making teleportation rings was not complicated; there were many witchcraft artifact crafting masters, not just Alannis.

Since Alannis had never had any anomalies in his life, the expedition team chose him to fulfill this batch of orders.

But no one expected that this person, who had masked himself all his life, would leave such a trap on the verge of death.

Undoubtedly, Alannis was a master in crafting witchcraft artifacts; the teleportation rings he made were of high quality and very stable.

The expedition team had initially conducted checks and tests on each teleportation ring, finding no issues.

Yet no one imagined that Alannis had hidden an extremely small witch array within them.

This tiny witch array usually served no purpose and showed no anomalies.

Its only function activated upon Alannis's death.

Initially recording the teleportation altar coordinates at the Twilight Temple, upon activation, one should have been teleported back here.

Under normal circumstances, indeed, there would be no problem.

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