Under the ugly expressions of the Pyrotechnic Academy wizards, Locke slowly turned around, looked at them, and rotated the natural magic eye on his forehead.

Pyrotechnic Academy wizard seed Wayne Acosta's expression changed drastically, "Let's go, retreat quickly. We'll go find another army ant swarm."

"The Eye Demon wizard's reputation is well-deserved. His combat power is too formidable."

In this moment, Wayne sensed the enormous gap in combat power between him and Locke.

If he dared to act, Locke definitely wouldn't mind making them never leave the Forbidden Forest. After all, there were so many dangers inside the Forbidden Forest.

All five Pyrotechnic Academy wizards chanted incantations and transformed into flames, fleeing toward the distance.

After Locke confirmed they had left, he withdrew his bloodline activation state and said to everyone who now looked at him with even more respect, "I only need the army ant queen's glands. The rest I'll distribute to you all. The materials from the remaining army ants are also temporarily distributed to you."

"Besides, I need to temporarily leave the team for a while. During this time, you'll need to explore the Forbidden Forest on your own."

"As compensation, I'll give you a magic painting map of the Forbidden Forest. It has key exploration areas inside the Forbidden Forest and different materials that can be harvested in different regions. This can help you explore the Forbidden Forest's periphery. Sebastian, you'll serve as this exploration team's temporary captain."

"The magic painting map must be returned to me afterward."

Locke planned to leave the team to search for that five-hundred-year-old special-grade research project.

Nixon and Sebastian, although they temporarily didn't understand why Locke wanted to do this, after the conflict with the Pyrotechnic Academy people just now, these people were even more convinced by Locke.

Therefore, they didn't dare ask too many questions for the moment. They could only express agreement to Locke and thank him for sharing the magic painting map with them.

This way, they would have even more confidence to harvest the treasures they wanted in the dense forest.

Moreover, Locke had just killed the army ant queen and devastated the army ant swarm. These army ants had lost their backbone and become very easy to kill. This was also a huge gain.

Not to mention that Locke completely didn't want this near-First Circle level army ant queen's corpse.

Of course, this was also because Locke's main goal now was to become a formal wizard. The biological materials on the army ant queen's body were completely useless to him.

Only its glands could barely count as useful material even at the First Circle stage, which was why Locke took them.

After Sebastian and the others left, Locke snapped his fingers. Immediately, a 0.8-circle pointer made of rusted metal appeared before him.

Over this past year, Locke had completely learned the three basic spells of archaeologists: Summon Tomb Spirit, Historical Projection, and Ancient Pointer.

The Ancient Pointer spell was composed of Rust Death Particles among the 210 types of negative energy particles.

Because Rust Death Particles had the characteristic of ultra-long-distance resonance with other Rust Death Particles. Moreover, Rust Death Particles only existed in very ancient places with metal. Without some age, this type of negative energy particle couldn't possibly appear.

This was a dark energy particle that presented a special particle state after being subjected to compound contamination from death, time, decay, and metal.

Apprentice-level wizards generally wouldn't use dark magic involving this kind of particle but Rust Death Particles had a third characteristic, which was that as long as they combined with a special material aura, they would resonate again with a certain specific special material aura, thus producing pointer-like characteristics.

The Tome of the Tombstone once wrote that the existence of Rust Death Particles seemed to prove that this world's spacetime possessed some kind of universal resonance that hadn't been accurately proven yet.

It explained why ancient things naturally attracted other ancient things.

And Rust Death Particles themselves were also the culprit that could corrode magical alloys and make magical alloys unable to exist long-term.

Locke placed a wisp of aura he obtained from Wizard Foucault's original manuscript in the great library onto the Ancient Pointer. Immediately, special magical radiance appeared on the rust-covered pointer's surface. The Ancient Pointer floating in mid-air began to slowly rotate, turning toward a certain direction.

"This magic is really useful for finding specific targets." A flash of joy passed through Locke's eyes. "Of course, because of the Rust Death Particles' special resonance nature, using it to find modern items and living people is full of inconvenience."

"The effect would be very poor. Although it can find them, the precision would be very low. This magic is perfect for resonating with ancient items."

"Five-hundred-year-old items barely count as ancient items, although they definitely won't automatically produce Rust Death Particles."

Locke used the Large Green Owl Banana to fly into mid-air and crossed over a group of Screaming Willows. After that group of Screaming Willows detected a moving object flying over them, they immediately emitted deafening screams.

But Locke had already picked a Sound-Absorbing Mushroom in advance and created a circle of silence around himself, blocking all the screaming sounds emitted by the Screaming Willows.

Locke looked at the Ancient Pointer before him and saw the pointer slightly shaking. This meant the target was already very close. Otherwise, the pointer would only keep pointing toward a general direction. Only when approaching the destination would the pointer shake slightly, representing that he was near the target location.

Locke circled once in the air. Currently below him was a swamp, with no unusual discoveries but that didn't matter. Based on the angles at which the pointer shook at different positions, Locke used this data to calculate the specific location of his destination in the swamp.

"Hidden by Illusion School magic?" Locke said, "Found it. It's there."

Locke descended from the sky and landed on a rock in the swamp. Immediately, after he stepped on that rock, a research institute hidden by Illusion School magic was exposed before Locke's eyes.

The illusion magic hiding this research institute seemed to be First Circle magic, so without standing in this special position, one couldn't see, touch, or sense this research institute in any way but as long as one stood in this position, the illusion magic hiding the research institute would automatically fail.

And Locke was able to determine this research institute's location through archaeologist magic. If he didn't know archaeologist magic, he really didn't know how many more years he would have to spend slowly finding his target through library records and the fragmented information in Wizard Foucault's memories.

But if any accidents occurred during this process, such as outsiders detecting his intentions, tragedy would easily occur.

Or if someone found this research institute first... In any case, Locke was now very glad he had studied archaeological magic.