Chapter 18: Borrowing money for development
Chapter 18 Borrowing Money to Develop
“Did he offend someone?” Saul asks.
“I heard that he brought his own copy of the High Elven Language, thinking that he could delve into it by becoming an apprentice, only to be found in the flowerbed this morning.” Korrie moved closer to Sol, purposely scaring him with a low, husky voice, “I heard that he cut his legs into several pieces and buried them in the soil as plant roots, and when he was found, he almost bled to death.”
“Can it still be saved?”
“Who knows, it had already been transported by the time I got there anyway.” Kori was a bit saddened.
“You’re not afraid?” Saul looked at Korrie, a young girl in her teens, with some surprise.
Korrie held her cheeks and murmured, “I knew what the Witch World was probably like before I came here. It’s similar to my home, where people always die somehow.”
That crazy new apprentice was just a minor hiccup, and Korie quickly changed the subject to her experience carrying a bucket to meet Mentor Guido yesterday.
“…… I feel like Mentor Guido is still willing to teach me, but he just can’t control the vomiting. The large bucket I prepared for him could be half a person high, yet it was still full of vomit in less than an hour. I can’t figure out how he can eat so much!”
“Heh ……,” Saul said, disgusted and amused.
Kori suddenly looked sideways at Sol, “You’re finally smiling hey. When you first came in, you looked like a walking corpse.”
Sol’s smile faded and he rubbed his face with his hand.
So he looked that haggard?
Only the straight-laced Kori would say that.
The one in charge of teaching Basic Everything Awareness was a second level apprentice.
He was skinny and bony, with sunken cheeks, and looked more like a corpse than Sol.
He didn’t pay attention to interaction during class, and just monotonously read from the book in a flat tone, making Saul drowsy.
Saul simply turned the book over and read it himself.
Because of yesterday’s colorful experience, he didn’t have time to prep for today’s content.
Basic Everything Cognition was like a hodgepodge of biochemistry, history and geography.
Anything that could be recorded in a sorcerer’s apprentice textbook had more or less the characteristics of sorcery.
For example, Saul saw a kind of grass that could make people grow their magic power in the chapter on plants.
But the price is to take his people to become thoughtless puppets, rather than helping people to grow their magic power, it is more like sacrificing oneself to refine magic crystals for others.
There were a total of ten books in the Basic Everything Cognition, and each book was ten centimeters thick, so it was simply impossible to read them quickly.
Saul picked the ones he was interested in reading, occasionally looking up to stretch his muscles.
At this time, he saw two of Keri’s former followers, Dozer and Locke, sitting beside Duke and muttering about something.
And Korrie on the side said nothing about it.
“What are you looking at?” Korie noticed Saul’s line of sight and looked along, also discovering Dozer and their small movements.
She bristled, “They’re trying to isolate you, how childish, like children.”
The class turned into a study session, and by the end of the day some people even started learning about the other classes.
The second level apprentice on the podium just read out the first section of the book, and after doing so, he read other books to himself, completely ignoring the people below him.
“No wonder we haven’t seen a few older apprentices in this class, I guess they all know it’s useless.” Kori muttered, regretting that she hadn’t brought any other books with her.
“Korie, can you lend me a little bit of magic crystals?” Sol, who had been brewing for half a day, finally mustered up the courage to say to Korrie.
“What do you need magic crystals for?” Korie looked over warily, “I won’t do a deal where there’s no return!”
“I want to borrow two books from the library.”
“Someone just went crazy reading nonsense, aren’t you afraid?”
Saul said sincerely, “I’m not going to read recklessly, but I really need some special books right now.”
Without asking Saul specifically what kind of book he wanted to read, Korie hesitated for a moment and poured out five black translucent lozenges from her carry-on purse.
“I can only lend you five, and you’ll have to pay me back in three months …… pay me back ……”
“Ten.”
“Deal!”
“Do I need to write an IOU?”
“Sure!”
Saul tore a page out of the blank booklet and the two made their first monetary transaction.
The first class passed, and the second class was rune construction, which everyone was looking forward to with immense anticipation.
Rune construction, the foundation of casting sorcery.
However, to everyone’s disappointment, the lecturer for this class was still only a second level apprentice. This guy was even more excessive, only teaching the most basic rune drawing once and letting everyone practice on their own.
Many of the newcomers had half an understanding and wanted him to teach them again, but the other side even wanted to charge money to teach them again!
When Saul heard that he wanted money, he simply gave up.
He recalled the points he had just talked about and felt that he remembered them clearly, so he started to draw the first basic rune in his mind.
With his eyes closed, the first basic rune was clearly imprinted in Saul’s mind.
He opened his eyes and froze for a moment, somewhat incredulous.
“I seem to have …… memorized it?”
Just in case his eyes had memorized it and his hands hadn’t, Saul lifted his pen and wrote it on a blank piece of paper.
He opened the book and compared the runes he had written with the book.
It was exactly the same!
Even the curvature of each line was the same!
Saul closed the book and tried again, this time he changed to a special pen and ink, and started to pour his body’s magic power into the tip of the pen as the lecturer on stage said.
This time it was a bit tough to put down the pen.
The magic power had to be output evenly and manipulated with the mental power to construct a basic rune.
Any of these steps done poorly would cause the rune to collapse, and the mana would directly fail, turning it into an ordinary pattern on white paper.
Sol was fully focused.
Then.
Success!
Although it was only depicted on ordinary white paper, foreign colors flowed on the surface of the rune, and the magic fluctuations emanating from it were clearly perceptible.
“You, you succeeded?” Korie murmured as her eyes widened.
She originally wanted to spend some money to listen to the explanation again, but at this time, seeing that Saul had actually succeeded in one go, she suddenly felt that it should be fine for her to delve into it again.
Saul didn’t notice Kerri’s voice, his sight had already turned to the next basic rune.
The second one.
Success!
Big success!
The third one.
Success!
Fourth one.
…… failed.
Saul frowned.
This failure wasn’t because he had made a mistake in memorizing the runes, but because he didn’t have enough magic left.
With his own magic power, he could only last for three runes?
Or was there something wrong with the way he was outputting his magic?
Saul finally deeply sensed the danger of not having enough magic power.
No wonder Kong Sha felt that she was eating her up, and no wonder Mentor Kazi wasn’t even willing to look at himself more than once.
Saul’s chest rose and fell violently for a few moments before finally calming down slowly.
“What’s the point of panicking?” He said to himself in his mind, “Haven’t you already made up your mind?”
Saul took out his crystal ball and the human-monster walking chart and began to meditate to recover his magic power.
There was an advantage to having less magic power, it recovered faster.
Learn to look at things dialectically.
Saul’s success in drawing three runes in a row had long sparked the attention of the class.
Not only the new apprentices, those old apprentices and even the second level apprentices on the podium were shocked by the series of magic power fluctuations on Saul’s side.
There were even a few newcomers who were planning to bleed to ask the second level apprentices to teach them, and with a turn of their feet, they were ready to ask Saul for advice.
However, these people began to hesitate again after seeing that Saul had only traced out three runes and began to meditate.
Could it be that the newcomers had some problems with their rune construction? Besides, one couldn’t go over and directly interrupt someone’s meditation, right?
Duke in the front had a twinkle in his eye, turned back and said something to his two companions, picked up his own runes and rushed up to the podium–Every apprentice who came from the outside had more or less some magic crystals prepared on his body.
The second level apprentice on the podium seemed to be satisfied that Duke was the first to go to him, and lowered his voice to give him a lot of lectures, looking at the crowd of newcomers under the stage enviously.
And Duke also always cooperated to show, suddenly realized, originally so expression.
Angela, who was sitting at the edge of the classroom, slowly slid a pair of lovely big eyes from the podium to the back of the classroom, and finally landed on Saul, revealing an interested expression.
(End of chapter)