Chapter 72 – The second olive branch

Chapter 72: The Second Olive Branch
What’s this? A soul sealed inside?

Seeing that the head was about to break free from the body, the golden runes suddenly turned into layers of chains sealing the head’s seven orifices and struggling to pull back.

The human head gradually ran out of strength and was about to be pulled back into the male apprentice’s body by the golden rune chains.

Suddenly it quickly retracted and violently charged in Saul’s direction again.

Between the contraction and pull, a small gap was left empty, and a tearing roar came out from the taut lips of the human head.

“Help me-“

The golden runic chains tightened again, and the voice ended abruptly.

It seemed as if that cry for help had consumed all of the human head’s strength, and the golden rune chains finally managed to detain it back into the male apprentice’s back.

“Hmm?” Rum grunted softly, his fingers suddenly picking up a huge quill from a lab bench off to the side.

The tip of the pen dipped into a nearby thumbcap-sized bottle of ink, and when it was lifted, a bit of the slightly sticky golden liquid hung from it, and would fall away.

Rum moved quickly, adding a few more lines to the male apprentice’s back.

The male apprentice lying there twitched twice, a pained expression on his side over face.

But also because of this change, he fell more like a living person than he had just been, rather than a puppet.

With the gradual reinforcement of the rune formation, the male apprentice’s face regained its calmness.

Saul, who had been observing from the side, also stopped meditating.

When the drawing was finished, Rum threw the feather quill back onto the table, had the male apprentice stand up, and rechecked his body.

“Observe for a while longer and get out. Call the next one in.”

A third apprentice came next, this time showing no anomalies.

It was just a quick process, like going through the motions.

When all three had gone out, Rum pondered in place for a moment before suddenly beckoning Saul to come closer.

Saul walked over with some trepidation, wondering how Rum would test him.

Who knows, the first thing Rum said after stretching his arm to grab Saul’s shoulder was ……

“Have you been having nightmares for the past two days?”

Saul’s mind instantly drifted back to the dream of lying naked on the teleportation platform, the sound of footsteps searching for him, and the blackened bottom of the platform.

Mentor Anze said that he was being haunted by a spirit, was this nightmare a manifestation of the spirit haunting him?

But why hadn’t Mentor Kaz been able to see it?

“Yes.” Sol appropriately showed some uneasiness.

“Cid’s spiteful spirit haunts you, and it seems you’ve let him die in a very unpleasant way.”

“I was in normal defense …… that means I was forced to fight back.” Saul hastily defended.

Rum laughed, and the part of his neck stretched forward, and really stretched out old.

“How about it, do you want me to help you get rid of Sid’s resentful spirit?”

Saul froze, easily understanding the other party’s meaning, and thought, “Mentor Rum, are you Sid’s mentor or mine? Isn’t it a mistake to have the wrong enemy?”

The other party was just complaining that Saul had killed his assistant, why was he now taking the initiative to open his mouth to mention the matter of helping?
Despite feeling strange in his heart, Saul was still honest most of the time.

“Think!”

Rum was satisfied with Saul’s dryness.

“If you want to, perform well. Kaz says you have an outstanding gift of soul. He rarely uses outstanding to describe someone. Let’s see how outstanding you really are, tell me, what did you just see in those three second level apprentices?”

Sol pondered for a moment, organized his words, and told the scene he saw truthfully.

Rum gazed deeply at Sol, his expression growing more and more serious as Sol recounted.

“You can’t call this a gift …… it should be called soul intuition.”

He reached out and took Sol’s arm, making Sol spin around in front of him.

Then withdrew his hand and rested it on his belly.

The belly rippled like a lake.

“Obviously, the knowledge of spell formations and runes is not yet mastered, and there is only a half-understanding of sorcery, yet he can directly see through the essence through the surface.” Rum suddenly turned his five fingers inward and violently seized it, directly ripping off a piece of flesh from his belly.

After the piece of meat was detached from the body, no blood flowed out of the wound. Instead, some fat flowed out to block the wound.

Rum put the piece of meat in his hands and kneaded it.

The lump of meat was surprisingly like clay that could be molded at will.

A doll-like doll quickly took shape in Rum’s hands.

He then used his pinky finger to hook out two black loach-like worms from a bottle and placed it on the doll’s face. The loaches burrowed down the doll’s eyes, leaving two empty holes.

The doll then gradually changed color to the light brown of wood.

Wasn’t this the puppet that the apprentices used to test their spiritual power at that time?
It was only then that Saul realized that the material of the puppet wasn’t wood at all. He had even borrowed one to study it for a few days back then, but he hadn’t found the material to be wrong at all.

Rum threw the finished eyeless puppet into Saul’s hands.

“Watch it and tell me what you hear.”

Thor took the puppet and glanced at Rum, a little puzzled, but complied, looking down into the puppet’s empty eyes.

“Help me, help me …… I want it too …… Help me ……”

The pleas for help rang out again, sometimes interspersed with other voices.

As time passed, Saul’s face gradually began to turn white.

Slowly, he could no longer intentionally focus on the puppet’s eyes, but he could not move his eyes away.

This freshly baked puppet seemed even more powerful and terrifying than the one that had been kept in the cabinet.

Rum never shouted to stop.

“…… Kill me! Kill me! Kill me!!!”

The shrill hiss resounded again, and Sol felt his eardrums ache and his brain spin in his skull.

He expected Rum to cry out to stop, but the latter remained still.

Saul’s mental power was a bit stronger than when he first became an apprentice, but the strength was limited, so he once again felt blackness in his eyes and was about to pass out in the next second.

Finally, the puppet in front of him was taken away.

The sharp hissing stopped instantly.

Saul’s feet went limp and he nearly fell to the ground, luckily reaching out to help steady his center of gravity.

Wait, what was he holding?
Saul quickly retracted his hand, the slower he was, the more he would have sunk into Rum’s fat body.

Rum didn’t care about Saul’s small action, threw the puppet into a barrel casually and asked, “What did you hear?”

Saul took a breather and just felt his brain melting into brain matter.

“It started with someone calling for help, saying help me.”

Rum didn’t have much of a response.

Saul continued, “Then there were some other voices, like I want it too, it hurts too much.”

Mentor Rum nodded softly, he was about to speak when he realized Saul wasn’t finished.

“It ended with a couple of sharp …… kills.” Saul recalled the voice and raised his hands to cradle his arms, feeling patches of goosebumps.

Rum was about to nod when his face suddenly changed, and he reached forward, tightening his grip around Saul’s right arm.

“What was the last thing you heard? Kill me?”

A sharp pain shot through Saul’s right arm, accompanied by a “click” sound.

His features crumpled together and he let out a cry of pain.

This Rum really wants to take advantage of this opportunity to get rid of me!
But in the next second, a white light flashed.

Saul’s right arm returned as before, the pain was as brief as a hallucination, and even the headache subsided a lot.

“Did you really hear kill me?” The corners of Rum’s eyes and his face full of fat were twitching.

“Yes.” Saul squeezed his arm; the bones weren’t misaligned.

“Was it a man’s voice, or a woman’s?”

“A woman’s,” watching Rum seem concerned about the voice, Saul added another descriptor, “sounds very painful.”

Rum stared at Saul, his expression slightly dazed, as if he saw someone else in his face.

“Ha …… ha ha ha ha …… ha ha ha ha ！！！！”

He suddenly began to laugh maniacally, like he was having a seizure.

Both hands kept slapping his fat belly, making a “bam bam bam” sound together with the laughter.

Gradually, he laughed his head off, and while the meat didn’t move, his head swayed back and forth.

Saul watched in horror and couldn’t help but take two steps back. He was afraid that Rum would explode like a balloon.

Rum laughed for what could have been ten minutes, then suddenly shifted forward, stopped laughing maniacally, and stared at Saul with dead eyes.

“Do you want to transfer to my name to study?”

(End of chapter)