Isabel frowned when she saw Melinda so tense. "Melinda, don't forget that he is an uncivilized savage. And surely you saw it too—that Magic Energy fluctuation just now was caused by this fellow. You're defending him so fiercely... could it be that you truly have some improper thoughts about this little one?"
"And do you think I'm the same as those rotten nobles? If we don't disguise him properly now, then once we return and word gets out, do you think a slave under some insignificant Baron will have any way to survive?"
As she spoke, Isabel let out a long sigh.
Melinda also knew that she had let her concern get the better of her. Over all these years, aside from the fatherly care her mentor Adolf had given her, Chen Cheng was the only one from whom she had felt another kind of care.
She still remembered the moment she put on those glasses and truly saw the world clearly. The first thing that appeared before her was Chen Cheng's somewhat nervous yet excited face.
"I'm sorry, Isabel. I just don't want him to survive the Magic Beast only to be killed by us instead."
Isabel patted her best friend on the shoulder. She knew very well what her friend had once gone through, and she also understood just how dark the so-called glory of the nobility truly was.
She knew that Melinda had projected certain inexplicable feelings of rebellion onto the little slave before them.
When Isabel had first seen Chen Cheng, when she saw him fearlessly question her in class, she too had been astonished that a person like him could still exist in this world.
She walked over to Chen Cheng and stripped away all the scorched clothing from his body.
Looking at Chen Cheng's charred, shriveled body, she frowned slightly before beginning to examine him with a special method of investigation used by the military.
When her consciousness entered Chen Cheng's sea of consciousness and she saw the shattered Magic Rune Corridor, her heart jolted.
What shocked her was not the extent to which the Magic Runes had shattered, but the number of Magic Runes inscribed within Chen Cheng's body.
The quality of these shattered Magic Runes might have been somewhat low, but their quantity far surpassed that of an ordinary beginner Bronze Rank mage. It had already reached the level of a Silver Rank mage.
As for the scattered remnants of rune corridors preserved amid those shattered Magic Runes, she simply overlooked them.
Those Magic Runes were far too unsystematic.
Moreover, she truly could not imagine how Chen Cheng had managed to inscribe this Gold Rank magic spell, much less avoid immediately suffering a magic overload that blew his body apart.
Yet the shattering of his Magic Rune Corridor this time had almost completely cut off his future path in magic. Removing the shattered Magic Rune Corridor within his body would be an exceptionally difficult matter.
Unless a Gold Mage was willing to use powerful mental force and spend an enormous amount of time clearing away those shattered Magic Runes bit by bit.
But while Isabel was lost in thought, Melinda likewise sent her consciousness into Chen Cheng's body, where she too saw the battered and broken Magic Rune Corridor.
"There are too many shattered runes in his body, and some of the runes and corridors are things I've never even heard of. His journey in magic ends here."
Isabel sighed.
At that moment, she did not know whether she ought to be happy. After all, she had sensed that ever since the glasses Chen Cheng gave Melinda improved her eyesight, Melinda had become somewhat less distant toward him than she should have been.
Perhaps Chen Cheng becoming ordinary once more would dispel Melinda's unrealistic thoughts.
After all, she truly did not want her best friend to one day tear all pretenses apart with those people because of him.
Melinda also knew perfectly well that Isabel was right. Chen Cheng was merely an apprentice mage; relying on his mental force alone, he could not erase those Magic Runes.
Even if Melinda and the others could help, they did not know the inscription routes of those unknown runes. If they erased them carelessly, they might activate a segment of the Magic Rune Corridor, causing a magic overload that would make him explode and die.
Thus, magic was something powerful yet fraught with danger. Those who truly studied magic and became mages all belonged to the upper strata of society.
After suffering injuries caused by errors in magical cultivation, they could rely on the influence and wealth of their Lineage to obtain the aid of powerful mages.
Moreover, their tolerance for trial and error was dozens of times greater than that of ordinary people. From childhood, they could try magic of different attributes as much as possible and find the attribute magic that suited them best.
The two women took off their outer garments, wrapped up Chen Cheng, whose body had only just grown new skin, and prepared to take him back to camp so that the military doctor could treat him more thoroughly.
Inside the cage formed by the forest's Vine Dragon Withered Wood, Achilles, who had sacrificed all the blood and vitality in his body, finally unleashed the strongest strike he had accumulated over many years.
"O divine spirit of fire, grant me the power to burn the world—Blazing Streamer."
As Achilles finished his incantation, the immense power of his blood and vitality directly formed a Magic Rune in midair, and powerful fire elements surged upward.
Sensing that formidable power of flame, Torey immediately held Wisdom Shield, whose face was streaked with tears and whose lips were bitten bloody, in one arm and swiftly retreated.
By now, Wisdom Shield and Torey were the only living people left. Achilles had already died the moment the magic was activated, while the knights who had survived earlier had been killed by the vines of the Vine Dragon Withered Wood while buying time.
Upon seeing that surging power of flame, the Vine Dragon Withered Wood withdrew the vines it had just extended to kill Wisdom Shield and Torey, letting out an unwilling roar at the same time.
It then pulled back the vines forming the cage and gathered them before itself into a barrier to withstand the strike.
When Torey saw that the cage had broken, he immediately fled the area at full speed with Wisdom Shield.
Wisdom Shield, who kept looking back, saw the Blazing Streamer strike the vine barrier. In the next instant, a thunderous boom resounded through the entire mountain forest. Within the flames after the explosion, Wisdom Shield could still see the Vine Dragon Withered Wood vigorously waving its vines, full of life and energy.
At that moment, Wisdom Shield's heart was filled with boundless regret. The unwillingness and hatred in his eyes eventually gave way as the Magic Energy in his body ran dry, and he fell unconscious.
As Torey carried Wisdom Shield and fled at high speed, the Vine Dragon Withered Wood, heavily wounded by Achilles's Blazing Streamer, waved its vines and continued pursuing the two of them.
Just as Torey was about to put Wisdom Shield down and turn back for a final fight to the death, a Fire Magic Energy fluctuation suddenly came from the edge of the forest.
Although this Magic Energy fluctuation was not powerful to Torey or the Vine Dragon Withered Wood, the Vine Dragon Withered Wood had just taken a strike of Fire Magic from Achilles and immediately reacted as if startled by the mere sight of a bow.
The charging vines swiftly recoiled, forming a defensive barrier before its main vine.
Seeing this, Torey immediately seized the chance to escape. He tightened his one-armed hold around the unconscious Wisdom Shield and sprinted toward the edge of the forest with all his strength.
"Little Chen, come, take a look for me. I didn't calculate the parameters on this wrong, did I?"
A balding little old man adjusted his glasses and handed over an A4 sheet covered in messy formulas.
"Old Ke, I remember you specialized in aerospace, didn't you? Instead of researching aircraft engines, spaceships, and the like, why have you started studying medicine now?"
"You young fellow, haven't you heard that research in every scientific field eventually converges? Take your Controllable Nuclear Fusion, for example. Won't it be used as power and energy for deep-space voyages in the future?
"And the biomedical repair pod I'm studying is also contributing to the great voyages through space in the future. Look at how vast the universe is. Even if we traveled at the speed of light, by the time we reached..."
In his hazy state, Chen Cheng returned once again to his days at the research institute. Just as he was discussing the great development of the universe with Old Ke, a burst of noisy clamor shattered his beautiful dream. Only then did Chen Cheng realize that he had long since died in that time and space.
A stabbing pain in his brain reminded Chen Cheng of what had happened before he lost consciousness.
Remembering that maddened Earth Tyrant Bear, Chen Cheng instantly became fully awake. Then, recalling the trump card he had used at the end, he immediately sank his consciousness into his body to inspect it.
When he saw the utterly shattered Magic Rune Corridor, Chen Cheng sighed inwardly. Just as he had guessed, the Magic Energy and precision required by his trump card were simply beyond what the Variable Magic Rune he had created could control at his current level.
Fortunately, Chen Cheng had possessed the foresight to prepare for this. The Variant Magic Rune responsible for transportation remained intact, which meant he still had room to turn things around.
He could still rely on that Variable Magic Rune, using it as a porter to clear away the shattered runes and corridors within his body.
Yet only after Chen Cheng used it did he realize that he had once again fallen into the trap of his own understanding.
As an apprentice mage, he possessed limited mental force. He had considered only the convenience of Variant Magic and forgotten about the limitation of mental force.
Moreover, those Magic Runes were now all broken. If his Variable Magic Rune wanted to grasp them, it would have to be modified again.
It was like the robotic arms on a spacecraft, each designed to grasp a corresponding object. Now that the original objects were broken, the pincers of the original grasping arms naturally had to change as well, remade to grasp the shattered objects.
And even if all those conditions were met, truly clearing away so many Magic Rune Corridors would take at least half a year.
At the same time, Chen Cheng realized his earlier shortcomings. When designing it, he had never considered how to deal with shattered Magic Runes.
However, he could not be blamed entirely. The magical knowledge he had encountered before had never mentioned shattered Magic Runes, because on this continent, shattered Magic Runes meant that the road ahead had come to an end.
Thinking of this, Chen Cheng silently warned himself not to lose his drive to advance, nor to blindly accept one side's words as the whole truth. The magical knowledge of this world also had its own omissions and flaws.
As for truly seeking Melinda and the others for help, he still had no such intention for now.
This was not merely because Chen Cheng wanted to keep his invention secret, but also because he deeply understood the difference between himself and them.
That difference was neither one of race nor status, but of ideology.
The core idea behind his Variable Magic Rune stood as far apart as heaven and earth from the theocratic ideology of their present magical world.
Having read some miscellaneous books in his previous life, he knew all too well how bloody a clash between ideas could become. In the end, such clashes had only one road: bloodshed.
In Chen Cheng's heart, Melinda and the others would always be people of this era. This had nothing to do with trust; being in this era meant that they were destined to be constrained by it.
For example, he was a savage slave, yet the Variant Magic Rune within him was an extraordinarily important invention. If the noble powers here learned of it, what awaited him would not be the praise of all, but death.
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