Enemy's Trace

Before Arthur came to this world, he received a lot of things from Merlin. They were all sorts of miscellaneous items, completely disorganized and mixed together.

If he hadn't been spurred by Gino's escape, Ethan wouldn't have thought to sort through the things Merlin gave him. And without this big cleanup, he wouldn't have discovered an item among them so quickly that could just happen to solve Arthur's language problem.

It was a very small metal amulet, quite unremarkable, easily overlooked when mixed in with a large pile of things.

The amulet's main function was to transfer some knowledge from one person's mind to another's. It was the item version of the magic Merlin used to instill languages in Ethan before.

From this perspective, it seemed like a simple operation would allow Arthur to learn a new language?

However, that wasn't the case!

This Magic Item given by Merlin wasn't a complete spell; it could only be used as an auxiliary tool. The primary user of the spell still had to be a Sorcerer.

In other words, this spell had to be actively controlled by Ethan himself. This item could only minimally ensure that his casting wouldn't go wrong, or rather, that if it did go wrong, it wouldn't cause damage to either of them.

"This is a safety device."

With Ethan's current Mental Power cultivation, casting such a spell was still quite strenuous, which was why he said this was another test given by Merlin.

He had to correctly find this item among countless杂物, and then use it with his own ability. As long as he could do that, their little problem would be solved naturally, and Ethan's strength would also improve significantly.

"It's exactly the same as the cultivation method given in my Spellbook."

The Mental Power Training in the Book of Inheritance had a similar style, constantly placing new goals in front of Ethan – goals that were conveniently not too far away, reachable with just a little effort. This kept him motivated to keep moving forward, preventing him from getting bored due to a lack of progress for too long and subsequently becoming lazy.

This time, not only could he use this item with a bit of effort, but it also came with a bonus spell.

"This spell doesn't seem too difficult, but its effect is significant. There will be many places it can be used in the future."

Although Arthur had become his partner, he was going back to inherit the throne in the future. This trip was just for travel and training, and he might leave in a year or two, or at most three to five years. Therefore, Ethan had to continue looking for suitable partners.

These partners couldn't all be guaranteed to be incredibly smart and learn new languages in a very short time. Ethan also had to travel to various planes, and the languages he would use would be numerous and varied without any certainty. If he understood this spell, he wouldn't have to worry about the language barrier anymore.

"At that time, I'll create a language pack and give one to each new recruit."

Ethan had been tinkering with this amulet since morning, and by nearly noon, he finally understood it completely. The next step was to practice continuously until he could cast the spell correctly and completely.

He called Arthur to eat together, and then they went to the practice field for a look.

Empty!

That was the only impression. The so-called practice field was a huge open space, with no designated areas or many training tools. Want to use weapons or weights? Bring your own! The guild only provided a shared space, nothing more.

Seeing this, Ethan and Arthur just did their routine training and left. There was really nothing to see here.

Next, Ethan went to the Reference Room and stayed there until dinner time. Then he ate dinner with Arthur and also taught Arthur some basic language skills – he couldn't always follow Ethan around; he had to go out and explore on his own sometimes.

Unfortunately, learning a completely new language wasn't that easy, especially a completely different language family. So, after half a month, Ethan had already initially mastered the small spell called 'Knowledge Sharing', while Arthur was still miserably holding small slips of paper with common phrases and pretending to be mute.

Arthur was very smart, and his memory wasn't bad, but because he didn't cultivate Mental Power like a Sorcerer to the point of photographic memory, just memorizing the pronunciation and common vocabulary of the new language almost drove him crazy. He barely managed to grasp a few, and he also had to consider the issue of spoken pronunciation... In the end, Arthur gave up and honestly waited for Ethan to master this spell.

It wasn't until this day, when Ethan said he could try, that Arthur finally breathed a sigh of relief.

"Not being able to speak is really too painful."

Ethan also couldn't stop laughing. To avoid being noticed as unusual, Arthur simply pretended he couldn't speak, so when there were outsiders around, he even had to suppress the urge to talk to Ethan.

After all, there was only one common language in the Sea of Tranquility, perhaps with slight accent differences, but it didn't affect communication. Arthur's situation had never occurred before. If he could speak but didn't understand the language of this world, it would easily arouse suspicion, and if investigated further, it might expose Ethan's biggest secret.

For safety's sake, Arthur simply pretended that his throat was injured and he couldn't speak recently. Pretending to be mute wasn't suitable, because he would be able to communicate soon.

Today, his painful days were finally coming to an end.

"Don't get happy too soon. Maybe my mastery of the spell isn't perfect yet, and failure is still possible."

Arthur showed a bright, sunny smile: "I believe you will definitely succeed!"

But in Ethan's eyes, the sunlight felt a little dazzling, as if it was going to burn him alive.

"Okay, I will definitely succeed!"

Hmm, it seemed to feel less hot now.

No longer looking at Arthur's expectant eyes, Ethan concentrated and mobilized his Mental Power, then cast this small spell – this was also a small spell that didn't require Magic Power, only Mental Power. Because it was run directly with Mental Power, it was highly likely to cause irreparable mental damage to the user and the recipient, so it required very high control, like performing a precise surgery, with no room for error.

The item provided by Merlin was an insurance. When an error occurred, it would decisively stop the spell's operation and 'return' the caster's Mental Power in a relatively gentle manner.

As for the recipient, it was even safer. As long as the caster successfully cast the spell, it would be recorded by the amulet and then released and transmitted to the recipient exactly as it was.

Therefore, as long as Ethan succeeded, there was nothing to worry about on Arthur's end.

Watching Ethan carefully mobilize his Mental Power, even sweat stains appeared on his forehead, Arthur also knew that the spell casting had reached the most important moment.

He even breathed cautiously, afraid that he might accidentally disturb the completely focused Ethan...

But if he were to realize Ethan's true state at this moment, he would probably immediately draw his Long Sword and demand a duel, then severely teach Ethan a lesson.

"Huh? It seems a bit simpler than I expected?"

"Everything is going smoothly. Has my Mental Power control improved again?"

Ethan stared blankly at the amulet in his hand.

"Maybe it's because Arthur and I found the amulet a bit late? After all, we didn't check things immediately after arriving in the Sea of Tranquility; we were drifting at sea for quite some time."

Unable to figure out the answer, Ethan looked up and noticed the cautious Arthur beside him. He immediately gave him a big smile: "It's successful. The rest is simple."

Arthur finally breathed a sigh of relief. The days of pretending to be mute were finally over.

Just as Ethan said, the rest of the process was simple and smooth. Ethan had originally wanted to also instill the languages he already knew, like English and Chinese Language, into Arthur, but seeing how dizzy Arthur looked after receiving the new information, he decisively suppressed the idea.

Arthur's Mental Power was of high quality and very resilient, but he wasn't a Sorcerer after all, and the nature of their Mental Power was quite different.

Arthur, having suddenly received a large amount of new knowledge, couldn't handle it without any effect like Ethan had. He needed to spend some time digesting it before he could continue using this spell to carry new knowledge – and this capacity wasn't infinite. Overloading it would also damage his mind.

"Alright, looks like I'll have to wait a while before transferring new languages to you."

Arthur also understood why Ethan was doing this. He hadn't expected such severe side effects before, and he still felt a bit dizzy.

"Looks like I need to go rest early today."

After saying goodbye to Ethan, Arthur went straight to rest. Ethan, however, wasn't planning on going to bed just yet. Having resolved Arthur's issue, he was now ready to deal with his own matters.

He set his sights on the guild's reference room. These past few days, he had only briefly skimmed the 'catalogue', identifying the information he wanted to look up, read, or even record. Much of that material wasn't allowed to be taken out and could only be viewed internally, so Ethan planned to stay up all night in the reference room this time.

"Bring the Book of Inheritance. I'll copy the important material directly to make it easier to look up later."

His memory was already very good, but he still wasn't as adept at recalling information as top Sorcerers, sometimes encountering situations where he suddenly couldn't remember something.

Simply put, he could only be considered an ordinary person with a relatively strong memory right now; he hadn't surpassed that level yet. So the safest approach was to record the important information in the Book of Inheritance.

As he walked out of the Living Quarters, he heard two middle-aged men standing not far from the entrance discussing a topic that interested him:

"Sean, Hand of Flame, seems to be dead. His title and that equipment were inherited by the former first mate, Gino."

"Oh? Are you sure?"

"I heard it from the port. An adventurer ran into the Lord of Flame and lost half their supplies just to save their life."

"Sigh, it seems even with a different person, the Hand of Flame is still the Hand of Flame."

"Yeah, we still need to be careful and avoid the Lord of Flame from now on... Oh, and don't go out to sea recently. I heard that guy is in the waters nearby, robbing adventurers returning from sea."

"Really..."