Seeking Help

"What a piece of trash. I've taught you so many times, yet you still can't produce a perfect experiment specimen!"

"You've wasted so many materials. I think you'd better become one of my experimental materials instead.→"

"Oh! Fresh flesh and blood. My Little Lada will surely be very satisfied with you, hehehe!"

Amid hoarse laughter, Ke Suo Long gripped the neck of a male apprentice below in the classroom. His two bulging eyes were filled with madness and savagery.

The root cause of that male apprentice's misfortune was that he had ruined his experimental material.

Unlike Saine, who served as Ke Suo Long's assistant on the podium and had an entire apprentice corpse as a specimen,

because the Black Wizard Academy's materials were limited—or perhaps because they feared the apprentices would waste them—the dissection materials before the apprentices in the classroom were merely fragments of limbs.

The male apprentice had half an arm before him. Whether from nervousness or some other reason, he had punctured three blood vessels in succession, directly turning his dissection material into scrap.

"Squeak, squeak, squeak!" A piercing cry came from the sleeve of Ke Suo Long's black Magic Robe.

An ugly rat, three-quarters of whose fur had fallen out and whose exposed red flesh made one's skin crawl, leaped out from within.

The instant the rat appeared, not only did all the apprentices in the classroom fall silent as cicadas in winter, but even Saine on the podium felt his heart tighten.

During the ten years Saine had lived at the Black Wizard Academy, he had seen this rat devour living people more than once. He had also been startled awake from nightmares by it on countless nights.→

Without exaggeration, at least seventy percent of the apprentices in the entire Black Wizard Academy had lived beneath the shadow cast by this rat.

Having witnessed a battle between two Formal Black Wizards, Saine vaguely felt that this rat's fighting strength might even surpass the Plant Monstrosity belonging to Kaisersen Master at the plantation.

A cruel scarlet glimmer flickered in the rat's eyes.

Before the other apprentices could even react, the red-skinned rat, originally only the size of a palm, suddenly sprang up and transformed into an afterimage over two meters tall, swallowing the apprentice before it in a single bite.

When the rat landed again, it had returned to its palm-sized form and slipped back into Ke Suo Long's sleeve.

Faint cries of "Squeak, squeak, squeak!" drifted out. The other apprentices in the classroom seemed to see two flickering red lights staring at them from within Ke Suo Long's sleeve.

It was a greedy gaze, like that of a predator that had spotted its food.

"Gulp." No one knew which apprentice swallowed first, but the other apprentices immediately lowered their heads, not daring to look at Ke Suo Long again.

They tended to the experiment specimens before them as carefully as they could.

Even if they made some mistake or minor error, they did everything possible to remedy it, hoping to fool the eyes of a Formal Black Wizard.

Saine was not distracted in the slightest either. Just as Ke Suo Long had praised him at the beginning, the experimental material in Saine's hands had been handled to near perfection.→

Perhaps Saine truly had a talent for this. If he could take Ke Suo Long as his master, he might one day become a top apprentice of the academy like Death Hand Mike.

But considering Ke Suo Long's temperament, and how he always liked to use his own apprentice disciples as experimental materials... Saine did not regret his original choice.

As Saine lowered his head to inspect his experiment specimen, he noticed from the corner of his eye that a female apprentice in the front row was trembling slightly. Her face was turned toward him as well, her expression carrying a trace of plea for help.

Saine did not know this female apprentice; she merely looked familiar. She seemed to be an Entry-Level Apprentice who had been at the academy for two years.

Her childish face showed that she was probably not even ten years old.

The experiment specimen she was handling was a hand. From Saine's professional perspective, there were at least two obvious mistakes on the specimen she had processed.

No wonder the female apprentice was trembling in fear. The scene of Ke Suo Long allowing his pet to devour an apprentice had truly terrified these little ones once more.

If three obvious mistakes meant certain death, then two mistakes meant she already had one foot through the gates of hell.

Only the little ones with a single obvious mistake could barely be tolerated by Ke Suo Long.

And apprentices like Saine, who had not made even the slightest minor error during the dissection process and could be called perfect, were few and far between in the entire Black Wizard Academy.

To put it vividly, Saine seemed born to eat from this bowl.

If he had an accomplished mentor to teach him, or received the corresponding Knowledge Inheritance, Saine might one day walk the path of Undead Element specialization among black magicians.

The female apprentice's plea for help made Saine's heart sink.

He could tell that one of her two obvious mistakes could indeed be remedied.

But trying to save another apprentice right under the nose of a Formal Black Wizard—Saine did not think he had that much standing.

The female apprentice had black hair, and several thin braids of unique style gave her a special beauty that the other female apprentices did not possess.

Her pleading gaze reminded Saine of Meili years ago, when she had also been an Entry-Level Apprentice and had asked Saine, who sat beside her, for help.

At that time, Saine had only been a low-level apprentice. Perhaps Meili's pleading gaze had moved him, or perhaps he had not been in the Underdark for long and had not yet fully adapted to the atmosphere of the Black Wizard Academy. Thus, he had gritted his teeth and helped Meili.

This time, would Saine still help this female apprentice?

He first glanced at Ke Suo Long. At this moment, Ke Suo Long was still inspecting the apprentices' work.

Since he was checking them one by one in the classroom, it would still be a while before he reached the female apprentice in front of Saine.

Taking a deep breath, Saine picked up the Surgical Knife beside the lectern.

He did not personally step in to help the female apprentice remedy her mistake. Instead, using the complete specimen before him as a model, he lightly gestured through the air with the knife.

At this moment, every apprentice in the classroom was watching their own specimen with pounding hearts, so no one noticed Saine's small movements—except the girl who had sent him that pleading look.

No apprentice who had survived two years in the Black Wizard Academy would be too foolish. When Saine demonstrated it through the air a second time, the female apprentice immediately realized something and hurriedly picked up her Surgical Knife to make the correction.

Making a specimen from a single hand would not have taken much time to begin with.

By the time Ke Suo Long inspected her work, the female apprentice had long finished her remedy and was sitting there respectfully.

"Hm? Not bad. You actually used the 'Cross Stitching Method' to remedy one mistake."

"But did I teach this technique to your class?"

"Hiss, I'm getting old. My memory isn't so good anymore." Shaking his head, Ke Suo Long passed by the female apprentice and walked toward the next one.

Though it had happened in only a brief moment, both the female apprentice and Saine on the podium had broken out in cold sweat.

That really had been too rash!

If Saine had known beforehand that Ke Suo Long had not taught the Cross Stitching Method to this batch of Entry-Level Apprentices, he definitely would not have so easily stepped in to help her.