Wizard

Lina and Saine's newly chosen home was located in the second-to-last Apprentice Dormitory building.

The environment here was more secluded, making it better suited for Saine and Lina to meditate or conduct magical experiments.

Even the rooms in this dormitory building were much larger than the one Saine and Lina had lived in before.

Besides a brand-new, spacious Laboratory Table, the room here even had a separate bathroom.

Resource distribution among the apprentices of the Black Wizard Academy was extremely uneven.

Nearly all Entry-Level Apprentices had to squeeze three or four people into a cramped dormitory.

Those rooms were even smaller than Saine's previous home. They did not even have Laboratory Tables, with only enough internal space for two bunk beds and several clothes racks.

Yet in the dormitory building Saine and Lina had selected, nearly every floor in sixty percent of the building stood partially empty.

It was common here for a single apprentice to occupy several rooms alone.

The room Saine and Lina had chosen was on the fourth floor, where there had originally been only four apprentice households.

Three of them lived alone, while the remaining household, like Saine and Lina, consisted of two people living together.

Of the apprentices living in the second-to-last Apprentice Dormitory building, half were Intermediate Apprentices and the other half Advanced Apprentices.

The Advanced Apprentices occupied the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors, while the fairly capable Intermediate Apprentices mostly lived on the lower three floors.

Saine and Lina had also chosen the location of their new home after considering both their strength and their specific needs.

On the second day after they moved into this building, one Intermediate Apprentice who had originally lived on the same floor as them voluntarily moved down to the third floor.

The other three apprentice households showed no reaction, but after several days had passed, Saine discovered something that left him clicking his tongue in amazement.

"I noticed today that those two apprentices living together are both men!" Saine said quietly to Lina, who sat at the table flipping through Magic Books, while he prepared dinner.

"What is so strange about that? Haven't you seen similar situations during your ten years at the Black Wizard Academy?" Lina continued reading with an utterly calm expression, showing no surprise whatsoever.

Saine lightly chopped into the Black Sharkscale Fish in his hands and smiled awkwardly. "I thought only those bored Low-Level Apprentices liked doing such things. I never expected even Advanced Apprentices to..."

There were very few cases of Low-Level Apprentices surviving past the age of thirty, and many long-standing apprentices knew this.

Some apprentices with extremely poor talent failed to reach the realm of Intermediate Apprentice even by their late twenties. Knowing their futures were hopeless, they began to abandon themselves to ruin, relying on their strength to commit all manner of vile acts.

The terrible atmosphere of the Black Wizard Academy was indeed the result of those Formal Black Wizards allowing matters to run wild, and even actively fostering it.

But it had to be said that these vile-natured Low-Level Apprentices also worsened the situation.

As for apprentices above the Intermediate level, although their character and temperaments were likewise exceedingly cold and ruthless,

they were, after all, beings who still had hope of exploring the Truth Dao and the Element Profound Truths. With most of their energy devoted to magical research and academy missions, they truly had little time to bully weaker apprentices.

Saine's reply made Lina close the Magic Books in her hands.

She walked over to Saine's side and, while helping him prepare dinner as best she could, casually said, "There are exceptions even among Advanced Apprentices. Those two people living together next door are not simple either."

"That Intermediate Apprentice, Mali, has won the academy reward twice in a row. He is a popular candidate for advancement to Advanced Apprentice."

"As for the other, the Advanced Apprentice Stanson, do not let his big, burly, simple-minded appearance fool you. He has actually mastered several extremely rare and special Bloodline Magics."

"If his brain were not a little lacking, he could have secured a place even among the top Advanced Apprentices." Lina spoke as she helped Saine handle the Black Sharkscale Fish.

Ever since Saine had returned injured from his previous Academy mission, Lina had indeed changed considerably.

At the very least, before this, Lina had never helped Saine prepare a meal like this.

It was not that she did not want to; she simply did not know how.

Lina's clumsy movements left many fish scales stuck to her arms.

It was truly hard to imagine how a woman who could not even manage household chores had mastered so much profound magical knowledge.

A lavish dinner brimming with warmth was completed through the joint efforts of the two.

Seated before the broad dining table, Saine and Lina's conversation bore little trace of ordinary daily life. Instead, it was filled with the atmosphere of magicians spending time together.

For instance, after briefly discussing several of their neighbors, Saine and Lina spoke while eating fish about certain problems they had recently encountered during experiments and magical studies.

Saine mentioned the insights and gains he had recently obtained in the field of alchemy.

Although Lina had not divided her attention into studying alchemy, as an Advanced Apprentice, she still shared some common ground with Saine in this regard.

After Saine finished speaking of his recent circumstances, Lina, who had rarely spoken much in the past, also brought up the Magic Books she had been reading lately.

The Magic Books Lina had recently been reading was called Ankeda Annotations, one of the books Saine's mentor had given him.

It was a Magic Notebook casually written by a Formal Magician named Ankeda. It recorded the Spell Model and related knowledge of an intermediate spell—Object Control Art.

Saine had initially believed that the greatest use of Ankeda Annotations was the intermediate spell within it. Presumably, that had also been Moxidu's purpose in giving him this Magic Notebook.

But what Saine had not expected was that, while reading these Magic Books, Lina had gleaned something else besides learning the intermediate spell Object Control Art recorded within.

"Based on the information revealed in these Magic Books, Formal Magician Master Ankeda's true profession was that of a wizard."

"It also explains that magicians in the Wizard World are actually divided into many professions. Besides wizards, there are Summoners, Necromancers, Elementalists, Bloodline Warlocks, and so on."

"Every branch of magical profession has many further divisions."

"For example, we can now be called Fire Elementalists among Elementalists," Lina said.

Lina's explanation truly gave Saine a sense of sudden realization, along with curiosity.

He had more or less mastered the two intermediate spells, Fire Wall and Flame Hand, over this period. It was time for him to branch out into Object Control Art.

While studying Object Control Art, prompted by Lina's reminder and suggestion, he would also carefully study the Magic Books Ankeda Annotations.

This lavish dinner, brimming with warmth, passed amid the conversation of the two Magic Apprentices.

It was an ordinary day without anything remarkable, yet also an ordinary day recording Saine's life at the Black Wizard Academy.