The First Night as an Apprentice

Thor stared at the maid in disbelief.

He was only twelve!

Thor pulled the heavy cart into the room and slammed the door shut with a bang in front of the maid.

The maid straightened up and pouted unhappily.

Just then, the maid responsible for delivering books to Room 603 pushed an empty cart over.

She looked at the young maid standing outside with empty hands in surprise. "He didn't let you in?"

"It's fine." The maid hooked a finger beneath her collar, and when it snapped back against her flesh, it quivered lightly. "He'll need it."

Unaware that the person outside had already marked him as prey, Thor happily picked up each book and flipped through it.

Every one of these books was thick.

Some introduced the magical animals, plants, minerals, and other things that existed in this world.

Some described the traits and legends of common ghosts and monsters.

Some resembled foreign-language textbooks, though their complexity rivaled an English-Chinese dictionary.

Others were simply picture books, except every image inside was bizarre and horrifying. Looking at them for too long could even make one dizzy.

After roughly flipping through every book, Thor went to inspect the items covered by black velvet cloth.

There was a Crystal Ball he had seen before, though this one was transparent rather than pure black.

There was a set of transparent crystal or glass test tubes and beakers, along with a small crucible.

There was also a large wooden box divided into more than a dozen compartments containing various items, including several sets of clothes and a Level 1 Apprentice badge.

All of these items had been introduced in the apprentice handbook. Thor compared them against the handbook one by one and finally identified everything.

Thor pinned the Apprentice badge to his coat, his fingers tracing the slightly rough texture on its surface.

Thinking of tomorrow's first public class, Thor took out a copy of Wizard Language: An Introduction to Noah Language, sat down at the long table again, and began previewing the material.

After all, he had survived the gaokao in his previous life. Rote memorization and endless drills were something he was fairly good at.

There were no windows in a Level 1 Apprentice's room, so he could not see the scenery outside. He could only use the Blue Hourglass overhead to tell the time.

Blue grains of sand fell one by one. Accompanied by the rustle of turning pages and the scratch of pen on paper, the whole world sank into silence.

He wolfed down the lunch and dinner delivered by the maid. When Thor next looked up to check the time, he realized it was already midnight.

Classes started tomorrow, so he could not stay up too late and drain his energy.

Thor stretched. The muscles all over his body groaned in soreness, but his mind was still clear, and he did not feel the dull exhaustion of fatigue.

After undergoing the Apprentice Mental Power test, he had noticed that his stamina had improved significantly, as if some valve inside him had been opened.

Back when he was still a servant, he had worked until midnight, slept until four, then been kicked awake and forced to crawl out of bed to work again.

Back then, he had always felt he never got enough sleep.

Who would have thought that after becoming an Apprentice, when he finally had time to sleep, he would not feel particularly tired?

"Is this just my imagination? It feels like both my mental strength and brainpower have become much stronger than before."

Thor could not be sure of his condition, so he decided to ask his mentor about it tomorrow.

He washed up briefly, then went to the wall and dimmed the candlelight to its lowest setting.

Whether in the room or the corridor, the candles could be dimmed, but they could never be extinguished.

Even servants knew that rule.

The kind that could save your life.

Lying down on the bed, Thor felt excited again.

The bed was probably one and a half meters wide, far more spacious and comfortable than the communal bunk he had slept in before.

Thor spread out all four limbs, trying to occupy the entire bed. But he was still young and thin; there was enough room even for him to lie sideways.

After lying sprawled out for a while, Thor still could not fall asleep. Left with no choice, he curled himself into a small ball and pulled the blanket tightly over himself. Only then did he feel an inexplicable sense of security.

This time, he fell asleep quickly.

At 4:15 in the morning, his biological clock forced Thor to open his eyes.

He sat up and yawned. The cool air filling his lungs immediately woke him up.

Bright candlelight spilled down once more, and Thor returned to the long table.

But just as he was about to open his book, something stirred in his heart. He walked to the door, pushed it open a crack, and peered outside.

His room was 604, near the end of the corridor. From here, he could see the slope leading up and down between floors.

Before long, he heard faint footsteps. A boy's figure appeared beneath the dim lights, laboriously pushing a cart up the slope.

Brown?

Thor's eyes widened. He felt an urge to act, but ultimately suppressed it.

Though his identity had changed to that of an Apprentice, his strength was no different from what it had been a day ago.

He closed the door again and returned to the long table.

"I remember Brown was on the late-night shift only two days ago. Why is it his turn again today?"

"Could it be because I became an Apprentice?"

Although there had been some issues with how Thor passed the Apprentice test, and many Apprentices already knew about it,

the servants might not care about any of that. They only knew that Thor had gone from being a servant to a powerful and terrifying Wizard Apprentice.

So Brown, who had once led the bullying against Thor, would probably be assigned to the late-night shift quite often from now on.

Thor wanted to ask Brown who had ordered him to try to kill Thor.

But now was not the right time. For one thing, Thor had no ability to interrogate the truth out of him. For another, it would be easy to alert the enemy.

He turned his head to look at the Hardcover Book on his left shoulder and reached out, wanting to touch the book that had saved his life. Unfortunately, his fingers passed through the air and touched nothing but emptiness.

"Perhaps only when I become a Wizard will I be qualified to understand how this Hardcover Book works."

The threat of death had not retreated simply because he had become an Apprentice. Instead, the clouds hanging over him had grown heavier. Thor could not see through the conspiracy he was caught in at all.

Thor lowered his head and plunged back into the sea of knowledge. Right now, only studying—studying without pause—could make him feel safe.

What woke Thor again was a polite knock at the door.

Keli stood outside. There were faint dark circles beneath her eyes; she had probably stayed up late studying too.

"It's almost time for class. Want to compare what we learned last night?" Keli said without ceremony.

Perhaps this was what it truly meant for geniuses to walk alongside geniuses.

Thor looked up at the time and saw that class was indeed about to begin. It was even later than the time he had planned to leave.

He hurriedly gathered up his books, paper, and pens and rushed out the door.

"That hourglass can be set as an alarm. The apprentice handbook explains it."

Thor instinctively made an OK gesture, but Keli did not understand it.

The two hurried toward the East Tower, chatting as they walked.

"How long did you study yesterday? I only read for two hours before my head became so muddled that I couldn't focus. I had to close my eyes and rest for a while," Keli said softly.

Thor's heart skipped a beat, and he did not tell the truth.

"About three or four hours at a stretch before taking a break."

In truth, he had even eaten with a book in hand yesterday. The only proper rest he got was when he lay down to sleep.

He had slept only four hours in total, yet he was still brimming with energy.

Even so, Keli stared at him wide-eyed in disbelief for quite a while.

"Your Mental Power really is terrifying. No wonder you could stare at that Puppet for so long." She lowered her gaze to the book in her hands and said regretfully, "I wish I could read for that long too."

As they spoke, the two arrived at the large classroom on the tenth floor.

It was packed with people, and many of them were clearly not new Apprentices from this batch.

Other than the first row and the corner seats in the last row, which still had vacancies, every other seat was occupied.

While Thor hesitated between keeping a low profile and standing out, Keli had already strode toward the first row with her head held high.

When she noticed Thor had not followed, she turned around and lifted her chin at him.

"Come on. You can't keep a low profile anymore."