Come On! Let's Do This Together!

Thor's fingers rested against the Puppet. He could neither pick it up nor put it down.

"Why do I always receive warnings of death? Am I just too unlucky, or is this normal in the Wizard Tower?"

Thor slowly, cautiously let go and found that he had not turned into a Puppet lying on the floor.

"Looks like a Puppet cannot take over my body by itself. It needs me to open the cabinet, or it can only do so when I face multiple Puppets."

Thor walked around the Puppet, intending to bring over the small bin that sealed away garbage.

"Since you refuse to obediently return to your cabinet, then become trash for me!"

But Thor celebrated too soon.

New writing surfaced on the Hardcover Book.

[Shuoyue Calendar, Year 314, May 21,

Because you were lazy, you threw the Puppet into the trash bin.

Though that was indeed where it belonged, the little bin could contain trash but not magical items.

When you returned to the Laboratory the next day, it looked as if a hurricane had swept through.

An enraged Senior Mark refused to hear your explanation and licked away all your skin, flesh, and internal organs...

You became a skeleton.

Your left hand was delighted.]

Thor immediately leaped back and grabbed the Puppet from the floor. "You're ruthless. I die if I put you in the cabinet, and I die if I don't!"

He squeezed the doll, desperately wanting to crush it with all his strength.

But the doll was sturdy. With Thor's strength, he could not even tear off one of its arms.

Thor gave up trying.

Because when he exerted himself, the doll seemed to smile.

Although no death warning appeared, Thor still felt that smashing the Puppet would not be a good thing.

"I'll take it outside the Laboratory and find somewhere to throw it away," Thor thought tentatively.

The Hardcover Book gave no further warning and shrank back into his left shoulder.

"Whew—"

Thor let out a breath of relief.

He turned, intending to finish inspecting the last stretch of the route before leaving immediately.

But the moment he turned around...

"Clatter, clatter, clatter..."

Something behind him fell to the ground in a rapid series of crashes.

The glass cabinet doors stood wide open, and the Puppets inside had spilled all over the floor.

The instant Thor turned back, he inevitably met the eyes of one of the Puppets.

"Save me, save me, save me..."

"Save me, save me, save me..."

"I want it too, I want it too..."

"Save me, save me, save me..."

In an instant, it was as though hundreds of voices rang inside Thor's mind.

Thor no longer cared about the warning that Mark would kill him tomorrow. He turned and ran, but the instant his feet left the ground, he lost his balance and crashed to the floor.

Thor tried to get up, only to discover that his limbs had become as stiff as wood.

A numbing sensation was spreading from his limbs, bit by bit, into his torso, his brain...

"No!"

Thor recalled Monica's daytime teachings about meditation and immediately began reconstructing the details of the Human-Monster Walking Diagram in his mind.

Though he had no diagram in hand and no Crystal Ball to aid his meditation, under the threat of death, Thor still entered a meditative state.

The chaotic voices by his ears immediately weakened, though they did not disappear completely.

The numbness retreated from his internal organs back into his limbs.

Had Monica been here, she likely would have marveled that Thor's talent in Mental Power was even better than she had imagined.

Yet Thor still could not rise and flee. His limbs remained rigid as wood.

"No, my left hand can still move!"

Thor felt that his Bone Left Hand was not stiffened and could still flex freely.

He poured all his strength into his left hand and crawled across the floor, trying to get away from the Puppets behind him.

But the moment his left hand moved, he could no longer maintain meditation, and the numbness began spreading through his body again.

But merely maintaining meditation could not solve his predicament. Once his Mental Power ran out, he would be driven into a dead end.

Thor simply abandoned meditation and focused on crawling with the strength of his left arm alone, dragging his body forward, then crawling again...

Only when the numbness spread to his chest would Thor stop, meditate again, and force the stiffness back into his limbs.

Switching constantly between crawling, meditating, crawling, and meditating, he painfully drew closer to the Laboratory doors, inch by inch.

Thor's left hand was already pressed against the Laboratory door. "Who would have thought that the live experiment would be what saved me?"

The Laboratory doors opened inward, so Thor needed to get up and pull the handle.

But just as he struggled to prop up his upper body with his left hand and tried to lean against the wall, the door suddenly opened by itself.

Half of Mark's face protruded from behind the door. His eyes strained to stare down at Thor, revealing large swaths of white above the pupils.

"Thor, what are you doing?"

The familiar face only made Thor feel as though he had fallen into an icy abyss.

A chill swept through his entire body.

From his position on the floor, he could see it with perfect clarity.

How was that Senior Mark?

It was clearly only a thin half-face, extending out from the middle of the door.

That strip of face seemed not to realize it had been exposed. It continued glaring at Thor. "The Laboratory is a mess. Where are you going? Get back there and clean it up!"

The large red trash bin beside the door suddenly opened its lid on its own.

Slap!

A pair of deathly pale hands gripped the edge of the trash bin.

Its knuckles protruded, blue veins bulging as though it were exerting itself, straining to climb upward.

A strange "gurgle, gurgle" sounded from behind him, slowly drawing closer to Thor. Something was rolling toward him.

Thor's teeth began to chatter again. He had not expected that even after becoming a Wizard Apprentice, he still could not escape the fate of being weak, helpless, and able only to await death.

The Hardcover Book flew before him again, its pages rapidly flipping with a rustle. Yet it did not stop. Every page that flashed past bore a huge character: "Death."

It could not even be bothered to describe how Thor would meet his death.

"Heh heh... Hahaha..." Thor began to laugh. "Why is death always fixated on me alone? Is my flesh that tasty? Hahaha..."

He was starting to lose his mind.

"Come on! Come on! Let's do this together! Let's see who's stronger once we become monsters! Come on! Hahaha..."

Bang!

The door was suddenly shoved wide open.

The door struck Thor on the forehead and knocked him flat onto the floor.

"Ugh!"

Thor's laughter broke off. He let out a low cry and instinctively covered his forehead with his hand.

"Wait, my body can move?"

The Hardcover Book quietly shrank back into his left shoulder.

With no time to check himself, Thor hurriedly looked up.

The half of Mark's face on the door had already vanished.

The door was pushed completely open, and a man wrapped from head to toe in Pink Bandage slowly walked in.

Other than a pair of silver eyes, every part of the man was tightly wrapped in bandages.

Not even his ears, nostrils, or a single strand of hair was exposed.

Pinned by those silver eyes, Thor lay half-prone on the ground, unable to move. His mind was blank, and he did not even feel fear.

Fortunately, the man in Pink Bandage merely glanced at Thor before lifting his head toward the Laboratory and murmuring, "Get back."

He lowered his head to look at Thor again. The coldness in his eyes receded, becoming gentle as clear water.

"New Apprentice, why are you spending the night in the Laboratory?"

"Spending the night?"

The moment that thought arose, feeling returned to Thor's entire body, as though he had become himself again.

Thor turned to look at the hourglass on the wall, only to discover that it had somehow fallen to the eleven o'clock mark at night.

"When Senior Mark left, it wasn't even six yet. Why is it already eleven?"

In Thor's perception, he had spent absolutely no more than half an hour alone in this Laboratory.