Compound Runes

Although Mark agreed to guide Thor, he would not waste his entire beautiful morning on this level-one newcomer; the study load for a level-two apprentice was very heavy, especially with their test coming up in a month.

It was less a case of Mark teaching Thor, and more a case of Thor studying on his own first, then asking Mark when he encountered difficulties he couldn't figure out.

Unfortunately, even with Mark's explanations, Thor only had a half-baked understanding of many things and could not grasp the logical relationships at all.

Before leaving at noon, Thor made another request to Mark.

"You want to borrow that puppet doll used for testing mental power?" Mark didn't hesitate; he walked straight to the laboratory cabinet, opened the door, and casually rummaged through it to pull out a puppet doll.

The moment Mark opened the cabinet door, Thor couldn't help but take two steps back.

Seeing Thor's vigilant appearance, Mark found it amusing. "Scared, yet you still want to borrow it?"

"It's precisely because I'm scared that I need to borrow it." Thor was careful not to let himself make eye contact with the puppet doll.

Thor reached out to take it, and Mark casually placed the puppet into his palm.

"Friendship price: 5 magic crystals for 10 days."

"Then I'll borrow it for 2 days first."

Mark's face darkened. "I don't lend it for 2 days!"

Thor said bluntly, "I only have 3 magic crystals left."

The magic crystals he had now were ones he had exchanged for credits with Keli.

He could give a discount to a friend, but he certainly wouldn't give one to an enemy.

In the end, Mark still took Thor's three magic crystals and warned him that while he could study it, if he damaged it, he would have to pay 2 credits in compensation.

Wrapping the puppet doll layer by layer with cloth strips, Thor carefully placed the doll into the pocket of his apprentice robe.

"Take me away, take me away..."

Thor's movements paused. "Senior, did you hear that?"

"Hmm?" Mark was already sitting back at his desk, buried in his research.

"No, it's nothing..."

Thor clutched his robe pocket with one hand, as if afraid something might crawl out of it.

He picked up his books and turned to leave the laboratory.

On the way back to West Tower, someone stopped Thor.

Thor recognized her face and knew she was a level-one newcomer from his cohort, but he had forgotten her name.

"Thor," the little girl looked a bit shy, "I have something I want to tell you."

She was pinching her clothes, her index finger constantly twisting the knot on them.

"Can you finish within five sentences?" The girl had appeared so suddenly that Thor had almost bumped into her.

The other party was stunned, her expression turning somewhat aggrieved.

"Sorry, I'm in a hurry."

"But I..." The girl's eyes suddenly turned red.

Thor simply bypassed her, muttering loudly, "It's over, it's over, I'm running out of time, I'm running out of time."

The girl stood there blankly and did not chase after him.

It didn't seem like anything urgent.

But Thor still couldn't make it out of the corridor.

At the end of the passage, another person jumped out.

"Hi, Thor!"

Thor recognized this person; it was Duoze.

The newcomer who used to chase after Keli and later hung out with Duke.

This time, he wasn't followed by that spineless Luoji.

Ever since discovering that Thor's magic talent was very low, Duoze hadn't proactively sought him out for a long time.

"Sorry, I'm really in a hurry." Thor turned his feet, wanting to bypass Duoze again.

But Duoze raised his hand, directly blocking the passage.

"I'll finish in five sentences."

Thor had no choice but to stop.

"Senior Luokai has led a group of new students to form a Mutual Aid Society. There, everyone can learn from each other and discuss things. Today at two in the afternoon is the second meeting of the Mutual Aid Society; do you want to come?"

"Does it cost money?"

"Uh, regular students are charged..."

"I'm out of money." After saying this, Thor nodded politely to him, then pushed aside Duoze's hand and walked out.

Duoze hurriedly turned and shouted at Thor, "Keli has already agreed to attend today."

Thor stopped in his tracks, looked back at the smug expression on Duoze's face, and said sincerely, "I really don't have any money left."

He hurried away, and finally, no one stopped him again.

After a quick lunch, Thor arrived at the morgue on the second floor of the East Tower.

This place had become his study room; his dormitory was now only used for late-night study and sleep.

The outermost room of the morgue had been reorganized by Thor. In addition to the transfer platform and two long tables, he had added a cabinet, which contained the essential experimental supplies Thor had exchanged for.

These instruments and materials had exhausted the remaining credits in Thor's hands.

If it weren't for the Wizard Tower providing food and lodging, Thor would be left with nothing but air to eat.

Inside the cabinet, besides the items Thor had bought, there were also some mutated materials he had harvested from the corpses.

An accident had led Thor to discover that if the materials he harvested were not placed in the empty boxes on the long tables, they would not be cleared away the next day, but would remain exactly where he had left them.

After studying Green's Wizardry Transformation Cognition and Corpse Transmutation Guide, Thor already knew how to use some basic materials.

Therefore, every time he worked, if he could obtain more than two materials, he would keep one for himself.

As for whether this would be considered stealing?

Thor didn't think so.

The book on researching corpses that Mentor Kazi gave him wasn't just for checking the residual characteristics on the bodies.

The latter half of that book was entirely about how to preserve materials, some simple applications, and a bit of discussion regarding the soul.

Since his mentor had asked him to study this book, he surely intended for him to learn the knowledge in the latter part as well.

However, even though Thor had specifically bought containers for perishable materials, it was difficult to stop the natural decay of the corpses.

Fortunately, the Corpse book also mentioned a Rank 0 spell--Preserve Organs.

To learn this spell, Thor had to first master that complex dark-attribute composite rune.

This was the reason he had been studying desperately day and night these past few days.

It was just that the difficulty of this dark-attribute composite rune exceeded Thor's imagination. Even though he had a high talent for mental power, he still couldn't quickly grasp the principles behind it.

That was why he had spent magic crystals to seek guidance from senior Mark, but unfortunately, although senior Mark had given him some ideas on how to solve the problem, he still hadn't found the correct answer.

Thor used a fountain pen to carefully trace the basic shape of the composite rune onto a piece of white paper.

"Based on the coordinate axes, I can basically determine that the shape I traced is consistent with the original rune. But why, when I try to activate this rune using mental power, am I still unable to do so?"

This composite rune was already one of the simplest composite runes.

It looked like a new pattern formed by two basic runes overlapping each other.

It was just that one of the runes was reduced in proportion.

"Senior Mark said that a composite rune is not just an overlap of two basic runes; one must also pay attention to their proportional relationship. But I have allocated my magic power according to the proportions, so why does it still seem like something is wrong?"

"Senior Mark also said to pay attention to the angle. What kind of angle? The angle of observation?"

Thor held the white paper up in front of him, level with his eyes.

Suddenly, a flash of inspiration struck him.

"Could it be the angle of perspective?"

Thor immediately put the paper down, took a ruler to find the center point, and drew a perspective view. Through calculating the proportional relationship, he tried to explore the distance between the two figures.

"Wrong!"

After working for a long time, he still hadn't managed to activate the rune.

"I've calculated it a dozen times and shouldn't have made a mistake, so it's not a perspective view."

Thor angrily crumpled the composite rune, which he had already drawn into a mess, into a ball and threw it into the trash can.

He stared blankly at the waste paper in the trash can.

"Where exactly is my understanding going wrong?"

The rune in the trash can was crumpled and wrinkled, with dents and bumps, some parts vertical, some flat.

It seemed as if countless small runes were dancing and leaping before Thor's eyes.

"Wait!" Thor's eyes suddenly lit up, and he raised his hand and slapped his forehead with a smack. "I had already considered that the two runes might not be overlapping but existed with a spatial distance between them, so why didn't I consider that the planes where the two runes are located might not be parallel?"

Thor took out a new sheet of blank paper and first drew a three-dimensional coordinate axis on it.