Skipping Class

To be honest, with Senior Sister Kongsha looking like that, Thor figured she didn't need a brain anymore.

He hurriedly lowered his head, afraid Senior Sister Kongsha would think he was laughing at her.

"Got it?" Kongsha tightened her grip on Thor's shoulders slightly.

Thor immediately broke out in a sweat from the pain.

"Y-yes, I got it," he said quickly.

Kongsha finally let go of him. "Remember, at least one Level 1 Apprentice's brain every month."

"But what if there aren't enough Level 1 Apprentice corpses?"

Kongsha looked down at Thor. The warmth from a moment ago had vanished, revealing her true face before she could hide it.

"Then you'll have to figure something out yourself. Remember, if you don't have enough, I won't give you a second potion."

Kongsha left.

She left Thor with a small bottle of potion.

The potion was in a glass bottle with a cork in its mouth. A small piece of leather covered the cork, and Silk Thread was wrapped around it.

As if to prevent even the slightest leak.

But the first thing Thor did after Kongsha left was struggle to remove the cap from the bottle.

The potion was clear, with a few bubbles forming as he shook it.

Thor put on a stern expression, leaned in, and sniffed gently.

A faint fishy smell.

Not exactly unpleasant.

Thor hurriedly capped the bottle and resealed its mouth with the leather.

A thought struck him, and he immediately sat down to meditate.

After a while, Thor opened his eyes.

"My meditation efficiency improved a little. It was only a tiny bit, but since I have so little Magic Power, I could feel the difference quite clearly. It really did improve."

Thor stared at the potion on the table in disbelief.

Just from smelling it, he could already sense its effects.

This stuff was incredible!

If he really swallowed it all like Kongsha said, then slept for a whole day and night, wouldn't he become a walking machine for absorbing elemental particles?

But the price he'd have to pay would be enormous.

The Hardcover Book had warned him that if he drank it all, he would become someone else's spellcasting material in three years.

What would he be like then? A lump of magical dead flesh? Or a walking corpse?

And Senior Sister Kongsha had ordered him to drink it all within a month!

Thor expressionlessly tucked the little bottle away.

Even without the Hardcover Book's warning, he'd never planned to take the potion.

He was keeping it for two reasons. First, to placate Kongsha. He still planned to keep holding on to this long, pale leg of hers for support against Sid.

Second, the potion was terrifyingly potent, and Thor wanted to find a chance to study it properly. It was just a shame it only lasted a month.

"Maybe the Hardcover Book can help me make some improvements." Thor still couldn't bear to give up the huge boost the potion offered. "It's a miracle potion that can improve meditation efficiency just by smelling it."

"Wait, smelling it is enough?" Thor fell into thought.

The next day, Thor, sporting dark circles under his eyes, ran into Keli, who also had dark circles, outside the public classroom.

They exchanged glances, tacitly refraining from commenting on each other's appearance.

With the same pace and movements, they headed to their familiar corner, pulled out their chairs, and sat down together.

As soon as she sat down, Keli let out a sudden yawn.

Tears welled at the corners of her eyes, only to be mercilessly wiped away with the back of her hand.

"You look exhausted. Did you stay up late again?" Thor wasn't exactly in a position to criticize anyone.

"I just feel how little time we have. Those bad people aren't going to give us time to grow."

The "bad people" Keli meant were the Mutual Aid Society, which had made her act strangely more than ten days ago.

Keli had always been proud, and she was making the fastest progress among this batch of newcomers.

Aside from Thor, whose progress she couldn't figure out, Keli considered herself very hardworking.

But after being inexplicably infested by a parasite at the Mutual Aid Society without even noticing, Keli realized how ridiculous it was to focus only on keeping up with the other apprentices in her class.

Even a difference of just one minor level could create a vast gap between hunter and prey.

Weakness was a sin!

When climbing a steep mountain, looking only at your feet could make you overlook the boulders tumbling down from above.

So she worked even harder.

Keli was the very picture of what it meant to grind and compete relentlessly.

Thor didn't know how determined Keli was, but he knew how proud she was.

Her experience at the Mutual Aid Society had struck her right on the chin and forced her to lower her head.

Thor also knew that although Keli was a genuine little girl, she wouldn't be beaten by such a small setback.

"Have you noticed?" Keli stared at a corner of the classroom and spoke to Thor in a low voice. "They don't seem to be acting strangely like they did that day anymore."

Thor kept his head down, reading, though his eyelids flicked up for an instant.

At the edge of the classroom's front section, Duoze and Luoji were still sitting next to Duke, but they were talking to the girl in the row behind them.

Keli had said the girl's name was Jenna.

She had once stopped Thor and tried to invite him to the Mutual Aid Society, but Thor had snapped back at her, leaving her no chance to finish.

Jenna still seemed a little shy, but it was clear she enjoyed having boys crowd around and chat her up.

Thor only glanced over, but he could see that Duke seemed a little distracted, while Duoze looked smug.

Only Luoji, who had never seemed to have much of an opinion of his own, had eyes that lit up whenever he looked at Jenna.

"Ah, youth..."

But remembering that all of them seemed to have joined the Mutual Aid Society, Thor changed his mind. "Youth doesn't last long."

"I've been watching them these past few days," Keli continued in a whisper. "Aside from acting strangely the first day they came back, they haven't shown any of those odd reactions since. But I asked around quietly, and apparently that Mutual Aid Society has been around for years."

For years? Did that mean a lot of the Seniors around them were also members of the Mutual Aid Society?

Thinking that each of those people might be harboring a parasite, ready to turn into an eerie puppet at any moment, Thor and Keli shuddered.

It was like walking down a corridor where every person you passed was unconsciously grinning.

"Not everyone can be a member of the Mutual Aid Society. Senior Byron has a way to deal with them, doesn't he?" Thor tried to reassure her.

Keli bit her lip. Sometimes she still woke from nightmares and reached up to touch the scar on her head.

"But Senior Byron doesn't want to get involved in their affairs either. Jenna invited me to another gathering a couple of days ago. I didn't go."

Thor hadn't been invited again, but he was starting to feel that the situation was troublesome too.

Getting involved with an organization like that was asking for trouble.

Sometimes you couldn't simply choose not to join, especially when the people running things had ulterior motives.

"You should be careful. Don't let them target you."

"It's fine. I told Jenna that Mentor Gudo asked me to help out in his Laboratory." Keli brushed back a lock of hair. "They wouldn't dare mess with a mentor."

She then suggested to Thor, "You should go see Senior Byron when you have time. If the people running the Mutual Aid Society find out you're close to him, maybe they won't pester you."

But Thor shook his head. "Senior Byron is nearly thirty. He'll be leaving the Wizard Tower soon."

Thor explained to Keli that anyone who failed to advance to Level 3 Apprentice before turning thirty would be expelled.

Keli was so surprised that she nearly raised her voice. "So that's why all those Level 2 Apprentices who joined the nobles are so old. They were expelled from the Wizard Tower."

"I wonder when we'll be able to leave this tower."

Thor had never left the Wizard Tower since arriving in this world, and he'd only been to a handful of places inside it.

He was almost starting to forget what the sun looked like.

If his days hadn't been packed with study and work, leaving him no time to dwell on it, Thor might have gone mad from being cooped up.