Wizards Have Kill Lines Too?

"Wishing to buy osmanthus flowers to go drinking together..."

The biting, frigid wind whistled as it swept across the rooftop of the building. Tylen stood before the massive floor-to-ceiling glass curtain wall, watching the reflection cast upon it.

The man in the mirror had a head full of graying hair, with three deep furrows carved into his forehead.

His eye bags were a sickly, grayish-black, and a few jarring age spots marred the corners of his eyes.

This shell of a body looked like that of a man on the verge of death, a half-century old.

But in reality, Tylen was only thirty-three years old this year.

As a former rural "test-taker," Tylen had relied on hard work and talent to fight his way from a village boy to his current position as vice president of a listed corporation.

He held assets worth over a hundred million and possessed countless stock options.

By worldly standards, he should have been lounging on a yacht with beauties in his arms, enjoying champagne and the sea breeze.

However, when he finally looked up from that desk forever crowded with schedules, what awaited him was not the service of a secretary in a tight skirt, but a cold medical diagnosis.

Pancreatic cancer, terminal. The king of cancers.

Tylen certainly knew the reason why.

Ever since he began his graduate studies, he had been overdrawing his life.

To secure his name on those core journals, he had pulled all-nighters crunching data while simultaneously trying to decipher his mentor's every whim.

He was on call at all hours, and he never missed a single drinking session.

By keeping his mentor comfortable through constant sycophancy, he had finally earned his ticket into the circle.

His later entrepreneurial journey was no different.

Relying on a heart that could navigate any situation and a high emotional intelligence honed to perfection, he had turned one difficult client after another into a growth point for the company during countless late nights of clinking glasses.

Does he regret it?

He does.

But if he could do it all over again, would he still make the same choice?

Of course!

For a poor boy with no background and no connections, if you don't risk your life to defy fate, what else is there to bet on?

If it had been any other illness, even if it meant losing a hand or a foot, he might have had the courage to fight and undergo rehabilitation.

But pancreatic cancer... he couldn't withstand it.

It hurt.

An indescribable pain.

It felt as if countless rusty, dull blades were churning back and forth inside his abdominal cavity; even breathing had become a form of torture.

This was a grim reaper destined to be incurable by modern medicine, mocking all wealth and power with total equality.

"Since it has come to this, then so be it."

His will had already been drawn up; his hundreds of millions in assets were enough for his parents, nearing sixty, to enjoy their twilight years, and enough for his younger brother, still in school, to establish himself in the big city.

His life, though short, could be considered lived with brilliance.

Facing the biting wind, Tylen straightened his expensive, custom-made suit one last time.

He never wallowed in self-pity; he accepted his losses when he lost the bet.

He leaned his body forward, his center of gravity lost.

In the moment of his fall, he closed his eyes, and the second half of the poem flashed through his mind.

"...in the end, it is not like the wanderings of youth."

When Tylen opened his eyes again, he was greeted by a stench more primitive, more violent, and sufficient to evoke the primal, physiological fear of a human being.

It was the cloying sweetness of rotting protein, mixed with the pungent odor of preservatives and some indescribable, cold, moldy air that seemed to seep into his very marrow.

"Ugh—"

His stomach spasmed violently, and Tylen instinctively retched, though nothing came out.

He struggled to prop up his upper body, his vision gradually focusing amidst the dim, flickering candlelight.

This was a low, damp, and oppressive stone chamber underground.

The walls were covered in moss, and seeping water droplets gathered into tiny streams, dripping rhythmically onto the grime-covered stone floor.

In the center of the room, ten massive ironwood shelves were arranged neatly.

These shelves were divided into upper and lower tiers, and instead of goods, each tier held a pale corpse.

They were displayed casually, like cheap frozen meat waiting to be sold in a supermarket.

The corpse on his left was a teenager of only a dozen years, with a massive claw mark across his chest and an expression of terror frozen on his face from before his death.

On the lower level lay a middle-aged man of forty or fifty, his skin a sickly, unnatural purple-black; he had clearly died of poisoning.

Further away, there were mercenaries missing limbs, streetwalkers in revealing attire, and even a few stitched-together abominations with obvious signs of crude assembly.

Dead silence.

Only the occasional crackle of burning candles and the distant sound of water flowing through the sewers could be heard.

"Seven Towers Alliance? Am I... a transmigrator?"

A sharp pain, as if a red-hot iron rod were stirring his brain, surged from deep within his mind.

Two distinct sets of life memories were forcibly merging within this young vessel.

Within the territory of the Seven Towers Alliance, at the Cain Wizard Tower.

A city-sized tower belonging to the school of Soul Wizards.

And his current identity: Tyron Arthas Magnus.

Only sixteen years old, of commoner birth, the third child in his family.

His father was a blacksmith in the west of Wave City, and his mother was a full-time housewife.

Among the typical transmigration templates—orphans or those abandoned by their families—this was a rare, fortunate start with both parents alive and a harmonious family atmosphere.

Half a year ago, relying on a stubborn, almost addictive drive for study, the original owner passed the written exam for the Cain Wizard Tower and finally obtained that ticket into the world of the extraordinary.

In this world, wizards are the embodiment of the extraordinary and synonymous with privilege.

Even the lowest-ranking official wizard could easily provide a lifetime of worry-free living for an entire family.

However, class barriers are not so easily crossed.

This chasm was paved with money.

The Wizard Tower is not a charity; it is a behemoth that devours gold.

The basic tuition and mandatory textbook fees for just the first year of apprenticeship totaled a staggering 22,000 Purple Gold Coins.

Tyron's father swung his hammer day and night, yet even working himself to the bone, he could only earn 1,000 Purple Gold Coins a month.

This money barely covered the basic living expenses to keep their family of five from starving.

Naturally, the 20,000 Purple Gold Coin tuition fee had to be taken out as a loan every year.

Thus, before he had even learned a single thing, Tyron was already saddled with a debt of 100,000 Purple Gold Coins.

And that was only the beginning.

Beyond tuition, there was an additional 2,000 Purple Gold Coins in textbook fees every academic year.

If you don't buy the textbooks, you can't even attend class!

Tightening their belts, his family could only scrape together 400 coins for him.

The remaining gap of 1,600 coins had to be filled by Tyron himself.

But that was not the most desperate part.

The most desperate aspect was the suffocatingly rigid hierarchy and the strict assessment system within the Wizard Tower.

Knowledge is power, but knowledge has a price.

Here, becoming stronger requires constructing Spell Models, refining mana, and deciphering the mysteries of death and the soul.

Yet, those core pieces of knowledge—such as efficient meditation techniques, safe soul-severing arts, and stable rune structure diagrams—were all locked away in the upper levels of the tower.

Except for those core disciples from prominent backgrounds or the children of the wealthy, commoner apprentices like Tyron didn't even have the qualifications to glance at the covers.

The strict assessment system was even more akin to a death sentence.

Within the five-year curriculum, failing the Half-Year Assessment twice in a row would result in immediate expulsion and the stripping of one's apprentice status.

Once expelled, it didn't just mean a lifelong inability to become a wizard; it meant that the 100,000 Purple Gold Coin student loan would become a nightmare to be repaid for the rest of his life.

His life, and even the latter half of his family's lives, would be reduced to slavery to pay off the Wizard Tower.

To survive, and to avoid being expelled.

Over the past half-year, Tyron had taken the initiative to accept the job universally recognized in the Cain Wizard Tower as the dirtiest, most exhausting, and most ominous—a job even goblins wouldn't touch: Corpse Collector Apprentice.

Wizards of the soul school had a massive demand for corpses.

They needed bodies to study human anatomy, rotting flesh to cultivate corpse poison, fresh brains to test soul residue, and complete skeletons to craft Skeleton Servants.

Tyron's task was to satisfy these varied, and often perverted, demands.

The work was not complex, and Tyron had become basically competent after half a month of training.

By day, he had to act like a vulture, scouring the city's slums, sewers, and even the mass graves outside the city walls, searching for unclaimed corpses.

Homeless people, beggars who had starved to death, gangsters killed in turf wars, and unlucky souls mauled by beasts.

At night, he had to return to this cold, damp basement to perform pre-processing on the bodies.

Cleaning filth, stitching severed limbs, trimming away rotting flesh, sorting and preserving...

The stench of decay clung to him like a maggot, deeply pickled into his skin and hair.

No matter how much he bathed or where he went, the people around him would subconsciously cover their noses and cast looks of disgust.

But he had no choice.

This job brought him an income of 250 Purple Gold Coins every month, which went toward offsetting the cost of his textbooks.

Without this money, he couldn't even afford the textbook Soul Primer: The Boundary Between Spirit and Flesh, and without it, he would have no qualification to step into the classroom!

Now that half a year had passed, he would be able to collect his first paycheck since arriving at the Wizard Tower next month.

However, while a person's will might be infinitely resilient, the flesh ultimately had its limits.

Long-term malnutrition, high-intensity manual labor, immense mental pressure, and the anxiety brought on by the impending "Half-Year Assessment" had finally snapped this taut string.

Just a few hours ago, in order to memorize a few more formulas, the original owner had stayed up late studying in this room reeking of corpses, and kicked the bucket.

"What a script..."

Tyron rubbed his throbbing temples, a complex curve tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"Why does this feel like the first semester of a key city high school I fought tooth and nail to get into from a rural middle school?"

It was the same back then.

He was surrounded by bright, polished city kids who spoke fluent English, were multi-talented, and had attended all sorts of cram schools.

He had spent two months desperately grinding through the textbooks, yet still ended up at the bottom of the class in the midterm exams.

The only difference was that here, the price of failing wasn't repeating a grade, but eternal damnation.

The Half-Year Assessment was that very gate of hell.

It was not only the threshold for measuring an apprentice's progress, but also the watershed that determined one's fate.

Those with good grades could earn the favor of their mentors and receive a tilt in resources;

Those with poor grades could only be reduced to lowly servants, becoming fuel for those above them.

And as for the current Tyron, he was undoubtedly the tail-ender of the tail-enders.

He closed his eyes and looked at his Wizard stats.

[Name: Tyron Arthas Magnus]

[Rank: Level 0 Apprentice]

[Constitution: 1]

[Spirit: 3]

[Mana Control: 0.36]

[Technique: Spirit Summoning Control Method (360/100,000)]

[Skills: None]

[Knowledge: None]

Never mind casting something as cool as a Soul Scream or Skeleton Summoning, he currently struggled to even control his mana enough to make a feather float.

And according to past experience, to pass this assessment, the passing line was: 6 points in Spirit, 3 points in Mana Control.

Beyond the hard requirements, there was also the hair-pulling written exam.

Wizard Introduction: Common Knowledge of Runes and Mental Power, Soul Primer: The Boundary Between Spirit and Flesh, Alchemy Basics: Material Processing and Solvent Ratios, Meditation Atlas: Mental Power Explained...

Eight textbooks in total; the original owner had memorized them with his life on the line, yet he had only retained 30% of the exam scope.

There was only one month left until the exam.

This seemed like a dead end with no way out.

"However..."

Tyron took a deep breath of the air, which was thick with the scent of preservatives, his gaze gradually sharpening.

"This level of hardship is nothing."

In his previous life, he had faced pancreatic cancer, a countdown to a death that was destined to be irreversible, and the despair of rolling on his bed in pain for countless nights.

But now?

Tyron slowly stood up and stretched this young body.

His joints didn't make grinding sounds, and his muscles, though thin, were full of resilience.

No blurred vision, no head full of gray hair, no agonizing herniated lumbar disc, and no big belly acting like a ticking time bomb.

Most importantly—

It didn't hurt.

There was no dull knife churning in his abdominal cavity, no black hole devouring his life from within.

Although his hands were covered in rough calluses and the smell of corpse oil that wouldn't wash away remained under his fingernails.

Beneath his taut skin, however, surged the scalding collagen and vitality belonging to a seventeen-year-old.

"Health, it's fucking great."

Tylen sighed in a low voice, his eyes flickering with a wildfire-like glow.

Since the heavens had granted him a second chance, and since he had been given this healthy body, he would never admit defeat.

He bent down and picked up a heavy book from beside the feet of a corpse.

It was a 200-page, quarto-sized tome—Meditation Atlas: Introduction to Mental Power.

The cover had been worn white, the corners were curled, and a bookmark made of a dried leaf was tucked into page 57.

By the dim candlelight, Tylen flipped open the pages.

The margins were densely packed with notes.

The handwriting was neat yet somewhat immature, recorded in the cheapest charcoal pencil, detailing the original owner's understanding and confusion regarding every single rune.

This part... is misunderstood.

Tylen quickly scanned a few pages, his brows furrowing slightly.

Comparing mental power to a water flow is correct, but forcing oneself to memorize the trajectory of the flow is the most foolish method. It should be understood as the relationship between pressure and conduits...

This passage regarding meditation posture is too trivial; it's all rote memorization, completely missing the core logic of emptying the mind.

As a former top-tier academic overachiever who had clawed his way out of the countryside, he was the king of the grind.

During his student days, Tylen had summarized a set of highly efficient learning methodologies perfectly suited to himself.

At a glance, he saw the original owner's problem: an excess of diligence, but the wrong methods.

This style of rote memorization was terrifyingly inefficient when faced with the vast and obscure knowledge of wizards.

If it were a written exam...

Tylen closed the book, his fingers tapping lightly on the cover as his brain spun at high speed.

Give me a month, and with my ability to synthesize and summarize, combined with the memory of this young brain, reorganizing the logical framework of these eight books to scrape a passing grade—or even reach the upper-middle tier—won't be a problem.

When it came to taking tests, he was a professional.

But then, his brows locked tight again.

The written exam was only a soft skill; the real fatal flaw lay in his attributes.

Mental Power was at 3 points, a full 3 points away from the passing line.

Magic Control was at 0.36 points, 2.63 points away from the passing line.

This was the true chasm.

As a bottom-tier commoner apprentice without the advanced meditation techniques of a family legacy, he could only rely on the basic Meditation Atlas issued by the academy, which had an appallingly low efficiency.

He also had no money to buy "Meditation Essential Oil" or "Mental Crystal" to assist in the growth of his mental power.

Without resources, there was no attribute growth.

Without attribute growth, he couldn't pass the exam.

If he couldn't pass the exam, he would be kicked out.

Another perfect death loop.

Just transmigrated and already dancing on the edge of the chopping block?

Tylen looked at the pile of cold corpses before him, calculating in his heart.

One month to double my mental power... unless there's a miracle, or...

Or there is some unreasonable external force intervening.

Just as he was struggling to think of a way to break the deadlock, a strange distortion suddenly appeared in his field of vision.

[Friend, would you like to top up a Small Monthly Card? It's worth it!]

[Invest in the future with time!]

[Please shout with me: Monthly Card users never lose!]