This Person Isn't Dead?

"Fran, right...?"

"Yes."

"What you want to redeem is here. This card is the access card for the first floor of the library. Just take it to the library; the copies of both books are here as well."

Fran accepted the items from an elderly man. The two books were not very thick, and she could easily hold them in one hand.

"Lastly, I need to remind you: all knowledge redeemed with Contribution Points cannot be widely disseminated. The consequences are very serious."

"Okay..." Fran's expression did not change much. These rules probably had little to do with her anyway. Selling the books was more or less equivalent to indirectly reselling them.

This so-called wide dissemination did not prohibit one person from passing a book on to the next after finishing it. Small acts of gifting like that were not regulated.

The prohibited wide dissemination meant printing the books in bulk and handing one out to every person who joined your club. That counted as large-scale dissemination.

It had nothing to do with her. The restriction targeted the person spreading it, regardless of who had redeemed it with Contribution Points.

She was not in a hurry to leave the room and trade the books for silver coins. Since she had gotten them first, it was not too much to take a quick look.

She closed Structure of the Soul as soon as she reached the third page. Damn it, it was full of technical terms like "Detectable Aim Point," "Soul Material," and "Laxi-style Combination Method." She could not understand any of it, and the Panel did not give her any prompts, so she did not continue.

Stars and the Sea, on the other hand, overturned her understanding of books. When she opened it, it was filled with large illustrations, with text annotations only in a few places. Somehow, that made it possible for her to keep reading despite only half-understanding it.

It was not until her head started aching that she realized she had read half the book. The old man had leisurely opened a book of his own and was reading it, paying her no attention at all.

Fran closed the book and walked out. No matter how she calculated it, she had stayed too long. It was time to leave.

As she walked, she silently called up the Panel. Sure enough, something new had appeared under the skills section.

[Star Gazing Art (Not Initiated) (Proficiency: 2/10): You can use the arrangement of stars in the night sky to predict what will happen next, but it is difficult for you to find the direction of the prediction.]

She tried to connect it to her mind, but her head still felt empty. Other than the few diagrams from the book, she had gained no knowledge at all.

She knew it was because she had not learned it yet. If she truly got started, a massive amount of knowledge would suddenly emerge in her mind, just like when she had leveled up her herb-related skills.

Fran handed the items to Milank, and Milank gave her a pile of coins. She counted them. There were exactly fifty silver coins.

With this money, she needed to think about how to spend it next.

She could actually go all-in on Magic Stones and spend the next three months practicing this alone, because she would have no money left to practice anything else.

Of course, she did not really want to do that. Her plan was to first buy several dozen portions of Ash Tree Root and Soul-Entangling Vine, raise the level of her Harmonization Method, then buy a few sets of materials for properly making potions. She would make a few bottles for real and see what price they could fetch.

She estimated that buying all of that would only cost a dozen or so silver coins. She would save the rest for now and wait to see what else she might need.

Her goal was not merely to pass the year-end assessment and avoid going to the battlefield. She also wanted to use this Panel to gain the ability to protect herself in this world.

Simply learning a few Spells would not let her rest easy after leaving the academy. Her current goal was to become a Formal Mage first.

As she walked and pondered, she saw an Apprentice approaching from the opposite direction. After glancing at her, he seemed to turn his head away. Just as she shifted her gaze toward him—

The Apprentice suddenly turned and ran, not even giving her time to think it over.

Fran frowned. She could tell with her toes that there was definitely something wrong with an Apprentice running the moment he saw her, but there was nothing she could do.

She did not have any skills at all right now. She was like a blank-slate mage who knew nothing. If they really fought, that Apprentice's sandbag-sized fists could probably take on two of her.

Fortunately, Jade Academy's management was fairly strict. Apprentices were not allowed to harm other Apprentices. Still, the incident gave her a sense of urgency and reminded her that she needed to develop some combat ability as soon as possible.

The fleeing Apprentice turned through several streets before finally stopping in front of an unmarked house. He knocked four times according to a secret signal, then waited two seconds before directly opening the door.

Inside, he saw someone using a scalpel to cut open a rat. When that person saw him arrive, he slowly stopped.

"Boss Richter... I..."

Seeing that he could not organize his words after so long, Richter cut him off directly.

"Calm down before you speak. Stop standing there saying useless things..."

The Apprentice took two breaths before continuing.

"It's like this. Last time, Boss, you told me to find an Apprentice, kill him, and deliver the corpse. I searched for a long time before finding an Apprentice who rarely left his room..."

Richter listened to his account while putting away his tools.

"After I used Boss's Spirit Driving Scroll, I saw with my own eyes that the Apprentice died beneath the evil spirit. I was planning to transport the body over a few days later, but on the second day after using it, I discovered that Apprentice had gone out to buy herbs..."

At that point, the Apprentice's voice began to tremble. He was clearly terrified. Someone he had believed dead getting back up again was indeed frightening.

Richter became interested as well and began carefully questioning him about the specific process of controlling it.

"You followed the procedure I marked out, attached your vision to the evil spirit, had it directly launch a spiritual attack on the target, and finally confirmed whether the target's mental power had dissipated?"

"Yes... That's exactly what I did. I specifically ordered the evil spirit to make sure the target's mental power scattered... After using the scroll, I was mentally exhausted for several days. And because there were a lot of people in the dorm during those days, I thought I would wait a few days first."

"Interesting... You never went to that Apprentice's room to check, did you?"

"No. I was afraid of drawing other people's attention, so I did not go over."

The reason Richter had instructed this Apprentice to kill another Apprentice was that Advanced Apprentices like them possessed certain privileges, and he happened to need an Apprentice's corpse.

Naturally, all of this had to be done in secret. If such a matter were exposed, no privilege would help them. That was why he had arranged for this Apprentice to search for a target. He trusted that this Apprentice had the ability and did not need to do it himself.

The advantage of not doing it himself was that if the matter came to light, he could righteously distance himself from it. Considering his status as an Advanced Apprentice, at most he would lose some other things.

That Apprentice had "died" and then come back to life. Why? Richter was interested.

However, he had more important matters to deal with right now and had no way to investigate.

"Just keep watching that Apprentice. I'll give you the Spell you want after you finish this matter."