The Wizard and the Road Ahead

After all the twists and turns of coming here this time, there were roughly two noteworthy matters.

First was something rather embarrassing. He felt sincerely apologetic: he had traveled a thousand miles to inherit an estate, only to find that its owner was not dead at all. Fortunately, he had still barely managed to inherit it in the end, avoiding both embarrassment and a wasted trip.

Second was the inexplicably altered Foul-Smelling Skin. It worked against enemies that were practically formless, but it was not powerful enough. Perhaps that was due to the enemy's special state, or perhaps because the other party was an apprentice wizard at the limit. After all, veteran apprentices who had earned such a title possessed no small number of tricks, and their spiritual power would certainly have reached the apprentice limit.

Ruger looked up at the benefactor embedded above him and found himself in a difficult spot. In the end, he had no choice but to rely on brute force. He drove the Blackclaw Lord's claws into the cave wall, gouging out several handholds, then used a short spear as steps before laboriously prying this unknown senior—whose origins he did not know—from the wall.

"Your life ended here," he muttered to himself, looking at the corpse split in two with some emotion. This was his first time collecting a body for someone. "Those little bugmen's aunties were fiercer than I imagined. Their strikes were vicious—they cut him straight into two pieces. What a pity about these clothes! No, no, that's not right. This is just perfect..."

Ruger picked up half the robe and measured it against himself. The upper half had only a small stain of blood at the severed edge, making it easy to clean.

Half a black robe, with part of one sleeve cut away.

It fit him perfectly when he put it on. The hem fell past his knees, nearly reaching above his ankles. He had to admit that his knees were rather close to his ankles.

The best part of this robe was its attached hood.

He pulled the hood over his head and put on the boots. He looked fairly convincing now.

After a simple round of tidying up, he buried the other party first. Then he found a nice, level spot, sat down, and let out a long breath. Solemnly, he took out the storage bag, ready to witness a miracle and receive this nameless senior's true gift.

Empowering himself with Strength of the Savage Bull, he seized the bag with both hands and pulled hard.

Riiip!

The sturdy storage bag followed its owner in reaching the end of its life.

Amid a nearly imperceptible spatial distortion, a mess of items scattered across the ground.

Only wizards who had specifically conducted bag-breaking experiments on storage bags in the past could compile data like that. He had no idea how many things the other party had kept in the bag, so there was no way to know how much had been lost when it broke.

Kobold creed: if you did not know what was lost, then you had gained one hundred percent.

The key was peace of mind.

He began sorting through the pile. Even magic stones held little value in his eyes. What he truly wanted were inheritance scrolls and books filled with spell knowledge. Or even some biographical novels to pass the time—anything that could let him glimpse some facet of this world.

His hands kept moving, but his heart grew colder and colder.

There were all kinds of unfamiliar bottles and jars filled with disgusting things. He would not dare use them even if they were given to him, nor would he know how, and he could not trade them for magic stones. These things took up a great deal of space.

There were also all manner of incomprehensible experimental notes with disconnected dates.

There were some magic stones, which he sorted into a small pile and set aside.

In the end, he found only three books specifically teaching spells. To his surprise, two of them even covered the same spell.

So he had found only two spells, both zero-ring spells: Writing Spell and Light Body Spell. The fact that an apprentice wizard at the limit carried these two spells on him already surprised Ruger. In his view, an apprentice who had reached that stage should have been trying to research some first-ring spells. At the very least, the things they carried should have included research on their own most adept modified zero-ring spells.

And the spell discussed in both books was actually Writing Spell. After flipping through them briefly, he found that one was this senior's research notes. Nor did it appear to be the only notebook—perhaps the others had not been brought out, or perhaps they had been lost when the bag broke. From this, he could infer that since Light Body Spell had been carried around as well, there must have been several research notes on it too, or related works by other wizards. For some unknown reason, this Senior Gray Shadow had begun researching these two spells.

But with Ruger's meager knowledge, he could not think of their value for the moment. Perhaps reading through these books carefully after returning would give him a new understanding.

After all, both spells appeared to have very simple uses.

Writing Spell, zero-ring spell.

With the chanting of an incantation, the pen before one would come alive. A small spell commonly used to assist with experiments and coursework.

Light Body Spell, zero-ring spell.

It could effectively prevent the caster from dying in a fall. It was quite useful in the Cavern World, where the terrain shifted unpredictably, but that was all. Note: it was not the first-ring Levitation Spell. There were always idiots who mixed them up.

The two spells were not bad either. Better to have them than not, he comforted himself inwardly.

Since a fifth-level apprentice wizard had been researching those two spells, they surely had something worthwhile about them.

Perhaps some apprentice wizards simply did not like carrying books related to spells when they went out. Instead, they carried the magic stones they had saved up, some valuable goods, or things more important to them—such as experimental materials currently under study.

This trip had been aimed at two nearby targets. They were not only close to the kobolds' territory, but close to each other as well.

He looked at the gray translucent crystal in his hand. This too was a gift from the senior.

At the time, he had wanted to toss it into the senior's luxurious tomb, but the light of spirituality had flickered. For some reason, he changed his mind and kept it.

What was this for? Should he ask Half-Man when he got back? he wondered.

Crack! Crack! As he turned it over in his hand, a sharp sound suddenly rang out.

"Friend, you cracked again..."

The cracked gray crystal was like a crisp pastry. With a gentle squeeze in his palm, it crumbled into an unrecognizable mess.

He suddenly felt that these scattered fragments looked familiar. They gave him a feeling similar to the things drawn in when he used the Demonic Mark Meditation Method to restore his spiritual power.

An idea flashed through his mind, and he immediately began to meditate.

As usual, he began tracing runes above the demonic mark to restore his spiritual power. Normally, in this state, he could sense the demonic mark drawing in tiny, invisible things, accelerating the recovery of his spiritual power. But this time, the moment he began tracing the runes, he saw a cluster of much larger, clearly visible motes of light in every color surge into the demonic mark.

As his spiritual power rapidly recovered, scene after scene flooded into his mind.

It was like opening a biographical novel he had long been looking forward to, only better—like personally living through the reading of a story.

Ruger even caught a fleeting glimpse of himself within it. They seemed to be the deepest, most unforgettable scenes from this senior's memories before his death. He had not expected that, despite appearing only briefly, he would have the chance to take part in one of those scenes. He must have left too deep an impression.

Gradually, the scenes shifted. Ruger saw this senior's youthful high spirits, saw the increasingly inhuman side of his bodily modifications, saw all kinds of unimaginable suffering, saw the wizard tower he belonged to scorned by other wizards for its various mad deeds, saw that the light of youth had vanished from his eyes. Yet none of those pains were the clearest or deepest images. The road to becoming an official wizard being blocked, leaving him unable to take that step for so long—that was his deepest agony.

The scenes shifted again, one different image after another flashing past. They flashed to middle age, then back to youth, finally stopping in his boyhood.

That day, he received the first gift of his life: a book.

The book told legends about the Surface World, along with all kinds of visions of the Surface World. On its final page was written one sentence—only wizards could walk upon the surface.

That was the first time he learned the word "wizard."