Aromatic Agent

Green did not immediately rush to do anything. Instead, he worked hard to slowly calm himself through meditation, sorting out his emotions and thoughts.

For wizards, meditation was a method of converting spiritual force into an equal level of magic power, and at the same time, it was also the most basic way to temper and improve one's spiritual force.

Thus arose the so-called matter of wizard aptitude.

Depending on a wizard's aptitude, with the same "door-thickness" of meditation, some people might gain one point of spiritual force in a year, while others might not gain one point even in ten years.

After the time of one hourglass, Green opened his eyes, ending his necessary daily meditation.

Meditation was not better the longer it lasted. Rather, it was best to maintain it for one hourglass each day. Once it exceeded one hourglass, a wizard would feel mentally exhausted, and the effects of meditation would no longer be great.

Huff...

Letting out a breath of pent-up air from his chest, Green picked up the crystal ball and sensed his own condition.

Spiritual force: 13, Magic power: 125~137.

"Mm? The upper limit of my magic power rose by two points? Looks like that insight just now really stirred me quite a bit."

At this moment, Green finally kept his mood in a steady state. His eyes carried the light of a wizard's wisdom as he sat quietly in front of his experiment table.

On the experiment table, a dissected frog was soaking in preservative solution, several white mice were squeaking in a cage, seven or eight glass jars contained various kinds of insects, and inside the yellow liquid of a large sealed container floated a monkey brain.

In addition, there were several bottles of nameless liquid giving off different fragrances. They seemed to be simple fragrance mixtures Green had made himself according to the Odor Atlas, along with a precious low-grade microscope...

Green took out his experiment notes. This notebook contained all the insights Green had gained over two years of researching Hunting Nose Modification.

Over these two years, through the Hunting Nose he had modified for himself, Green had already become able to identify nearly four thousand kinds of odor atlas entries. This was a full ten times stronger than an ordinary person!

Rubbing the space between his brows, Green began thinking again.

"Hunting Nose Modification isn't bloodline sorcery. That was confirmed half a year ago when I bought the microscope. Bloodline sorcery is a system of power in which wizards obtain the bloodlines of certain formidable creatures, exchange their own blood, and then use certain mysterious methods to modify and evolve themselves."

He lit a small piece of soul-soothing incense. This incense was a kind of spice Green had made according to the Odor Atlas and alchemy. It had a mind-calming effect, a little trinket Green had invented himself.

"Since it isn't part of the bloodline sorcery system, nor any of the systems I can normally come into contact with—the elemental sorcery system, curse sorcery system, occult system, spiritual force sorcery system, soul system, alchemy system, or machinery system—then what exactly is the principle behind this Hunting Nose Modification? Damn it, and also, why doesn't this magic sorcery book have an author's signature..."

Green had once worked hard in the academy library to look for magic books similar to Hunting Nose Modification, hoping to cross-reference and verify them with one another, thereby advancing the experiment.

But Green was astonished to discover that in the vast library, there was not a single magic book like Hunting Nose Modification—one that could change and evolve a wizard's body, yet was not bloodline sorcery, alchemical sorcery, or mechanical sorcery.

After pacing alone in the room for a while, Green seemed to form some ideas in his heart. He quickly arrived in front of the experiment table and sat down again, then grabbed a white mouse that had been squeaking nonstop inside the cage.

"Since it isn't bloodline sorcery, then what part of a living creature is being changed that allows it to evolve? Perhaps I should conduct an experiment and see which parts of the body are changed by those special substances injected into the body through Hunting Nose Modification sorcery?"

The moment the new line of thought appeared, Green became like a madman, rummaging back and forth under the experiment table until he took out a bottle of red potion.

This bottle of potion was a synthetic pigment. If taken orally, it caused no harm to living creatures, because the creature's gastric mucosa would effectively digest the harmful components within it. But if injected directly, it would cause some slight poisoning in living creatures.

A wizard would have no pity for the "experimental materials" under his hand. Green still had some low-grade materials left over from the materials for Hunting Nose Modification sorcery, which could only be combined into an inferior injection potion and would not allow a wizard to obtain any evolution at all. However, if it was only for observational experiments, it was enough.

Half a day later, Green finished making a crude synthetic Hunting Nose Modification potion, with synthetic pigment mixed into it.

Of course, the prerequisite was that over the past few months, Green had already extracted the white mouse's cellular blood and obtained a neutralizing agent. Otherwise, this step alone would have required several full weeks.

Picking up a tiny syringe, Green injected the synthetic Hunting Nose Modification potion into the white mouse's body, then patiently waited for Hunting Nose Modification to take effect on the white mouse.

Two days later.

Under Green's microscope, an experimental result appeared that made Green feel it was inconceivable!

"How is that possible? The cells throughout the white mouse's entire body are showing signs of poisoning? All of them have been dyed red by the pigment? How is that possible? Clearly only the nose was 'evolved,' so why does the potion need to change every single cell in the whole body?"

Green's face held disbelief, and at the same time, some pleasant surprise.

Perhaps there had been another major breakthrough today.

However, Green was unable to continue his research in his own small room, because this microscope was only the lowest-grade microscope.

Although he had spent a full thirty magic stones to buy it from Black Isotta Tower, it could only observe cells in the microscopic world. It belonged to the type of microscope used to popularize knowledge at the wizard apprentice level. If he wanted to further magnify and observe changes in certain domains within cells, that was somewhat impossible.

He could not stop the experiment!

Green gritted his teeth and directly took all his vessels toward Black Isotta Tower, the most central place in this wizard academy.

Black Isotta Tower occupied an extremely vast area. The first-floor hall was practically a gigantic trading market, stretching beyond the eye. Green did not delay, rushing in a flurry toward the top floor, the seventh floor.

"I want to rent a high-power microscope."

Holding the vessels, Green spoke urgently.

After the wizard apprentice in charge of managing the valuable rental equipment glanced at Green, he said blandly, "One magic stone per day. However, if any equipment is damaged during the trial period, you will be investigated by the law enforcement team."

Green was startled by the rental price of the high-power microscope, but he still gritted his teeth, took out a magic stone, and handed it over, then rushed into the laboratory in a flurry.

One day later, Green left the laboratory. With a rather ugly expression, he said to the wizard apprentice in charge of management, "May I ask, does the academy have any higher-grade microscopes for rent?"

"Higher-grade?"

This wizard apprentice in charge of managing experimental equipment was also startled by Green's words.

"You're merely a wizard apprentice. Are you trying to research some precision potion or something, requiring such fine data that even the high-power microscopes here aren't enough?"

Generally speaking, only alchemical pharmacology had extremely harsh requirements for microscopes. Occasionally, mechanics also had some requirements, but other fields had no need for microscopes at all.

Therefore, this wizard apprentice curled his lip and said, "Our academy isn't skilled in alchemy, so there's no way there would be anything higher-grade... Mm, wait, I remember now."

Green's face filled with pleasant surprise. "There really is one?"

After giving Green a strange look, the wizard apprentice let out an odd laugh and said, "My mentor has an even more precious microscope. Supposedly, he bought it from the Seven-Ring Holy Tower."

"Your mentor?"

Green's expression turned even uglier. Needless to say, his mentor had to be a great wizard. Borrow a microscope from a great wizard?

To Green, such a thing felt utterly remote.

Biting the bullet, Green asked, "May I ask who your mentor is?"

"You don't need to worry about who my mentor is. However, if you can give me twenty magic stones, I'll let you use his advanced microscope once while he's away. How about it?"

The wizard apprentice winked at Green, wearing an expression that said, you know how it is.

"Twenty magic stones!"

Green jumped up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, scared out of his wits. "Are you insane? Just to use it once, and it's that expensive?"

"No way around it. I'm taking a big risk too. If my mentor finds out, I'll be in deep trouble. Do as you see fit. In any case, if you're short even one magic stone, I won't take you there."

The wizard apprentice said indifferently, "Mm, my name is Varo. If you need me, you can come find me anytime."

Green gritted his teeth, turned, and left.

Never mind twenty magic stones; right now, Green could not even take out two magic stones, because all the wealth he had left on him amounted to only one and a half magic stones.

"Think of something, think of something. How can I get those damned twenty magic stones!"

Green walked along somewhat irritably.

Borrow them?

In the past two years, Green had not made any new friends at all. As for asking his friends in the Blood Sail Alliance to lend him some, unless he had absolutely no other choice, Green truly could not bring himself to open his mouth.

"A great wizard should achieve the aims within his ideals through the knowledge he controls. Mm, the Hunting Nose sorcery I now grasp counts as knowledge, but how should I use this knowledge to obtain those damned magic stones?"

Green rubbed his head, nearly on the verge of collapse, when he suddenly noticed the few bottles of spice mixtures he had casually concocted on the experiment table.

"Mm? Maybe... I can try selling these fragrances?"

Unlike ordinary wizard apprentices, Green, who focused on studying Hunting Nose sorcery and the Odor Atlas, had no offensive ability whatsoever, but he was practically an expert in odor studies, and at the same time could track targets and counter-track with extreme effectiveness.

This was a field that wizard apprentices rarely studied. What people pursued seemed to be only those lethal sorceries.

"Right, maybe... I can find some synthesized fragrances in the Odor Atlas that have a natural attraction for humans?"

Almost instantly, Green thought of the scent in the Odor Atlas that was most attractive to humans: the scent of opposite-sex hormone secretion!

Most humans could not smell this scent at all. In fact, in the Odor Atlas, the scent of hormone secretion was fundamentally one of the scents in the stench atlas, but this scent would produce subconscious hallucinations in humans of the opposite sex who smelled it.

To put it simply, it was aphrodisiac.

Inspiration sparked in an instant. Odor potionology was Green's best field, and also the only field he was good at, the result of two years of obsessive research—even dating back to his time on East Coral Island!

Concocting a fragrance required ten fragrance tones.

Three short-note fragrances, giving people an impact scent they could feel in an instant.

Three middle-note fragrances, making people linger in that scent for several hourglasses of time.

Three long-note fragrances, allowing the fragrance to give off long-note scents over the next several days, lingering and intoxicating.

Finally, there was a single suppressing-note fragrance. This fragrance was the essence of the perfume. It would suppress the previous nine short, middle, and long notes; once others smelled the perfume, whenever they recalled it later, what they remembered would be this suppressing-note fragrance.

It seemed simple, but it also involved calculation formulas for the mutual reactions of odor molecules. If Green had not accumulated years of memorizing and researching the Odor Atlas, then for an ordinary wizard apprentice...

What an ordinary person could think of was probably no more than mixing pollen and honey from nature.

Green's method for making the perfume was to turn the suppressing-note fragrance into the scent of opposite-sex hormones.

In that case, Green would have to make two different types of perfume, one suited to men and one suited to women.