Choice

For two days and two nights straight, Green stayed in a state of total concentration as he concocted fragrances, and during that time he did not forget his job of cleaning the library.

Two days later, Green, in an abnormally excited state, came to the trading plaza in the first-floor hall of Black Isotta Tower with dark circles under his eyes and thirty bottles of fragrance in hand.

"Please help me sell these thirty bottles of fragrance on consignment. Price them at one magic stone per bottle."

Green spoke to a wizard apprentice who was studying with a magic book in his arms.

This wizard apprentice was a great fatty. Though he wore a loose robe, it still could not conceal all that flab on him, and his eyes had been squeezed by the flesh on his face until they were almost a single slit.

The fatty looked up at Green and said in surprise, "Fragrance? What is that? I've got plenty of nectar here."

"Uh... consider it a kind of potion that can alter the essential scent of one's body odor and gender aura. It has a certain subconscious attractive effect on the opposite sex. A little thing I invented."

Green gave a simple explanation.

"Oh? Attract the opposite sex?"

The fatty seemed interested and wanted to open a bottle of fragrance to experience it. Green hurriedly stopped him and said, "There are two kinds of fragrance. One is suitable for men, and the other is suitable for women. If you use them carelessly, there's a good chance they'll produce the opposite effect."

Under Green's guidance, the fatty closed his eyes and gently opened a bottle to sniff it. After being quiet for a short while, the fatty suddenly opened both eyes and looked at Green with a face full of delighted surprise.

"What is this fragrance called? What a wondrous potion. I actually felt a surge of restlessness from when I was in adolescence, as if it were that inexplicable heartbeat of first falling in love, secretly liking a girl for the first time. What a marvelous experience!"

"Uh... name? Let's call it Venus, Goddess of Love."

Seeing the fatty describe it in such a mystical way, Green felt it was a bit exaggerated.

He had smelled it himself too. Though that fragrance was also very attractive to him, it was nowhere near as exaggerated as the fatty said.

Could it be because he had never truly been in love?

Green guessed using a wizard's way of thinking.

"Venus, Goddess of Love? Haha, good name, good name! However, I have a suggestion. How about selling this Venus, Goddess of Love for two magic stones a bottle?"

Of course the fatty was willing for such a rare potion to sell at a good price. That meant he could receive more compensation.

"Two magic stones a bottle? Isn't that too expensive?"

Green looked at the fatty with some doubt. Spending two magic stones just for this bottle of fragrance that would not raise one's combat power at all seemed to Green to be far too wasteful.

The fatty, however, said without thinking much of it, "People who can buy this kind of fragrance absolutely won't care about that one magic stone. Do you think everyone in this academy is a newcomer still struggling desperately over magic stones? Besides, who said I was going to sell this fragrance to those wizard apprentices?"

"You mean... sell it to those great wizards!"

Green's mouth fell wide open.

Seeing Green's jumpy, startled look, the fatty could not help sighing. How had a fellow who had never seen the world managed to invent such a marvelous potion?

So what if they were wizards? Wizards were people too, and wizards with long lifespans would pay even more attention to such marvelous luxuries.

To think he had come up with a potion that used scent to attract the opposite sex, rather than a simple perfume. It actually gave people that overlapping sense of heat from the first time they drew near the opposite sex.

A while later, Green dragged his exhausted body back to his room and plunged headfirst onto the bed, slowly falling asleep.

Only after sleeping for a full day did Green wake faintly.

After casually eating some backup dry rations, Green thought it over. Today, there seemed to be a class extremely important to him: a fairly reputable wizard was explaining the simple application of soul sorcery. This was a foundational course for wizards to cultivate companion insects and soul slaves in the future.

Previously, because Green had been far too focused on studying Hunting Nose Modification and Odor Atlas, he had pushed aside almost everything else. But now, with the trial exam approaching, Green had to seize the time to prepare.

However, attending class required magic stones as the fee, and previously, the only one and a half magic stones he had were all spent on buying materials to make the fragrance.

After worriedly tugging at his hair, Green walked toward Black Isotta Tower, intending to see how many bottles of fragrance that fatty who had given his ironclad guarantee had sold. Right now, he was desperately short of magic stones.

"Oh... my dear great inventor of Venus, Goddess of Love, you've finally come!"

The fatty rushed toward Green like a gust of wind. His behavior simply left Green stunned. How had he managed that with such a fat body?

Green hurriedly asked, "What happened? Could it be that this fragrance is selling well?"

"More than well! Today, I only recommended this Venus, Goddess of Love to one wizard, and after that wizard experienced it briefly, he was so pleasantly surprised that he bought all thirty bottles!"

The fatty laughed excitedly. "He didn't even ask me the price!"

Green was dumbstruck. Was there any need to exaggerate this much? This was only a fragrance he had invented by chance.

"Hehe, so in the end, I raised the price a little more and said it was three magic stones a bottle. But that wizard didn't pay any attention at all. He directly tossed me a mid-grade magic stone and didn't even ask for change!"

The fatty smiled smugly and eagerly asked Green, "So? Do you have any more fragrance? I guarantee your sales will flow without obstruction. However much you bring, I'll sell it all. I even want to sell it to other wizard academies within the range of Seven-Ring Holy Tower!"

Green accepted the ninety magic stones the fatty handed over, with ten taken as the consignment reward.

While excited, Green hesitated and said, "I can concoct the fragrance at any time, but it will take me quite a lot of time and energy. Also, because the trial exam is approaching, since I'm not short on magic stones now, I plan to seize the time to improve my strength. In the future, I'll only be able to concoct some for you when I'm short on magic stones."

The fatty was somewhat regretful, but he also knew the cruelty of the trial exam, so it was not good to try to persuade him too much. He nodded and said, "So that's how it is... all right, then. Leave me your crystal ball information. We'll keep in touch more in the future. My name is Digen. You can just call me Fatty."

"Mm."

A while later, Green left Black Isotta Tower in a low-key manner.

As a fellow carrying the enormous wealth of ninety magic stones, Green felt somewhat uneasy deep down, afraid that those wizard apprentices, once jealous, would curse him to death.

In the past, Green had been as poor and clean as if washed bare, so he had not been afraid of anyone taking an interest in him. But now, things were different...

"The matter of the companion insect has to be put on the schedule. Fortunately, I made some preparations before and found a few fairly decent samples."

Green jogged all the way to the lecture hall. After handing over the magic stone fee, he entered the classroom as he wished.

This was a wizard whose voice carried a mechanical flavor. Beneath the broad robe, the eyes were two masses of black fog, drifting and swaying—strange, mysterious, even making it impossible for others to tell whether this wizard was male or female.

This wizard seemed to carry a considerable obsession for soul sorcery.

"Jie jie jie jie, soul sorcery is the most sublime and elegant art of wizards, the most essential core of life. Do you know what creatures from other worlds call us wizards? That's right, they call us world slave masters. From that, you can see their fear of our control over soul slaves. This is the art of our great wizard souls..."

One class lasted two hourglasses. For half of it, this wizard, who was somewhat neurotic about soul sorcery, spent the entire time praising the greatness of soul sorcery and its history of development in the long river of the Wizard World. Only in the latter half did the wizard truly begin explaining the applications of soul sorcery.

Even so, it had to be said that this wizard truly possessed quite unique and meticulous insights into soul sorcery. Many of the unique theories proposed made even Green feel as if his eyes had lit up and everything had suddenly opened before him. It was clear this wizard truly had genuine talent and learning.

After the lecture ended, Green went straight to Black Isotta Tower again in one breath. This time, however, he headed directly to the seventh floor and arrived before the wizard apprentice named Varo.

Varo's job could be said to be quite easy. Usually, not many people came in a whole day, so he still remembered Green and said with a smile, "Yo, gathered enough magic stones?"

"Mm."

Green did not say much either and directly handed twenty magic stones to Varo. After Varo accepted the magic stones without the slightest politeness, he chuckled.

"Good. Leave me your crystal ball imprint. My mentor is still here these next few days. When my mentor goes out, I'll call you. Don't worry, I won't cheat you over twenty magic stones."

After hesitating for a moment, Green felt that since this person had been able to find such an easy position as an attendant on the seventh floor of Black Isotta Tower, he should have a considerable background and would not go so far as to cheat him once over twenty magic stones.

After exchanging crystal ball imprints, Green returned to his little hut, sat before the experiment table, and looked at the insects he had once collected before him.

Green was making a decision about the matter of his companion insect.

Theoretically speaking, basically any insect could become a wizard's companion insect, because the unique characteristics of an insect's soul would passively increase a wizard's resistance to curses and illusions. But for the most intimate "partner" in a wizard's life, all wizards still hoped their companion insect would preferably possess some unique traits.

Of the seven kinds of insects Green had collected, three could be eliminated outright. Green had remained hesitant and undecided over the remaining four kinds of insects, unable to make up his mind.

The first kind of insect was called the carrion-eating insect.

Green had collected these insects from the body of a wizard apprentice who had died from a curse. At that time, after the wizard apprentice suffered the curse, his body had been eaten clean by this terrifying insect in just a few moments. It could be said that carrion-eating insects were cruel to the extreme by nature.

Thus, after taking note of them, Green had carefully collected some.

The second kind of insect was called the Gadfly Snail. It was a parasite.

In spring, this kind of insect would be eaten by certain small dung-eating creatures from the droppings of some wild cranes, and then it would parasitize those small creatures.

However, the terrifying thing about this parasite was that it would cause the parasitized small creatures to mutate. To put it simply, they would grow extra legs, extra arms, and the like.

Then, because these mutated little creatures had difficulty moving, they would very easily be eaten by wild cranes. In this way, the parasite could be considered to have completed a perfect "cycle."

Very few people paid attention to this kind of insect. Green had also only noticed it by chance while studying bloodline sorcery, and after taking notice, he caught some and brought them back.

The third kind of insect was called the borer moth.

This was the companion insect most beloved by wizard apprentices on the Wizard Continent. This kind of companion insect did not have much offensive ability. After being made into a wizard's companion insect, it had only one effect: greatly extending the lifespan of a wizard apprentice, directly increasing it from two hundred years to three hundred years!

As for the fourth kind of insect, Green did not even know its name. Green had discovered it by chance in a test tube while throwing away garbage, and the library also had no records of this shape-shifting insect that looked like mud.

Green guessed that perhaps this insect was the product of a failed experiment by some wizard apprentice or wizard.

Up to now, Green had only discovered one function of this eerie insect: it possessed very strong life force, similar to the vitality of an earthworm. Even if it was severed into two pieces, it could still live, and the two pieces would grow into two new life forms.

The insects in the four test tubes were placed before Green. A contemplative light appeared in Green's eyes. Which one should he choose?

After hesitating back and forth, Green moved the No. 1 and No. 4 insects aside.

Although the man-eating insect had extremely strong offensive ability, unless there was absolutely no other choice, and unless they were wizards who specialized in cultivating companion insects, ordinary wizards would basically never use companion insects to attack enemies of the same rank. Therefore, in Green's view, the man-eating insect's offensive ability counted as a useless ability.

As for the fourth kind of insect, since Green guessed it was a failed product of some wizard or wizard apprentice, that proved there was a successful product. Generally speaking, the abilities of a successful product and a failed product were as different as heaven and earth.

Moreover, the fourth kind of insect had a very unstable factor, and that was its reproductive ability. As a failed product, it seemed to have already lost its ability to reproduce. Could it really rely forever on being manually cut in half to multiply?

With a sigh, Green looked toward the borer moth.

Sure enough, the companion insect beloved by numerous wizard apprentices definitely had its reason for existing.

However, Green did not rashly abandon the Gadfly Snail either, because an interesting phenomenon Green had discovered back then was that the Gadfly Snail's ability to promote biological mutation belonged to a kind of power that promoted biological "evolution"!

Uh... although this "evolution" was failed, malformed evolution.

But since it was evolution, yet did not use bloodline sorcery, Green could not help but make certain associations.

Perhaps there was some special connection between this and the Hunting Nose Modification sorcery?

At last, Green decided to first cultivate the Gadfly Snail inside a living frog for a period of time. When he later obtained the right to use the advanced microscope, he could conveniently look at the experiment results.

Thinking this, Green left the room for a moment, and when he returned, he was holding a frog in his hand. He gently cut off one of the frog's hind legs to use as a normal living specimen. After stopping the bleeding, Green began cultivating the Gadfly Snail inside this poor frog...