Magic Runes

Green's cabin.

Green opened his eyes and subconsciously thought back to last night.

"This feeling..."

Green closed his eyes.

Suddenly, Green snapped awake!

No, this was only the body's instinct. Wizards were creatures who submitted to absolute wisdom in pursuit of the knowledge of truth. How could they bow to instinct like beasts?

Thinking this, Green hurriedly sat up and shook his head hard.

But as Green turned his head and saw Lafi beside him, still sound asleep, her graceful body half covered and half revealed, that astonishing curve of her figure, that soft, delicate, fair skin, that full body brimming with vitality—all of it made Green swallow a mouthful of saliva despite himself.

Who had never been young?

"Gulp, uh... forget it. I'll give myself half a day off today."

Thinking this, Green gently drew close to the sleeping Lafi and embraced her enchanting body from behind, feeling the beauty and heat within.

"Mm... again?"

A cloying voice sounded from deep in Lafi's throat.

As Lafi opened her eyes, she seemed to suddenly think of something and abruptly turned around. Beneath her long lashes, a pair of star-bright, beautiful eyes stared fixedly at Green, as though she wanted to see straight through him.

Green felt a little unnatural under Lafi's stare, his face reddening as he said, "What is it?"

"Green, from now on, you can only belong to me alone!"

With undisguised joy, Lafi happily hugged Green and looked straight into his eyes. For a moment, Green was squeezed by Lafi until he could almost no longer breathe.

"Uh..."

Only after lazing around until noon did Green and Lafi finally get out of bed.

To Green, who was busy every single day without pause, this was simply something unimaginable.

After Lafi casually toured Green's room and laboratory, she said tenderly, "Now I know where you live. When I have time in the future, I'll come find you. You're not allowed to play disappearing acts with me again! But..."

At this point, she paused, and Lafi said somewhat embarrassedly, "In the end, we are wizard apprentices. Becoming official wizards is our goal. Though love is beautiful, it is only the sustenance and spice of a long life. It's better not to get too lost in it."

As she spoke, Lafi encouraged Green, "Right now, the most important thing for you is to put everything you have into surviving the trial. I don't want to have just gained the person I love, only to attend his funeral."

Green felt a little awkward. Lafi's presence was too strong; she had actually said everything there was to say. He could only agree, "Mm, you too."

"Hmph, hmph."

After kissing Green one last time, Lafi left without looking back.

Green calmed his mood.

He truly had not expected that yesterday, he had only been thinking that the trial exam was about to begin and wanted to attend a Blood Sail Alliance gathering once, yet all these things had happened.

With his sensitive Hunting Nose smelling Lafi's scent left all over his body, an indescribable sweetness and satisfaction rose in him. Was this love?

When there was a chance in the future, he would bring Lafi to kowtow before Old Ham's grave.

Thinking this, Green closed the door and continued beginning his experimental research.

Green once again threw himself into self-forgetting experimental study and research.

Over these past few days, Green had not only made new discoveries regarding the Life Code Forbidden Zone, but had also had an unexpected gain in elemental magic runes.

Green had to set aside the matter of the Life Code Forbidden Zone for now.

Because Green discovered that if he wanted to obtain the next experiment for his research now, he absolutely needed a precious experimental material: a living person!

However, if one conducted wizardry experiments on civilians and was discovered, then one would immediately become a notorious black wizard, be jointly wanted by all wizard academies, and be hunted by black-wizard hunters at any time.

Green did not dare risk doing human experiments like that.

Clearly, Green had no intention of doing something that violated his own bottom line as a wizard. He could, because of rules and competition, slaughter cruelly among his own kind, but he could not torture in the darkness.

Green thought of another way to solve the problem. It was also how many wizards solved such problems: buying a humanoid slave from another world from some powerful wizard.

These humanoid slaves from other worlds were, in truth, not humans. They were merely some humanoid creatures from foreign worlds, and therefore were not protected by the rules of the wizard world.

In that case, Green would indeed save himself a lot of trouble.

Since the Life Code Forbidden Zone experiment could not continue, Green simply turned all his attention toward the magic rune he had discovered by accident.

Magic runes, aside from the twenty-six standard runes, did indeed include many rare runes, but obtaining those runes was simply ten thousand times harder than improving a magic array!

It was just like Wizard Dila back then. After this level-one wizard grasped the wizardry spell Dead Soul Flame, even the level-two wizard Faceless Mask had actually needed to first lure in that giant octopus and numerous sea monsters to exhaust his magic power before coming to hijack the ocean liner. From this, the deterrent power of strange wizardry formed by these rare runes could be seen.

Thinking this, Green's heart could not help but heat up, and he looked with burning eyes at the two sections of tree branch on the experiment table.

These two sections of tree branch looked pitch-black, almost like charcoal. Back then, these two broken pieces had originally been one piece; they were an unremarkable object Green had happened to discover on the first floor of Black Isotta Tower, in a magic materials shop.

According to the shop owner, this section of tree branch was something left behind after natural thunder from the sky had accidentally struck a tree. Although some thunder power was stored inside it, no use for it had been discovered. But because it was rather unusual and rare, he had put it out for sale, priced at two magic stones.

At the time, Green had merely been curious about this section of tree branch and wanted to buy it as cheap material for practicing alchemy, so he had not paid too much attention to it.

But when Green returned to the laboratory and cut this section of tree branch open to use as alchemy material, he discovered something unusual.

Because when Green cut open that section of branch, he made an eerie discovery: the severed end was as smooth as a mirror. Though the power of thunder inside the branch had been highly compressed and squeezed together, it had congealed without dispersing, seeming exceedingly stable.

At that, Green's interest was piqued. He simply stopped treating this severed branch as an alchemy material and instead began studying the reason behind the strange properties formed by the thunder within it. He tried extracting some of the thunder power and then entrusting it to alchemical smelting; in the end, Green even specially made some potions to aid his research...

But he failed again and again. The idea was simply impossible.

Otherwise, why wouldn't that shopkeeper have done it himself?

Green had originally been planning to give up, but then one day, after meditating, his vision suddenly blurred by chance, and he seemed to discover a hazy, complex rune at the cut of that severed branch.

The rune seemed to exist for only an instant before vanishing. Green even thought his eyes had blurred.

Startled, Green simply opened his eyes wide and stared fixedly at that severed branch.

After about two hourglasses' worth of time, Green's vision seemed to blur again...

This continued for several full days, until Green confirmed one thing: this rune he had discovered by accident should be one of the rare runes mentioned in the sorcery books.

This discovery immediately filled Green with pleasant surprise.

From the sorcery books, Green knew just how precious those rare runes were. Rare runes could not be recorded or conveyed through any visualized method such as hand drawing or carving; they could only be passed down by comprehending them with the soul, then dividing the soul for inheritance.

And ever since Green knew he had picked up a treasure, he began observing this rune that flashed past for an instant at fixed times every day, hoping to comprehend it as soon as possible.

However, to this day, there was still not the slightest concept of this rune within Green's soul. According to Green's preliminary estimate, if he wanted his soul to thoroughly comprehend this rune, it would take at least more than ten years.

Thus, Green practically began carrying these two severed pieces of wood close to his body, observing them once at each fixed time.

Time flowed by.

In the blink of an eye, the time for the newcomer trial exam of Green's cohort had arrived. The terrifying trial that wizard apprentices from previous cohorts called the bloody millstone was about to begin.