Inside the church laboratory, Lynn walked to the sealed rack in the corner, took down the first junior alchemy grandmaster's body, and laid it flat on the experimental table.
This alchemy grandmaster was a newcomer, the youngest and weakest of the group.
He looked to be around thirty, his eyes tightly shut. Most of his mage robe had been removed, exposing the skin of his chest, abdomen, and arms.
His muscle lines were slack, without any signs of struggle, like a machine that had only just stopped running.
His body had remained active under the sealing sorcery. Otherwise, it could only have been made into an undead creature.
Standing before the experimental table, Lynn took a black rune pen from his ring.
Its tip was extremely fine, capable of drawing clear lines.
He gripped the pen, bent down, and began drawing the first rune on the alchemy grandmaster's chest.
When the tip touched the skin, it left no bloodstain, only a fine dark-gray line.
The line extended along the collarbone, branched at the center of the chest, and spread in arcs toward both sides, forming two symmetrical curves.
Lynn did not move quickly, but every stroke flowed smoothly into the next, the entire sequence as fluid as drifting clouds and flowing water.
After completing the arcs, he added several short horizontal marks beneath them and embedded several nodes between the marks.
Those nodes consisted of three or four tiny runes arranged into fixed shapes, clasped like locks at the crucial intersections of the entire pattern.
The area covered by the runes continued to expand, from the chest to the abdomen, from the abdomen to both sides of the ribs, then through the gaps between the ribs and onto the back.
The distance between each pattern remained even.
The patterns on