"Search Dog"

Dago ordered the metal spell puppet to stand guard nearby, then finally found the time to inspect the metal box Bronte III had found.

It looked almost identical to the magic box Undine had given him. It had to be Melville's Wonder Box.

It was a precise product of ancient alchemy.

Dago did not rush to touch it.

A faint silver-blue glow surfaced in his eyes. This was the projection of elemental particles onto his retinas when his mental power was highly focused.

In a wizard's eyes, appearances were often breeding grounds for deception.

He needed to determine whether its surface bore the curse-type Malicious Touch or the undead-type Soul Siphon.

Even Dago had not expected things to go so smoothly. He had found one with barely any effort, and a trace of anticipation rose in his heart.

He picked up the magic box and examined it closely before his eyes.

Cold. Heavy.

The sensation beneath his fingertips was not the hardness of metal, but a faint elasticity similar to living skin.

This was a fusion of memory metal and the hide of some enchanted creature.

The patterns on it were not decorations, but solidified energy circuits.

Kosti had told him how to open the magic box. He first had to crack the "lock" on it.

The lock itself was not complicated. The difficult part had always been obtaining the magic box.

To mortals, this might have been an ingenious mechanism.

But to a wizard who understood the principles of leverage and mana nodes, it was merely a basic logic puzzle.

Dago stared at the countless rotating gears on the magic box for a moment, then reached out and lightly adjusted several of them.

His movements were as precise as if he were performing surgery.

His mental power transformed into