The Demon Hand Shows Its Might (Part Two)

Were flawed creations necessarily bad? Not always. It depended on the person; many astonishing works sprang from inspiration found in flawed creations.

Sanderson looked at the hand models scattered across the ground. The first was a human hand, though its workmanship left something to be desired. The second was much better, already quite close to a normal hand. Then came the third... the fourth...

Using that first hand as a foundation, Little Dean kept making alterations: some had spikes, some had none, some had armored scales, and some had bristles. There were all manner of strange shapes.

Although he had no idea what Little Dean was thinking, the models strewn across the ground told him that Little Dean was taking his lessons seriously, even when they involved something as simple as playing with mud.

After Dean left the courtyard, Sanderson did not return to the little room in the middle. Instead, he went behind the row of rooms, into a bamboo grove.

In that tiny bamboo grove stood a gravestone, as though the little grove existed solely to conceal it.

There was no inscription on the gravestone. It looked like nothing more than a stone slab embedded in the earth.

"Teacher, I'm here. I've brought news... news that offers both hope and despair," Sanderson said to the gravestone, his voice trembling slightly.

The gravestone did not respond. Only a faint trace of savage violence seeped into the surrounding air, just like... yes, just like the demon model Sanderson had created for Dean earlier, with its trace of savage violence.

An unknown length of time passed. It was already midnight, and the three moons occupied three different directions in the sky, as though deliberately leaving the fourth for the sun that would rise the next day.

Only then did Sanderson emerge from the bamboo grove. He looked somewhat dazed, as though he had exhausted a great deal of mental energy.

Without giving anything else much thought, Sanderson went straight to his room, collapsed into bed, and fell asleep.

Meanwhile, after returning to his "home," Dean opened the spellbook Magic Hand and read it several more times. In the end, his gaze remained fixed on that Demon Hand.

Sanderson had not asked him to sculpt that particular hand out of clay. Instead, he had told him to give his imagination free rein.

Dean knew that Teacher Sanderson did not want his thinking confined to the spellbook. Every great spell had been created by someone; he could not simply keep studying the limited knowledge within its pages.

That was why Dean had sculpted so many oddly shaped hands.

Of course, Dean thought the Demon Hand in the book was already very powerful. There was no need for him to add or alter anything, like drawing legs on a snake.

After playing with mud all day and spending so long reading the spellbook, even the young Dean had little energy left. He seemed quite tired, and soon after lying down, he fell asleep.

Early the next morning, Dean woke with the rising sun. His mind was already racing; clearheaded so early in the morning, he simply could not stop thinking.

"I... I know which direction to take!" Dean murmured with his head lowered. He seemed to have settled on the initial form of his Demon Hand.

"Is Teacher Sanderson here?" Dean had waited at home until he thought the time was right before coming to Sanderson's courtyard and calling to the magical servant outside.

"Mr. Dean, please come in. Master said that this would be your second home from now on, and that you are also my second master." The magical servant continued, "Greetings, Mr. Dean. Wooden Man, the magical servant, is at your service. What do you need?"

Dean regarded the magical servant with interest. Presumably, Teacher Sanderson had already learned all the publicly available information about him. Together with these instructions to the magical servant, this counted as formally acknowledging him as a student.

After all, Wooden Man was a magical servant whose intelligence was no less than an ordinary person's. Teacher Sanderson was the only teacher in all of Bru Magic Academy capable of making such a servant, and Wooden Man was the only one of his kind.

Of course, this was not the creation of life, but Life Fusion—a way of granting a little intelligence to certain bewildered life-forms.

"I'd like to see Teacher Sanderson. I wonder..." Dean looked toward Wooden Man.

"Oh, my young master, Master is snoring away right now. It seems he wore himself out last night." Wooden Man winked at Dean, though the sight of those wooden eyes winking was decidedly strange.

Dean was rather speechless. Yesterday, this magical servant had seemed quite proper, like a loyal guard.

Wooden Man had stayed beside him and Teacher Sanderson all afternoon yesterday, fetching whatever tools they needed and doing whatever tasks they required without complaint, barely speaking at all. In Dean's mind, Wooden Man had been the perfect servant.

But today, perhaps because Teacher Sanderson was not around and Dean had become his only student, was this magical servant starting to show his true colors?

"Ahem, you wretched block of wood, don't go corrupting my student. Ahem." Just as Wooden Man was about to say more, Sanderson emerged, leaning on his cane.

From Sanderson's tone, he was clearly used to Wooden Man behaving this way. Dean even wondered whether the magical servant had picked up this shameless-old-rascal act on his own because Sanderson could not be bothered to keep him in line.

"Ahem, Little Dean, come with me." With that, Sanderson headed toward yesterday's little magic laboratory, leaning on his cane.

Wooden Man bowed and obediently resumed sweeping the courtyard.

"I found something for you, something extremely precious. So I want you to experience it with your whole heart and mind." Sanderson sat down and took out a box.

Dean nodded, only half understanding. Experience it? Experience what? Whatever's inside this box? What's in it? Could it be empty, leaving me to figure things out myself?

Countless thoughts sprang into Dean's mind.

Soon, however, a fist-sized crystal sphere appeared inside the box. Most striking of all was a crack running all the way through the Memory Crystal. Dean recognized it: this was a One-Time Memory Crystal worth five Gold Coins.

Five Gold Coins! Until yesterday, I'd spent more than half a year working to save up just one. And now I'm actually going to use up a Memory Crystal worth five?

A One-Time Memory Crystal could only be used once. Of course, that depended on what it recorded. The more powerful its contents, the more earth-shaking and terrifying the scenes, the harder they were to preserve.

This Memory Crystal already had a crack running through the entire sphere. That meant the scene within must be earth-shaking, so terrifying that the crystal sphere could not withstand even its image. It might not even last long enough for the recording to be viewed in full once.

Understanding how precious the Memory Crystal was, Dean took a deep breath and nodded to Sanderson. He was ready.

"Memory Crystal, project!" Those were the last words Dean dimly heard.

In the blink of an eye, Dean found himself in an unfamiliar place, a desolate desert beneath an expanse of crimson. The entire sky was bloodred. There was no sun here, nor any moon.

There was only a hand, a hand as enormous as a mountain!

(End of chapter)