Shelly scrambled to his feet in a panic, his eyes wide in disbelief.
“You're from the Wizard Tower?”
Saul knew he looked a bit too young to be convincing, but he didn’t bother explaining. Instead, he used Mage Hand to lift the letter from the floor and send it directly and accurately into Shelly’s hands.
“Hold onto it this ti,” Saul’s smile vanished, his voice dropping by an octave. “Drop it again, and I’ll twist your head off with it.”
Shelly instinctively clutched the letter tightly.
He looked down and quickly confird that it was indeed a handwritten letter from the Wizard Tower.
While Shelly was occupied reading the letter, Saul leaned close and whispered to Penny, “I’ve thought about it—if we want Ada to be happy in the future, it’s best if you stay by his side.”
Penny lifted her head, her eyes instinctively widening. Inside them was no longer the silver starlight, only a dull gray mist.
Saul had taken away her eyes—along with her ability to see the world through dreams.
For an ordinary person, that might not be a bad thing.
“Wait here for a bit, Penny. Once I’m done, I’ll take you back.”
Penny nodded. She reached out her hands, felt Saul’s robe, and followed it down to the hem, where she held on tightly.
Saul kept part of his attention on Shelly across the room. Though the man was still reading the letter from ntor Rum, he could strike at any mont.
And Saul wasn’t sure if the Wizard Tower’s authority was enough to deter soone who hadn’t even completed the basic apprentice training.
After all, ignorance breeds fearlessness.
Just look at what this wild First Rank apprentice was trying to do—
He was attempting to refine vengeful spirits to enhance his own magical power?
What, did he think he was still too sane? That his brain hadn’t rotted quite enough?
Across the room, Shelly finally finished reading the letter, his face shifting between pale and flushed.
The letter was short—Saul had read it too—just a scolding, really.
The general ssage was that Grind Sail Town’s tribute to the Wizard Tower was dispensable. If they didn’t take it seriously themselves, then there’d be no need to continue sending anything at all.
But the tone was much colder and more arrogant than how ntors usually scolded apprentices.
Still, Saul didn’t believe the Wizard Tower was truly indifferent about the Grinding Sound Fruit. Otherwise, they could have just cut ties altogether. Why bother sending a reprimand and asking him to investigate the drop in output?
In the past two years, Saul had never even heard of Grinding Sound Fruit as a material—he didn’t know what it was used for.
Clearly, Shelly was shaken by the letter. When he finally set it down, his face was twitching uncontrollably.
“My lord,” Shelly said, struggling to contain a swirl of emotions as he bowed to the boy who looked younger than his own son, “please allow to change into proper clothes. It’s inappropriate to greet you like this.”
“No need. I don’t care for those troubleso formalities.”
Saul’s words stopped Shelly mid-step, just as he was about to head for his clothes.
Shelly looked back at him in disbelief, as if he wanted to say more.
But Saul cut him off. “I don’t know where you learned this thod of creating vengeful spirits, but it won’t help you reach Second Rank.”
On the way here, Saul had listened to the old madman’s story and realized the town leader seed to be dealing with the barbarians. The barbarians’ shamans had unique thods to refine vengeful spirits using ordinary people.
That led Saul to suspect this First Rank apprentice might be trying to use the barbarians’ thod to advance to Second Rank.
He had chosen not to act sooner precisely so he could observe firsthand what the people of this town were up to.
All the investigation in the world couldn’t compare to seeing it with his own eyes.
Looking at Shelly—his body pale and bloated like a waterlogged corpse—Saul knew the man had probably been using vengeful spirit to empower himself for over a year now.
Even if Saul didn’t know the exact process, he could infer from the principles: one inevitable side effect of absorbing too many vengeful spirits was the chaos of being overwheld by their consciousnesses.
It ant living in a constant nightmare.
Fear. Despair. Madness. Collapse…
Without proper thods to deal with it, that was Shelly’s inevitable fate.
With that in mind, Saul also guessed one possible reason for the Grinding Sound Fruit’s reduced yield.
Grinding Sound Fruit ≈ Tranquilizer.
Shelly was likely using Grinding Sound Fruit to stabilize his fractured ntal construct.
But that only suppressed the symptoms temporarily—eventually, it would all co crashing down even harder.
Shelly’s face showed so surprise at Saul’s words, but Saul could tell from the flicker in his eyes that he wasn’t taking them to heart.
Just the kind of person who believes, “You don’t understand. This is a secret family redy.”
“What’s your na?” Saul suddenly asked.
“I’m Shelly, my lord.”
His hands flailed awkwardly, unsure where to rest.
When alone—or when he held absolute power—he delighted in the primal sensation of being unclothed and unconcerned.
But under scrutiny, under pressure, his nakedness felt like that of a lamb in a slaughter pen—already sheared bare.
Saul noticed his discomfort.
But he couldn’t allow an enemy to armor up.
Who knew what kind of weird tools Shelly might have hidden in his clothes?
“I rember you had a companion?” Saul asked casually, though his thoughts were elsewhere.
“Yes, my lord. His na is Yuka. Also a First Rank apprentice.”
“Did you two cultivate the Grinding Sound Fruit together?”
“I handled most of the cultivation. Yuka is more skilled in combat.”
So… can’t kill one and spare the other.
Saul made up his mind.
“Do you know the requirents for advancing to Second Rank?” he asked, tapping his toe lightly on the ground.
Shelly blinked, confused by the sudden topic shift.
“Uh…” He hesitated, then answered, “At least 45 joules of magic power, and successfully constructing a First Tier spell.”
“What’s your current magic power?”
“Forty-four joules, my lord.”
No wonder he was already hunting for another girl—he must be desperate to break through that final barrier.
“If I’m not wrong, before you killed that girl yesterday, your magic power was already close to 45 joules, wasn’t it?” Saul’s toe drew idle patterns on the floor.
Because of the ultra-sensitive Penny nearby, Saul avoided using words like “refine” or “extract.”
“…Yes, my lord.”
“Even if I hadn’t shown up today, you wouldn’t have been able to reach 45 joules with her.”
Shelly looked at him again, that sa skeptical expression.
“Your ntal construct is too loose. It can’t contain the magic you’re accumulating. The vengeful spirits you create from ordinary people are extrely fragile, and you don’t have the power to stabilize them. So even when you hit the threshold, it all just leaks away.”
Wild apprentices like Shelly received fragnted and incomplete training.
“But… but…” Shelly seed to be getting it, but reflexively refused to believe.
“To put it in words you’ll understand: a bowl can’t hold a bucket of water.”
That was too blunt—Shelly was stunned.
Saul had also hit bottlenecks in his magic growth, but unlike Shelly, his limitation ca from magical aptitude—not from a cap on his ntal structure.
Shelly’s situation wasn’t hopeless, but Saul wasn’t about to hand him a solution.
“I think you already understand what you need to do next. What I don’t get is—if you already pledged yourself to the Wizard Tower, why start making deals with the barbarians?”
Saul stepped forward hard, startling Shelly.
Shelly finally raised his head, a twisted smile on his face—one worse than crying.
“Because all you people ever do is take the Grinding Sound Fruit. You won’t do anything else for us!”
He suddenly hugged his own arms tightly, his fingers digging into his flesh and dragging downward in a brutal motion.
Blood sprayed out instantly—and from the wounds drifted the pale gray faces of young girls.
They floated up from Shelly’s torn skin, their expressions blank. Their feet still stuck in the wounds, their legs stretched impossibly thin, like helium balloons tethered to him.
“I have no way out!” Shelly roared.
(End of Chapter)
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