To be honest, with how Senior Kongsha looked, Saul felt she probably didn’t even need a brain.
He hurriedly lowered his head, afraid she’d think he was mocking her.
“Do you remember?” Kongsha’s grip on Saul’s shoulders tightened slightly.
Saul immediately broke out in a cold sweat from the pain.
“Y-Yes, I remember,” he stammered quickly.
Kongsha finally let go. “Good. Remember, at least one First Rank apprentice’s brain per month.”
“But what if there aren’t that many First Rank apprentice corpses?”
Kongsha looked down on Saul from above. The tenderness from earlier was completely gone, revealing a side of her she hadn't bothered to hide.
“Then you’ll have to figure it out yourself. And remember, if the quota isn’t met, I won’t give you the second potion.”
She turned and walked away.Leaving Saul with a small vial of potion.
It was stored in a glass bottle, sealed with a cork, the cork covered by a scrap of leather tied tight with silk thread.
Like it was afraid to leak.
But the first thing Saul did after she left was painstakingly pry the stopper off.
The potion was clear, and when shaken, it produced some bubbles.
With a serious expression, Saul leaned in and gave it a gentle sniff.
A faint metallic scent.
Not exactly a foul.
He quickly sealed the bottle again, re-wrapping the leather around the mouth.
Something stirred in his heart, and he sat down at once to begin meditating.
After a while, Saul opened his eyes.
“My meditation efficiency increased. Just a bit, but because I have so little magic, the difference is really obvious. It definitely improved.”
He stared at the vial on the table in disbelief.
Just from smelling it, he could already feel its effects.
This stuff was incredible!
If it worked like Kongsha said—swallowing it in one go and sleeping for a full day—wouldn’t he become a walking elemental particle vacuum?
But the price was enormous.
The Hardcover Book had warned him: if he drank it all, in three years he’d become someone else’s casting material.
What would he even be by then? A lump of magically rich dead flesh? Or a walking corpse?
And yet Senior Kongsha expected him to finish it all within a month!
Expressionless, Saul carefully tucked the vial close to his chest.
Even without the Hardcover Book’s warning, he had zero intention of drinking it.
Keeping it served two purposes. One, to reassure Kongsha—after all, he still planned on clinging to that long, pale leg of hers to deal with Sid.
And two, the potion’s insane potency made him want to study it more. It was just a shame it only had a one-month shelf life.
“Maybe the Hardcover Book can help me make some improvements,” Saul muttered, still unwilling to let go of the massive gains the potion offered. “A miracle drug that boosts meditation efficiency with just a sniff…”
“…Wait. Just a sniff works?”
Saul fell into deep thought.
…
The next day, Saul showed up at the public classroom with dark circles under his eyes—only to run into Keli, who looked just as sleep-deprived.
They exchanged a glance and, with silent understanding, chose not to comment on each other’s appearance.
They walked in sync, moved in sync, and sat down together in their usual corner.
The moment they sat, Keli suddenly yawned.
Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes, only to be mercilessly wiped away with the back of her hand.
“You look exhausted. Did you stay up all night again?” Saul asked, though he wasn’t in much of a position to criticize.
“I just feel the pressure of time. Those bad people won’t wait around for us to grow stronger.”
By “bad people,” Keli meant the Mutual Aid Society—the group that had done something to her just days ago, making her act strangely.
She’d always been proud, the fastest learner of this year’s new apprentices.
Except for Saul, whose progress was hard to gauge, Keli considered herself extremely diligent.
But ever since that incident with the Mutual Aid Society—where something parasitic had taken hold of her without her even noticing—Keli realized how laughable it was to only compare herself to her peers.
Even a slight difference in rank could mean the gap between predator and prey.
Weakness was a sin!
If you only watched your footing while climbing a steep mountain, you’d never see the giant boulder falling from above.
So she worked even harder.
If anyone could embody the essence of “grind” and “hustle,” it was Keli.
Saul didn’t know the full extent of Keli’s determination, but he knew how proud she was.
What happened at the Mutual Aid Society had hurt her pride so deeply, she had no choice but to bow her head.
But he also knew that, while Keli was still just a little girl, she wasn’t the type to be broken by a single setback.
“Have you noticed,” Keli said in a low voice, eyes locked on one corner of the classroom, “they don’t seem to be acting strange anymore.”
Saul kept his head down, reading, but his eyes flicked up for a quick glance.
In the front corner of the room, Doze and Rocky still sat next to Duke, chatting with a girl in the row behind.
Keli said the girl’s name was Jenna.
She’d once tried to invite Saul to the Mutual Aid Society, but he’d shut her down before she could even speak.
Jenna still looked a little shy, but you could tell she enjoyed being surrounded by boys.
Saul only glanced for a second, but it was enough to see that Duke seemed distracted, Doze was smug as ever, and Rocky—probably the spineless one—looked positively dazzled every time his eyes landed on Jenna.
“Ah, youth…”
But then he remembered they were all part of the Mutual Aid Society and corrected himself.
“…brief youth.”
“I’ve been watching them these past few days,” Keli continued quietly. “Aside from that first day back, they haven’t shown any of the same strange behavior. But I looked into it a bit. That Mutual Aid Society… it’s been around for years.”
Years? Then their upperclassmen—could a lot of them be members, too?
The thought that many people around them might be secretly hosting parasites, ready to turn into mindless puppets at any moment, sent a chill through Saul and Keli alike.
It was like walking down a hallway where every passerby grinned at you unconsciously.
“Not everyone could be part of it,” Saul said, trying to reassure her. “Didn’t Senior Byron have ways of dealing with them?”
Keli bit her lip. She still sometimes woke from nightmares and would reach up to feel the scar on her head.
“But even Senior Byron doesn’t want to get involved with them. A few days ago, Jenna asked me again to come to one of their gatherings. I didn’t go.”
Saul hadn’t been invited again himself, but he agreed—it was a pain.
Groups like that weren’t easy to shake off.
Sometimes, it wasn’t as simple as just refusing. Especially when the people behind it had darker intentions.
“Be careful,” he warned. “Don’t give them a reason to target you.”
“It’s fine. I told Jenna that Mentor Gudu asked me to help out in his lab.” Keli flicked her hair. “They wouldn’t dare mess with a mentor.”
Then she added, “You should try to find Senior Byron more often. If the people behind the Mutual Aid Society see you getting close to him, they might not dare mess with you either.”
But Saul shook his head. “Senior Byron’s nearly thirty. He’s about to leave the Tower.”
He told Keli what he’d learned—that if a Second Rank apprentice didn’t advance to Third Rank by age thirty, they’d be expelled from the tower.
Keli was shocked, barely keeping her voice down. “So that’s why all those Second Ranks who joined the noble factions are so old… They were kicked out by the tower?”
“I wonder when we’ll get to leave this place…”
Since arriving in this world, Saul had never left the Tower. His range of movement was extremely limited.
He’d practically forgotten what the sun looked like.
If not for his days being jam-packed with studies and work, he probably would’ve gone mad by now.
(End of Chapter)