Chapter Thirty-Eight: Nisse There was nothing to hide about his plan to sell potions outside the Academy.
The other Potionology apprentices certainly had the same idea — it was just that no one would guess the sheer volume he intended to offload.
Of course, he would have to conceal his identity when selling. As long as no one recognized him, there would be no problem.
"The apprentices inside the Academy really are shrewd — they squeeze prices down to nothing!" Biji nodded. "Why don't you follow Senior
"I value my freedom!" Lei Lin shook his head. He knew something of Merlin's choice. Merlin had signed a Wizard's Pact with a family, which provided him with a large quantity of free ingredients for experimentation and later offered resources to help him push for the Wizard rank. But once Merlin became a Third-rank Apprentice, he would have to supply that family with a certain amount of potions each month, and once he became an official Wizard, he would have to join the family outright.
This was how Wizard families recruited apprentices at the bottom of the ladder.
Without the Chip, Lei Lin might have gone down the same path — or worse, his aptitude might have been too poor for any family to even consider him.
"Biji, your family is in the Marsh Duchy, right? Do you know of any markets or exchange gatherings?" Lei Lin asked.
"Of course, but it's very complicated out there — lots of wandering Wizards and fugitives. It's chaotic! And dangerous!!"
"I know, but I don't have to go myself. I could hire someone, for instance!" Lei Lin began talking nonsense with a straight face.
In the Academy's Mission District, apprentices could also post missions — as long as they had enough Magic Stones and paid the deposit.
"That's true! I'll copy some information on that and send it to your room later!" Biji thought about it for a moment, then nodded.
"Thank you so much! I'll treat you to the restaurant someday — the second floor!" Lei Lin's face lit up with delight.
"Sure!" Biji's eyes curved into crescent moons.
……
In the days that followed, Lei Lin used the Chip to analyze the two potion formulas while simultaneously searching for Zero-level Spells that could alter one's appearance or even one's aura.
Biji had long since sent over the information about the Wizard market, but as long as the anomaly outside the Academy remained unresolved, Lei Lin still didn't dare venture out.
Inside the third-floor free dining hall, Lei Lin was having a meal with Bill. Today they had white bread and caviar, along with steak and fruit juice.
"What? Perry is dead?! He was a Third-rank Apprentice!" Lei Lin was somewhat shocked. Perry had fifth-rate aptitude and a good mentor, having advanced to Third-rank Apprentice four years ago — he could be considered one of the most prominent figures in the Academy.
"That's right! He took on a mission to investigate the surroundings of the Academy and even formed a small team! There was another Third-rank Apprentice in it too!" Bill's face was grim.
"With that kind of lineup, it would have to be a full Wizard's intervention to be able to kill Perry!" Lei Lin guessed. Perry definitely had Magical Items on him, and his strength was top-tier among Third-rank Apprentices. His mentor might have even given him some powerful life-saving items, yet he still died — this made Lei Lin even more wary of the dangers around the Academy.
"Not necessarily — it's also possible he was surrounded and attacked! Apparently, when Perry was found, his lower body was already gone, and his internal organs had all been eaten. It looked like the work of Beastkin!"
"Beastkin?" Lei Lin recalled what the books had said. There were two theories about their origin — one claimed they were the failed products of human experiments conducted by Wizards, while the other suggested they were a humanoid subspecies.
What they had in common was that Beastkin were vicious by nature and extremely cunning.
"Haven't they always been active in the Desolate Wastelands? How did they wander all the way over here? And they attacked apprentices — don't they know that's a naked provocation?" Lei Lin was somewhat puzzled.
"Beastkin have never been known for their brains. Who knows what they're thinking? Besides, they've always dared not provoke full Wizards, or they'd have been wiped out long ago," Bill added.
When the Academy's full Wizards went out to investigate, the journey had been completely uneventful — nothing unusual was found at all. It seemed the Beastkin had hidden themselves in advance.
When they encountered apprentices, they swarmed them — it had the distinct flavor of bullying the weak while fearing the strong.
"But they won't be getting away with this for long! Perry was Professor Heilongsi's personal disciple, and Professor Heilongsi is famously vain and protective of his own. He'll definitely take action!" Bill said with certainty.
The Academy had been ignoring the Beastkin for two reasons — firstly, their strength was too low to pose any real threat to full Wizards, and secondly, it provided apprentices with an opportunity to gain experience. But now that a personal disciple had died, the situation was entirely different.
Lei Lin still found it rather incredible that the Beastkin had suddenly appeared around the Academy. Just like the spider-faced creature last time, it gave him the feeling of a conspiracy.
"But I'm not the only smart one in the Academy. Whatever I can think of, others can too — so why haven't there been any rumors at all?"
Lei Lin quietly pondered. "Something isn't right about this. I'd better start making preparations early."
"Lei Lin!" A voice came from behind — somewhat timid and hesitant. Lei Lin turned around to see
"He's a friend of mine. I'll get going!" Lei Lin said to Bill.
"Go ahead and take care of it," Bill said with a smile.
"What's the matter?" Lei Lin walked over to Gulicha and asked in a low voice. Gulicha was a rather quiet and withdrawn person, and under the deliberate suppression from
"This! We do have something really important to discuss with you! Could you come with us for a moment?" Gulicha asked.
"Sure!" Since he didn't have anything else to do, Lei Lin agreed.
"Let's talk in my dorm room!" Gulicha pulled Lei Lin toward his residential area.
Lei Lin glanced at the room number—1913. It was quite far from his own, which explained why they rarely ran into each other.
"Go on in! Don't be too shocked!" Gulicha said meaningfully.
Lei Lin took a deep breath, quietly slipping his left hand into the pouch at his waist, then pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The moment he entered, a nauseating stench hit him full in the face. The smell was like some horrific blend of sewer water and rotting corpses, nearly making Lei Lin vomit on the spot.
Gritting his teeth against the revulsion, Lei Lin took in Gulicha's dorm room. The layout was roughly the same as his own, except that on Gulicha's bed sat a girl, and next to her was a figure shrouded entirely in a black cloak. The foul odor was emanating from that figure.
"Hello! Dorrielle!" Lei Lin recognized her—she was one of the apprentices who had come with them. Her aptitude was even worse than his, only first-rank, and she had only just recently advanced to First-rank Apprentice.
As for the cloaked figure beside her, according to the Chip's detection, its fluctuations were quite bizarre. Sometimes it didn't even register as a First-rank Apprentice, and other times it seemed to be at the very peak of First-rank, on the verge of advancing to Second-rank. The radiation radiating from its body was extremely dense.
"Hello! Lei Lin!" Dorrielle forced a thin smile. Her eyes were red and swollen, as though she had just been crying.
"What exactly is going on?" Lei Lin had a feeling the problem lay with that cloaked figure.
Sure enough, Gulicha shut the door and gave a strained smile before speaking to Lei Lin: "You've already greeted Dorrielle. There's one more—this is Niss. Do you still remember her?"
"Niss?" She had been one of the apprentices who came with them initially, first-rank aptitude, a sweet little girl who got along well with Dorrielle. Of course Lei Lin remembered.
"This..." The cloaked figure was enormous and bloated, like a massive fat person, and it reeked so badly that Lei Lin could hardly reconcile it with the petite, sweet girl he remembered.
"Niss, take off the cloak! Lei Lin isn't an outsider! Besides, you need his help!" Gulicha said.
"That's right!" Dorrielle encouraged from the side.
Hearing their words, Niss hesitated inside the cloak for a moment before slowly removing it.
"Mmph!!" Lei Lin clapped a hand over his mouth, eyes going wide in utter shock!!!
What kind of "person" was this!!!
Her face was covered in scars with visible stitch marks, she had a pig-like snout, a bald head, one missing ear, sparse teeth, and a constant flow of disgusting yellow pus seeping from her mouth. Her entire face looked as though someone had randomly rearranged all her features and mashed them back together.
Seeing her like this, a word flashed through Lei Lin's mind — "stitch-monster." Niss's current appearance looked as though someone had casually taken corpses of humans and beasts and stitched them back together at random.
Such an absurdly ugly appearance, compared to the girls Lei Lin remembered, finally made him understand why Niss always covered herself in a black cloak.
"What... what exactly happened?" Lei Lin's face was grim.
"Do you remember the conditions that came with choosing a mentor?" Gulicha reminded him.
"You mean... cooperating with experiments!!!" Lei Lin was startled. He had felt at the time that some wizards' conditions were too good to be true — and now it really had been a trap!
"That's right! We had no Magic Stones and were randomly assigned mentors. Niss was assigned to a professor specializing in Mutationology!"
"He was very good to Niss — not only did he teach her a great deal of knowledge for free, but he also promised that as long as she cooperated with his experiments, she would receive one Magic Stone per month as a stipend!" Duoduo Li'er said from the side, occasionally lifting a handkerchief to dab at her eyes.
"Three days ago, during an experiment, Niss was contaminated by spell pollution and ended up like this!" Gulicha's voice was low and heavy.
"Human experimentation?" Lei Lin's heart sank. He naturally knew that many wizards in the Academy conducted human research in private, but directly using apprentices as test subjects was still rare.
"Although there are still plenty of Knights and civilian slaves to experiment on, apprentices have magical resistance — they're the best materials!" Niss finally spoke from the side, her voice now hoarse and aged, carrying a metallic tremor.
"That's right!" Gulicha chimed in. "Ahem... I also cooperated with my mentor on quite a few experiments. Although nothing irreversible has happened yet, some aftereffects have already started to appear..."