After Seake finished exploring the first floor, he returned to his attic room. He stared at XiaoBa, who occupied a large chunk of the floor, and wondered, why hasn't anyone handled you yet? He didn't speak the words aloud. He absolutely couldn't talk to corpses.
Seake stepped over the body and went to check the anti-theft magic next to the bed. No one had touched his things. The silver box around his neck shook slightly, and the things inside wanted to help Seake deal with the body. Seake touched the silver box to calm it down. No, destroying a corpse in a civilized society would be punished by law.
After a day of disappointment, Seake felt very depressed. His boss lacked professional ability and had a bad personality, and he was poorly paid (and even burdened by his boss), and finally, he irritated his boss's boss's daughter. He began to consider changing jobs.
But his academic qualifications were too low. As a remedial school graduate who had not become an apprentice, he was the lowest rank in the entire mage society. Plus, he had no money, so he had no choice. Not to mention his background in Solnyx language was avoided by everyone. People who heard of this incident employing him was extremely rare, even if there were any, it was like being an assistant of Hana - bad food and accommodation, heavy, monotonous and dangerous work, and no labor health insurance.
Seake sat on the bed, wrapped himself in a cold quilt. Although he closed the window and used a rag to fill in the gaps in the window frame on the spot, this room was still as cold as an icehouse. The central heating did not reach this corner of the house, and there were no heating appliances in the room.
Seake saw a pile of bookshelves on the headboard and on the floor, XiaoBa was clearly a hardworking mage, but like Seake, he had fallen to live in a place like this. Seake sorrowfully thought, would XiaoBa end up drinking sweet dew to commit suicide just like him?
He shook his head. Sweet dew was expensive. People who can drink that thing to commit suicide must have the means to exchange it for better living conditions. If XiaoBa could afford sweet dew, he had no reason to commit suicide.
Seake had not given much thought to why XiaoBa died. He has no interest in the reasons for someone's death. But if it wasn't a suicide for XiaoBa, then it became a homicide, and there was a culprit. Seake could also become a victim like XiaoBa.
Suddenly, he got up, opened the herb bag, drew out the sacrificial knife, took out the brush and ink, and began to draw a magic array in the corner of the room. This won't work, he smelled danger. He must reinforce the protection magic of the room.
He carefully used spells to wrap the room and then lifted the sacrificial knife and chanted in Solnyx language: Night's ruler is here, Day's majesty is there. The movement of all things leads to the light of the ice spirit.
A flowing white light appeared on the edge of his knife, like luminescent water that defied gravity and spun around the edge of his knife. That light then pulled out, revealing thin and spider-like lines of light that floated towards the ground and disappeared into the floor.
Seake rotated and pulled the light threads until all the light on the edge of the knife was evenly buried in the room floor before stopping. This spell could detect magic. If there was an abnormal flow of magical energy, Seake would know.
Seake put away the knife and felt a wave of fatigue rushing over him. He put the sacrificial knife in his arms and crawled under the covers.
Not long after he lay down, he saw flickering clusters of light appearing everywhere on the ground. They looked like lightning about one or two centimeters tall coming up from the ground. There was a flow of magical energy, but the way it was flowing didn't look like someone was casting a spell, but the natural flow of energy here wasn't normal.
Seake decided he had to call the mage practitioner management office in the morning to ask if there were any other jobs available.
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Seake's workplace, in this country, belongs to the so-called prosperous area. Public facilities are quite complete. Therefore, a rarely seen and expensive public facility called the magic talk booth can be found here.
This new magic invention is very convenient, allowing two distant people to communicate through an enchanted bell. Originally, this was a paid-for timing and metering service, but because it is covered by the Bright Wand Association, they give discounted prices to their subordinates. As long as a mage dials a magic call to the Bright Wand Association, it is free. Otherwise, Seake doesn't have the money.
Seake came out to find the magic talk booth before work. He wore a shabby and dreary mage robe, which stood out from the clean and colorful streets of this community, but he didn't care. He was already used to it.
The magic talk booth looks like a cylindrical tube with a red base color and various paintings. The one Seake found outside was painted with a large group of purple cranes standing in a pond looking for food or arranging their feathers.
A golden bell with small protruding numbers hung in the magic talk booth. Seake pulled the bell and pulled the rope, and a blue disc appeared near Seake's waist, with a circle of numbered grooves. Seake used his fingers to poke around the grooves and dial the magic call number.
This bell is hollow and has no beads inside. This one is connected to other scattered magic bells throughout the country. As long as the correct number is dialed and another bell is specified, when the two bells are connected, they can talk to each other through the bells, and the bell on this side vibrates and reproduces the sound received on the other side, allowing the two users to talk across space. This technology is not easy. It not only overcomes the problem of long-distance spell energy transmission but also each bell must be able to identify the marks of other bells. Some people say that the magic call is one of the greatest magical inventions of this era.
After dialing the number, the bell rang and the waiting tone was heard. After a while, the magic call was connected. After a snap, a sweet and formal female voice came: "Hello, Mage Practice Management Bureau. What can I help you with?"
"I'm Seake·Cruick."
There was a terrifying scream on the other end of the bell. It sounded terrifying, as if the woman had just bitten off half a cockroach. After a snap, the call was ended.
Seake dialed the magic call again and connected it. This time, a man's blurred voice came. It seemed that he was chewing crunchy snacks: "Hey, hey, hey? Seake?"
Seake heard the woman's voice just now still faintly coming from the bell: "Didn't he curse me already? Will I walk out of the house unconsciously in the middle of the night and be cut open? Will I give birth to a magical baby? I can't get married anymore——"
"Yes, Seake," he said, then roared at the bell: "Director! What kind of job are you giving me? There are corpses in the dormitory, grass and human heads growing in the yard, and the chef won't give me food because my boss is too annoying!"
"Mage assistants are all like this. Director speaks in a pure tone.
"I've never heard of any mage assistant digging up the aroused dikuc grass!"
"Aroused dikuc grass? How did you cultivate it? Are you willing to publish the news in the journal?"
"I neither know nor want to know how that thing came into being!"
"Calm down, Seake. The corpse can be wrapped in toilet paper and flushed down the toilet, otherwise it can be thrown away with the garbage truck. The Director treats the corpse mentioned by Seake as a dead cockroach or rat. He changes his serious tone, but still chews in his mouth. Instead, Seake feels that he is even less serious. The Director said: Our bureau is set up by the magical court specifically to deal with mage employment issues. All our services are paid for publicly, and we don't charge any intermediary fees for introducing you to a job. You know what your market value is in the job market, and we have to give the other party a subsidy before they will hire you. You cannot just give up because of a small setback. If so, we will find it difficult to do our job!"
"If I die, I will definitely haunt you and recite official language in your ear every night until you go crazy!"
The Director's reaction was a big laugh, and his hearty laughter almost shattered Seake's nerves. Seake hung up the phone and knelt on the ground, holding his head. He remembered when he had just graduated from the magic school, he was still unable to find a job even if he lowered his asking price. Those days of not knowing where the next meal would come from and queuing up for beds in the shelter every day, he really didn't want to go through it anymore. It's winter now, and the conditions of sleeping on the street are terrifying enough for Seake not to think about it.
Seake propped up his upper body with his hands on his knees, exerting force, and slowly stood up. He dragged his footsteps and walked out of the magic talk booth to go to work.
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He returned to the mansion that did not belong to him, intending to go and get lunch, but was surrounded by maids. These young girls used unfriendly looks to assess him from afar before. Now, six of them blocked his way and retreat with sharp eyes piercing him.
One of the maids with twin braids, who should be the leader, said to the others: "What can we do to make this thing look a little better?"
Another girl took out her powder box and hair dryer and said, "Let's start from the beginning. There is nothing we can't do."
Then Seake was dragged into what looked like a mage laboratory, filled with bottles and jars of various liquids. The girls put all kinds of things on his face and hair and then forced him to change clothes.
The way these girls treated Seake was as if he were a stone waiting to be carved, maybe a particularly bad one. Except for telling him to turn his head! Close your eyes! they wouldn't talk to Seake. They treated him like a stone that couldn't talk, only talking to their companions.
So Seake easily heard many inside stories.
"I heard that voice again last time."
"Another one? Did it start at dusk again?"
"That voice is really disgusting. Is there a pervert buried in the wall?"
"I sound like there is more than one."
"What did the lady of the house say?"
"She said I was too nervous."
A maid raised her voice: "Did she say you were too nervous? Does she have the right to say others?"
"I see Lady taking more and more medicine. It wouldn't be surprising if something bad happened one day."
"It's all from Hana. I absolutely won't drink that scammer's medicine."
"She even wanted to drag me into the Mouse Society last time."
"What? Is she doing that?"
"Well, I don't think it's strange that this place is haunted. I heard someone died here last time."
"What happened? Please tell me more!"
"I heard that Lady wanted to build a house here. The landlord would not sell, so she used many methods. Later, the landlord got sick and died. I think the family was responsible for it."
"Does Lady have such great power?"
A maid lowered her voice and said: "I heard she was sick for several years. The old master used to favor her very much. It was because she was sick. She pointed to her head and said: Only became like this, the old master probably expected to obey her wishes and she would improve, right?"