Chapter 21: Money really isn't easy to earn
Saul took two steps back because of the shock, his feet stepping on the masonry floor with a heavy reverberation.
The corpse that was tied to the conveyor belt suddenly opened its eyes, its head didn't move, but its eyes desperately looked to the left side.
Upon seeing Saul and Kaz, his pupils suddenly dilated and trembled slightly, as if he had seen something exciting.
"He's still alive?" Saul couldn't help but ask Kaz.
"How is that possible?" Kaz stepped forward with a bemused expression and lifted the black leather covering the new apprentice in front of Saul.
Underneath the leather was a sliced open chest, ribs as open as wings, and an empty chest.
Further down the legs had been reduced to strips of flesh interspersed with dirt and rocks.
What a fine cut.
Only the apprentice's eyes were still moving and turned upward as Kaz walked. His lips cracked slightly, revealing the white teeth inside.
Saul felt his stomach flip.
He had seen his fair share of gory horrors in the Sorcerer's Tower over the past few days since he had crossed over, which made it possible to hold back from throwing up on the spot.
Now, the test against him had begun.
He forced himself not to avert his eyes.
The nausea and dizziness were still there, but Saul kept telling himself that it was just a corpse that couldn't move, that it wouldn't suddenly stand up and swallow half his face in one gulp.
The fear eased a little.
"His brain died a long time ago, it's not his own soul that's left here. And not normally aggressive." Kaz covered the black leather and turned to Sol, "Scared?"
Saul took a sharp breath of the fishy air.
"Afraid."
"Hmm?" Kaz raised an eyebrow.
"But I can do it."
"Hmph." Mentor Kazi grunted softly, "This job isn't something you can do just because you want to. The body in front of you has already gone through two rounds of processing, dealing with the dangers and recovering the materials, and all these alienated corpses will have to be eliminated with special treatment in the end, or they will run out and turn the Sorcerer's Tower into a spooky domain. But before elimination, we can leave some useful experimental materials. All you have to do is the final wrap-up and cleanup."
Kaz's dry hand slapped against the black leather.
"Snap!"
"You are to find the parts of this that are magical due to alienation, but not hosting an attached ghost, through your learning or your inspiration. Divide and place them in different boxes on top of the table with lids for recycling and initial sealing. Receive the rest in the large box below. When you leave for the night, the people outside will collect the boxes and replace them with new ones."
"I will grade your work based on the amount of useful material. As long as you turn in more than five pieces of material each month, you'll pass, and if you go over ten, you'll get an extra credit."
Kaz lifted his chin and nodded toward the still-moving body, "Now, tell me, which part do you think can be recycled?"
Saul stepped up to the conveyor belt and mustered up the courage to point to the eyeballs that wouldn't stop twitching.
"Is this one considered useful?"
"Not useful." Kaz grimaced.
It seemed that parts that appeared to be active on the surface weren't necessarily useful.
It could also be that it was useless to a sorcerer because it had been contaminated after being alienated by some kind of weirdness and couldn't be used again.
This money really isn't easy to earn.
Wasn't a Dark Attribute Sorcerer just dealing with corpses and ghosts?
Saul took another deep breath.
Now that he was able to get used to the smell of this place, although he felt that it still felt fishy, it was not so bad that it made him vomit.
As soon as he lifted the black leather, he looked over it stiffly.
Perhaps it was because after becoming an apprentice, his mental power had been developed. Saul still had a hard time, but had been able to observe the puddle on the conveyor belt with both eyes without getting dizzy from the shock.
The mangled body didn't look any different to Saul's naked eye, and Saul couldn't determine for a moment where else it could be used as sorcerer's material.
In the afterglow, Saul noticed that Kaz's left hand was already tapping his right arm, his patience about to run out.
"Through my learning or my inspiration ... But at present, the knowledge I already have can't help me distinguish at all. Then it will have to be through inspiration, what is inspiration? Intuition? or mental power?"
Saul's eyes carefully moved to his left shoulder, unfortunately his hardback was only responsible for keeping his little life, not earning money for his work, and at the moment was as quiet as a laying flat salted fish.
Then there was only one means Saul could try.
He stood in front of the corpse of his new apprentice and began to visualize the diagram of a man-monster walking.
It was difficult to enter immersion without the help of a crystal ball. But last night's experience in the lab allowed Saul to enter a semi-meditative state without relying on the crystal ball. In this state, he was able to see elemental particles and some things that he normally couldn't see with the naked eye.
At the moment, in Saul's eyes, the eyes that could still move were like the tentacles of a snail sticking out of his face, bobbing up and down, curiously surveying the world.
And the corpse's lips were covered with a layer of small hard black thorns.
The teeth under the lips glistened slightly.
Saul stared at the sporadic glitter and felt that there was something familiar about the glitter.
Like when he used to play the game, there were hints of items dropping.
"Pick up the bag, pick up the bag."
"Haven't found it yet? I can give you a hint, there are at least two places on this corpse that can be recovered, as long as you can find one you'll be considered passed."
Kaz's impatient voice interrupted Sol's meditation.
Saul didn't have time to discern whether the sight his mental powers were probing was reliable or not as he raised his hand and pointed at the corpse's mouth.
Kaz frowned, "You mean his mouth?"
"No, his teeth."
A brief moment of dismay flashed across Kaz's face.
He stepped forward, grabbed a thin black stick from the long table behind him, and picked apart the corpse's lips.
"Ahem ..." he turned back and looked at Saul with a slightly unnatural expression, "Yes, this is a spot."
Success!
Saul held back his excitement and continued to observe the rest of the corpse with semi-immersive meditation.
Then.
He saw two flashes of light.
Saul pointed out one of them with feigned uncertainty.
Kaz nods and asks if he's found anything else.
Saul once again takes a closer look from top to bottom, ignores that last flash, straightens up and says to his mentor, "I don't have anything else to find."
"Well, not bad." Kaz casually pointed out the glint where Saul had seen through the unspoken glint and said lightly, "Here's another one."
Next, Kaz verbally instructed Saul to split and recover the material using the props on the lab table behind him. They were then placed in three separate smaller sized boxes on the table, covered and plugged in.
The rest of the body was rolled in a single piece of that black leather and placed in the large box under the long table.
Inside that big box was inscribed with witchcraft spells, which had a sealing effect on ghosts and monsters.
All that remained on the conveyor belt was a large blood-colored mark.
Kaz nodded and lifted his chin to signal Saul to wrench on the wrench by the teleportation table again.
With the sound of the machine turning, the bloodstained conveyor belt turned to the underside of the machine and another body emerged from behind the black leather fringe.
Saul's eyes narrowed momentarily at the sight of the head, also exposed outside the leather.
This deceased ... person he also recognized.
She had tried to seduce Saul during the first day of textbook delivery and had appeared in Saul's nightmares that night.
The plump maid!
Why was she dead too?
Was it an accident or man-made?
"You knew her?" Looking at Saul's expression, Kaz asked in a voice that didn't rise or fall.
"Well, she used to give me textbooks."
"Death is a common occurrence in the Wizard's Tower."
"What happens when you die like that, when you die out?"
"Go to the nearby towns and recruit, they're more than willing to send people in."
The small talk ended and Mentor Kaz pointed at the maid, "She has ... at least one usable part on her, if you can find it this time as well, I'll leave this job to you."
Saul's spirit lifted, not bothering to grieve for the maid, he lifted the black leather covering her.
The maid's body was naked, and the long wound on her chest proved that she had been dissected as well. It was just that it was an ordinary person after all, and although she had died a grotesque death, there weren't many places on her body that had abnormal residue.
Unlike the new apprentice just now, who was already in a light pile by the time she was delivered into the large box under the table.
(End of chapter)