Chapter 26 I Love Learning, Learning Enriches Me
In the following days, Saul turned on his desperate study state.
Dormitory, study.
Classroom, study.
Corpse room, work plus study!
He'd never had such a full life!
Whenever anyone asked, he said he was preparing for the test in three months.
Even Korie, who had been fairly calm, was reeling from him.
But such an effort from Saul became synonymous with despair and final struggle in the eyes of some people.
The news of Kaz's request for Saul to reach 10 joules of magic in his first test was, unsurprisingly, spread all over the staff, and in response to this some favored him, while others felt it was completely hopeless.
Everyone who had meditated already knew exactly how much magic power could be increased by meditating for a month.
Although I don't know how much Saul is worse, but listening to Duke's meaning, it is absolutely hopeless.
Saul himself later secretly also went to measure, his current magic power is only 3 joules, while the normal passing line, in fact, is 10 joules.
In other words, Kaz asked him to reach the level of a normal first grade freshman in three months.
This was also a punishment for him sneaking in.
Although Kaz had arranged a new job for Saul, he never said that Saul didn't have to fulfill the magic power growth requirement.
Saul also didn't want to gamble on whether or not Kaz would lower his requirements because he was giving him a job.
Especially, he had a leering Kongsa beside him, as well as Cid, who had no idea how he would retaliate when he returned.
Saul hated to sleep only two hours a day right now, but if he didn't rest well, he would be less effective at studying over time.
Luckily, his mental talent allowed him to sleep for four hours to regain his full energy.
Finally, it allowed him to have the capital to inwardly scroll.
On this day, the Everything Cognition class reached the animal chapter.
Saul had read the entire animal chapter back in his dormitory, and had even memorized some general knowledge that he found useful.
He was still flipping through the book at a speed that far exceeded the progress of the class.
"Wow."
The paper flipped to the next page.
"The ghostly chapter?"
Saul was stunned and hurriedly read it carefully.
In the novels and movies and dramas of his previous life, the corpse room was a high incidence of ghosts and monsters.
Although he hadn't encountered any dangers in the corpse room yet, bizarre things would often play out.
For example, when sawing the arm of a corpse, the corpse would suddenly open its mouth and say it hurts.
If it wasn't for the fact that the corpse had long since been split in two from it, Saul would have wanted to find a doctor to resuscitate him.
But at that time, all Saul could do was to take two pieces of cloth and plug the two halves of the corpse's mouth respectively.
In addition, Saul had recently been delving into Grimm's Cognition of Witch Body Transformation and Guide to Refining Corpses, and was unusually sensitive to the word ghost.
"The end of life is generally categorized into material death and spiritual extinction ..."
"There are various cases of spiritual power extinction. Among them, forms that cannot be fully controlled by the subjective will of the body can be called ghosts, while forms that are controlled by other subjective wills can be called monsters."
"... When a material support is lost or damaged, ghosts can often be briefly consigned to other material supports. Commonly found are mannequins, clothing, corpses, etc. ..."
Dolls?
Seeing this, Saul remembered the little girl puppet that was used to test the spiritual power.
Was it hiding a ghost inside it?
I wonder if I can borrow it to study it.
So is the color-changing trash can in Katz's lab part of a ghost or a monster?
Fear mostly stems from the unknown.
After days of studying in Saul, it's amazing how much more curious the fear is when you think back again to that night in the lab.
Saul quickly went through the entire Ghosts and Monsters chapter first, and found a few places where the General Knowledge of All Things was more of an introduction to the types and characteristics of ghosts and monsters.
There was very little explanatory type language like what was just there. Perhaps the speech was too deep for a first level apprentice to handle.
On the side, Korie unintentionally glanced at Sol's progress.
"Did you even finish the Ghosts chapter?" Her small mouth was open and her eyes darted back and forth between Sol's face and the book.
"Just flipping through it randomly." Saul made a sudden decision.
He looked at the second level wizard apprentice at the front of the classroom who had already read a synopsis of the lesson's content and told everyone to study on their own.
And then he looked at the increasingly empty classroom and the newcomers who didn't know what they were doing or were drowsy.
Quietly, he stood up, collected his things, and whispered to Korrie, "I'll be heading back."
Korrie tried to say something, but Saul had already hurried off.
She pouted and looked down at the Introduction to Rune Construction in front of her, thinking it would be better to learn all the basic runes first.
People with good mental talent were really good at learning the basics.
Knowing that Saul was still running around agonizingly trying to raise his magic power, but Keri still couldn't help but envy him.
...
"Senior Mark!" Saul clutched his book and rushed into the lab.
As expected, second level apprentices hardly attended public classes, and their time was spent on one-on-one tutoring by their mentors and self-study.
Senior Mark was really treating the lab as his study room.
I wonder, has he ever experienced the horror of that night in Saul.
"Why aren't you in class?" Mark knew whose voice it was the moment he heard it and immediately stood up with a smile on his face.
Knowing that Saul was the apprentice that was not brought back after being taken away by Mentor Katz, he must have satisfied Mentor Katz somewhere.
Like the other two apprentices, An something and Du something, so far they could only come to the lab in the afternoon to study on their own.
Although he had already collected a lot of tuition from the two, Mark still hadn't memorized their names.
Three months later, who knew which other first level apprentice would be able to appear in the classroom again? And in a year's time?
There was no point in building up feelings for people who didn't matter.
For wizards, ordinary apprentices were expendable.
To the advanced apprentice, the lowly apprentice is expendable.
It's not about class, it's mostly about survival.
"Senior Mark, I encountered some problems when I was teaching myself Composite Runes, and I would like to ask for your advice."
Mark subconsciously looked at his study notes to determine today's date.
"You ... finished the basic runes?"
Saul nodded.
Mark stroked his chin, "The progress is quite fast, if you can solve the problem of magic power, advancing to the second rank apprentice is just a matter of time."
"Let's put it this way, I can give you a free lecture on how a rune is constructed, but only this one. If you want to learn more about the others you'll have to pay normally."
A free explanation of a composite rune meant that what had happened in the lab was written off.
Regardless of Mark's role in it, as the lab administrator, he had definitely been remiss in his duties.
And the secret compensation Mark had given Saul was solely to make up for his dereliction of duty, not because Saul had been in danger.
"Thank you, Senior."
Saul turned the "Introduction to Rune Construction" in his hand to the last few pages.
"Can I learn this compound rune first?"
It referred to a composite rune that was dominated by the dark element, and after learning this composite rune, it could be combined with other basic runes to form multiple 0th rank sorceries with dark elemental attributes.
It also meant that after mastering this composite rune, Sol would have the ability to learn spells.
Although in the first lesson, Instructor Guido had warned them not to be so quick to presume to learn sorcery, what Saul lacked the most right now was time.
"Of course. First of all, you have to understand that compound runes are not a simple overlap of the basic runes, there are many variations in magic conduction embedded in it ..."
Saul skipped the second half of the first session with the full second session, gradually realizing under Mark's guidance that ... Compound Runes are so damn hard!
I'm begging for some recommendations, thank you, readers!
(End of chapter)