Chapter 184 – Temporary Locator
Not bothering to worry about Kongsa who left the East Tower later than eight o'clock, Saul was very curious about the relationship between Haywood and Kongsa after hearing their conversation.
One of them was in charge of the first storehouse, the inscrutable level three, and the other was the most powerful level two.
But listening to Heywood, both of them and what's more Ivan were outcasts.
Saul gripped the handrail of the cart tightly and looked at the elfin whisper that stood steady in the bottle, wondering what Konza had heard in there.
Going back, the branch once again showed its influence in blurring one's perception of time. By the time Saul put the bottle back on the shelf, he thought ten minutes had passed, but looking back at the hourglass clock on the wall, he realized that only three minutes had passed.
He retreated back to the long table and silently timed it in his mind. When he looked up again after what he felt was a minute, just over thirty seconds had passed.
"After putting the Elven Whisper back in, I still have trouble perceiving time. But this cognitive dissonance seems to recover slowly, and meditation speeds up the recovery greatly."
It took Sol roughly an hour to fully adjust his perception back.
This caused him to look at the shelves with palpitations.
"I was blurred out of my perception of time just moving bottles and transporting carts. I don't know what that listening ritual that Konza completed cost her. But she doesn't seem to be affected much except for her depression, is it because of the locator, or does she have another he way to remove the effects?"
This time, although there was no distress, this subliminal influence on the consciousness was also dangerous. In case the elven whispers' influence on consciousness increased, it might be able to directly drive people crazy in an endlessly elongated timeline.
It was now 9:30 PM, not yet time to rest, not yet time to let down one's guard.
Saul flipped out the two locator programs Kongsha had given him, and after confirming with his diary that there were no major problems, he began flipping through them.
After a few days of research, he believed that both the out-of-body souls and the problems with his own body dissolving were related to mental body abnormalities.
The cause of this abnormality could not be checked out yet, but Saul did find a solution in the 18th floor study.
Although it was still just a guess at the moment. But unlike other sorcerers and apprentices, Saul verified the conjecture and could basically rely on thinking without such a large sunk cost.
Because he had already entered the second level, Saul was studying the locator in addition to learning the basics, sorcery, and words.
I wonder if the tower owner saw something wrong with Saul's body before he brought him to the library on the 18th floor.
Anyway, Saul was seeing a lot of books that would help him in his current state.
Among them were some knowledge about the locator and the remnants of the program, plus the two complete programs he had just gotten from Kong Sha, Saul was fully capable of starting his research on the locator.
But unlike the others, Saul's locator had actually been in his possession for a long time, and that was his current greatest reliance, the Death Wizard's Diary.
But although the diary is powerful, it has another well-known flaw, that is, Saul can't control the diary.
Except when communicating with the consciousness in the diary's black pages, the diary would run out and float back at his words, other times the diary would not respond to Saul's requests.
The most crucial thing was that Saul had yet to find a way for his spiritual body to contact the diary.
He wasn't even sure where exactly the diary existed in his physical soul.
Therefore the experiment with the locator, on the contrary, did not go as smoothly as Saul thought it would at first.
"This matter can't be rushed. If a second level apprentice wants to advance to the third level, in addition to the body soul quality that must meet the standard, he also needs to select and fuse the locator. Second level apprentices as powerful as Kong Sha seem to have been stuck on the fusion locator step for many years."
"But at the end of May, I'll be leaving the tower for Lord Golza's outgoing mission, so if I suddenly have an out-of-body experience at that time, it'll be too dangerous."
Although Sol could now return to his body in just six steps, if he got into a fight with an enemy, the other side would not give him half a second to recover.
For this reason, Saul temporarily came up with a plan to temporarily stabilize his spirit body for himself.
That was the temporary locator.
Temporary locators were also rare and valuable at advanced apprenticeships.
It was equivalent to a supplement for the sorcerer's own locator. With a temporary locator there was also a double safeguard for the sorcerer's mental body and consciousness. It was like taking a riot shield on top of a blast suit.
Although the strength and range of the protection was limited, it could also play a certain protective role.
In the event that the mental body was shocked or contaminated, it could further help the owner recover. Having made up his mind, Saul took out the mannequin doll that he had rented but not paid for at Mentor Kaz's lab.
After thinking about it, he set another red candle on the table.
He looked left and right, the countless basics and formulas he had seen in the past two days swirling around in his mind, and then Saul buried his head in writing various runes on the paper.
As he wrote and maneuvered, more and more materials were brought to the table by Saul.
The yellowed paper was filled up day by day, and more and more complicated formulas for making sorcery spells and sorcery props appeared on it.
With the formulae deduction taking shape, Saul began to visualize in his mind the scenario where he would use the temporary locator he had designed.
Then the diary came out over and over again without fail to pour cold water ... or lava on Saul.
More and more papers filled with words piled up in a corner of the table, and after gradually iterating into a small mountain, it tumbled down to the ground with a loud crash.
And Saul is still looking for the optimal solution of the temporary locator.
...
A few days later, a small town separated from the Sorcerer's Tower.
Dark clouds were accumulating above the small town of Thumper, gusty winds whistled by from time to time, and torrential rain seemed to be coming down at any moment.
Thor was sitting in a plain, single-rider wagon with no Wizard's Tower markings.
He wore a plain, coarse shirt with a leather breastplate over it. A pair of leather gloves were on his most noticeable arm.
He didn't look like a sorcerer's apprentice, but rather a mercenary.
He was just a bit smaller.
This outing was special, for one thing it was ordered by Tower Master Golza himself and warned Saul twice that it could be dangerous; for another, Saul also brought his own special purpose with him.
After entering the town, the carriage's traveling speed slowed down.
Saul turned his head sideways and used the curtains of the carriage, which were constantly being blown up by the gusts of wind, to observe the scene outside.
I don't know if it was because of the impending rainstorm, but the streets of the town seemed incomparably cold.
At this time, the coachman who was driving the cart outside suddenly turned around and said loudly, "Young master, the road in front is blocked."
This coachman was the same coachman who drove Saul to Black Fortress Forest last time.
When Saul had traveled directly from the Draped Hand Valley to the Sorcerer's Tower, the coachman who had gotten the news had also rushed back a few days afterward.
This time, once he heard that it was Saul who wanted to use the car, he immediately volunteered to come out. And when he left the wilderness surrounding the Sorcerer's Tower, he carefully honored Saul as Young Master.
Carefully and subtly expressing his gratitude to Saul.
Saul pushed open the door of the car and a gust of wind blew, causing him to squint his eyes.
A path ahead was littered with wooden fences and sandbags, and on the fence was a sign shivering in the wind that read in the common tongue, "Danger Do Not Enter!" .
"Is there another path here to our destination?" Saul opened his mouth and his voice carried clearly into the cart driver's ears.
The cart driver was about to answer when the hat on his head was blown off by a gust of wind that swung in a different direction, revealing a small, thumb-sized mushroom on top of his head.
That little mushroom's body trembled violently under the ravages of the gale, as if it was going to be blown away in the next second.
Saul raised his hand, grabbed the chevron's hat with one hand, and snapped it back onto the chevron's head.
"Thank you, young master!" The cart driver who had no telekinesis ability could only raise his voice in the gusty wind, "There is no other passage, the manor we are going to is at the end of this road, the southernmost part of this town."
(End of chapter)