Chapter 211: The Basement

He first braced himself and went to look for the steward, hoping he could change his younger brother’s assigned task.

But he couldn’t find the steward.

The steward seemed to be everywhere—you could spot his busy figure at any given time of day.

Yet when you actually needed him, you’d find that he was nowhere to be found, no matter how hard you searched.

Some people had privately discussed this, saying that the steward’s mysteriousness was second only to the master of the Wizard Tower.

This time, George didn’t manage to find the steward before night fell.

As it neared eight o’clock—the time they absolutely had to return—George gritted his teeth and decided to go seek out Saul, who had once shared the same dorm bunk with him, but was now already a wizard apprentice.

However, when he followed his memory to the dorm where Saul had lived after becoming a First Rank apprentice, he discovered that the place had already turned into an empty room.

“Brother,” David asked timidly behind him, “Do you really know that wizard apprentice, sir?”

The little boy looked around uneasily. To him, all the wizard apprentices who occasionally passed by looked terrifying.

He would rather clean the corridors at night than stay here any longer.

David tugged at George’s sleeve. “Brother, let’s go.”

George was also deeply disappointed at that moment.

Back when he had still been ignorant, when Saul had just become an apprentice, he had volunteered to become Saul’s personal servant.

However, the steward had reminded him that someone of the lowest status, with no ability whatsoever, had no right to apply to be a personal servant—

Unless Saul personally requested it.

But the steward also advised George not to waste that bit of past connection on something so meaningless.

So George had clung to that rare connection, carefully maintaining it, doing his best to show a closeness different from others whenever he had the fortune to see Saul.

Yet he hadn’t expected that when he truly needed to use that favor, he wouldn’t even be able to find the person.

George gripped his younger brother tightly, standing dazed in place, and for the first time clearly realized: the bond he had relied on was, in fact, nothing.

Maybe the two years of preferential treatment he’d received from the steward, on account of having once shared a bunk with Saul, had already used up all the value of that connection.

And the now ever-rising Saul had already become someone far beyond his reach.

“Brother…” David noticed that something was off with his brother’s state and nervously shook his arm.

George finally came back to his senses and tried to make himself look calm.

“It’s fine,” George repeated, “It’s fine. Tonight, your brother will go with you.”

David was instantly reassured. In his eyes, his brother was an impressive figure.

“Okay, brother!” The little boy leapt onto George’s back, and just like when they were little, pressed his forehead against the back of George’s head.

George let his little brother fool around, but the smile on his face looked more like he was about to cry.

Still, he didn’t let David see his fear.

“It might not necessarily go wrong,” he murmured silently in his heart.

…

“Finally, a breakthrough.”

After several days of intense study and sorting, Saul had finally figured out the principles of Fleshcrafting.

It was a type of magic that granted one’s flesh extreme vitality, and enhanced physical abilities through constant devouring.

It included many branching spells, used to maintain the purity of one’s bloodline, preserve the clarity of the soul, and various corresponding body modifications.

Together, these formed the entire inheritance of Fleshcrafting.

Fortunately, Saul didn’t need to master everything—he only had to extract what was relevant and helpful to his Soul Resin-based body refinement.

And given that the Bloodthorn Family was a small-scale wizard family, the knowledge they researched generally wouldn’t be too dangerous—small families couldn’t afford to lose too many members, after all.

That’s why even as a Second Rank Apprentice, Saul could study spells that were normally for True Wizards.

Aside from researching Fleshcrafting, Saul also took time to read all the Bloodthorn Family’s records related to the Dead Wizard’s Diary, along with Ralph’s series of hypotheses and experiments surrounding it.

Unfortunately, most of it wasn’t as useful as Saul had hoped.

“Well, of course. If the Bloodthorns had truly grasped the diary’s secrets, they’d never have let it fall into my hands.”

Saul lay on the single bed in the second storeroom, hands behind his head, eyes gazing up at the shadowy ceiling above.

“It says in the diary that it came from the Bloodrose Family, which seems to have perished during the Hanging Hand Valley War, but there might still be descendants alive. If I ever get the chance, I should go investigate.”

Saul glanced toward the diary resting on his left shoulder and sighed. “Dear diary, if only you were a little more proactive, I wouldn’t have to work so hard to uncover your origin.”

But the diary remained silent, its usual cold aloofness undisturbed.

“Forget it. My head’s spinning from all the reading. No meditation tonight. Just a proper sleep to recover my magic.”

Saul relaxed and closed his eyes, a rare peaceful smile playing on his lips at the thought of restful sleep.

But this slumber turned out far from pleasant.

Saul was jolted awake by a searing heat, like a brand against his skin.

When he came to, he realized with horror. He wasn’t in the second storeroom anymore.

Even worse, he was in an out-of-body state!

“What is this place? How did I end up here?”

When he first woke up, Saul was still floating midair. As his mind caught up, he fell to the ground due to sheer mental inertia.

Luckily, he had experienced several out-of-body episodes before, so he quickly calmed himself.

He began to cautiously observe his surroundings.

He now stood in a spacious room, the ceiling rising to at least five meters—higher than any floor he’d seen in the Wizard Tower.

His gaze dropped to the floor, where he saw three giants sleeping in a corner, huddled together.

Each of them looked to be over two meters tall, with muscular frames and arms twice the size of Saul’s thighs.

But compared to their hulking bodies, their heads were disproportionately small, giving them an odd and unbalanced appearance.

Just then, a door at the far end of the room opened, and two more giants walked in.

Saul recognized one of them. He was the burly man who always curled up at the end of the hallway near the corpse room on East Tower’s second floor.

The other one he didn’t know, but guessed he was also a servant of the Wizard Tower.

These mutant servants handled the lowest-level, most dangerous work—tasks regular people never encountered.

Seeing someone familiar, Saul felt a bit more at ease. No matter what, he was still inside the Wizard Tower.

“What is this place?”

He walked over and saw the two giants pushing a cart toward a large machine.

Saul floated up for a better look.

The machine resembled both a meat grinder and one of those crushers for industrial waste.

One of the giants pulled a large box out of the cart.

Saul recognized it immediately—it was the same kind of container used to store unusable materials when he worked in the corpse room.

“So this is the place where they process trash or contaminated materials… must it be the basement of the Wizard Tower?”

If that was the case, then the first floor of the East Tower should be directly above his head.

“Did I really just drift out of my body in my sleep and float straight down to the basement?” Saul thought, half amused, half exasperated.

Just then, one of the giants dumped the contents of the box into the “meat grinder,” while the other walked up to the front and, muscles bulging, began turning a large crank.

The handle spun, engaging the gears inside. The uppermost blades of the “meat grinder” began to rotate.

Rumble rumble rumble—

The first giant poured everything from the box in. Bones and meat scraps clashed with spinning blades, producing sounds that were sometimes crisp, sometimes sickeningly squelchy.

Once the first load was ground down, the giant replaced it with a second box and began pouring again.

Saul decided not to keep watching. He looked up toward the ceiling, wondering if he should try floating back up the way he came and return to the East Tower’s first floor.

But just then, the rumbling “meat grinder” suddenly stopped.

Saul looked down, and was startled to see something round rolling atop the grinder’s blades.

It was a human head—its outer flesh shredded into an unrecognizable mess of blood and gore.

(End of Chapter)

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