Chapter 251: The Diary in Hand

After Yura left, Saul returned to the long table and picked up the message pen to write a few more lines.

He recounted the entire incident, from Wright’s call for help to Yura heading out alone.

Setting the pen down, his eyes flickered.

That night, unsure whether Yura might suddenly return, Saul decided not to activate the Mental Realm’s magic formation. Instead, he chose the more reliable route of regular magic study.

But even after two days passed, there was still no word of anything unusual on Wright’s end. Nor had the Tower Master specifically come looking for him.

Everything was calm. As if nothing had ever happened.

During these past days, however, something else began weighing on Saul’s mind.

The Seed of Malice had sprouted.

Once it started sprouting, full incubation would only take another day or two.

The hatching process was progressing much faster than Kujin had predicted.

Now, the only question was—what kind of Curse would hatch? What would its function be?

Still, since the diary had shown an interest in the Seed of Malice, the resulting fruit should likely come with some form of explanation from diary.

Little Algae was quite fascinated by the Seed of Malice. Even though Saul repeatedly warned him not to eat it, he still loved circling around it constantly.

Now that Saul was certain the situation with Wright wouldn’t affect him, at least for now, he finally restarted the Mental Realm formation he’d put off for a few days.

He had specially prepared magic pigments most favorable to the drawing of dark-element formations, copying the entire design from segmented diagrams onto the warehouse floor.

Just transcribing and drawing the formation took him most of the day. Then he placed magic crystals one by one onto the magic nodes.

Now, all that remained was for him to step inside and activate the formation with his own energy.

Since it was his first attempt, Saul didn’t modify the formation in any way, to avoid disrupting how the Mental Realm would manifest.

All the preparations were complete. All that was left was for Saul to step into the formation and activate it.

Before beginning, he gulped down the juice extracted from a Grinding Sound Fruit. Then, with a twinge of pain in his heart, he swallowed a dose of Heart’s Guard.

Just before starting, Saul glanced at the diary resting on his left shoulder.

Today, the diary was bobbing up and down more violently than usual, the rhythm faster too—almost like his own pounding heartbeat.

“Are you excited too?” Saul licked his parched lips and took a deep breath.

Then he closed his eyes and calmed his thoughts.

His soul body began to resonate. Magic surged through his arms and legs, flowing into the formation below.

One by one, the magic crystals lit up. Countless dark currents pulsed along the lines, weaving and churning, until they awakened the entire magic formation.

All at once, the white walls flared as candle flames leapt high into the air. Tongues of flame licked the walls, leaving behind blackened scorch marks.

Behind the rows of heavy shelves, one corpse after another slowly rotated. Their stiff necks creaked and cracked as they turned.

Once their heads had turned a full ninety degrees, eyelids opened—revealing pairs of endless black voids.

But Saul had no time to worry about the eerie changes around him. In his perception, space began to tremble, the ground cracked, the ceiling collapsed, and rifts tore open across the air.

Peering gazes emerged—from above, below, and all around him through the space crack.

Even with his eyes shut, Saul felt that overwhelming sensation of being watched—like standing exposed and naked on a stage before a crowd of thousands.

Suddenly, time froze.

After a long sigh, the sound of shattering glass echoed from all sides.

Saul opened his eyes. The earth shattering scenery before him crumbled and fell away, revealing a deep, sunless darkness beneath it all.

He blinked once, and the mirrored shards surrounding him shattered again into mist, scattering into the shadows.

Looking down slightly, he saw himself standing atop a massive circular stone platform. The surface was inscribed with the pattern of the Mental Realm formation.

He had successfully entered the Mental Realm.

Saul’s first reaction was to look toward his left shoulder.

But the diary was gone!

His thoughts flinched in alarm, causing the stone platform beneath him to tremble.

“Don’t panic. Stay calm,” Saul urged himself in his heart.

Maybe it was the Grinding Sound Fruit working its magic, or maybe his own reassurance was enough, but the space around him finally stabilized and stopped shaking.

He surveyed the surroundings but didn’t spot any sign of the diary. Even when he probed inward with his mental senses, he found no trace of it.

“This is different from last time.”

This time, Saul didn’t panic. Instead, he began to carefully analyze the differences between the two entries.

“Last time, not only was my own soul present on the platform, but so were Morden’s and the countless souls he had devoured.”

“This time, the platform is completely clean. At the very least, it means no one else is spying from within me. That’s a good thing.”

Saul lowered his head to examine himself, and soon realized that his current appearance matched his physical body in the outside world.

In other words, his current soul form had the same light gray skin—the look of his body after undergoing the second round of transformation.

“Last time, in a moment of crisis, I connected with the diary and managed to make it appear in my hand, but I couldn’t open it. I could only use it as a brick.”

“So I never really gained control over the diary back then. That’s why I couldn’t truly connect with it or use it to anchor myself.”

“Then what am I still lacking?”

Although Saul could try to repeat the process from last time and retrieve the diary again…

Somehow, he had the distinct feeling that if he did, it would still just be a brick in his hand.

“I’m not in a rush to fight anyway, so I’ll keep experimenting.”

He began to shift his thinking.

“Out there, I can easily control the diary—flip to any black page, even view that mysterious golden one. There’s no reason I should lose access just by entering my mental realm.”

“The diary is something I control through my mind. So now… is it that the diary doesn’t recognize this version of my soul?”

Saul had a vague sense that he was close to grasping the answer. He looked down at his hands, waves of thought churning in his mind.

“The Mental Realm is shaped by consciousness. Everything I see is filtered through my own perception. But my perception isn’t always one hundred percent accurate. So…”

He lifted his head and looked straight ahead. After a few breaths, his body began to shiftm

His arms and legs stretched longer. Bones extended. Muscles thickened.

His apprentice robes and boots transformed into a white short-sleeve shirt, gray slacks, and a pair of dull, scuffed black dress shoes.

At a thought, a half-length mirror appeared before him, reflecting his current appearance.

Sure enough—it was his true form.

That same young man who had just graduated, full of ambition, eager to rise in the world and become a winner in life.

“So this is the version of myself I truly identify with,” Saul said with a wry smile at his reflection in the mirror. “Not the one who spent over a decade grinding away, only to remain mediocre—a salted fish who flopped and stayed salted.”

“So what I feared back then, when facing the wraith’s bookshelf, wasn’t myself. It was that ordinary, unremarkable, failure of me.”

But not anymore.

Saul stretched out his hand and grasped a hard-covered, dark red book from the seemingly empty air.

On the cover, six embossed letters glowed faintly:

Dead Wizard’s Diary.

He drew his arm back, resting the spine of the book on his index, middle, and ring fingers, while his thumb gently flipped open the cover.

It was easy. As effortless as brushing aside a girl’s soft hair.

“If this version of me—this shape and mindset—can access the diary, then that means… the Dead Wizard’s Diary was never some inheritance I got from this body. It chose me from the beginning!”

If one ignored the trembling corners of Saul’s mouth from sheer excitement, then with the diary in hand, standing tall and composed, he truly had the look of a master. A profound and confident.

(End of Chapter)

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