Chapter 350: A Busy Snow Season

The region where the Wizard Tower was located was relatively close to the tropics. The snow season came later.

However, the snow season in this world—essentially, winter—was also unlike that of Saul’s original world.

Whether it snowed in winter was decided by the local Third Rank or higher wizards.

If such a wizard needed a damp experimental environment, then even in the dead of winter, it would be filled with constant rain and humidity.

If he wanted warmth, then even if yesterday had been a snowy wasteland, today flowers could bloom under a sunny sky.

And the stronger the wizard, the wider the area they could control.

The Western Continent, due to a major war a century ago, currently had no Third Rank wizards. As a result, the weather there obediently followed the natural rhythm of the four seasons.

Snow had fallen intermittently for three months before vanishing overnight, as if scraped away with a blade.

The end of the snow season came with knife-sharp clarity.

On the fourth day of the fourth month, Year 317 of the New Lunar Calendar, Saul welcomed his third birthday at the Wizard Tower.

However, the few who even knew his birthday either weren’t at the tower or had already died…

Naturally, Saul didn’t care whether anyone celebrated it. In fact, he himself hadn’t even realized the date.

That day, he was lying personally on the experimental table in the second storeroom. Hayden, who had regained his skill level, was crouched over, drawing a magic formation on Saul’s palms.

The formation had been developed by Saul himself, and since Hayden was better at hands-on work than theory, all he could do was trace what he didn’t fully understand.

Fortunately, the guy had a steady hand and was better at drawing intricate lines than Saul was with one hand.

After drawing the final key node, Hayden tried to stand but his knees gave out from crouching too long, and he collapsed to the floor.

“You’ve done well. Take a break.”

“Alright.” Hayden, who had been struggling to get up, simply flopped back down onto the floor.

He spread out his arms and legs, trying to relax his numb limbs.

Although his outer form was now completely female, inside he still had the temperament of a man—no sense of modesty whatsoever.

Saul climbed down from the table, stepped over Hayden’s splayed legs, and went to the experiment table to continue refining the formation on his hands.

Though Hayden had achieved the strength of a Second Rank apprentice, his mental strength hadn’t caught up. So Saul didn’t let him inscribe the full formation.

Without full understanding, Hayden wouldn’t be able to complete the core section.

Even if he copied it perfectly, it wouldn’t work.

“The snow season’s over. If I don’t set out soon, that diary will probably start pestering me to move.”

In fact, due to the diary’s long-range death warnings, Saul had originally planned to go to the Elven Valley on the very first day the snow season ended.

But when he was about to set out, the diary cryptically hinted that he wasn’t ready yet.

If he wasn’t ready, it meant he might die in the Elven Valley—or miss out on something crucial.

Yet the diary refused to say exactly what he lacked.

After numerous mental simulations and analyzing the situation on his own, Saul finally got the diary to change its hint and offer a solution.

He then spent another two months refining his plan.

That plan involved the two magic formations on his palms.

These were the result of Saul’s sleepless efforts and enormous mental effort: an upgraded version of the mental realm formation.

Yes, he had taken a formation that originally required a four-square-meter floor to draw and shrunk it down to fit inside his palms.

Moreover, he had split it in two and fixed each half separately.

Now, whenever he needed to activate the formation, he simply pressed his palms together in a cross pattern—as if clapping—to complete the full circuit.

Then, with help from Penny the Nightmare Butterfly, he could purge distracting thoughts and instantly enter the mental realm.

Within the platform, Saul had greater control over his mental power and soul body. The diary also took on a physical form there, making it far easier to manipulate.

Most elven artifacts had the ability to disrupt one’s soul body. Without the protection of the soul body, a person’s consciousness could be polluted by elven temptations, leading to madness or death.

But Saul’s mental realm was a special battlefield that stripped away physical strength disparities. Inside, the diary’s power could be utilized to its fullest extent.

Within the platform, Saul’s soul body was exceptionally stable, able to shapeshift freely without risking cognitive distortion.

Additionally, the four other soul entities could also take on physical form in the platform, no longer just theoretical advisors.

This was most likely the preparation the diary had required Saul to complete, in order to deal with the rumoredly bizarre elven relics.

“Even though the formation is fully designed and the diary hasn’t given another warning, I still need to run some practical tests,” Saul said as he glanced around.

Through the gaps in the storage racks, he could see the corpses standing with their backs to him.

“These guys seem calm, but the moment my soul body shifts even a little, they’ll come at me—more sensitive than a hound’s nose.”

After a long while, Saul completed the final key point of the formation. He slowly stood, waiting for the magical energy flowing across it to stabilize. Next, the formation would need to be soaked in a potion to lock it in and reduce metabolic loss.

“Hayden, if you’re done resting, get over here and mix the potion!” Saul called out.

Though Hayden had spent six months as a test subject and regained the skills he’d honed in the corpse chamber, his long-dormant laziness had begun to resurface.

He often lacked initiative, needing Saul to give explicit orders to get moving.

This left Saul a little disappointed. Sometimes, he even wished Hayden’s second personality would emerge to help with the experiments.

After all, that personality was proactive in every aspect. Saul had no plans to accept it fully, but when it came to lab work—it really was amazing.

Just as Hayden was about to fall asleep on the floor, he scrambled to his feet and rushed to prepare the potion.

This potion was crucial—it determined how long the formations on Saul’s palms could last.

Unlike finished potions, most wizard concoctions had to be mixed on the spot to ensure maximum effectiveness.

Herman wasn’t in the storeroom at the moment.

To be precise, he had returned to the diary—because Saul had wrecked his body for the Nth time.

This was mainly due to Saul’s wild ideas and experiments that paid no mind to damage or cost. Over the decades, the number of corpses in the second storeroom had decreased rather than increased.

When Tower Master Gorsa heard about this, he didn’t care. In fact, he considered it a normal sign of experimental progress.

Over the past six months, Saul had also noticed that the atmosphere in the Wizard Tower had become increasingly tense. Especially on Mentor Rum’s side, where the resurrection experiments seemed to have made a breakthrough.

Nearly every mentor and apprentice in the tower had been mobilized to assist with Rum’s experiments.

Under Rum’s strict, almost harsh standards, over a hundred wizard apprentices were operating like tightly meshed gears, spinning at high speed.

In contrast, Saul—once the Tower Master’s greatest hope—had holed himself up in the corpse chamber for half a year, without making a peep. Aside from Hayden, he hadn’t requested any materials, prompting gossip among the other apprentices.

Saul, however, paid them no mind, continuing his experiments methodically and finding time to strengthen himself in the cracks.

As he finished brewing the potion and was wiping his hands with a cloth, the message pen on the table suddenly activated.

“Could it be a task from the mentor?”

Saul clicked his tongue. He hadn’t received a mission in nearly two months.

Though Mentor Rum was leading a grand experiment, they hadn’t needed any materials from the second storeroom.

So even though Saul wasn’t kept in the dark about the project’s content, he only had a vague idea of what Rum was trying to achieve.

It was too complicated.

Even if someone handed him the full formula, it would take Saul half a month to decipher it.

All he was certain of was that Rum’s research direction was completely different from his own—it was focused on transforming souls!

So when the message pen suddenly activated, Saul was a little surprised.

But when he looked over at the parchment with mild curiosity, he found only two large characters written on it:

“Come out!”

(End of Chapter)

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