Chapter 409 : New Skin

A strange rustling sound came from the stone platform. Saul looked down and saw what seemed like an invisible carving tool on the platform, using him as the center, rapidly etching circles of eye patterns in the blink of an eye.

Saul hadn’t expected that the surrounding unknown stars in the space would block the invading dark corruption without even needing the diary’s intervention.

Not only did they block it, but it seemed they even…

“Could it be that the invading eyes are being devoured by the mental realm?”

A sliver of surprise bubbled up from his frozen emotions. His emotional control wavered slightly, and Saul immediately suppressed his amazement, lowering his head to examine the new eye patterns on the ground.

As the master of the mental realm, he could feel that changes had occurred within it, and these changes were manifested in the newly appeared eyes on the ground.

Saul bent down, half-squatting, and traced the new lines with his finger.

“Each of these eye patterns seems to be a rune.”

Saul’s mental power followed his finger, sketching out the eye rune in his mind.

Suddenly, the world before Saul’s eyes changed.

His field of vision was divided into hundreds of segments.

It was chaotic, like looking through a kaleidoscope.

Except every “mirror” within the “kaleidoscope” showed a completely different image.

In an instant, Saul saw countless scenes, and each scene turned into detailed, vivid information that flowed straight into his brain.

“This is… vision?” Saul immediately closed his eyes.

Yet those fragmented hundreds of images remained clearly in his mind.

And every image was dynamic, playing out scenes like little stage plays.

Saul even spotted Haywood in one scene, and Gorsa in another.

“This isn’t a kaleidoscope—this is a surveillance room full of monitors…”

His brain was simultaneously receiving over a hundred streams of information, and yet, it could process and store them all without issue.

“Could this be the effect of this rune?” Saul vaguely began to understand.

But then, he made a new discovery.

In each of the hundreds of scenes, there was a thin line floating in the frame.

These thin lines would pass through the center of the images, disappearing into them. Because they were so fine, Saul hadn’t noticed them at first.

“Lines?” He suddenly remembered how, back beneath the sea of Bluewater Bay, he had also seen lines while absorbing glowing soul fragments.

Only back then, the fine lines connected together—while here, they were all disconnected.

“What would happen if I connected these lines too…?”

The thought surfaced out of nowhere, and Saul couldn’t wait to try.

However, the urge was too intense—it instantly shattered his frozen emotions.

Strong emotional waves surged back into his brain. The mental realm broke apart in an instant, kicking Saul out.

He felt a wave of disorientation, and when he opened his eyes again, he was already back inside the interlayer.

Right in front of him was Senior Byron, who looked like a lump of coal, and his familiar mental signature.

“I’m back?” Saul, still possessing the ribbonfish, immediately looked up at the eyes overhead.

The invaders in the illusion had been absorbed—what would happen to the eyes inside the interlayer now?

However, when Ribbonfish-Saul lifted his head, he found the eyes still hovering in the darkness, blinking and staring at him and Senior Byron.

But they no longer attacked.

They all seemed calm and harmless.

When Saul stared at one of the eyes for a long time, it even quivered slightly, and then shyly averted its gaze.

It actually got shy!!!

“Saul.” The charred senior finally spoke. “What’s going on? Why did you suddenly freeze? And why aren’t those eyes attacking us anymore?”

Byron had been about to leave the interlayer earlier, but he suddenly saw Saul frozen still after being struck by the black light beams from the eyes.

Just as he was about to retreat, he slammed the brakes and rushed back.

The moment he stopped beside Saul, Saul snapped out of his trance, lifted his fishy head, and looked toward the sky full of eyes.

After a few breaths with no reaction from either Saul or the eyes, Byron had no choice but to quietly call out to Saul.

Saul turned his fish head, “Senior, how long was I unresponsive after being hit by the black light?”

“Less than two seconds,” Byron immediately answered. “What happened?”

He couldn’t assess Saul’s condition now—he could only wait for Saul to explain.

“Those black lights can create incredibly realistic illusions. I spent half a day in that illusion, then found a way out. Turns out, out here, only an instant had passed.”

Saul silently called out to Nightmare Butterfly, and this time, he finally got a response.

Sure enough, when he was trapped in the illusion earlier, it wasn’t that she was ignoring him—it was that the flow of time was so different that Penny probably hadn’t even heard his call.

“Looks like you did something inside, or else these eyes wouldn’t suddenly turn so tame,” Byron sighed.

He vaguely realized that Saul’s abilities far exceeded his imagination—this was no longer something simple like extracting wraiths or absorbing evil thought.

But Byron chose not to ask anything, just feeling a moment of dazed confusion inside.

“The gray matter solution given to Saul had issues… probably can’t even cover the owed credits now. He’s saved me again…”

Saul didn’t know about Byron’s complicated emotions. He simply glanced once more at the eyes above (several quickly looked away shyly) and decided to send Senior Byron out first—he could come back later to check things.

Then, he turned his fish body around and pushed the stunned Byron through the marked exit.

Bursting through the “water surface,” Byron sank like a stone with a heavy plunk, while the ribbonfish soared and spun in the air.

Saul detached from the fish body and re-entered his own body.

Looking back, he saw the ribbonfish still lying in place—its exterior golden and crispy, already ready to be served at the table.

As for Senior Byron—he lay there motionless, like a burned, carbonized corpse on the tiles.

Without delay, Saul rushed over, pulling out the elf king’s head he had brought back from the Elven Valley.

This head had originally been extremely dangerous, but before the half-elf’s death, they had deliberately stripped away the head’s mysterious properties—reducing it to a rare magic material.

Saul carefully picked up the unresponsive Byron.

“After leaving the interlayer, Senior’s condition is deteriorating rapidly. No wonder the interlayer was able to contain so many fragments of souls.”

Saul sighed, not daring to waste time—he firmly… stuffed the well-behaved Byron into the elf king’s head.

Somehow, the head could accommodate a “charcoal lump” that was three times its own size—yet its exterior showed no distortion, still a beautiful black-haired figure.

The silver butterfly flew out, circling the beautiful head a few times. “How strange, Brother Saul. How did this head grow black hair?”

“In your eyes, it changed appearance? In mine, it’s still the same. Looks like Senior’s entry made it lose its ability to change shape. Whether that’s temporary or permanent, we’ll have to see.”

Saul, cradling the head, sat back down at the workbench. He still needed to further process and refine the elf king’s head to make it more suitable as Byron’s new skin.

Byron’s original skin had been his locator device—which had saved his life during the sudden attack, before being disguised as a corpse and carried away by Lokai and Jero.

Even if it could be recovered, it was probably destroyed beyond use.

Losing his locator would be a huge blow for Senior Byron. But as long as his life, brain, and soul were intact, there would always be a way to recover.

Though his strength would likely drop back to First Rank apprentice level.

However, his soul body’s essence remained at Third Rank apprentice strength—no fear of degenerative mutations after the downgrade.

And with this new skin sourced from a once-Fourth Rank elf king—even if the king was long dead, and even if his powers had been stripped by the half-elf—it was still an incredibly high-grade material.

With it, Senior Byron might not just recover—he might even go further.

Penny quietly perched nearby, not daring to disturb Saul’s work.

But at that moment, a new voice suddenly rose behind Saul.

“This place is… a Wizard Tower?”

Saul paused his movements, looked back—and saw the golden, crispy, fragrant fried ribbonfish lift its head.

Its shriveled eyes on either side of the head sluggishly turned, seemingly observing the outside world.

“Ahhh! The food’s moving!”

Penny shrieked.

Congratulations to Senior Byron on his rebirth. Welcome to a life of endless debt!

(End of Chapter)

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