Chapter 23

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

The shop attendant swaggered into the alley, with one hand behind his back and his eyes lowered, appearing to be completely unguarded.

However, he was actually taking in everything around him.

Lin Suo looked on thoughtfully.

As he reached the end of the alley, the shop attendant let out a disappointed sigh, “The damned rat didn’t fall for it.”

The black-clad individual lying in ambush at the other end of the alley also jumped down, his expression gloomy.

“Matt, give me an explanation.”

Hearing this, the shop attendant immediately became flustered.

“Lord Sala, I didn’t expect this rat to be so cunning. Perhaps he is well aware that he is weak and doesn’t dare to make a move against me, especially since I work at the White Rose. Most self-taught wizards don’t dare to mess with me. This was a mistake on my part, which wasted your time. I will compensate you.”

“Hmph. It’s best that you do.”

Lord Sala, the black-cloaked Magi, snorted coldly, clearly displeased.

From the scales covering his exposed cheeks, he looked like a self-taught wizard with a physical deformity.

Lin Suo furrowed his brow. After running through today’s events in his mind, he gained a clear understanding of their plan.

“Cooperating with a self-taught wizard to set up an entrapment, huh? Targeting self-taught wizards like me who are easily angered and not very strong?”

It was clear from their demeanor that they had succeeded more than once.

Lord Sala hadn’t noticed Lin Suo, so he didn’t conceal his mental power fluctuations. He seemed to be an intermediate Magi apprentice, and his mental power was particularly active, not far from breaking through to become an advanced Magi apprentice.

The gap between Magi apprentices wasn’t very pronounced. If the other party wanted to make a fatal strike without being discovered by the surrounding residents, he had most likely mastered psychic spells.

Psychic spells were not available to self-taught wizards, but they were not banned from being sold to other large Magus forces coming from outside Koster.

On the contrary, if the forces had a close relationship, even the stage-one spells could be exchanged, let alone the apprentice-level spells that were only treated as commercial goods.

Matt was a shop attendant at White Rose.

If a group of apprentices led by Magis from other regions came for an exchange activity, he would most likely sell psychic spells to the other party’s apprentices.

This created an opportunity for action.

“How wicked. This way, I won’t feel guilty about killing both of you at all.”

With that, Lin Suo secretly triggered the mechanism.

Today, the Enlightenment Flowers planted in the sunny garden had fully ripened, and Lin Suo picked five of them.

He had used one of them to develop a powerful Fainting Agent.

The principle of the Fainting Agent was actually quite simple.

It was not a poison, but a type of incense that provided a huge mental power boost. When Lin Suo first synthesized it, the main ingredient was peppermint extract, which he developed for the purpose of staying up late to increase his proficiency.

The icy feeling could freeze a mortal’s soul into a popsicle.

However, it only had a moderate effect on Magis who had strong mental power and opened up the mental power space. So, at the time, he thought it would probably be useless on Magis.

Today, he added an Enlightenment Flower to the synthesis formula and the enhanced effect was so great that even he couldn’t handle it. He would faint within a few breaths. The only reason he set it up was to prevent any accidents from happening.

Since he came with the mindset of making someone a corpse, he would naturally ensure that everything would go smoothly.

Who would have thought that he would end up with another life to collect?

Indeed, experiencing certain things was the only way to truly understand them.

Lesson learned!

Standing in the alley, Matt suddenly shuddered, noticing that the fog had rolled in without warning. Living in a harbor town came with this annoyance, though it was rare for the fog to roll in during late autumn.

“Brrr, it’s so cold. Lord Sala, let’s head back now. I’ll bring your compensation to you tomorrow.”

The black-robed Lord Sala paused and felt a tingling sensation in his forehead. He activated his mental power detection and realized something was amiss. The clear images he normally saw from detection were now blurred as if they were frosted over.

Wait…

“Shit! This fog… bad…”

With a thump, Lord Sala collapsed to the ground frankly, unconscious.

The entire process took no more than three seconds. At the side, Matt stood completely still, frozen, his eyes losing their luster.

Lin Suo donned a filter mask, crafted from artificial magic stones which contained magic energy that could effectively resist the mental power in the fog.

Then, he came down from the rooftop.

As expected, Matt’s soul simply vanished since he couldn’t contain that much mental power. He had died instantly.

If a transcendent magic potion related to mental power was used on ordinary people, most of them would end up the same.

Lin Suo cautiously approached the black-robed Magi and pulled out a small throwing knife from his pocket. He gave it a quick flick, and it lodged itself straight into Sala’s forehead.

With this, the other party was dead as dead can be.

Relaxing a little, Lin Suo meticulously searched Sala’s body.

The spoils were meager: two real magic stones and two money pouches. There were no books on spells, which was normal for someone who had come out to kill.

However, Sala had a Meditation Technique book that caught Lin Suo’s eye.

“Moon Snake Meditation Technique? Makes sense. For you, the Meditation Technique is your foundation. Even if it’s just an apprentice-level Meditation Technique, carrying it with you all the time is explainable.”

Lin Suo flipped through the pages nonchalantly.

A Mediation Technique like this which had side effects was usually an apprentice-level Meditation technique. However, there seemed to be something wrong with this Moon Snake Meditation Technique.

Lin Suo’s expression turned bitter. He had a feeling that he had landed himself into trouble…

During the cultivation of the Moon Snake Cultivation Technique, the blood of a monster named the Moon Snake was required. At the same time, the cultivation would also cause the Magi’s transformation into a half-human, half-snake form. If one could break through to become an official Magi, one would then possess the Moon Snake bloodline and its innate strength.

This type of Meditation Technique was originally spread by the Life Modification School.

Later, it was discovered that although using this shortcut to modify one’s bloodline before becoming a stage-one Magi could accelerate one’s strength and cultivation speed, it had irreversible and serious effects on the soul and psyche.

While bloodline could be modified, soul modification had always been a difficult problem for Magi.

With the rigor of the ancient Magi, such “experiment leakage” should not have occurred.

However, the wonder of fate lies here. Various coincidences made it inevitable.

By the time the Magi of the Life Modification School noticed, such defective Meditation Techniques had already spread throughout the continent.

As such, they could only find ways to improve it for generations.

The side effects were reduced, and the Meditation Techniques were neutered to prevent the possibility of the cultivator breaking through to become an official Magi.

In this way, the apprentices who accidentally learned such mediation techniques would never fully mutate into monsters simply due to an increase in strength.

In recent years, some malicious individuals had intentionally sent such Meditation Techniques to the hands of the self-taught Magi, having them learn and thus nurture more apprentices.

When the time was ripe, it would be an opportunity to harvest monster materials.

“Wow….”

Recalling the Magi handbook given to him by Antlers and comparing it to some details of the Moon Snake meditation practice, he could be sure that this was a special Meditation Technique that had not been neutered.

The culprits were modifying the bloodlines of others and harvesting humans as materials.

And now, he had killed someone’s target in advance… It was very dangerous.

“This can’t do. I need to deal with the corpses first.”

With that, Lin Suo removed all the mechanical traps in the alley and used an Enlightening Flower to gather the spreading Fainting Agent. The two had a complementary relationship and could attract each other.

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