Glan Natural Science Academy

  The next day, early morning. 

Ryger opened his eyes. He still felt that everything that happened yesterday was like a dream. 

Warm sunlight passed through the glass window and shined on the white bed sheets. After confirming that he is indeed in the Glan Academy’s Moon Bay Inn, and that everything that happened yesterday was not a dream, Ryger began to itt up on the bed.

Ryger thought of something. He sat up immediately and picked up the spacebox that Satro gave him yesterday. 

“Truly amazing!” 

Ryger fiddled around with the spacebox. He was enamoured with the box. 

After playing with the box for a while, Ryger took out the gifts he had received – the magic fan from Peerless, the spook bottle from Enid, the notebook from Adva – and observed them closely. 

Since Ryger didn’t yet know how to control a scholar’s energy field, otherwise known as a magician’s magic, he was not able to utilise the two magic tools. But that didn’t stop Ryger from taking a closer look 

The first was the magic folding fan. 

Although it has been broken in many places, it was still possible to recognize the three-headed bird with open wings branded on the fan, if faintly. The bird looked mightily awe-inspiring and seemed to be a proteus with powerful innate talents of wind. 

“Wait!” 

He discovered something. The sticks were fine since they seemed to be made from a special kind of wood. But what amazed Ryger was the leaves of the fan. The ‘paper’ that constituted it was definitely not paper made from plant fibres. It seemed to be weaved together from a certain infinitesimal and exquisite material! 

Ryger took out a magnifying glass, one of the items in the spacebox gifted by Satro. 

He used the magnifying glass on the fan and observed the surface. After a moment, he discovered the fan’s secret and was amazed by it. 

The fan’s leaves were actually fine feathers that were weaved together bit by bit before having tens of thousands of miniscule runes engraved on it. 

Ryger looked at how such fine down feathers were rubbed together to form silk threads that were criss-crossed and weaved to form the fan’s surface which was etched with tens of thousands of pinpoint-sized energy runes. He was shocked. Was this alchemy? 

“Such uncanny workmanship is what mentor Kubo calls a ‘sideshow’?” 

Ryger then looked at the spook bottle. 

The dark green spook bottle was very small and exquisite, and didn’t have any decorative patterns on its surface. The mouth of the bottle was plugged by a plain wooden cork. Ryger had tried to remove the cork but it seemed that because he had no energy field, the cork adhered to the bottle tightly and wouldn’t budge.

Ryger shaked his head. Knowing that these magic tools were very bizarre, he gave up on trying to make something happen. 

As for the Frostfire bird notebook, Ryger observed it for quite some time and came to the conclusion that other than it could last very long, it had no other special function. 

Lastly, there was mentor Kubo’s bag of money. 

“Five gold coins and sixty-three silver coins… an amount that father’s annual earning from painstaking effort t can’t even compare with. And now it gets handed to me by mentor that casually. Haaa ……” 

His mind was full of mixed thoughts. But when he thought of how he spent 3 whole silver coins yesterday for the inn’s accommodation fee, Ryger couldn’t help but feel a flash of pain like his heart was bleeding. 

Three silver coins equated three hundred copper coins. 

This was enough to buy fifteen kilograms of black bread back in the Agate Lake, enough to buy nearly a month’s worth of food! 

From this, it could be seen that the exorbitant prices within the Glan Natural Science Academy were by no means comparable to Agate Lake. 

“That’s right!”

  Ryger suddenly thought of the Starcore necklace he was wearing in front of his chest. 

“According to father, the Starcore necklace can discern whether a prey has a proteus bloodline. I should try it on these magical tools to see if there’s any reaction!” 

The necklace’s pendant looked like an inconspicuous piece of agate. Ryger found the slightly raised button on the pendant and pressed it while facing the fan. 

“Beep! Detected: three-headed wind kite’s feathers, 60 grams; stormwood, 254 grams.” 

It really is able to analyse the composition of something! 

If I learn alchemy from mentor Kubo in the future, is it possible for me to use the necklace’s analytic function to imitate and create high-level, complex magical tools? 

With his curiosity roused, Ryger pointed the necklace at the spook bottle and pressed its button. 

“Beep! Detected: damaged faint soul. Energy too weak to analyze.” 

It appeared that the most valuable part of the spook bottle was in the soul which didn’t seem to be high-level. No wonder it was so cheap compared to those magic tools with sky-high prices. It appeared that if one was able to master the technique, the whole process of making a spook bottle shouldn’t be too hard. 

Ryger then looked at the frostfire bird notebook. 

“Beep! Detected: Frostfire bird’s skin, 400 grams; marrow of memory, 15 grams; mountain essence, 1 gram; mithril, 0.25 gram.”

“Eh?”

  Unexpectedly, the frostfire bird notebook had other materials used in making it and the process of making it seemed very complex. No wonder mentor Kubo made a pained expression back then. 

Knowing that the Adva gave himself a treasure, Ryger put it away happily. 

Lastly, Ryger pointed the Starcore necklace towards the space box and pressed the button. 

“Beep! No valuable material detected.”

Ryger didn’t know if the Starcore necklace was unable to analyse the spacebox’s material or if there weren’t any valuable materials used in the process of making the spacebox. Ryger didn’t get any results.

“How could this be?”

Ryger pondered for a while and didn’t come out with anything. He packed up his gifts and stopped thinking about it. 

He got up and dressed himself. 

“I’ve left Agate Late to escape the Church. Now that I’m here in the Glan Natural Sciences Academy, I’ll have to work hard for my future life. The most important thing to do now is to find a place to live!” 

This inn that Ryger stayed in costed 3 silver coins per day, which would come to 90 coins for a month’s stay. Almost a gold coin. Such a high price made Ryger’s heart ache. 

There weren’t many people around Scholar’s Street at dawn. Most of them were the stores’ staff who were busy preparing for business. 

Thud thud thud! 

The limestone road shuddered and the pedestrians, noticing, quickly made way.

A group of 10 plus mercenaries with various clothing ran quickly through the street. Their armor or leather clothes were coated with blood stains from an intense fight. An injured person, green in the face, could be seen on the back of a thudding, hurtling mammoth. He was probably poisoned. 

“Out of the way! Out of the way! Get out of the way!” 

The huge mammoth’s nostrils spewed out a stream of black smoke and the smell of sulphur was everywhere. 

Ryger, who had moved out of the way, made an astonished gaze and compared the mammoth. With a body like his, perhaps even several hundred of him would be nothing but fodder to the mammoth. It simply wasn’t something that an ordinary person could fight head on!

“It’s the Mammoth Warhammer mercenaries!” 

“Tss, it seems that the Principality is at war again!”

Ryger could clearly hear the whispers of the pedestrians. He gulped.

For Agate Lake, a small town in the hinterlands of the Glan Principality, the word ‘war’ was a foreign one. But this didn’t stop the townspeople feeling fear. Fear towards a war that has a far higher death rate then hunting at the Accipit Jungle.