Chapter 71: The Person Trapped on Her Back |
“Could it be that the three of them are actually the same person?”
Having seen many strange and unusual wizard apprentices, Saul speculated on the oddity of the trio before him.
But he quickly realized he was wrong.
The folding door cracked open slightly, and another blond-haired, blue-eyed boy stepped out. He gave a nod to the girl at the front of the line.
Then he turned and left.
The boy who emerged was also wearing the same uniform, with the same Second Rank apprentice badge pinned on it.
The girl at the front of the line stepped through the narrow doorway, and Kaz seized the moment to lead Saul into the room.
As soon as they entered, Saul instinctively glanced around for Mentor Rum’s figure.
The room was indeed spacious.
He said “quite” because the sides of the room were lined with thick, heavy curtains that looked like they were made of leather.
Each curtain panel was a meter wide, and the material was so thick it didn’t sway.
This room had no solid walls, only these curtain partitions.
The girl apprentice who entered before them had already moved to the right, lifting one of the curtains.
Saul leaned slightly to peek into the adjacent “room.”
And then he saw a beam of light slanting down onto the floor.
Saul blinked, feeling like this light was different from regular candlelight.
A strange tension rose in him but not because of the imminent appearance of Mentor Rum.
“Rum?” Kaz didn’t recklessly barge into the left or right spaces but simply raised his voice and called.
“Hmph!” came a response from the right, though the tone didn’t sound particularly welcoming.
“Hey.”
Kaz raised his hand, motioning for Saul to follow.
The two of them passed through the spot the previous apprentice had gone through, lifting the curtain into the next “room.”
The moment Saul stepped through, he felt the temperature rise slightly compared to the rest of the building.
He instinctively looked toward the source of the warmth—and saw it: sunlight!
His eyes welled up with tears.
In the outer wall, a one-meter square window had been built into the thick stone. The pitch-black window was open outward, and because of the wall's depth, only a small portion jutted beyond the outer surface.
It was that single beam of light, piercing the heavy exterior wall like it had crossed galaxies, slanting onto the floor and bringing an unfamiliar warmth to the otherwise icy room.
Saul hadn’t seen sunlight in over three months.
“There’ll be other chances,” he sighed softly to himself, willing the overflowing tears back into his eyes. He quickly sped up to catch up with Mentor Kaz ahead.
A few steps later, there was only a faint mist left in his eyes. Even as he passed through the light and felt its warmth on his skin, he kept his composure.
Mentor Rum was seated deep in the room, and as Saul crossed the beam of sunlight, he saw—an enormous mound of flesh.
He had seen pictures and videos of people weighing hundreds of pounds before. Many were so obese they couldn’t even move from their beds.
But even those didn’t compare to this.
This—was truly a mountain of flesh.
It seemed to be a man, though layers of fat obscured all visible gender characteristics. His mid-length, messy blond hair hung to his jaw, propped up by the fat beneath his chin. He had no beard, and his nose was sunken into the fat of his cheeks. Only the area around his eyes was relatively flat.
His most prominent feature was his stomach.
Layers and layers of fat piled upon each other so thoroughly it was impossible to tell where his chest ended and his abdomen began. His legs were completely hidden beneath folds of flesh like a bloated skirt.
But his arms were strangely thin—extending from his shoulders to a length of nearly two meters. They were divided into three segments, clearly not human limbs.
Was this Rum?
The mound of flesh ignored Kaz and Saul as they entered, using those abnormally long arms to grope over the body of the girl who had entered before them.
The apprentice remained expressionless, allowing herself to be inspected.
There was no lewd atmosphere here—Rum’s expression was one of scrutiny and criticism, like someone examining a head of cabbage at the market for rotten leaves.
“Go lie on the platform.”
The girl was finally released and walked over to a narrow, cold metal table beside Rum. She began undressing.
Under her robe, she wore no shirt, though her pants were still properly on.
No one in the room looked away.
Even Saul kept watching silently. He had seen plenty of exposed female corpses in the morgue, but this was his first time seeing a living one.
The apprentice undressed without hesitation, seemingly unbothered by the presence of others. She revealed her upper body, then quietly lay down on the metal slab, parting her golden hair to expose her pale back.
Rum extended one of his long arms and gently pressed her back.
A golden rune array suddenly emerged in the center of her pale skin.
Intricate symbols were interwoven with lines and ancient Noah characters. It was Saul’s first time seeing such a formation, and he couldn’t help but examine it more closely.
Then, all of a sudden, the golden runes shifted rapidly—forming the shape of a man’s face, with rune-formed eyes that turned to stare directly at Saul.
Saul immediately lowered his gaze and looked away.
In doing so, he missed the unexpected glance Rum cast his way.
Soon, Rum completed his examination, waved the girl off, and let her get dressed and leave.
“Not bad. Next.”
The apprentice still wore a blank expression, showing no emotion.
Once she had left, Rum sighed softly.
Then he quickly composed himself and looked at Saul standing behind Kaz, though he spoke to Kaz.
“This is the one you recommended? He killed my lab assistant—why would you think I’d agree to take him?”
“Because he’s suitable,” Kaz replied with a shrug.
“Suitable? A novice apprentice? What do you think he knows?”
“He can learn,” Kaz replied indifferently.
Rum let out a short, scoffing laugh. “How long will that take? You think I have time to waste on him?”
Kaz remained unfazed. “So what if it wastes time? Haven’t we wasted enough time already?”
Seeing that Kaz wasn’t in the mood for arguing, Rum actually softened his tone a little.
“You’ve seen Kira?”
“You mean Lady Kira. She’s advanced to Second Rank.”
“A Second Rank wizard?” Rum sounded a bit surprised, then dazed. “She’s already advanced? I might not ever reach that level in my life.”
Kaz didn’t respond, silently acknowledging Rum’s sentiment.
The room fell into a brief silence.
After a while, the sound of a second male apprentice entering the room broke the stillness.
Rum snapped back to attention and said to Kaz, “You can go now. I need to test him. If he fails, I’ll let him crawl back out alive.”
Kaz hesitated for a moment. He looked back at Saul, as if he wanted to say something, but in the end, he just patted Saul on the shoulder and walked out.
Saul hadn’t expected that.
Wasn’t Mentor Kaz going to explain the situation with Sid?
Or did he think that as long as Rum didn’t kill him, letting Saul suffer a bit and be done with it was good enough?
Rum’s cold gaze swept over him, making Saul feel like he had been stripped bare.
The second male apprentice had already walked up to Rum.
Rum, clearly disinterested, casually groped him a couple of times and told him to lie on the metal bed.
“Observe carefully. I’ll ask you questions afterward.”
“Observe? Are you talking to me?”
Still not fully grasping the situation, Saul saw that Rum had begun, and hurriedly slipped into a semi-immersed meditative state.
This was his serious work attitude!
From his perspective this time, the golden glyphs on the male apprentice’s back appeared again, quickly forming the image of a woman’s head.
Saul resisted the discomfort and kept watching the glyphs’ changes, carefully analyzing each rune’s function.
But most of the formation was composed of compound runes—some of which he had never even seen before. After watching for a while, he still only understood bits and pieces.
Then suddenly, a white, semi-transparent human head lunged out of the formation.
But it seemed to be held back by some kind of force, as if something were pulling it inward.
Its facial features, stretched to the limit by the backward force, looked almost exactly like the golden rune-formed woman’s face!
(End of Chapter)