Chapter 340: Snail Picker
Another wave crashed down, slamming the fallen boy into the water, his limbs flailing and twitching.
The sea was only knee-deep there, yet he couldn't seem to stand up.
Those nearby heard the boy struggling and stopped what they were doing, turning to look in his direction, but no one reached out to save him.
Between moments of sinking and surfacing, the boy's face would occasionally appear as he cried for help. But no one saved him; the others didn't even remove the black cloths from their faces.
They simply stared in the direction of the boy's voice, their faces etched with numb sorrow.
Saul, who wasn't wearing a black cloth, naturally saw what had happened.
The rope around the boy's waist had snapped at some point. A transparent hand was pulling the rope from the depths of the sea.
Therefore, when the fallen boy tried to climb ashore using the rope, he was actually moving towards the more terrifying deep water.
Saul's expression turned cold.
The transparent hand wasn't the pale, corpse-like arm he had seen between the waves.
It was a Tier 0 spell, Mage Hand.
A faint magical vibration rippled through the air, and Saul searched for an even fainter fluctuation of mental energy within it.
He turned his head in the direction of the mental energy, and in the shadows beneath the cliff, he saw two apprentice mages, a man and a woman.
The man was tall and sturdy, his face expressionless; the woman leaned intimately against the man's chest, turning her head to look at the struggling boy in the sea with a beaming smile.
Just as the boy's struggles grew weaker and weaker, Saul suddenly flicked his fingers.
The frigid, man-eating seawater suddenly transformed into gentle palms, lifting the boy by his back, raising him out of the water.
Only when the boy stood up, disoriented and somewhat bewildered, did the hands revert to seawater, lapping against his thighs.
Saul's act of saving the boy naturally attracted the attention of the two apprentices.
The man still looked over with a blank face, while the woman rolled her eyes without any attempt to hide it.
However, they made no further moves.
Clearly, their earlier attempt at murder had been nothing more than a whim, and they didn't want to clash with another unfamiliar mage because of it.
The Mage Hand in the sea also dissipated, and the boy stood in place, finally realizing that his rope had been severed.
He licked his dry lips, which the seawater couldn't even moisten, and whispered, "My rope is broken."
Because he had swallowed water, his throat was terribly dry, making him sound like a vengeful ghost lurking in the darkness.
After a moment, someone finally responded to him, "The shore is this way."
The person wasn't lying to the boy; he was indeed standing on the sand, away from the sea.
However, the sea breeze and waves distorted his voice, making it impossible for the boy to discern exactly where the speaker was standing.
He took two tentative steps and almost slipped again.
Because of his earlier struggles, he had reached a deeper area; if he accidentally fell, he might drown.
This was too dangerous!
The boy barely managed to steady himself again amidst the constant lapping of the waves. But he had once again lost his bearings.
Finally, he gritted his teeth, and blood began to seep from his taut lips.
He cautiously straightened his head and lifted a corner of the black cloth covering his face.
He didn't dare look at the sky, nor did he dare look at the sea, only wanting to quickly scan his surroundings to determine the direction of the beach.
However, as soon as his gaze turned 30 degrees, he saw the beach and a person standing on it, completely shrouded in a gray cloak.
That person was standing near his companions who were also collecting snails, but they clearly hadn't noticed his presence.
Judging by the other party's attire and demeanor, he was definitely a mage.
The boy shrank back in fear, but he suddenly remembered the hands that had suddenly lifted him up earlier.
Those hands were so warm; compared to the cold seawater, they were like a stove in winter.
The boy bowed deeply in the direction of Saul. As he bent over, his face was once again drenched by the splashing waves.
"He's quite clever," Saul said with a smile, looking at the boy who had bowed to him, almost burying his head in the sea.
"Xiaozao, pull him over here."
Xiaozao obeyed, swiftly flying over, wrapping around the boy's waist, and directly lifting him up, leaping out of the sea and flying towards Saul.
When Xiaozao grabbed him, the boy struggled for a moment, but quickly calmed down, obediently being carried to Saul's presence.
"Wizard… Sir," the boy said, kneeling directly on the ground due to the force of the descent, pressing his forehead against the cold sand.
"Get up, I have a few questions I want to ask you."
The boy hesitated for a moment; he had encountered mages before, but they had always made him kneel to answer.
Or rather, they didn't care what position he was in.
But thinking of Saul's act of saving him earlier, he still chose to scramble to his feet.
"What are you collecting?"
"Replying to your honorific, we are collecting black sea snails."
There are actually black sea snails here?
Black sea snails were also a type of magical ingredient, but they weren't considered valuable in the wizarding world, and their uses were limited.
Despite this, because of their connection to wizards, they had become a rare delicacy in the eyes of ordinary people.
The Wizard Tower also served this dish, but Saul didn't care for seafood and rarely ordered it.
The most delicious part of the black sea snail was a certain organ inside its body, but eating too much of it could cause hallucinations.
Some wealthy people also used it as a hallucinogenic drug to harm others, sometimes harming themselves in the process.
Since there were black sea snails here, Saul understood why people would risk their lives to gather them.
"Do you know how often soul tides occur here?"
Although he had already asked the wealthy merchant Pond once.
But the perspective of the wealthy merchant was definitely different from the perspective of these people who risked their lives to gather sea snails.
Hearing the words "soul tide," the boy's body, which was facing away from the sea, trembled again.
"Replying to your honorific, there have been… about ten times this year. Twice in the last month alone."
It's already become twice a month? That's far too frequent?
"Have you ever seen a soul tide? How dangerous is it? I mean… does someone die every time?"
"Replying to your honorific," the boy licked his dry lips, "Someone dies every time… My father was swept away last month."
Saul paused.
He just randomly picked someone, and he ended up asking the person involved.
In the wealthy merchant Pond's words, the frequency of soul tides was low in previous years, only occurring once or twice a year. Before ships entered the port, they would receive a signal from the shore, anchoring offshore overnight, and could enter the port normally the next day.
But in recent years, the frequency of tides had increased, and no ships dared to dock here anymore.
In Pond's words, he complained more about how Bluewater Bay no longer had the support of a port, and the economy was far worse than before, but the soul tides had therefore not caused much loss of life.
But in the boy's words, these fishermen, who originally lived off the sea, could only return to the sea to support themselves after Bluewater Bay declined.
But even joining such a dangerous job as collecting black sea snails had conditions.
The boy's father was a snail collector before his death, so the boy had the opportunity to inherit the job.
After listening to the boy's story, the sky grew even darker.
The sea began to pick up.
One by one, the people who had been collecting sea snails in the shallows quickly returned to shore, tugging on their ropes.
Only after reaching dry land did those people pull off their blindfolds.
They then discovered that the boy had already returned to shore and was talking to a mysterious person.
These snail collectors didn't dare to approach, didn't dare to leave, and could only shiver in the cold wind, facing away from the sea.
"… Alright, you can go back, I have no more questions."
Saul had roughly understood the frequency of the soul tides from the boy and didn't make him stay any longer.
But the boy looked at the people behind him, then turned back, summoning all his courage.
"Sir, may I ask, I have two younger sisters and three younger brothers, you, could you see if there's any chance they could become your apprentices?"
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