Chapter 88: The Auction (1)
Translator: Leo Editor: DarkGem/Frappe
Angele closed the door carefully, took off his clothes, and lied in bed. There was still blood and sweat on his body, but he could not resist the comfy bed.
‘Zero, check my body condition,’ he thought.
‘Checking… Various burns caused by electricity and lightning damage. Negative energy particles have damaged your nerve system, and your ability to use spells is impaired. Your organs are failing, please take action as soon as possible, otherwise you will get some serious sequela.’
It was not as bad as Angele had thought. He had known that his body won’t be able to handle all the negative necromantic energy particles that he used to increase his magic resistance for a short duration. The organ damages were caused by those electric arcs he had taken during the fight. In other words, everything was just as he had expected.
Angele struggled for a while and got out of the bed. He was drowsy, but he had to take care of his injuries first. Walking to the herb box, he grabbed some purple beans from it. He then put them into the stone-made grinding bowl on the table and started to grind the beans into powder.
It took him about a minute to make the beans into rough purple powder.
Angele opened the drawer, and there were many small test tubes lined up on a wooden rack. Most of the tubes were filled with green, blue, and red liquid or powder.
He grabbed a tube that had blue powder in it and closed the drawer. He then removed its stopper and poured all the powder into the grinding bowl. After putting down the empty test tube, he started to grind again.
After several seconds, white smoke started to come out of the grinding bowl, and Angele could smell the acrid fumes in the air.
*CHI*
Angele poured some water into the bowl, and the smoke quickly disappeared. He then spooned some thickened liquid from the bowl and put it into his mouth.
The liquid was bitter and spicy, and it wasn’t pleasant tasting at all.
‘Positive Particle Neutralizer consumed. Time until the negative energy particles are neutralized: 17 hours,’ Zero reported. Angele put down the spoon, satisfied with the result.
The Positive Particle Neutralizer was usually used to heal injuries caused by necromancy spells, and it could be easily made. Neutralizers were mostly used on normal people, thus, Angele had never thought he’d need one of them.
He didn’t need to worry about the negative energy damage for now, so he looked at the elephant hearts on the table. They were the most valuable items he had obtained during the mission.
“I need to have a good rest first.”
Angele shook his head, deciding not to start the procedure of making them into enchanted items yet. He threw the used bowls into the sink and walked into the backyard. There, he fetched a basket of water from the well and poured it over his head.
The chilling water from the well made him feel refreshed, and his underwear was soaked. He put down the water bucket and pointed in the air.
A light red rune appeared on the tip of his finger, then disappeared within a second.
“Ossell,” Angele muttered.
Tiny red particles began glowing on his skin, and there was steam coming from his underwear. After about ten seconds, his underwear was dried and clean.
‘That’s one advantage of being a rank 3 apprentice. Using energy particles really helps my daily life.’ Angele could use Wind energy particles to increase his moving speed, Fire energy particles to dry the clothes up, and Life Energy Particles to make plants grow faster.
He sat down on the ground and started to meditate. After ten minutes, there were green light dots floating around him. The backyard seethed and teemed with life energy.
He opened his eyes and pointed at the burn marks on his body. Groups of green light dots gathered and covered them up.
Those Life energy particles could help Angele recover faster and heal his wounds better. He was not sure if using them on himself too often would cause any side-effects, but the only thing he noticed was the itchiness coming from the wounds. He returned back to his room after patching himself up.
After entering the room, Angele suddenly had a strange feeling that something was approaching him, and it was something dangerous. He scrunched his eyebrows and every object in the room became marked with blue lines by Zero.
‘Boosting your five senses… Searching for unknown signals…’
‘Strange signal detected, marking it now…’
A tiny red dot dropped on the corner of the room, the distance to the signal and various other information listed by it. Angele had thought it was an object, but it was a man that was crouching on the other side of the wall.
Angele stayed calm, reading all the information about the man. The stranger was obviously stalking him, and his mission was probably to collect as much information as possible.
The stalker was using the same skill he had obtained from the thugs he’d encountered when he first came to the city, and it was the skill he had been practicing.
‘Snake of the Sand Forest?’ Angele guessed.
He had wondered why those people had never come to him to avenge their killed members.
Angele had taken the scroll with their secret stealth skill recorded on it from the a.s.sa.s.sin, killed those thugs in a brutal way, and had expected the organization to take revenge on him. They probably knew that Angele was weak at this moment and so decided to take action.
Angele was severely wounded and was still recovering. Those thugs probably thought it was the best chance for them to try to attack him.
However, they probably hadn’t expected Angele to learn the secret stealth skill so fast that he could already detect their a.s.sa.s.sin’s presence.
Angele pointed his finger at the wall, and some black smoke came out of his fingertip. The smoke went through the gap of the window and hit the a.s.sa.s.sin. Angele heard the a.s.sa.s.sin groaning while trying to escape, and the man quickly left the place.
What Angele had released was a small amount of necromantic energy; it would not do any damage to the knight-level a.s.sa.s.sins, but he was just trying to let them know that he could easily detect their presences.
Angele’s expression changed. He wanted to go after the man, but he was not sure if they had something else waiting for him, and he wasn’t fully prepared to fight yet. Also, he was actually happy that the organization had finally approached him—he still wanted to know if they really had the Dragon Scale Flower. Although the a.s.sa.s.sin escaped this time, Angele had special ways to trace the negative energy he had released.
But still, Angele decided to be more cautious about things.
*******************
Twelve days later.
“Ha!”
Tia yelled and swung her crossguard sword toward Angele.
*Clang*
Angele easily blocked the slash with a black saber, barely moving his body.
They were practicing sword skills in the backyard together, and Tia kept attacking while Angele kept blocking. However, Angele was predicting all of Tia’s moves without breaking a sweat. Still, he was happy that Tia had improved a lot after he taught her his sword skills.
“Very good, you’re improving a lot,” Angele praised Tia, smiling. “Take a rest, and let’s have breakfast.”
“Yes, Master!”
Tia was still panting. She put down her sword and bowed to Angele. It had been awhile since Angele had taken her in as his student.
She was a hard-working girl and learned things fast. She practiced every day after being taught his sword skills and was pa.s.sionate about learning.
Angele wanted to know if Tia really trusted him and decided to test her by teaching her wrong ways of using certain skills. Although she looked confused for a second, she started to practice those skills without asking any questions, and Angele stopped her right away.
He trusted her a lot now. Tia was the perfect student for him, and he asked her to leave the pie house. He decided to pay her for bills and ask her to focus on practicing sword skills.
Watching Tia practicing his sword skill set reminded Angele of the days back at the Rudin Empire.
He had developed his own set of sword skills with the help of the chip, and that was the reason why he had become strong quickly. Besides the attributes, Tia was very close to the old Angele.
He slowly walked to the dining room, and Tia entered the room before him. She carefully laid down the sword and put the vegetable pancakes Angele had ordered into the plates. She also poured a gla.s.s of milk for Angele before stopping to stand by the table.
Angele liked the girl a lot. She was very thoughtful, and she always had a serious expression on her face.
After breakfast, Tia did the dishes and left. Angele decided to meditate in his room for a while.
He had already fully recovered from the injuries and now wanted to convert those hearts he had gotten from the mission to enchanted items.
‘Zero, how’s the progress of a.n.a.lyzing the Lightning Rune? Also, report the progress on all other missions.’
‘Lightning Rune: 54% complete.
Enchantment Procedure Simulation: 31% complete.
Potion of Tranquility: 11% complete.’
Angele scrunched his eyebrows. ‘How long do you need for the completion of the formula for Potion of Tranquility?”
’15 days.’ Zero’s answer was a bit disappointing.
Potion of Tranquility had similar effects to Awakening Potion—they could both help Angele increase his Mentality. The problem was that he had run out of the materials for crafting more Awakening Potions, and his body was already resisting its effect, so he decided to find the formula for Potion of Tranquility.
High Mentality would help Angele break the limit. He also needed to find the Water of Asu and the defense spell model, but he didn’t have any leads on those at the moment. Benedict had only offensive ranged spells, and his defense came from his enchanted items and the special magic circle.
Angele walked toward a bookshelf by the wall and took a book from it. There was a piece of yellowed paper in the middle of it, and the words on it were all written in a special language, which normal people would never be able to read.
It was the formula for Potion of Tranquility, but it was encrypted with the Nier Code. Angele had burnt the original version and made a new one with the encryption.
He read the formula again. It was scanned and stored in the chip, but the way it was written caught his attention, and he wanted to look at it with his eyes.