Chapter 21
Morgue Settlement Day
Today was settlement day for the laboratory.
Having just completed the structure of "Magical Energy Storage", Lucy couldn't be bothered to meditate. After a quick wash, she threw on her grey apprentice witch robe and headed toward the morgue.
In front of the scarlet iron gate of the West Tower, Tier-3 apprentice Karen was slumped over a wooden table, bloodshot eyes intently flipping through a heavy sheepskin book in his hands.
"Good morning, Senior Karen."
The silver-haired girl's greeting echoed in the damp air, but Karen seemed not to hear, keeping his head down. Lucy didn’t urge him.
Only after a while, once Karen had finished reading a chapter and carefully set aside the borrowed witch’s notes from the library, did he finally raise his head and speak in a gloomy voice:
"I remember you, the silver-haired apprentice witch who voluntarily joined the dissection room during the division of roles meeting. Surviving until now... lucky."
Lucy’s expression remained unchanged. She placed a hand over her chest and bowed slightly.
"I’ve always been lucky."
After all, she had hit the jackpot and died in her previous life—so Lucy silently added in her mind.
"Hmph, I hope you can stay this optimistic." Karen gave an inexplicable smile, his withered fingers brushing over the parchment on the table. "Morgue No. 66 received 3 humanoid enchanted beast corpses, submitted 8 enchanted beast organ specimens. Oh... not a bad result."
Karen looked up in mild surprise at the silver-haired apprentice witch before him.
Typically, for newly joined apprentices in the West Tower, handing over more than 3 specimens in their first settlement was considered acceptable. More than 5 would be considered excellent.
And this girl in front of him had handed over 8. Although they were all of the lowest value, it still placed her within the top ten of all apprentices he had overseen—considering that he himself had only managed 4 when he first arrived at the West Tower.
What he didn’t know was that Lucy had not handed over everything. She had secretly kept three high-value specimens: the Cradle of Enchanted Human Offspring, the Banshee’s throat, and its wings.
"After evaluation, the specimen value is 320 magic sand. Subtracting 150 magic sand for the corpses..."
Karen took out 2 magic stones and 70 magic sand and handed them over.
Nearly 3 magic stones of income in one week wasn’t bad, but for Lucy at the moment, it was barely worth mentioning.
If it weren’t for the need for Academic Points from Anatomy, she would have considered giving up corpse dissections entirely to focus fully on potionology.
After pocketing the magic stones, Lucy headed toward Morgue No. 66. But before she could walk far, someone called out behind her:
"Lucy, please wait a moment."
Lucy, in a rather good mood, glanced at the approaching person. He looked somewhat familiar.
Carlton?
The boy who, after being assigned to the West Tower, had tried to unite all the apprentice witches. He had quite a talent for speech and persuasion.
It was said that among the apprentices of the same batch, all had joined Carlton’s organization—called the Advancement Society—except for her and Nure.
In the blink of an eye, Carlton had already come up and subtly blocked her path.
Lucy had no intention of getting involved with these people. Moreover, the fact that this guy called out to her at this moment was no coincidence. While she was receiving her magic stones earlier, he had been watching from afar the whole time.
"What do you want from me?"
Her pretty face under the hood showed no expression, and her voice turned cold.
Perhaps already aware of her temperament, Carlton didn’t show the slightest anger. He smiled and said:
"It’s like this, I wanted to invite you to join the Advancement Society, so everyone can..."
"Not interested. Also, I’m in a hurry. Please move aside."
The girl’s chilly voice cut him off, choking the rest of Carlton’s words in his throat. Her right foot, clad in brand-new deerskin boots, had already stepped onto the stone stairs.
Ignoring Carlton’s stiffened smile, she strode away.
It wasn’t until Lucy had walked far that a brown-haired girl with freckles approached.
"She’s way too arrogant. You personally came to invite her, and she still acted so rudely. I think we should just leave her to fend for herself."
Carlton forced a smile again.
"No, Lisa, we can’t give up on any apprentice. After all, we’ve been classmates for two years."
"Besides, I saw Lucy receive two magic stones as payment. If we can get her to contribute, I’ll be able to exchange them at the Exchange Office for a bottle of Mental Strength Enhancement Potion."
Carlton’s fingers ran through Lisa’s hair.
"Once I advance to official apprentice, I’ll naturally protect everyone—especially you."
Lisa looked at Carlton with eyes full of admiration and affection, fully believing every word he said.
She also firmly believed that once Carlton became an official apprentice, he would protect her.
"Don’t worry, President. I’ll find a way to persuade Lucy to hand over the magic stones."
Carlton's hand moved from her hair to her cheek, gently stroking with affection.
"Then thank you, Lisa. You know, your place in my heart is different from everyone else’s."
"Mhm."
...
Completely unaware of the conversation between the two, Lucy had already returned to her Morgue No. 66.
She had just opened the "Anatomical Notes" and was preparing to continue constructing her witchcraft model.
At that moment, a series of metallic clangs echoed from the morgue's pipeline. A metal tray had slammed heavily against the morgue’s iron gate.
Seeing that "business" had arrived, Lucy had no choice but to put down the freshly opened "Notes". As usual, she donned the plague doctor mask, then reached out to open the scarlet iron gate and pulled off the black cloth covering the tray.
It was a completely shattered corpse. The tray was filled with chunks of flesh in various sizes, the largest no bigger than a palm.
Based on a few scattered features, it could be identified as the corpse of a mutated wolf.
This was her first time dissecting a humanoid enchanted beast that lacked any human-like body parts.
She opened the system prompt.
Soon, two blue glowing spots emerged on the corpse.
One was located at a relatively intact wolf leg, while the other, slightly larger, was at the wolf’s head.
Confirming the organ specimens, Lucy retrieved a medium-sized scalpel from her toolkit and, following the texture lines of the wolf leg, slowly sliced through the flesh.
Half a sandglass later.
A semi-transparent nerve fiber from the leg was placed intact by Lucy into the specimen preservation fluid.
After a quick clean-up of the blood-stained operating table, she moved swiftly on to extracting the second specimen.
As before, Lucy soon removed all the unnecessary tissues from the wolf’s head, revealing a skull glimmering with blue light.
She inserted iron forceps into the slit wolf head and gave a gentle twist.
With a crisp sound, the skull was easily pried loose.
But just then, an amber-colored orb rolled out from the cracked wolf skull, bouncing along until it landed on the silver dissection table with a soft clatter.
At the same time, a sudden sense of danger surged within Lucy.
Crack!~
A barely audible shattering sound rang out in the otherwise silent morgue. A fine crack had appeared on the marble-sized amber orb, and black mist mixed with an unknown, putrid fluid sprayed out violently.
With barely half a second’s hesitation, Lucy immediately slammed the enchanted skull she had just removed down on the bizarre amber orb.
Without waiting to confirm the result, she turned and bolted toward the morgue’s iron door like an arrow released from a bowstring.
At the same time, her mental strength surged. Two intricate and profound witchcraft models swiftly formed in her mind.
Basic Ring of Resistance, a Tier-0 witchcraft, created an arcane shield scaled to mental strength ×1.
Magical Energy Storage, a Tier-0 witchcraft, provided a +3 magical energy storage model for spells.
With the latter boosting the former, the magical energy grading of the “Ring of Resistance” reached 10.6°.
As a faint halo lit up around her, the amber orb—smashed by the enchanted skull—finally shattered completely.