Chapter 32
The Previous Chapter Title Was Actually Forgotten
Seventh Floor of the Tower
"I can’t detect any magical energy fluctuations of a curse or possession on you."
Blaji withdrew the crystal ball used for detecting curses back into his wizard robe. His light brown pupils reflected the image of the silver-haired girl seated across the living room.
Half an hourglass earlier, Lucy had left the library and come to find Blaji. After describing the nightmare from the previous night, she hoped he could perform a check on her.
But judging from the crystal ball's reaction, there was nothing unusual.
"Perhaps your Contamination Value is too high? Or maybe you're just exhausted? Dear, how long has it been since you truly slept?"
Leticia, dressed in a long robe, offered her suggestion from the side.
Ever since her contamination syndrome had been cured by Lucy, she had resumed her wizard studies.
Although wizards could rely on meditation to go without sleep for twenty-four hourglasses, doing so would strain their mental strength and could easily lead to hallucinations over time.
Lucy pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to recall.
Since crossing over, she had indeed never lain down for proper rest, and her potion experiments had kept her up through several consecutive all-nighters.
"Maybe." Lucy was about to take her leave, but suddenly remembered something. "Senior Blaji, do you know High Elvish?"
Blaji was slightly startled, then recalled:
"That’s an extremely complex writing system. I tried studying it back when I was a basic apprentice, but I eventually gave up."
Lucy felt puzzled.
If it were merely a matter of script or language, then with a wizard apprentice’s mental strength, there shouldn’t be any fundamental barrier to learning it.
Blaji continued, "High Elvish is not just a simple written language; it is a symbology imbued with magical runes. Each character carries dozens of times the meaning of the common script. It’s said that spells cast with it can be unleashed instantly."
Lucy’s pupils contracted slightly.
The elderly man in the library who had recommended she study High Elvish now appeared increasingly enigmatic in her memory.
From his demeanor, it was obvious he was quite familiar with this script.
Bidding farewell to Blaji and his wife, Lucy quickly returned to her dormitory.
Lucy lit the magical Everbright Lamp on the desk and opened the travelogue titled "Traveling with Migratory Birds."
Based on the symbol on the title page, she quickly found the corresponding entry in the High Elvish Introductory Dictionary.
"Dedicated to every scholar who loves anatomy The Pale Scalpel."
Scholar? Not wizard!
Lucy couldn’t help but grow even more curious about the identity of this Pale Scalpel.
Her fingertips traced the gold-embossed patterns, and she turned to the second page.
Fortunately, most of the text here was written in the common wizard script.
"When I advanced to a peak apprentice, I began to seek the true essence of the Anatomical School. I once firmly believed that truth lay beneath the blade of the scalpel."
"No, the essence of anatomy is biology, is medicine, is specimenology, even mineralogy... Those specimens soaked in preservative fluids taught me how to dissect life, but never revealed the mysteries of its evolution."
"Until that morning it was a flock of beautiful migratory birds. They formed the shape of the symbol 'λ', a character representing wavelength in mathematics, and symbolizing 'the shackle of metamorphosis' in High Elvish. At that moment, I suddenly realized that the true essence of the Anatomical School might not lie in how to dismember still death, but in how to observe the flow of life."
"And so, I set down the blood-soaked intestinal gloves, stuffed my satchel with specimen jars, a compass, and a blank journal. This journal would record the five hundred and thirty-one days and nights I journeyed with the migratory birds."
"This is not a rigorous academic journal, but rather an invitation from the wilderness..."
After reading the preface, Lucy couldn’t tear her eyes away from the yellowed pages of the book.
It wasn’t the lyrical writing that held her gaze, but the insight into the Anatomical School.
Perhaps, observing the flow of life truly was the essence of anatomy.
Lucy stared at the slightly messy handwriting on the yellowed paper until moonlight climbed fully across the windowpane.
Unfortunately, apart from the preface, the entire travelogue was densely written in High Elvish, like a thick heavenly tome.
...
Early morning
While meditating, Lucy’s whole body was drenched in sweat. Her brows were tightly furrowed, and she trembled uncontrollably.
At some point, she suddenly opened her eyes.
Only after reaching under her pillow and grasping her hidden staff did she slowly calm down.
She had the exact same dream as the night before.
Only this time, she had hidden earlier in a shrubbery outside the corridor, while that long-armed shadow searched for her everywhere.
Just as the twisted claws were about to part the leaves, she had struggled awake from the dream.
In the dream, she had nearly forgotten that she possessed extraordinary powers. She couldn’t even muster the thought of resisting her mind was filled only with the urge to flee and hide.
This sense of being bound and powerless left her uneasy.
What unsettled her even more was a faint intuition: the moment she completely forgot her identity as an apprentice within the dream, that eerie creature with the human face would truly bite into her.
Lucy sat by the edge of the bed, her smooth, fair legs appearing as delicate as jade in the dawn light. Her slightly damp silver hair draped beside her ears.
Her exquisite, sapphire-blue eyes gazed toward the window.
Yet Blaji had already confirmed she bore no curses, and Orlando, being just a Tier-3 apprentice, shouldn’t have the ability to pull off something that would elude a Tier-6 apprentice.
Gathering herself, Lucy washed up briefly and left the dormitory.
Tomorrow was the day of the second settlement at the morgue. Today, she had to dispose of the few remaining corpses still stuck in the pipeline.
But before that, she needed to make a trip to the library on the tenth floor.
She soon found records about "mysteries" on the first shelf.
Mysteries fell under the "Occult Studies" of the wizard schools, an extremely niche and specialized field. Even across the entire wizard continent, there were very few towers focused on it.
Because of this, even wizards had very limited understanding of mysteries.
The only certainty was that a "mystery" was a kind of lifeform born from resentment mysterious entities that easily emerged around the time of a creature’s death. The stronger the hatred or grudge, the more powerful the resulting mystery would be.
"Resentment and hatred? By that logic, mysteries are basically what people used to call ghosts!"
Looking at the brief introduction about the birth of mysteries in the Occult School, this idea naturally occurred to Lucy.
No wonder people said the Anatomy School was prone to encountering mysteries. With how many corpses were dissected every day, it was inevitable that something foul would appear.
But this also gave Lucy a possible solution.
If Orlando had indeed turned into a mystery and was now haunting her, everything suddenly made sense.
And since the Anatomical School was one of the fields most exposed to mysteries, it surely had methods to counter them.
With that in mind, Lucy briskly headed toward the West Tower.
Morgue No. 300
Karen looked gloomily at the silver-haired girl knocking at his door and said helplessly:
"Miss Lucy, do you already have so many magic stones that you don’t know what to do with them?"