Chapter 53: Chapter 53

Glenn had three crystal balls now — the usual one, the one that contained split souls and one used in the Underground World.

Going back to his dorm, Glenn found that the mushroom seeds had grown up. He noticed some farinaceous spores on the fungi’s fruiting body and collected them with meticulous care.

“These stuff hallucinated me and almost got me killed in the forest!” Glenn murmured unintelligibly as he put the spores into a flask.

There was another flask with a ginger, turbid liquid in it. The liquid was an extraction from the stomach of a crane on which Glenn had tested his Gadflies three months ago. According to Glenn’s long term observation and examination, this liquid was the key to the crane’s resistance against the Gadflies’ bad mutational effect — the one that deformed its host.

Another test result related to Gadflies was its role as a Symbiotic Insect in accelerating the host’s evolutionary process, especially the process of passive evolution.

Passive evolution referred to the obtainment of new or enhanced features or faculties while one was adapting to the changing environment. One example was the shift into upright walking: calluses appeared on humans’ heels to reduce the pain, and leg muscles got stronger to make it easier to walk. But passive revolution couldn’t compare to positive revolution in terms of the newly gained abilities, such as when a sorcerer upgraded to a higher level.

Natural evolution took time, but Gadflies could quicken the process and bump the relevant ability to a higher pitch.

As a consequence of passive revolution, Glenn was now more immune to being hallucinated because he had been entranced once by the mushrooms, and to being burned because he had received injuries from Daughter of Sun’s flame.

A barbarous idea came into Glenn’s mind when he made this discovery — to buy magical sticks of varied elements to hurt himself and thus improve his defense against them. But he was exhausted and went to bed. He fell asleep in, literally, a minute.

The next day, Glenn went to Dickens and other shops located in the trade market to purchase the magical sticks. Now he had ten sticks that were each made of distinctive element. These elements were the commonly seen ones: fire, water, ice, wood, earth, wind, thunder, light, dark, and life.

Glenn deliberately bought sticks that had offense power ranging from 20 to 30 points. By doing so, he would get around 10 point actual attack against him, because his mask would absorb 20 points offense without requiring Glenn having to consume his magical force. However, 10 point offense would readily kill a 4 point constitution body. So, Glenn followed Dicken’s proposal, who, despite his serious concern over Glenn’s method for a quicken evolution, gave him some Life Leaves. Life Leave, when put in the mouth, could protect one for a short time by raising one’s internal energy and could be used for multiple times.

One minor side effect was that after receiving an attack from a particular element, Glenn must take a certain kind of food to make the whole approach work. Diet couldn’t afford to be ignored, and it had to be the exact food.

The process went on — Element assault, being neutralized by Life Leave, Gadflies secreting special material and driving evolution speed up. Soon, Glenn had made a list of food that popped up in his head. They were produced subconsciously.

The foods were not difficult to find except for the one that came out when he was attacked by fire element. It was the Beauty Clam.

The Beauty Clam was what governor of Bi Seer city had entertained sorcerer Apollo with at the banquet. They were said to exclusively belong to the South Frontier Sea. They were very precious and hard to find and capture. Although there was an alternative to the Clam, but he desired the best choice and took his chance.

“Hi, Lafite. It’s Glenn. How are you?” Glenn made a contact with Lafite using his new black crystal ball.

“Yo! Come and see who this is! It’s Glenn, someone who has never contacted me first!” Lafite sneered.

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“Lafite, I’m doing a test, and I need some Beauty Clams. I remembered your father talked about where to get them. Do you remember?”

“Beauty? What kind of test require beauties?” was Lafite’s reply.

“Lafite!” Glenn accentuated Lafite’s name to signify to her to stop joking. “I’m in a hurry. I need to finish this test before I go meet sorcerer Norris.”

“How exactly does it concern me?” Lafite proceeded in her same serious tone.

Glenn sulked and ceased talking.

“Ha!” Lafite burst into laughter. She then said, “I don’t remember it. But why don’t you try the ‘Bounty Hunter’ at the Black Tower? You put a bounty on the things you want, and someone will get it for ya.”

“Yeah, good idea. I am going to do that.” Now seeing some progress on the matter, Glenn was about to end the call as he noticed, through the ball, Lafite’s bare shoulder and shapely bosom. So instead, he slobbered.

“I’m free tonight. Can I come to see you?”

“Why the polite formula? I’m your girl. See you soon.” Lafite blew a kiss towards Glenn.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Black Isotta was lit by lights. Glenn was walking towards Lafite’s dormitory. He walked without making any sound, without giving out any scents. He was a mystery!

Suddenly, Glenn’s attention was drawn to a feminine scream.

The screech was made by a girl who just got out of a yard. She didn’t see Glenn at first, and as she ran past him, her panicked eyes met Glenn’s. She said nothing and left immediately.

Glen took a few steps forward to have a look into the yard. It was dilapidated and was covered in thick and tall grass. In the middle of it was a water tower. This place was one of the two forbidden areas in Robinson’s eyes. Glenn had been warned by him to not develop any interest in this water tower. The reason was that it was haunted.

However, Glenn had always relied his reason on sorcery rather than supernatural beings. Saying a tower was “haunted” demonstrated his/her ignorance and even benightedness.

Glenn made some progress to the yard’s gate. He then paused for some seconds and strode into it.

The yard reeked of the smell of rotten grass, which had run rampant. The moment Glenn stepped through the gate, he observed two peculiarities — the noise of the school was gone: he couldn’t hear a thing, even the striking bells. And the brilliant light was gone as well.

He had entered a complete silent, dark area!

“It’s so weird. If this yard is enclosed by a sorcerer and thus absorbed the sound and light, then why can’t I feel any energy movement?!” Glenn wondered. “It is so strange even outside the water tower. Should I go into it?”