Under Gwen and Heti's questioning, Jenny finally broke her silence. For the first time, the complete story of the notebook and its previous owners was presented in front of them. Gwen also learned more about the rogue mage.
The first owner of the notebook was indeed the rogue mage, but he still did not leave his name in the notebook. Jenny only knew that he was a destitute, eccentric, and ostracized senior. The rogue mage came from the Violet Kingdom in the north of the continent and was once a member of the largest human mage organization, the "Secret Spell Society". However, as Gwen knew, his strength was low and he was ostracized. His research was considered deviant in the eyes of orthodox mages, so his life was extremely miserable. In the end, he left the Secret Spell Society in order to cure his daughter and entered the Ansu territory. The notebook that Jenny obtained was one of the manuscripts that the rogue mage left behind in his early years. If Gwen was not mistaken, he sold it to a mage in the Ansu Kingdom to raise money for his journey.
Perhaps he sold it for only three copper coins, or perhaps it was worthless and was only used as a gift for a pile of books and notebooks.
The circumstances of the second owner of the notebook were not much better. From the words in the notebook, it could be seen that the mage was also conducting "deviant" research. The reason he conducted such research was also because his personal strength was low and there was no hope for him to improve.
A mage who found it difficult to make progress in magic and runes placed his hopes on logic and mathematics to help him explore the truth of the world. The rogue mage's research on the universality of runes and the underlying laws gave him a guiding light, allowing him to vaguely grasp the path to explore the mysteries of magic without the help of powerful magic and without personal strength. However, the second researcher did not go far on this path.
Perhaps it was to raise money for his research, or perhaps it was to verify a certain piece of data obtained from the notebook, this unknown mage died in an expedition. The few belongings he left behind were quickly divided up, and the precious notebook fell into the hands of Jenny's mentor.
But Jenny's mentor did not become the owner of the notebook, because the 'orthodox mentor' was unusually disdainful of the notebook. He did not think that two low-level mages could reveal any truth by writing a bunch of calculations on a piece of paper. He also believed that the second owner of the notebook lost his life in an adventure because he believed the nonsense on the waste paper. The poor guy who died in the ruins proved the fallacy of the theory in the notebook.
Therefore, the mentor directly threw the notebook into the garbage outside the mage tower, and his "apprentice" Ravenkeyes picked it up.
And this so-called "apprentice" was actually the slave of the great mage.
This phenomenon was very common among orthodox mages. Their apprentices were usually divided into two types: real apprentices and non-human apprentices. The former were people with higher magic talent, or people of noble birth and pure blood, while the latter were just apprentices in the mage tower in name, but in fact, they were used as slaves and experiment materials. Ravenkeyes belonged to the latter.
Because of his poor magic talent and the fact that he was not from a famous family, Ravenkeyes was not valued in the mage tower. Although he was very talented in mathematics and logic, because of his poor spellcasting and rune sensing ability, he was called a "retard" and a "freak" by everyone in the mage tower. The great mage reluctantly taught Ravenkeyes some basic knowledge, and then used cheap magic potions and rituals, which had huge side effects, to force him to become an official mage. After that, he trained him as a runemaster, intending to let him draw magic circles and make props.
It was at that time that Ravenkeyes picked up the notebook and became the third owner of the notebook.
And a few years after that, Jenny met Ravenkeyes.
Unlike most of the "talented" people who could enter the mage tower, Jenny's background was more humble. She was not even selected to enter the tower as a "mage servant". This thin girl came from a poor village far away from the Captical, and her family had not dealt with Extraordinaries for generations, let alone having the "noble blood of a mage".
She was able to enter the mage tower because her hometown suffered a famine, and her family was about to starve to death. At that time, her "mentor" happened to pass by her hometown and wanted to "be kind and use the food in his hand to exchange for something with the local starving people."
Jenny clearly remembered that it was a windless but cold night. Her parents gathered the children, drew a lot, and picked her, who was only 14 years old.
The next morning, she was pushed into the carriage of the "great mage" and exchanged for enough food for her family: two bags of wheat.
She still remembered that there were a lot of things in the carriage: unknown herbs, animal specimens, stones, metals, bark, and a few numb children about her age.
The carriage was piled with experimental materials.
The mage used food in exchange for experimental materials, and she was brought to the mage tower as an experimental material.
After that, she met Ravenkeyes in the mage tower, an "apprentice" who was a mage servant but had a higher status than her.
Ravenkeyes was responsible for "feeding" the experimental materials.
The children who were brought here from the countryside were quickly put to use by the magician. Almost every two or three days, a child would be brought out. Some of them could come back alive, while some couldn't. Even those who came back alive quickly became crazy and weak. Jenny was aware of her fate, but she didn't run away.
Because Ravenkeyes reminded her every day: Don't run, it will be worse than death.
Just like that, it was finally Jenny's turn to be "put to use". She could not remember what happened that day because she was almost completely immersed in fear and confusion. But luck favored her: when she was sent to the experimental circle, she was suddenly detected to have a very weak magic affinity.
She turned out to have a talent for magic.
Because of her talent for magic, and because she was very honest before, Jenny kept her life and became one of the mage's apprentices. She was also a "servant apprentice" with the same status as Ravenkeyes. She also got her own surname: the mage very casually gave her the surname "Pero". In the human language, this word meant "wheat" because she was bought back by the mage with two bags of wheat.
Being free from the threat of death was already a great blessing for Jenny as an experimental material. But in fact, her situation was still not good: she was just a "thing" turned into a "slave", and in many cases, there was not much difference between the two.
But at that time, Jenny did not have much time to think about it. She was very lucky to be alive, and to be able to read and learn magic as a mage apprentice (even if she was a servant apprentice) was a good thing she had never thought of. She began to learn the knowledge eagerly, reading, recognizing runes, and memorizing spells almost day and night. Soon, she found that Ravenkeyes had a similar hobby and way of thinking as her …
They became good friends, friends despite the difference in age. Ravenkeyes excitedly showed Jenny his treasured notebook and told her about the incredible things rooted in mathematics and logic in the notebook. The two "apprentices" who were weak in magic and had not received a proper mage education at all absorbed the knowledge in the notebook and built their own worldview based on it.
They did not realize at all how deviant this way of research that relied on formulas and calculations to approach the truth was in the eyes of the orthodox mages who believed in the pursuit of the truth through personal strength.
On the other side, Jenny's' mentor ', a powerful magician, soon discovered that Jenny's magic talent was actually very low and pitiful. This sickly person who had crawled out from an experiment only had a tiny bit of ability to sense magic. With her talent in spiritual power, she would probably only be able to master a few apprentice-level magic tricks in her lifetime, and would have no chance of becoming an official magician.
So he soon stopped investing in Jenny and was eager to recoup the cost. He gave Jenny a bottle of magic potion and a magic circle blueprint, and asked Jenny to drink the potion and forcibly catalyze her to become a level-one mage. Then, she could start practicing as a runemaster.
Ravenkeyes, who had already drunk the potion, stopped Jenny in private and gave her a bold suggestion: why not believe in the knowledge in the notebook, believe in the formulas that were deduced based on the knowledge in the notebook, and try to control the runes with only mathematics and logic without the help of magic?
Jenny listened to Ravenkeyes' suggestion and completed the reconstruction of the magic circle as an apprentice.
It was probably the first magic circle in the world that was "calculated".
But her "mentor" did not reward her for it. Instead, he was furious and quickly found out that it was Ravenkeyes who was "playing tricks". Then, he followed the clues and found the existence of the notebook. This almost "betrayal" made him even more furious. He thought that a research notebook full of nonsense from a weak mage could bewitch his servant in his mage tower, which was a great insult to him.
The great sorcerer was so angry that he was ready to destroy the notebook and punish his two "apprentices" severely. But at this time, Ravenkeyes bravely stood up for the first time and took the initiative to face the wrath of his "mentor".
He accepted the punishment alone and saved the notebook and Jenny at the cost of one eye, a quarter of his soul, and two tendons. He tried to convince the tyrannical great sorcerer that it was valuable to keep the notebook and let the stupid apprentices study it. Maybe there was something in the notebook that was worth investing. He and Jenny could become such test subjects and make magic circles and runes according to the method recorded in the notebook. In this way, if they succeeded, all the results would belong to the great sorcerer. If they failed, the great sorcerer would only lose two experiment materials.
Jenny's mentor accepted this idea and let the two bold apprentices continue the research, but he never gave up on ridiculing and attacking them. He thought that those who could not control the high-level runes at all must be ridiculous, as stupid as serfs guessing the king's menu. How ridiculous was it if they could not understand and control the runes, but they could guess the power of the runes based on a few calculations?
But anyway, Ravenkeyes and Jenny could finally continue to study the content of the notebook, and they soon found that there was an obvious "fault" in the magic conduction properties of different magic-conducting materials. This fault seemed to divide all the magic-conducting materials into "positive" and "negative" sections, and a mysterious constant affected the actual performance of the magic-conducting materials in these two sections. It turned out that the magic-conducting materials only affected the "output power" of the magic circle, and the anti-interference stability of the magic circle mainly depended on the arrangement of the runes. The relationship between the magic-conducting materials and the magic-conducting materials was only affected by the positive and negative polarity and a constant …
They began to deduce this constant and gradually approached the final result. However, on the eve of success, their mentor suddenly gave them a task.
Go to an out-of-control magic well and reset the rune array there.
This was completely beyond their skills as a runemaster, and resetting the rune array of the magic well was not a runemaster's specialty. This was the job of a formal mage.
But the mentor's order was absolute, and there was a sentence that came with the order:
"Didn't you say that all the runes can be set in your formula? Then go and set it. "
Ravenkeyes accepted the order. He knew very well that the great mage had lost his patience, because the latter was not a person who could tolerate his servants acting freely, so he had no choice at all. And adjusting the runes in the magic well would also allow him to verify the most critical question.
Jenny's recollection came to an end. Her tone was very calm, as if she was not talking about herself. "Before Mr. Ravenkeyes left, he told me that he would adjust the runes according to the first conjecture. If he came back alive, E would be 1.29; if he didn't, E would be 1.66 — he didn't come back."
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
