Adam handed the items over to Elliot without a care, and Elliot's amazement climbed with each one. He had expected the rewards to be generous, but he had never imagined there would be this much.
Never mind the contract—that was what Adam had genuinely earned, and the tower could not have shortchanged him there. The other items were another matter entirely. The materialized rune came from the Second Elemental Spire; a rune that let an apprentice gain a personal storage space at this stage was worth a fortune, and among all the apprentices of Mordo Academy, this was the only one of its kind. The library pass, meanwhile, showed that the tower looked favorably on Adam's future—a veiled attempt to draw him in.
The most unbelievable of all was the egg. Elliot lifted it in his palm and said to Adam, "I can't believe the tower would reward you with something of that grade. It seems to come from the Abyss, my friend. You have to be careful. Abyssal creatures are all chaotic and evil—if your strength can't overpower it, it will eat you."
Adam filed the warning away, but he wasn't worried. Outstripped by my own pet? Impossible.
Adam said flatly, "This is the reward from Mage Victor. He said I helped him solve a great trouble." Then, sounding a little puzzled, he asked, "Also—do you know what the trial nine months from now is about?"
Elliot handed the four items back to Adam with obvious reluctance, muttering, "If you were willing to sell these, you'd be a rich man in an instant. It's really enough to make a person jealous!" Then, with undisguised glee, he said to Adam, "You actually still don't know about the trial? Ha—I forgot, you've been holed up in the lab lately."
Elliot then told Adam why the trial was being held. Adam frowned. Whether the apprentices hated him meant nothing to him; he cared only about the trial itself. At his strength, if the trial were fought among this batch of apprentices alone, Adam could wipe them out with ease—but from what Mage Victor had let slip, the trial clearly could not be that simple.
Adam asked Elliot, "Do you know how the trial is carried out?"
Elliot shook his head. "It's different every time. Sometimes they throw all the apprentices into a secret realm to slaughter each other, and those who survive are deemed qualified. Sometimes they dump them in a magical beast habitat, and those who live are deemed qualified. It depends on how the academy arranges it."
Adam got nothing useful out of Elliot, but there was no need to worry too much. A trial meant combat, and all he had to do was be ready to fight. He still had nine months, and with free access to the library he could master as much magic as possible.
"And then there's this egg." Adam bounced it in his hand. If he could hatch it within nine months, it should come in very useful... probably? He had no idea what the growth cycle of this kind of other-plane creature was. Just what use an "infant" could be was still doubtful.
Adam spent the whole way thinking about his own affairs and didn't bother flying back to the lab, which let the apprentices lay eyes on him once again—with strange, hateful looks.
"Does being a genius mean you can do whatever you want?"
"Does being a genius mean you can ignore whether other people live or die?"
"Why do we have to be in the same batch as someone like that? That damned, selfish..."
These people's thinking was strange. They never looked for the cause in themselves, never actively fought for the right to choose; they only drifted passively with the current while complaining that the water didn't flow the way they wanted.
They only dared say such things to themselves in their hearts, or grumble under their breath, never loud enough for Adam to hear. Adam's earlier strike had worked beautifully—at least no fool had jumped out to bother him since. They knew Adam would really kill.
William stood in the distance watching Adam, torn inside.
Of the apprentices from the deserted island, only the four of them had survived. Ophelia had vanished after joining the laboratory; Cristel had been taken as a disciple by a full-fledged Mage; Adam shone with a light that could not be concealed. Only he had sunk completely into the crowd—and the saddest part was that he could see no way out.
His soul-level fire elemental affinity had once filled him with pride, but at the academy he had learned it was worth nothing. It could not make anyone look at him twice. If the academy could have stayed as it was, that would have been fine, but he didn't need to think hard to know that after the trial the whole situation here would be turned upside down. If he didn't seek a change now, he would sink for good.
But he had no resources and no connections. Duke Alfred's support had amounted to those magic items, and by now he had sold every one of them for energy stones—yet even after burning through all of them, he had only managed to learn a handful of spells.
And so he thought of Adam—this "companion" who had already built his own laboratory. Through his own channels he had learned how powerful psychokinesis was, and he realized this was his chance to change his situation.
William watched Adam's figure about to disappear into the building, and at last let out a long, murky breath and gave a bitter smile. Admitting defeat to someone like that isn't shameful... is it?
Having talked himself into it, William hurried after Adam and called out, "Adam, please wait."
Adam had been thinking the whole way about how to hatch the egg. Headmaster Victor hadn't told him; Adam had formed a guess from the feeling he got when he touched the shell, but he needed to confirm it at the library. Just then he heard a voice behind him: "William."
William came straight to the point. "Adam, I'm applying to join your laboratory—as... as a test subject in your research."
Adam hadn't expected to hear that. He looked at William and asked, "How many units is your initial spiritual power?"
William hadn't expected that question either. There had been conflict between them before, and he had braced himself to be refused outright or even humiliated—but Adam's attitude toward him now was no different from his attitude toward a total stranger.
Sure enough. Adam never once thought I was worth noticing.
William reached that conclusion with a sinking heart, then forced his spirits up and answered, "3.75."
James was the low-talent sample, Frank the special sample; William could serve as an ordinary one, and data drawn from multiple samples would help improve the meditation method. That had been Adam's thinking ever since he saw the royalty contract. Any research consumed vast resources, and his biggest source of resources right now was psychokinesis. In that case, he might as well shift part of his research toward something universal.
Naturally, the whole point of test subjects was to save him time: when the time came, all he would have to do was deal with the problems they had already surfaced for him.
At that thought, Adam said to William, "Fine. Report to my laboratory first thing tomorrow morning. I'll have the contract ready in advance."
With that, Adam turned and left. This was a trivial matter. It was easy to foresee that once psychokinesis truly spread, plenty of others would come applying to join—and whether William was among them made no difference to Adam.
It had been a long time since Adam had come to the library. The first floor was much livelier than before, and he noticed something odd: some apprentices would cluster in small groups to read a single book together.
"Adam." "Adam."
A few senior apprentices lingering on the first floor greeted Adam, which drew the attention of the rookies. The way they looked at Adam was no different from the others—though the funny thing was, as Adam passed they still edged out of his way with a mix of awe and fear.
Adam returned each greeting in turn, then walked over to the other-plane lore shelves and began looking through the material on the Abyss Plane.
Adam had never paid these books any attention before; he knew he was still far from being able to take part in a plane war, and there was no need to waste energy stones here.
From the books, Adam learned that the Abyss Plane was a collective name for a kind of twisted, chaotic, orderless plane. Such planes had no civilization; from the moment they were born, every creature in them fought and killed without end to seize the resources of survival. They followed instinct, were innately gifted, and could grow their destructive power without limit by endlessly devouring.
Adam put the book back on the shelf. This sort of general overview was no help to him. For the first time, he headed for the library's second floor.
Like most buildings, the library was shaped like a tower: the higher the floor, the more profound the knowledge and the fewer the books. Adam was a man of strong purpose. Curious about magical knowledge as he was, he did not linger; he walked straight to the other-plane lore shelves, and sure enough, found what he needed there—<i>Hatching and Raising Abyssal Creatures</i>.
"Abyssal life is a strange form of life. Its evolution is chaotic and cruel: the stronger it grows, the more disordered it becomes. Its diet covers everything—ether, energy, flesh and blood; there is nothing it cannot devour. And this devouring is one-way: there is only intake, never any return."
Adam mused over that opening sentence. By Earth's reckoning, life was the only entropy-reducing phenomenon within the universe, that closed system of rising entropy; yet in this high-magic world there could actually be entropy-increasing life. That is, once an abyssal creature grew powerful enough, it would destroy the plane it inhabited, then turn to invade the rest.
Adam rather felt this was no different from Mages—except that Mages invaded other planes to feed the Mage World in return.
Abyssal creatures had no fixed form; their appearance usually went beyond the describable. The hatching method, however, was nothing special—these things were easy to raise, needing only enough energy and enough flesh and blood. The key was that from the very start of hatching, one had to keep inscribing the master-servant contract with one's own blood and spiritual power, so that the creature would come under the Mage's control.
The rune group of the master-servant contract was not complicated; Adam memorized it in under an hour. But signing the master-servant contract was not the end of one's worries: if the Mage's strength as master could not keep pace with the servant's growth, the servant would inevitably turn on him.
A line of warning at the very end of the book caught Adam's attention: once an abyssal creature reaches level one, it is not permitted to appear in the Mage Plane; otherwise it will be destroyed by the Guardian of the World.