The moment the two Mages stepped out of the tower's teleportation formation, the enforcers swarmed around them. The alchemy puppets dropped into combat stances and issued a warning to the pair: "Mage Kino, Mage Ryan, a negative energy aura at critical threshold has been detected. Explain yourselves immediately."
At the same time, the tower's first floor was enveloped in a powerful energy field; the materialized energy disrupted the tower's normal operation, and even a Mage's formidable body felt as though needles were pricking its back. Ryan hurriedly dumped Adam out and said, "The apprentice Adam was struck by the ancient magic Soul Rend and is in an unstable state. I request an audience with Mage Victor."
At Ryan's explanation, the energy field weakened somewhat. The alchemy puppet walked up to Adam and extended a mechanical arm into the runic seal; Ryan promptly released the seal he had set himself, and a tide of silver micro-alchemy machines instantly swallowed Adam whole.
That done, the alchemy puppet paused in place for a moment, and then Headmaster Victor's voice sounded in the two Mages' ears: "Bring him to me."
Herded along by the enforcers, the two Mages made their way to the second-to-last floor of the tower, where they met the true body of the Mage who seemed never to have left this place.
"Good day, Mage Victor."
The enormous true body nodded to the two of them, then took Adam from the alchemy puppet's hands, brushing aside the silver seal with ease. After studying Adam's condition, he said, "This little fellow—I don't know whether to admire his boldness or grieve over his misfortune."
Mages Kino and Ryan knew that once Adam was in Mage Victor's hands, his fate was no longer something the two of them—or Adam himself—could influence; his life and death lay in the whim of a high-tier Mage. After briefly explaining the whole sequence of events, they sat quietly to one side.
Mage Victor extended an enormous finger toward Adam, and a three-dimensional screen of light appeared in the air. What it displayed was exactly what was happening inside Adam's soul sea.
Mages Ryan and Kino glanced at the screen, and their expressions abruptly turned shocked and strange.
"Soul Rend... mutated?"
Mage Victor nodded. "That's right, it mutated. Ancient magic is largely unstable; even a tiny influence can easily change its nature. This spell's original function was to rend the soul, but now"—he pointed at the two monsters tearing at each other inside Adam's soul—"the mutated negative energy has converged into a single whole. This spell already possesses power beyond a first-tier ancient magic, and it wants to seize control of this body."
Kino's field of research was utterly different from the soul; he could not quite follow what was happening inside Adam's soul. Still, he had heard Mage Victor say that the magic had mutated into a single whole—and yet now he saw two.
Hearing Kino's question, Headmaster Victor said, "This is exactly why I called him bold. Without any systematic knowledge to guide him, without ever having come into contact with ancient magic, this little fellow found his own way to fight it. He has turned himself into another despair monster."
Kino could not help asking, "And what will come of that?"
"Success or failure, nothing more. If he succeeds, he preserves himself; if he fails, he becomes a monster. But whatever the outcome, his soul will inevitably be tainted with the aura of ancient magic. It will have a great effect on the path ahead of him—it may even leave him unable to ever explore truth again."
Having said this, Mage Victor canceled his magic and handed Adam back to an alchemy puppet, gesturing for it to carry Adam to his laboratory. Then he said to the two Mages, "Your assignment is complete; go settle your rewards afterward. As for the fee for saving this apprentice—if he wakes, the two of you can work it out among yourselves. If he doesn't, the academy will accept his contract and pay you on his behalf."
The two Mages bowed and stepped back. Then Mage Victor spoke again: "Oh, that's right—the new recruitment work is very short-handed. If you have the time, you could take that assignment."
The world does not freeze in place for the sake of any one person. The academy, with Adam missing, carried on as usual. In Adam's laboratory, James and Frank, after their initial shock, accepted the news and prepared themselves for the possibility that Adam would never return. But they did not leave the lab—first, because of the contract, and second, because they had nowhere else to go.
After returning to the academy, William quietly signed a contract with the academy, becoming a contract apprentice. Then he disbanded his organization and once again took up a secluded life, seldom leaving his rooms.
Elliot came many times, but Adam was now in the headmaster's laboratory; he could neither see him nor get any useful news out of the other three. After one disappointment following another, he gradually stopped coming.
Only the three of them remained in the laboratory. When Adam had been there, they had hardly noticed; without him, they found they had accumulated a great many questions, and with Adam, their creator, gone, answering them by their own exploration and discussion alone was very slow.
Soon a new batch of apprentices arrived at the academy. There were no more guests from the deserted island: all nearly five hundred were high-talent apprentices recruited from the native towns and cities. Just as they themselves had been on arrival, the newcomers had eyes bigger than their hands, arrogant and conceited, forming cliques and throwing their weight around inside the academy.
Because of their birth and talent, they already had a certain amount of magical strength before enrolling, and because there were so many of them, they showed the previous batch of apprentices no respect at all, brazenly seizing mission resources for themselves.
Open clashes between old and new apprentices broke out many times; some apprentices even died in duels. At first William's batch held the upper hand, relying on the ferocious spirit they had won in fights for their lives, but as time passed and sheer numbers told, they slid into decline—and some had already "defected" to join the new apprentices and turned on their former companions.
So someone came to William and asked him to step in and teach that pack of clueless rookies a lesson, and win back the old apprentices' rights for them.
But William refused.
He found his own thinking drawing closer and closer to Adam's of a year ago. Watching these stupid, laughable squabbles, he felt only boredom—and at last he understood why Adam had coldly refused when he and the others had gone to ask for his help.
Just as he had not understood back then, they did not understand William—and then he, too, became a marginal man.
The rookies took this to mean William could be bullied, but after he struck without hesitation and killed several of them in quick succession, no one was willing to provoke him anymore—exactly as with Adam in his day.
One morning, after the rookies had taken the trial assessment and left the academy, the laboratory received its first visitor in a very long time.
Cristel.
William opened the laboratory door and stared blankly at the noble, aloof Cristel before him. The timid girl who had once been like a small wild animal was now completely different; looking at her was like looking at a second Adam.
"Long time no see, Cris."
"Good morning, William. Long time no see."
William invited Cristel into the laboratory, gestured for her to sit wherever she liked, then said with a sigh, "You're different from before."
Cristel smiled faintly, like an iceberg melting, radiant in the sunlight. "So are you. People always change, and always must, don't they?"
"True. They must, or they'll be weeded out."
After those words, the two sat in silence, and it turned out they did not know what to say.
Then Cristel rose and wandered around the laboratory, examining every instrument and every report with interest. William sat quietly, neither introducing anything nor stopping her. After a long while, Cristel asked softly, "Adam—still no news?"
William lifted his head. "You know too?"
"Mm. Instructor Blake told me the whole story from beginning to end. He's still that strong—escaping from a full-fledged Mage and fighting on until now."
Blake. Instructor. William savored the title with complicated feelings. His old companions had each gone their own way, while he still had not found his own, still living under Adam's protection.
"How have you been lately?"
"Very well. The instructor has knowledge there I couldn't finish learning in a lifetime, and I feel I improve every day." Every day I close the distance between me and Adam—and yet that benchmark, that goal I have to catch up to and surpass, is now neither confirmed alive nor dead.
"Still, the instructor isn't entirely satisfied with me. He has said many times that if it were Adam, he would certainly do better."
"Tell me—would he really die like this?"
William let out a long sigh.
"He absolutely won't. How could he die so pointlessly?!"
Cristel asked and answered her own question, then stood. She had not come to William for an answer, because the answer had long since been in her heart.
Just then the laboratory door opened again and James and Frank came in one after the other, looking curiously at the two of them. Cristel gave them a slight nod in farewell and walked out the door, heading into the distance without a backward glance.
James asked a wistful, lost-looking William, "Who was that? Her energy fluctuations are strong—I never even knew the academy had an apprentice that strong."
"Her? She's another Adam."
James and Frank exchanged looks, not understanding what William meant, and William showed no intention of explaining. He walked off alone to one side and, facing the spiritual power amplifier and magnifier, began constructing his meditation method.
A month later, the new batch of apprentices returned to the academy, having lost thirty percent of their number. Their trial had been harder than William's, and after being tempered by true brushes with life and death they were much steadier, and the academy finally regained its long-absent calm.
It was at that moment that the battle inside the soul sea of Adam—who had lain sleeping and suffering in Headmaster Victor's laboratory all this while—finally reached a verdict.