Netheril’s Glory - Chapter 77: Punk's Disappointment.

The darkness of night once again enveloped this land. Unlike the small town of Niailan, where there was still a little hustle and bustle, the entire vicinity of the White tower was completely silent. Due to the leakage of the abyssal aura, large areas of land were polluted into a weird black and red color, and whether it was insects or grasses, they all turned into distorted black remains.

Under the increasingly sharp wind, the remaining remains also became fine dust and disappeared completely into the dark sky.

The sky in the small town of Niailan was very gloomy. The howling wind, the oppressing environment, and pervasive dampness all indicated that heavy rain was coming. The townspeople, who have been working all day, couldn’t relax at all, and they hurried up to pick up the things outside as all of them knew from their experience that those crumbling pieces of cloth roofs wouldn’t be able to protect them from the upcoming heavy rain.

In the White Tower, Punk, who was now experimenting with an official-level alchemy potion, suddenly received a notification from the early warning formations he arranged outside the White Tower. His apprentice assistant has finally arrived.

The arrival of his apprentice assistant was anticipated very early by Punk. After all, an apprentice-level mage had no concealment in front of the official-level prophecy spells.

Punk, who was now in a bottleneck in his researches, was a little unhappy with the interruption of this visit. The prophecy spell clearly showed that this little mage had arrived in the town very early, but for some reason, she came here this late.

Nowadays, Punk completely devoted himself to various researches, and he had too many other things to do, like, there were a lot of spells that needed to be practiced and studied carefully, and also needed to learn a few super magic skills urgently, so he was not really in the mood to explore the little girl’s itinerary, now he just hoped that this apprentice would be helpful and would be able to save some of his times.

After putting down the tools in his hand and carefully putting the half-processed materials on a tray that isolated the flow of energy, Punk turned around indifferently to open the door of the White Tower.

Bilan stood tremblingly in front of the gate of the White Tower, which was at least three times higher than herself. The white gate was a piece of regular marble with no cracks on it. The entire White tower was like this. It looked like a square tower directly carved from a whole piece of granite.

But the white color of this tall tower did not give Bilan a feeling of whiteness or cleanliness. On the contrary, just standing in front of the door, she felt a filthy and evil aura spreading across the entire hill. And with the gusts of howling cold wind, she felt like countless invisible claws had surrounded her, and the white tower itself was more like a monster that wanted to eat people whole. Seeing this terrifying atmosphere, Bilan had the urge to turn around and escape as far as possible.

“Boom!”

The door of the White Tower opened abruptly, and the loud sound felt like it knocked on the soul in this dead night. Bilan subconsciously took two steps back and looked inside the door.

She saw a hooded young man standing at the door, who had a face that would even make girls jealous. He was wearing a blue robe, the hood covered his light blue hair, and his hands were half inserted in his robe.

However, what impressed Bilan’s mind the most, were not these features but the pair of cold, azure blue eyes. Staring in those eyes, she felt a chill in her heart. Under the gaze of those terrifying pupils, Bilan just felt that many of the excuses that she had thought of along the way had been forgotten entirely. And now, she couldn’t utter a single word.

Punk frowned slightly, looking at the girl who was standing in front of the door and trembling like a cat facing a hungry wolf.

Although he was a little pleased that now people no longer had the “Wow~ So pretty” reaction, but this kind of terrified look also made Punk a little unhappy. Obviously, no one would be happy if the person in front treated themselves as a demon crawled out of the abyss!

“You are late. Come in”!

Punk, who was still had many experiments to do, had no time to pay attention to Bilan, who had been stunned for more than ten seconds.

In his opinion, the psychological quality of this little girl was not suitable as his experiment assistant, and It also seemed to him like this little girl belonged to the Lawful neutral camp, so he feared that it would be impossible for her to assist him in dismembering living bodies.

Feeling the fearful little girl had already walked into the White Tower behind him, Punk immediately controlled the door to close firmly.

Now he found out that what he thought would be an effortless task was not so easy after all, and the side-effect of him blatantly opening the abyss portal in the middle of a town was already starting to show. People obviously “misunderstood” him; now, those shrewd but timid mages would not easily choose to risk their lives to become his apprentice.

In Punk’s thinking, if he was that evil, then like the red-robed mages of Sandalin Association, wouldn’t he just kidnap potential apprentices instead of announcing a voluntary recruitment notice.

But now he feels that even if he gave more knowledge and other temptation, except for a few crazy guys, no one would be willing to take the risk of becoming an experimental subject of a mage from the evil camp.

This was the reason why reputation was also important; it might not bring one strength, and sometimes it might become a burden; still, its importance could not be ignored, at least that was the case before one had the power to sway the entire world.

Punk felt now he had a deeper understanding of things like prestige and reputation.

“But now…”

Punk turned around, looked at Bilan’s eyes with an indifferent gaze, and began to explain his plan for this little student in a commanding tone:

“I know that your name is Bilan. Starting today, I allow you to call me your mentor. Your daily tasks are to clean the White Tower, sort out experimental materials, and regular cleaning up…”

After a slight pause, Punk glanced at the minced meat and internal organs stacked in the corner of the tower.

Bilan also followed Punk’s gaze, and finally, she realized what those dark things piled in the corner were.

She quickly recognized that those “things” were pieces of scattered fleshes and broken bones, and now she also knew what the strange smell she had been smelling since entering the White Tower was… It was the smell of blood!

Staring at the pile of minced meat that was still squirming with wide eyes, Bilan only felt a surge of tumbling in her stomach, and severe nausea ran straight to her throat from her abdomen.

After seeing such a tragic scene for the first time in her life, Bilan’s eyes became teary, but she still endured the desire to vomit and listened to Punk’s subsequent arrangements.

Because her intuition told the girl that if she showed any signs of disobedience now, she would die for sure, and it would be undoubtedly a very miserable death.

Punk paused again and watched Bilan, and he felt more and more disappointed with her. He started to wonder if this alchemist, who couldn’t even endure this little scene, would really save his time or take more of his time.

“That Lo Lan delivering this kind of goods even after being late for a week? Too disappointing.”

Had it not for the fact that, if he killed this trash in front of him, he would finalize his status as an evil mage, and that might attract retaliation from the lawful camps of Dolez, he would not have hesitated for second to slaughter this seemingly useless thing and use her for experiments, as the number of experimental slaves was not enough anyway.

“But at last,”

Punk sighed in his heart and comforted himself:

“It’s okay. I am sure I can find some work for this little girl to make her useful.”

So finally, Punk put aside the irritability caused by the failure of his experiment and the incompetency of his new assistant, he continued to explain her tasks to the already pale Bilan.