Chapter 292
“Then there’s the Transformation School. They focus more on foundational knowledge and the study of the human body, excelling in surgical practices and adept at using spiritual materials to replace parts of the body for enhancement... Professor Ashford is the leading researcher in the Transformation School.”
After saying this, Adele didn’t stop; instead, she began to ramble on, venting her frustrations to Charles.
“People in the Transformation School are basically not all there... I even heard of someone wanting to swap out her brain to escape her delusions, but of course, she ended up dying... And then there’s the Healing School, which has the most slackers.”
“For example, if you get shot, a Healing School practitioner would use a ritual to heal you, but the bullet would remain in your body forever, and you could still die from infection... The Transformation School would advise you to replace the shot area with a new one.”
“As for the Alchemy School... it requires a lot of theoretical knowledge and memorization of formulas and reactions. It has the fewest members, and it’s easy to switch to the adjacent ‘Poison Maker’ path, which isn’t very respected within the Redemption Society either.”
“Charles, which one are you most interested in? I’ve dabbled a bit in all of them.”
Adele sat with her legs together, hands resting on her knees, leaning slightly forward, looking at Charles with anticipation, waiting for her response.
Rituals, potions, and surgery?
Charles instinctively simplified these three schools into those three words, a question forming in her mind.
“Can’t you study all three at once?”
Charles asked curiously, “If you learn them all, wouldn’t the results be better?”
“All three at once?”
Adele paused for a moment before responding, “Are you an idiot?”
Charles: “?”
No matter who said it, Charles wouldn’t care, but coming from Adele, it felt particularly cutting.
“You don’t have enough time to learn everything,” Adele shook her head and said, “It won’t help with the ritual at all. If you specialize in one path, you’ll digest the potions faster.”
That made sense.
Charles nodded.
She had instinctively thought about “how to better heal others,” but for the extraordinary, everything they did and learned was merely to complete the ritual.
“Let me put it this way,”
Charles seemed to have thought of something and asked, “If, and I mean if.”
“Isn’t a ‘Coroner’ quite similar to the Transformation School? One transforms corpses, while the other transforms the living.”
“If a ‘Coroner’ finishes transforming a living person and then returns to a state where they haven’t consumed any potions, wouldn’t that count as completing the ‘Physician’ ritual, allowing them to drink the potion directly?”
Adele paused for a moment after hearing Charles’s question.
Once she sorted out what Charles meant in her mind, she placed her hands on the chair beneath her, stood up, and walked over to Charles, taking a seat in front of her. She reached out to touch Charles’s forehead.
No fever?
Why is she talking nonsense?
Returning to a state without having consumed potions?
What kind of ignorance does it take to say something like that?
But instead of directly refuting Charles, Adele decided to check her head later. For now, she followed the thread of Charles’s conversation:
“Strictly speaking... yes.”
“As long as the person transformed by the ‘Coroner’ is still alive and their physical condition is indeed better than before, it counts as completing the ‘Physician’ ritual.”
“But you can only drink one type of potion. If you choose to be a ‘Coroner,’ you won’t be able to choose ‘Physician’...”
In Adele’s eyes, there was still an essential difference between a “Coroner” and a “Physician,” because she had truly seen a “Coroner” at work.
They dared to stitch anything together, and the resulting monstrosities were terrifying—this had nothing to do with medicine, as most “Coroners” used dead materials for their stitching.
After hearing Adele’s response, Charles felt she had a backup plan.
In the future, when using a “Coroner” save, she could stitch a living person to complete the “Physician” ritual, and then use a clean save to drink the “Physician” potion next time, thus speeding through the first tier of the “Physician” path.
Next, Charles asked a lot of questions about potion-making. Since these questions were related to Adele’s expertise, she answered them all diligently.
Charles was indeed preparing to pursue the Alchemy School, as it was convenient for poison-making and could easily transition into the “Poison Maker” path, completing another ritual.
Adele was right; knowledge should serve the purpose of the ritual. As for other knowledge, she could explore that when she had free time.
Throughout Charles’s inquiries, Adele maintained a smile, trying her best to appear knowledgeable.
If it weren’t for her insistence at the end that Charles call her “Teacher Adele,” Charles might have genuinely thought that the calm, teaching side of Adele was her true nature.
When Charles finally mentioned she was leaving to rest, Adele reluctantly got up, took Charles’s hand, and walked her to the carriage, watching until it disappeared from view before returning.
Adele’s journey of learning had always been solitary, and having a peer to study medical knowledge with might have been the most wonderful day she’d experienced since starting her medical studies.
After bidding farewell to Adele, Charles sat in the carriage and opened the system’s simulation interface.
【Next Day: 1 Day (Saint Year 741, July 3, 06:00) (Cost: 10 Fate Points)】
It was now just under 12 hours until dawn.
Even if she let her simulated self prepare, there wouldn’t be much time to get anything ready in those few hours.
Upon returning to Aivina’s estate and to her room, Charles took out the “Endless Manual of Forgetting” and wrote a note.
【Get a handle on the movements of Opode and Lucy, and if possible, also figure out Xiu’s whereabouts.】
With such a short time frame, it was basically impossible to have Tara bring reinforcements; she had to rely on her own strength to approach these third-tier individuals.
Rationally speaking, it would be best to choose the “Subverter” save at this point.
Because that was Charles’s strongest save, and even if something unexpected happened, the “Subverter’s” abilities could keep her alive for 24 hours.
But Charles didn’t plan to survive for 24 hours in the simulation.
She couldn’t continue to exhaust her mental energy.
This simulation was straightforward: she would test the effects of the “Nemesis” after its limit was pushed. If it worked, she would design a trap for the key person based on that; if it didn’t, she would still have ample time and energy to think of other plans.
She only needed to use the pure essence of No.0 to ensure nothing went wrong, complete the task, and then exit by suicide.
Charles returned the Endless Manual to the system’s repository, sat on the familiar sofa, leaned back, and slowly recited in her mind.
“Next Day.”
“No.0.”
Silver light burst forth before Charles, enveloping her completely.
...
【Next Day】
【Saint Year 741, July 3, 06:00】
【Countdown -23:59:59】
As the silver light faded from Charles’s view, the system panel displaying the time and countdown gradually disappeared. She felt herself nestled in a warm bed.
She raised her hand, intending to lift the covers to check if her simulated self had left a notebook, when she heard a familiar voice.
“Hmm…”
At this moment, dawn was just breaking, and Aivina rubbed her eyes, looking sleepily in Charles’s direction.
“Are you going out...?”
Aivina seemed still half-asleep, her voice soft and ethereal as she continued, drowsily, “Don’t forget... afternoon tea…”
Her eyelids appeared to be struggling to stay open. After saying this, she closed her eyes again, quickly slipping back into sleep.
It was clear she was truly exhausted.
Afternoon tea?
Did my simulated self agree to something like that?
It must be related to an event; without drinking any potions, her simulated self wouldn’t create problems under the influence of delusions and potions.
Charles didn’t want to disturb Aivina any further. She carefully rolled out of bed, her gaze fixed on the notebook resting on the low table in front of the sofa.
She slipped on her slippers and walked over to the notebook, reaching out to pick it up and flipping it open.
【The time left is a bit short, but since this is a simulation, some methods that can’t be used in reality can be employed.】
Table of Contents
