Diary of a Dead Wizard
Chapter 436: Elf Skin and Black Iron Coffin (1)

"Saul?" A familiar voice called out to him.

Saul turned around and saw it was Mentor Kaz.

Kaz's neck wound had fully healed, but he still looked pale and exhausted, his mental state especially poor.

"Mentor Kaz."

Kaz looked at Saul, his eyes scanning him up and down, just like when they first met.

"Sigh, who would have thought that you would be the first apprentice to become a true wizard?" Kaz shook his head again. "Maybe I’m not cut out to be a mentor."

"Mentor Kaz?" Saul stepped forward, wanting to support him. He had always known that Kaz appeared aged, but seeing him today, he suddenly felt how tired his heart had become.

"I’m fine." Kaz noticed Saul’s concern and waved it off, then looked toward the ruins of the Wizard Tower. "I once thought that, even though some of Gorsa Tower Master’s methods were difficult to bear, as long as we endured for a while and completed the resurrection experiment, we could still live well. But I underestimated their greed and oppression. The kindling eventually turned into an uncontrollable fire, and ironically, they burned themselves into ashes in the end."

Kaz looked back at Saul, hesitated for a moment, then quietly warned him, "The Tower Master still wants to resurrect Yura; he hasn’t truly given up. Be careful. Perhaps now he will appreciate your help, but if one day he still cannot achieve his goal, he may turn his sights on you again."

"I... understand. Thank you, Mentor Kaz."

Saul understood Kaz’s concerns.

Saul had once thought that as long as the resurrection experiment was completed, Gorsa would have achieved his goal. But now, it seemed that his desire to resurrect Yura was not to bring his beloved wife back to life.

Because if the Tower Master truly loved Yura, he would not have remained indifferent to her suffering.

Saul thought back to what he had heard three years ago in the puppet's whispers, "Kill me," and he understood that the real Yura had long since been unable to endure the pain required for resurrection.

At that moment, Gorsa's usual tender treatment had become a suffocating cage.

As Saul and Kaz were talking, apprentices slowly began arriving from the distant forest.

There weren’t many, fewer than ten.

Saul recognized several familiar faces among them: George, his former servant companion, and Kurom, the one who liked to dance with corpses—he was even holding a complete female corpse in his arms.

These apprentices were often not particularly powerful, or, like Kurom, loners.

They had never been particularly noticeable in the Wizard Tower, but now they were among the few survivors.

Of course, there were also some Second Rank and Third Rank apprentices who had been out on missions and hadn’t returned.

It seemed these people considered Mentor Kaz their anchor, crowding around him with anxious faces. Only George carefully greeted Saul.

Since becoming an apprentice wizard, George had finally understood the gap between him and Saul. He also realized that being a wizard was not a safe identity; sometimes, power and terror grew more dangerous with strength.

This caused him to avoid getting too close to Saul.

Because the aura around Saul made him tremble with unease.

"Ah! It’s Master Saul!" George had a thumb-sized lump on the left side of his neck, from which a boy’s innocent voice could be heard.

"Shh!" George quickly covered the lump.

Saul nodded at him. "Is that your younger brother?"

George bowed and said, "Yes, he said he wanted a head, so I thought I’d grow a human face tumor."

"What nonsense!" Kaz scolded from the side. "A human face tumor is very prone to mutation, even polluting yourself. Who taught you to do this?"

George was stunned and mentioned the name of a Third Rank apprentice, only to realize that the person had already died in the Wizard Tower.

"Really!" Kaz sighed deeply. "I used to be so focused on the resurrection experiment. Now that the experiment no longer needs to be done, I should focus on disciplining you fools."

For some reason, after saying this, Kaz’s previously exhausted and defeated aura seemed to weaken considerably.

Watching Kaz scold the incompetent apprentices in front of him, Saul couldn’t help but shake his head and smile wryly.

As the sun set, Kaz and the other apprentices who had returned gradually lit a bonfire at the edge of the ruins.

With the faint light, Kaz and the other apprentices began to clear the rubble of the Wizard Tower.

Saul was also among them. He was looking for the second warehouse because, besides the materials he had left there, Hayden was still lying in the stone coffin!

Fortunately, although the Wizard Tower had collapsed, the upper part was shattered into pieces, while the lower floors, from the tenth level down, had collapsed horizontally and were lying on the ground.

Below the fourth floor, things were relatively well-preserved.

However, even so, most of the butlers and servants did not survive.

The collapse of the Wizard Tower triggered a chain reaction with some of the magical materials. Even the most ordinary of these materials were dangerous to non-wizards, and many were already unrecognizable by the time they were unearthed.

In order to recover as much of Gorsa’s unwanted assets as possible, Kaz led the remaining apprentices and servants to clean up the ruins. In the end, they did manage to salvage quite a few valuable items.

However, Saul noticed that the elusive head butler, who commanded all the servants, was not here.

There was neither a body nor any sign of him among the survivors.

"Could he have been taken by Gorsa as well?" Saul wondered quietly.

The next morning, Kaz found Saul again.

"We’ve basically finished cleaning up the ruins," Kaz said with a bitter smile. "But I found that most of the items from the rooms above the 19th floor are gone. I suspect Gorsa took them. Haha, I was hoping to check out the Tower Master's collection, but it seems I’m out of luck. How about you? How did things go on your side?"

The East Tower’s first floor was considered Saul's domain by default, and no one dared to come and steal anything, not even Kaz, who deliberately stayed away.

"After the Wizard Tower collapsed, the bronze door lost its activation. Some of the materials in the first warehouse were not contaminated, so I picked a few things, and I’ll leave the rest for you, Mentor Kaz."

Kaz didn’t refuse. The irresponsible Tower Master had already run off, and if he still wanted to look after the surviving apprentices, he would need plenty of supplies.

"The second warehouse…"

"You can take whatever you can from the second warehouse. The materials there are quite dangerous, even Third Rank apprentices aren’t supposed to use them casually."

Saul was tempted, but he truly didn’t have a bag large enough. Even his compressed travel bag only had a few cubic meters of space, not nearly enough to carry an entire warehouse.

"The bodies in the second warehouse have already rotted. Many of the materials were stored using partitions. Some of them started to degrade when I was there, causing some loss," Saul described with a smile.

"I still took some with me, and there’s plenty left—so I’ll leave it to you, Mentor Kaz."

"That’s fine. It’s dangerous for you to carry it all anyway," Kaz accepted once again. After a moment, he asked, "Saul... are you planning to leave?"

"Mm." Saul didn’t deny it.

"Did you... take all the vengeful spirits from the interlayer?"

Saul froze. He hadn’t expected Mentor Kaz to notice, but he admitted it directly. "Yes. Mentor Gorsa must have planned it from the beginning. Once the experiment succeeded, he would leave, so he said he would leave the Wizard Tower to me... but now, the Tower has collapsed. However, Gorsa still gave me something very important. The vengeful spirit fragments are among those things."

Kaz opened his mouth as though he were about to speak, but then, after thinking it over, he chose not to ask further.

"Alright, young man. It’s time to go out and make your way in the world. Once we finish cleaning up here, I plan to take any apprentices who are willing to come with me to the Kema Duchy."

Saul was taken aback. He hadn’t expected Kaz to leave as well.

"Aren’t you going to rebuild the Wizard Tower here?"

Kaz smiled and waved his hand. "What right do I have to build a Wizard Tower? Besides, this place was given to Gorsa by the Kema Duchy. I can't hold it."

"There are also some small wizard organizations within the Kema Duchy. I plan to find a suitable place to settle there. By the way, the organization will be called the Necromancer Garden. If you ever go to the Kema Duchy, you can come and have a look."

From Kaz’s words, it seemed like he had already established and expanded the Necromancer Garden organization.

Suddenly, a silver butterfly fluttered into Saul’s sight, followed by Penny’s lively, childish voice.

"Brother Saul, Keli’s awake!"

Saul froze for a moment, then broke into a joyful smile. He bid farewell to Kaz.

"Mentor Kaz, Keli’s awake. I’ll go check on her."

"Go ahead, go ahead!" Kaz waved his hand quickly.

Saul followed the Nightmare Butterfly, jumping directly into a large pit from the original small garden. Before hitting the bottom, a black tentacle as thick as a thigh reached up to catch him.

Saul jogged over and saw Senior Byron there as well.

The two nodded to each other, and Saul immediately rushed to Keli, who was in her metallic shell.

"Keli, you’re awake?"

Because of the metal armor, Keli’s voice came out muffled and buzzing.

"Quick, help me open a few holes, I’m about to suffocate!"

(End of this chapter)

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