Mystic Overlord: Reading Gives Strength
Chapter 117: The Works of the Locals

Chapter 117: Chapter 117: The Works of the Locals

Standing alone in the living room,

Ronald could faintly smell the aroma of roasted meat that emanated from the corpse in front of him.

Under the relentless assault of "brutal" force, the will-less blacksmith had been roasted through and through, dead beyond any doubt.

Ronald calmed his mind and carefully sensed the situation.

Without a doubt, there was one more suffering soul in the River of Blood.

However, this event didn’t bring any immediate increase in strength to him; rather, it felt like a natural progression.

To put it in an analogy, it was like a person who had stockpiled plenty of food in a warehouse; only in an emergency would the stored goods reveal their irreplaceable function.

In normal times, there was no special feeling at all.

"Ah—"

Ronald sighed and carelessly tossed the chair he was holding onto the ground.

Crack—

The pitiful wooden chair shattered on impact, completely falling apart.

Although it was of high quality, after the continuous full-strength hammering from before, the chair was now more or less destroyed.

Ronald then waved his hand.

He tried to draw the blacksmith’s soul out from the River of Blood, at least to first see how the soul came into existence.

—Almost at the same moment he had this thought,

From the black mist on the floor, a faint gray shadow emerged, a human form wreathed in curling blue smoke resembling an ethereal dream.

Ronald took a brief look at this ghostly figure.

After a few seconds of silence, he approached to examine it closely.

The soul that was imprisoned in the River of Blood was extremely vague upon its appearance in reality.

Even from a distance of half a meter, Ronald could not make out the details of the figure’s face, only a blurred expression of agony.

"..."

"Can you speak?"

Ronald attempted to communicate with the soul.

Regrettably, the figure showed no response to his questions. Apart from maintaining its existence and that pained appearance, it just stood there blankly, waiting for Ronald to issue an attack command.

In the silence...

Ronald waved his hand, allowing the soul to return to the black mist formed by the "brutal" force.

If the chance arose, he planned to return to the city and test the creature’s actual attack pattern using animals like rats.

For now, it was best to set it aside.

Loosening his wrists and body, Ronald slowly walked over to the living room’s fireplace and picked up the fire tongs hanging beside it.

Hiss—

The tongs straightforwardly pierced the blacksmith’s body; he then dragged the thoroughly cooked corpse back to the previous bedroom.

—Though it was thoroughly dead.

Ronald felt it was safer to keep the body within his line of sight.

Returning to the bedroom, amidst the ruins of the smashed wardrobe,

The Magic Book he had seen before was still lying there obediently.

The manner in which the black mist swirled around it indicated at a glance its extraordinariness.

—It was time to see what this thing truly was.

Thinking this, Ronald directed the black mist to cover the surface of the Magic Book.

The fierce "brutal" force enveloped it, and with a ’whoosh,’ the black mist on the Magic Book’s surface instantly evaporated.

Directly touched by the power within The Divine Comedy, it didn’t even cause a ripple.

And it was at that moment.

Accompanied by the complete dissipation of the power entwining the Magic Book.

As the concentrated power dispersed, a special kind of Magic Power spread rapidly in all directions.

Ronald immediately extended his hands in front of his chest, and a black fog rose in sync.

However, this inexplicably emerging force merely swept past his position and continued to spread farther away, leaving him with no other sensation.

"..."

What was this thing?

Ronald recalled the knowledge he had seen at the Investigation Bureau.

This situation didn’t seem like a curse, nor did it resemble any form of attack.

Could it be that this thing was simply a warning spell to ward off others from touching the Magic Book?

After hesitating for a moment, Ronald turned and scanned his surroundings.

During this time, nothing in the room had changed, and there was no alteration to the bodies lying on the ground.

It really had no additional effects...

To be on the safe side, Ronald took two steps back, and then directed the black fog to pull the Magic Book from the rubble to himself.

This time, no further incidents occurred.

The Magic Book lay before Ronald without a hitch.

But it was only after that smoky special effect dispersed that he realized the object wasn’t as exaggerated as he had imagined.

Specifically, it was a very simple notebook.

The cover bore no text or images, looking as if a primary school student’s homework book had its cover torn off.

Considering he didn’t want to touch the item directly, Ronald simply used the black fog to prop up the Magic Book while flipping through its pages.

Immediately, some crooked characters caught his eye.

The handwriting was so woeful that Ronald could barely recognize it as a variation of the Latin alphabet.

As for the content...

Thanks to his linguistic knowledge, he could read it without any problems.

To put it simply, most of the content involved psychological terms, words like ’mimicry of homogeneous behavior,’ ’subconscious diffusion,’ ’environmental interference with consciousness,’ were scattered throughout.

Yet at the same time, the contents of this Magic Book did not form a coherent sequence of words. To give an example in Chinese, it was as if someone had written the sentence "Large tree little bird big explosion complete cupping" in a diary.

Actions and names lacked prepositions, forming no meaningful language.

Immediately afterwards, Ronald tried to read aloud the text on the page.

"..."

The surroundings were eerily silent; the Magic Book remained unresponsive.

This confirmed Ronald’s previous hunch.

The book in his hands was indeed not the original.

According to the data seen previously at the Investigation Bureau, apart from the mysterious origins of the originals, a very small number of knowledgeable and enigmatic individuals in this world could actually create Magic Books containing power.

It seemed that this object was such a product.

Unfortunately, due to the ability of the Divine Comedy black fog, any Magic Power that had been attached to the Magic Book had been thoroughly routed.

Without the creator of the Magic Book to repair it, the object was just an ordinary notebook; anyone holding it would be unable to cast spells.

So...

What kind of school of thought was this, exactly?

Many well-known things flashed through Ronald’s mind.

But as he had no research in this particular area, he was still unable to extract the truth from these disparate words.

"Tsck—"

Giving up just like that, Ronald shook his head, wrapped the Magic Book in a piece of clothing from the wardrobe, and then stuffed it into the pocket of his overcoat.

Looking at the current situation.

It seemed that the affair with Serephis had, for the most part, come to a close.

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