Whispering Verse

Today is Tuesday, the day of the Feast of Holy Prayer in Dawn Church. Shade promised Bishop Owen and Father Augustus that he would attend the church in the afternoon and give a public speech. And besides that, he still had some things to deal with.

Leaving Mia at home to look after the house, Shade packed up the things in the basement and went out.

The trip in the morning was to buy some things.

The first stop was Old John's antique store. Father John read the newspaper and waited for customers as usual. Hearing the ringing of the bell, he tilted his head from behind the newspaper and saw it was Shade, and then yawned and said:

"Are you here to buy anything else today? Speaking of which, how was your exam week? Louisa passed her ancient essay, right?"

Father John is the black market shop owner who has the best relationship with Doctor Schneider's group.

"Passed, my alchemy homework also passed. Dad, I am going to spend a lot of money to buy things this time."

After waking up and walking around the familiar Tobesk, away from the wet port city with pirates and fishmen, Shade was in a very good mood.

"You? A lot of money?"

Father John looked at him suspiciously, not believing this statement at all, as if he thought it was some kind of bargaining strategy.

So Shade reached into the inner pocket of his coat, and then grabbed out a 100-pound note tied with a strip of paper. He then reached into the outer right pocket of his coat, grabbed a 100-pound note tied with a strip of paper, and finally reached in In the left pocket, there is another 100 pounds.

The largest banknote issued by the Kingdom now has a face value of 50 pounds, but it is usually only used for settlement of bulk items and is rarely seen on the market. What Shade took out were 5-pound bills, 60 in total:

"The relic worth 300 pounds that you mentioned was consigned to you by a friend. I want it." (Chapter 99)

The old man looked at the money in surprise, then nodded:

"It has the function of extracting energy or similar entities or non-entities from the living body itself, and then pouring it into the user's body. This is the requirement, right? That thing is still there. If you want to buy it, I can get it for you. Although I knew you met a rich female noble last time, I didn’t expect it.”

He didn't say any more, but quickly put away the banknotes. He asked Shade to wait for a while, and then walked away for twenty minutes. When he came back, he had a long and slender thing wrapped in a strip of cloth in his hand.

"Cane? Sword?"

Shade was looking forward to it.

"The cane is not that long. If it is a cold weapon, do you think it will be sold for only 300 pounds? You should understand how expensive weapon relics are."

The old man said, putting the thing on the counter, then quickly walked to the door of the store and locked the door.

Remove the cloth strip and inside is a pair of fishing rods.

"The clerical relic [Soul Fishing Rod] is completely black. The material of the fishing rod itself and the hook is similar to fine steel. It is telescopic and is 5.24 feet (approximately 1.6m) when fully unfolded. The fishing line is transparent and the material is unknown. When used It can be extended as needed.”

The old man neatly took the fishing rod in his hand, pulled out the retracted part of the fishing rod with a click, and then handed it to Shade for inspection.

"[Soul Fishing Rod] once hooks a living person, you can harvest the opponent's memory fragment. If the living person is still a ring warlock, you can get part of his spirit, and there is a very small probability of directly obtaining the opponent's spirit runes, which perfectly meets your requirements. .As for side effects”

Seeing Shade swinging the fishing rod around to feel the feel, Father John knocked on the table and asked Shade to pay attention:

"You must use fishing to activate its effect. And the opponent must not lose the ability to move and take the bait. Once hooked, the angler must read the acquired memory and cannot refuse, and the acquired memory is a random piece and cannot be Make a choice. If you use this method to read other people's memories for a long time, even a high-level warlock will have your own personality affected. What's even more dangerous is that as long as you use it more than 13 times, there is a chance that you will suddenly see someone in your next life. To giant fish hooks falling from the sky.”

"oh?"

Shade looked at him in surprise:

"what is that?"

"I can't answer you, because people who see the fishhook will take the initiative to touch it and then disappear. The news about the fishhook was told by them when they saw the fishhook."

The old man shrugged:

"Probably some strange being is fishing. Did you see the line of Pulu script on the fishing rod? That's the language of the Fourth Age. I happen to know some of it. The roughly translated meaning is"

[We are fishermen, but we are also fish. 】

There is no bargaining price for this fishing rod, it is 300 pounds and you have to pay in cash. Even if Shade brought up the cane, Old John couldn't let go, because it was consigned to him by a friend, and he had no power to lower the price.

So after paying this money, Shade's savings dropped from 900 pounds (note) to 600 pounds. Although his ability to make money increased, unfortunately his expenses also increased.

The fishing rod is for the possible divinity that follows, so this money cannot be saved anyway. After returning the fishing rod to his home, Shade put on his robe and mask and went to the Black Raven Library.

The acquisition of the Whispering Spirit Rune [Greed] was something he did not expect, and the acquisition of the Spirit Rune meant that he could master power in a new direction. The connection between greed, time and silver moon is not significant at present, so Shade, as usual, only plans to learn a related thaumaturgy. If there is a suitable thaumaturgy in the future, then go get more greedy power.

Similar to [Gluttony], [Greed] is also a relatively common spiritual rune. Many ancient books and relics can allow ring warlocks to obtain runes with similar concepts.

In addition to daily necessities, emergency preparedness, repairs to the third floor of his house, and second-year tuition fees, Shade still had about 200 pounds in gold. Compared to the first time when I chose the thaumaturgy of [Gluttony], this time I was really very generous.

In the dark little room of the Black Raven Library, Shade sat on the sofa and explained his request to the person behind the wall through the small hole in the wall. In order to prevent missing out on valuable thaumaturgy, it is also stated that the price can fluctuate slightly.

It took the library half an hour to give Shade a list of seven kinds of thaumaturgy. Among them, the Whispering Elemental Spirit Rune [Gluttony] could learn six of them.

The cheapest [Greedy] is worth 15 pounds. This is a passive ability. After learning, it can enhance your greedy desire. This is a thaumaturgy that is combined with other thaumaturgy that requires "greed" as a condition. Ordinary ring magicians will definitely not learn it.

The most expensive one is [Warda's Death Contract], which costs 350 pounds without learning materials and up to 1,200 pounds with materials. This is an active ability that uses a "lending" relationship to sign a contract with other intelligent creatures through a handshake. Once the contract is violated, thaumaturgy will demand the life of the violator.

It sounds powerful, but thaumaturgy is useless compared to a ring magician with a higher level. It will be ineffective due to text traps and the death of the caster. It is a precious "contract" thaumaturgy.

Shade didn't choose the most expensive one, nor did he choose the cheapest one. In the end, he chose the thaumaturgy [Treasure Object] with a material value of 232 pounds.

The explanation of this thaumaturgy is quite simple. It uses one's own greed and cherishment of an item to give it extraordinary abilities.

The thaumaturgy itself only works on ordinary items, and only one "treasure item" can be selected at a time, which can be replaced with each moon phase cycle. Moreover, the power of thaumaturgy is limited by the degree of greed and cherishment of the item itself, as well as its own level.

Different ring warlocks' choices of different "treasure objects" will give them different extraordinary abilities, but this ability will only increase according to the appearance of the item. For example, shoes will allow the wearer to run faster or see higher, and the eyes will enhance vision in the dark or enhance the range of vision, but it is absolutely impossible that after choosing a ring, the ring will suddenly be able to shoot fireballs.

Judging from the records provided by the Black Raven Library, most ring wizards who learn this thaumaturgy choose coins or banknotes as their "treasure objects". Because the greed for money will never decline.

Of course, there are also some ring magicians who select special Rhodes cards as "treasure items". As a result, the cards will have extraordinary abilities such as flying at extremely high speeds or being hard and sharp.

You must know that [Origin·Balance] controlled by Shade cannot be sharp enough to be used as a weapon.

This thaumaturgy has, of course, very minor side effects.

First, greed for the same kind of selected "treasure items" will be amplified. Second, once the "treasure object" chosen by oneself is lost, the user of thaumaturgy will no longer be able to use thaumaturgy during the six-month cycle, and during this period, his or her "greedy" desires will be amplified.

But this side effect is acceptable, so Shade chose to purchase this thaumaturgy.

After paying high fees, my savings dropped to about 400 pounds. When Shade returned home, he saw that it was not lunch time yet, so he finished learning thaumaturgy using materials such as "Money, Grass, Horses, Dung Stone, Greedy Man's Skeleton".

However, there was a small problem when selecting "treasure items".

He took out all the cards and planned to choose [Ancient Fairy Tale·Match Girl]. But when the aura cast by Thaumaturgy covered the cards, the entire deck including [Origin·Silver Moon] but not [Origin·Balance] was selected.

[Origin·Balance] cannot be selected, probably because it has been activated and is not an ordinary item. The entire deck was chosen probably because of the "divine afterglow" state's increased effect on thaumaturgy.

He is not able to select multiple targets, but can consider "a group" to be "one" target.

The evidence for this conjecture is that Shade feels that he can replace different cards into the deck so that the replaced cards lose their "selection" and the replaced cards gain "selection". Therefore, when Shade acquires new special cards, the new cards do not have to wait for the next moon phase cycle to be selected.

[You spent so much money on thaumaturgy, is it just to give the opponent more cards when playing cards? Foreigner, you are such a greedy person. 】

"Don't slander me."

Shade hooked his fingers, and under the effect of [Treasure Object], fifty-four playing cards flew from the far end of the table to him and were stacked neatly on the table in front of him.

Then Shade took a newspaper, opened it, and then manipulated fifty-four cards to cut the newspaper.

The cost of more than 200 pounds is well worth it. In the afterglow state of divinity, although these cards are not sharp enough to crack bricks and rocks, they are enough to slit human throats. Moreover, in the entire deck, the power gained by the special cards is much greater than that of ordinary cards due to the greed in Shade's heart.

If he could replace the entire deck with special cards, the effects of thaumaturgy might be further enhanced.

When the cards first started flying, little Mia hid behind Shade and stared at the scene. And when they stopped on the table in front of Shade again, the wide-eyed cat immediately walked out, jumped on the table, and curiously stretched out its paws to touch the top one.

Although the cards have acquired sharp characteristics, using [Treasure Object] to control the card's flight is far inferior to Shade's direct control of [Origin and Balance]. But compared to the spell [Moving Object] that can achieve similar effects, the control of [Treasure Object] is more refined.

For example, Shade suddenly had evil intentions, and the card that Mia kept flapping suddenly flew up. While Mia was chasing, she controlled the cards to fly around on the table, making the cat keep waving its claws.

"Meow~"

It suddenly stopped, put its little paw on Shade's arm, and looked at Shade with its big amber eyes.

The stranger laughed and let the card stop in front of the cat. It stretched out its paw with great satisfaction.