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Chapter 38: Consulting Fourth Brother

The fat Salmon’s wealth deeply provoked young Ashura!

At that moment Ashura longed to learn the craft of rune engraving!

He had spent half the day in the library poring over books on rune engraving, and Saint Gobban Academy’s collection was truly vast, so he had already gleaned the basics of the art!

He now knew that rune engraving demanded powerful mental strength and an understanding of intricate magic patterns!

The engraving had to be completed in one unbroken stroke; any pause or slip ruined the work immediately!

Most magic patterns served to amplify Martial Techniques and Magic, though some runes released instant offensive or defensive skills!

Certain rune sets could even unleash formidable abilities, yet as the years passed more and more high-level patterns vanished from history, which made rune engravers all the more valuable!

Ashura realized it was getting late and he still needed to discuss his dual mage-warrior plan with Instructor Yuan Da, so he hurried out of the library toward the Magic School!

Instructor Yuan Da was already waiting for him in the large classroom, and the two did not delve too deeply into anything today.

Yuan Da kept the conversation on Ashura’s daily cultivation, gradually getting to know him rather than rashly presenting a training plan!

Ashura cooperated fully, telling Yuan Da about his own situation and the problems he met in cultivation, and the two of them discussed matters until dusk!

Yuan Da told Ashura to come see him whenever he had time and added that he would wait in this classroom every afternoon.

Ashura also asked whether Yuan Da knew anything about rune engraving, but the instructor admitted he had no knowledge of it.

When Ashura returned to the dorm he found Boss Jin Ze and Fourth Brother Angelo still in the common room working on the newest copy for their pin-up cards!

Ashura gritted his teeth, ran to the second floor of the cafeteria, spent 100 credits on a pile of gourmet dishes, then called the other three over to feast with him!

The fact that all three owned space rings already revealed that they came from great clans.

Yet they had hardly tasted the academy’s credit-priced delicacies, always trying to save their credits for cultivation!

Naturally the trio wondered why Ashura suddenly splurged today, especially when the guy refused to replace his tattered robe!

While they ate they chatted about academy gossip, most of it leaked by Angelo for the other three to enjoy.

Taking a chance, Ashura asked Angelo whether he knew Salmon; Angelo replied that he did, calling him the previous year’s top rune engraver in the Forging Academy and the senior he himself hoped to surpass.

Hearing that, Ashura immediately started asking technical questions about rune engraving, and at first Angelo paid them little mind.

But the further they went, the more professional Third Brother’s questions became, and some even required serious thought before Angelo could answer.

Jin Ze and Arthur kept eating and laughing without speaking, until Angelo finally caught on and, smiling, asked Ashura, “Say, Third Brother, are you trying to learn rune engraving?”

Ashura scratched his head in embarrassment, unwilling to mention he had cut off a girl’s hair and sold it for credits because it sounded shameful.

He merely said he had heard Salmon earned loads of credits through rune engraving, felt envious, and wanted to see whether he had any talent for the craft!

Angelo felt a bit speechless toward his Third Brother; although the basic requirement for rune engraving was strong mental power, success was hardly that easy… he himself relied on inherited family talent to achieve modest results.

His habit of getting up late every day was actually a side effect of exhaustion caused by practicing his family’s secret mental-strength method!

What he did not know was that Third Brother spent whole nights meditating without sleep and had already tempered his mind beyond ordinary limits!

After thinking it over and not wanting to crush the money-grubber’s confidence, Angelo gently said, “Third Brother, you can give it a try, but every art has its specialty, so don’t let it slow your own cultivation.”

“Rune engraving is mainly about controlling mental power; you have a mage’s foundation, but I can’t share my family’s core mental-training method.”

“I can, however, let you read the auxiliary clan members’ mental-training manual, but I can’t teach it to you personally… please understand.”

“I also have an annotated magic-pattern compendium you can borrow; if anything puzzles you, ask me and I’ll tell you what I know.”

Ashura gratefully seized Angelo’s hands and thanked him repeatedly; though he had not opened his heart completely to the other three, he remembered their kindness!

Before Angelo even finished eating, Ashura already wanted to start learning rune engraving from him.

But Angelo refused to abandon the delicious credit-bought food, especially while Arthur was fighting him for a piece of Beast rib.

So he pulled a thin booklet of a dozen or so pages from his space ring, its sheets packed with tiny script!

He tossed the booklet to Ashura, explaining it was a mental-training method, and continued wrestling with Arthur over the Beast rib.

To his surprise, before he had even finished that half piece of rib, Ashura handed the booklet back.

At first Angelo assumed Ashura had given up, but Third Brother said he had memorized it and wanted to see the annotated magic-pattern compendium!

Not only Angelo but also Arthur and Jin Ze were stunned; the short span was barely enough to read the booklet once, yet Third Brother claimed he remembered it all.

At their insistence, Ashura recited the entire booklet from memory, and when he finished the three of them fell silent.

To be honest, the trio had heard some rumors about their Third Brother, most of them negative.

‘Weirdo’ was his nickname around the academy.

Arthur had even almost fought other students who mocked Ashura, though he never told Ashura about it.

Although they lived in the same dorm, Arthur still could not figure Third Brother out; apart from some astonishingly wild ideas, he had seen nothing outstanding from him, nor heard of any great talent!

In fact, Arthur and Jin Ze had known each other since childhood; although they never mentioned their clans, both families were among the continent’s top powers, making them longstanding allies.

They had only just met Angelo, yet his clan was nothing to scoff at either.

Ashura, however, definitely did not appear to be a scion of such elite houses, though they never looked down on him for it.

Yet memorizing a dense mental-training manual in such a short time was rare even among the most gifted heirs of those great families!

What broke them even more was that, after Angelo handed Ashura a compendium two fingers thick, Ashura carefully read it once, closed his eyes to reflect for the time it took to drink a cup of tea, and returned it.

This time the three of them ignored Ashura and silently went back to their own rooms!

Ashura was still savoring the flood of knowledge the diagrams had given him; he even dipped into the tea on the table and began sketching runes on the tabletop.

Normally rune engraving required high-grade Beast blood as ink and a feather from a bird called the Jiuli as a brush!

Ashura possessed neither material, so he had no idea whether he could become a rune engraver; for now he could only familiarize himself with the diagrams.

Besides cultivation itself, this was the one skill he was determined to master.

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