A Sorcerer’s Journey

Having regained his faith in his way of sorcery learning, Glenn left the stone tablet and returned to his dormitory. He then immersed himself in his usual meditation to help himself calm down and keep his mind organized.

Meditation was the most fundamental and efficient method to improve one’s mental strength and to stimulate the conversion of mental strength to magical force. The potency of meditation varied with the meditator’s satori[1], which roughly meant how engaged the thinker could be during the meditation process. Besides, the duration of meditation should be restricted to around an hourglass of time, the chronometrical method widely used on the Sorcerer Continent where one hourglass equaled two hours in the human world.

“Hmm…” Glenn completed his meditation and took a deep breath. He then put his hands eagerly on the crystal ball, which he’d received as a bonus along with the seven free sorcery courses from the school. He was rejoiced when the ball read a mental strength of 13 points and a magical force of 125 points.

“That is a two-point rise in magical force. The meditation seemed to have paid off!” Glenn exclaimed.

According to A Guide to Meditation by Sorcerer Apollo, the typical degree of magical force for a sorcerer was basically tenfold of his/her mental strength. Now with 13 points of mental strength, he had brought out a nearly ten times magical force.

That was a big step forward because in the very early days on the ship, he had produced merely three points of magical force when he had 12 points of mental strength.

In a quite delightful mood, Glenn then went to sit down on the chair in front of his testing table. On it were a dissected frog, a monkey brain and an assortment of insects drenched in jar fluids, a few squeaking rats in an iron grate cage, vials of perfumes which Glenn had manufactured according to the Odor Mapping – Volume II of Canine Olfactory Enhancement and Odor Mapping, and a much-valued microscope that cost Glenn 30 magic stones.

He flicked through his heavy notes that he had made over the past two years about Canine Olfactory Enhancement – Volume I of Canine Olfactory Enhancement and Odor Mapping, and now he was capable of discerning over 4,000 kinds of odors, tenfold of the average discerning capability. But for him, it was far from enough.

Glenn then lit an incense, a product which he had made himself. It could produce a pleasant and soothing smell.

“Olfactory Enhancement is not a Hematology Sorcery[2], then what branch does it belong to?” Glenn wondered.

It was neither Curse Sorcery, Medicament Sorcery, Occult Sorcery, Mechanical Sorcery, Alchemy Sorcery nor any kind of sorceries he had learned so far.

And unfortunately, there was no way to know who had written the Canine Olfactory Enhancement and there were no similar books to refer to in the library where books on Curse Sorcery, Mechanical Sorcery and Alchemy Sorcery abounded.

Pacing to and fro in the dorm, he wanted a moment of enlightenment. And here it came!

Glenn had decided to take a big step.

Previously Glenn had conducted his research mostly by feeding the lab rats self-made medicines, which were meant for sharpening their sense of smell. But the process had been slow, so Glenn decided to take a risk and give the rats an intravenous injection of the medicine, and Glenn colored the medicine with a reddish, synthesized pigment.

Two days later, to his great surprise, he found that every single cell in the rats’ bodies had turned red when he observed them using the microscope. The observation meant that the medicine had spread all over the rats’ veins. But the microscope couldn’t show the specific changes of the individual cells.

Determined to follow through his research, Glenn rushed to the Black Tower for help.

“There must be a more sophisticated microscope there,” Glenn thought in his mind.

The ground floor of the Black Tower was actually a huge trading market, where people were all busy trying to make a deal. Glenn cut through the first floor and went directly towards the seventh floor where the room of Equipments for Renting was on. But Glenn was taken aback at the rental rate for the microscopes: one magical stone per day! Still, for the sake of his experiment, Glenn made up his mind, and rented one. He then rushed back to his testing table.

But the new microscope couldn’t provide Glenn with the resolution at which any changes of the rats could be observed at the cellular level, either. Therefore, one day later Glenn returned the microscope and requested for a more sophisticated one. The boy who rented Glenn the microscope the day before looked quite surprised.

Normally, only medicament sorcery and, in some cases, mechanical sorcery and alchemy sorcery would require a microscope. Now that Glenn was asking for a microscope with a very high resolution, it indeed caught the boy off guard.

“What? The one you took is not good enough for you? What are you using it for, anyway? We are not majors in medicament sorcery! Besides, there are no better ones.” The boy shrugged. “Wait a second! My mentor has one. It’s said that he bought it from the Holy Tower of Seven Rings. You want it？”

“Yeah. I want it badly!” Glenn’s eyes brightened.

“Then I will let you use it for some time. As a reward, you pay me 20 magic stones. ”

“What? 20 magic stones? Are you out of your mind?” Even though Glenn speculated that the boy’s mentor must be a great sorcerer, he still thought that the microscope was highly overcharged.

“Well, I was trying to help. You know it’s a big risk.” The boy assumed a look that said he couldn’t care less if Glenn would not buy it.

“But I don’t have that much money.”

“Come to me when you get it, then. By the way, I’m Varro.”

Glenn had no choice but to leave, for he had only one and a half magic stones. He had almost used up his stones buying materials for his olfactory experiment. He kept murmuring on his way back, “How can I possibly get those 20 magic stones?”

Borrowing from members of the Death Sail League was not an option, because Glenn was too dignified to beg for money.

But suddenly, he had a good idea and he didn’t need to borrow at all.

“I now have the knowledge on olfactory enhancement, why don’t I take advantage of it?” Glenn thought. “I should start with the perfumes. Yeah, the aphrodisiacs! I could make and sell it at the trading market, then.”

Glenn jumped into air at the idea.

After years of efforts on olfactory and odor study, Glenn, unlike the majority of the pupils in the school, had learned no tricks of offensive skills, but had virtually evolved into a professional on odors.

Aphrodisiacs were actually recorded in the Odor Mapping. It was odorless, or subtly speaking, couldn’t be sensed by ordinary people. The most amazing part of it was that it had a strong effect of increasing libido.

The aphrodisiacs were essentially made up of ten types of odors – three types of odors to impact and impress, three to make the odors last for several hourglasses; three to compel the subjects to be indulged in the odors and the last one to dispel other odors around the subjects.

After two days, Glenn had produced a jar of aphrodisiacs and then divided it into 30 vials.

“Now I can sell them in the market and get some magical stones.” Glenn was thrilled.

__________________________________

Footnotes:

In the Zen Buddhist tradition, satori refers to the experience of kenshō, “seeing into one’s true nature”.

Hematology Sorcery was a kind of sorcery of power-building through transferring certain tough animal’s blood into the practitioner’s body, which was then adapted and processed in the circulatory system in ways that still baffled the most brilliant minds.