Kobold Wizard's Journal

Chapter 179 Shop Management and Shop Management

After a period of deep meditation, it was already late at night. Ruger subconsciously began to recover his mental energy, and then started another round of deep meditation, seemingly to relax his mind. Each deep meditation was combined with the transcendent reading of the Black Book using the Divine Art, ignoring all the messy things, and focusing only on the meditation runes in order to reach the fifth level of wizard apprentice as soon as possible.

After using it for a while, Ruge discovered that although the bald old wizard said that the Divine Object Technique wasn't for learning spells or reading books, it was actually more effective when faced with a book as a medium. Other objects, even with some time to accumulate, revealed very little. Ruge speculated that perhaps the writers naturally imbued their writings with flowing thoughts and strong emotions, and spell-related books, when written, were accompanied by fluctuations in mental energy, making it easier to leave traces that the Divine Object Technique could read.

The next morning, as soon as Ruger stepped down the stairs, he heard old Lunser roar.

"Who did this?! Which bastard broke my door?!"

Old Dog Head Lunser looked at the broken corner of the shop door and the marks on the wall in the alley, and stood in front of the shop door cursing loudly.

“Uncle,” Rugra stopped him, “don’t be angry, this is…”

He pointed to the opposite side as he spoke.

Old Lenser shut his mouth, looked at Ruger, and whispered, "You saw him? Was it that old gentleman?"

Ruger nodded and said, "Last night, what Elena and I saw was not the wizard himself, but someone who looked like the heart-stealing murderer was chasing after the wizard's subordinates or juniors, or something like that. In short, it was a hairy guy... In the end, the murderer was subdued, and we saw him being tied up and dragged into the wizard's house."

The uncle and nephew spoke in hushed tones as they retreated back into the shop.

Old Doghead pondered for a moment, then silently picked up his tools to repair the shop door.

“Oh, by the way, Uncle, the murderer seems to be a bloodline infected person, and a bloodline wizard apprentice,” Ruger said.

He thought it best to let the knowledgeable old dog Lunther know about these things.

"Are you sure?" Old Lunser asked, picking up the tool he had on hand.

“It was Miss Elena who said it, and I don’t think she’s wrong,” Ruger added.

Old Lunser nodded upon hearing this, and without further questioning, began to repair the shop door with a clanging and banging sound.

Ruger skillfully tidied up the counter and, seeing this, went over to help.

The uncle and nephew chatted as they worked.

"Uncle, does everyone who practices meditation have five temporary spell slots?" Ruger asked curiously.

"The third-generation meditation method was created to give apprentices more ways to cope. Except for a very few special cases, it naturally has five temporary spell slots. Most meditation methods will lose these five zero-ring temporary spell slots after becoming a formal wizard, and the remaining few meditation methods will also lose these temporary spell slots when they reach the second or third ring wizard stage. There are basically no exceptions, because the third ring wizard is also known as the origin wizard, who has already condensed a unique origin in the mental space..."

Old Lunser put away his tools and got up.

“Origin Wizards, by concentrating themselves, can ignore minor spells that directly affect the target in their normal state, such as pranks like hair removal. Unless someone is bored and studies this spell in detail, it has no effect on a Third Ring Wizard, because this spell can no longer affect him.”

Old Lenser glanced at him as he spoke.

"You'll be in charge of turning the sorted manure into fertilizer today," old Lunser said as he walked into the house.

"Okay, Uncle, I already learned it yesterday."

Ruger actually wanted to take over this job, and also get some fertilizer for his own cultivation space.

As for the things Old Renser said, he found them quite pleasing. Moreover, he discovered that Old Renser spoke very meticulously, perhaps because he had deeply experienced the idea that anything is possible in the wizarding world. This had shaped his speaking style; even certainties would be described as highly probable or virtually without exception in his words. Therefore, listening to Old Renser allowed him to mentally increase the likelihood of certain things happening.

Just as Ruger was about to take a step, the door diagonally opposite him creaked open slowly. Miss Owl assisted the wizard as he stepped into the sunlight of the blood-red sun and basked in the sun.

The old man, whose face looked more like a stone statue, still smiled and slowly nodded in greeting when he saw Luger.

Ruger immediately bowed in return.

In his memory, when they first met, the old man's complexion was merely pale, but now it seemed to have worsened, even affecting his clothing and accessories.

Just as he was about to return to the shop, Old Dog Head Lunser suddenly rushed out, passed in front of him, and disappeared into the alley in the blink of an eye.

As Ruger watched the figure disappear into the alley, he guessed that something had happened to Mr. Nuondo again, and that Old Lunser had gone to help. These bloodline modifiers, who were on the verge of collapse, were using the power of the Blood Sun to try to save themselves by conducting various experiments.

Seeing that Jaxet was still busy upstairs and hadn't come down, Ruger took the initiative to go behind the counter and temporarily watch the shop.

He only lay there for a short while before taking out his spellbook.

"This place looks pretty good! Oh? There's even a statue standing here in this narrow alley?"

A sound came from outside, and Ruger dutifully put away his spellbook and sat up straight.

"You call this a good place? So secluded, so unclean..."

"Silence, my young master. Speaking like that will make you look foolish. The good places will be fought over by the elders and divided up by the main family. We are already doing very well to have such a place, and we may not even be able to get it. The most important thing is to truly establish ourselves in the City of Burning Blood. It doesn't matter if the place is not good. The long life of the vampires is just right to bask in the glory of the blood sun. If we can continue to enjoy the subtle changes for hundreds or thousands of years, many miracles will surely be born in the clan."

The people outside were clearly not ordinary guests.

Luger reluctantly lay back down.

“Oh, look at these walls, they’re so old and battered! And this door, it’s the only thing I recognize in this alley, the pattern on it is quite nice, but it’s broken—” one person said angrily.

"Please be quiet, my lady, this place does not belong to us yet," the man said again.

Ruger listened to the sounds outside. It sounded like there were three people, two men and one woman. It seemed they were walking slowly down this short alley and were just about to reach the front of Old Lunser's shop.

Judging from their conversation, these three vampires actually came to challenge the shop, and two of them even seemed quite disgusted.

Of course, Ruger knew this was true. Even old Lenser himself had to admit that the shop in this location relied entirely on word of mouth and one or two specialty potions to stay afloat. It was hardly a good location, and calling it a street-facing spot was a stretch.

But the way these guys were commenting and criticizing was enough to infuriate old Lenser.

"This statue with its head tilted back is ugly, I don't like it!"

"I don't really like it either."

After the voice finished speaking, it continued.

"It doesn't fit in at all here, it has no aesthetic appeal whatsoever. Even the most exquisite statue cannot be appreciated by the hands of a vulgar person. And the way the statue is tilting its head back shows that the vulgar person who made this statue cannot see the beauty in life, and it is unlikely that he can understand the beauty on the path to the extraordinary."

Ruger, who was lying on the counter inside the room, couldn't help but laugh as he listened.

(End of this chapter)