Death Wizard Diary.

Chapter 169 Surgery

Saul was very polite, but his attitude left no room for refusal.

Hayden hesitated for a long time before finally agreeing.

Because Thor added another sentence from outside the door.

"Senior Hayden, do you know why apprentices who can't advance to the third rank by the age of thirty are expelled from the Wizarding Tower?"

Hayden's hand, which was gripping the door, suddenly tightened. He stared intently at Saul's nameplate before finally opening the door.

"Then come in, I'm not used to going to other places."

Saul readily agreed and stepped into the second morgue, which was almost never open to outsiders.

Thor was immediately struck by the interior layout upon entering.

This is so neat and clean!

Unlike Saul's messy lab bench and crammed cabinets, Hayden's morgue was so clean and tidy that it looked like... an exhibition hall?

The innermost wall is lined with display cases, stretching from the floor to the ceiling.

Each display case has glass doors, allowing people to clearly see the items stored inside.

These cabinets, from top to bottom, contain parts of people or other creatures, such as hair, eyes, nose, and so on, all the way down to their feet.

The color also gradually deepens from left to right.

Thor could tell at a glance that most of the limbs were normal.

In other words, they are all useless materials.

Hayden's workbench was also exceptionally tidy, and even the conveyor belts connecting the left and right sides were spotless, without a trace of dirt.

"Hayden-senpai is really... good at organizing."

Hayden clasped his hands together, pinching the base of his thumbs.

"I just enjoy doing things."

Thor had never seen Hayden in the general classes for first-level apprentices; he probably spent all his time in the morgue.

"Sol, when you said leaving the tower at thirty, wasn't it because the tower master felt that someone lacking the aptitude would waste the tower's resources?"

"I don't know if that's the reason, but the most important reason is..." Thor dragged out his words, but suddenly stopped when Hayden looked over anxiously.

Hayden waited for a long time, and seeing that Thor didn't speak, he immediately understood what he meant.

He stopped asking about it and started discussing serious matters.

"Sol, you said you wanted to take something out of your eye. Can you describe its properties?"

Saul, however, took out several reagents from his pocket.

"I've already thought of the surgical plan, and I always carry the necessary materials with me. It's just that it's not very convenient to operate on my own eyes, so I came to trouble Senior Hayden."

Hayden was taken aback; so he was just a tool. "Okay, what do you need me to do?"

Saul carefully explained the surgical procedure to Hayden.

Hayden's mouth gradually widened, his mind filled with exclamations like "This works?" and "Really?"

After explaining the process, Thor left the brain-overloaded Hayden and began preparing the potion.

He had long wanted to extract the Nightmare Butterfly's cocoon, and therefore had made many preparations.

This time, Hayden will be in charge of extracting the cocoon, while Thor will be in charge of the final capture and sealing.

Yes, although Saul was the one performing the surgery, he also had a very important task.

Whether it was Thor's experience of having the cocoon inexplicably enter his eye after obtaining it, or the story of the butterfly that flew away and was caught by the wizard but still ended up killing the wizard in the end, Thor understood that this butterfly was not a peaceful creature.

The good news is that the Nightmare Butterfly is still just a cocoon, the future villain has not yet grown up, and the diary has not hinted that it will harm Thor.

Thor now has the option of either eliminating him outright or retraining him.

Both options are risky. For now, it's best to remove the cocoon to avoid being continuously affected by nightmares.

He quickly prepared the reagents for the two test tubes.

One is a completely transparent liquid, somewhat viscous, but it flows smoothly and doesn't stick to the inner wall.

The other one was a purple liquid with tiny bubbles.

"Senior Hayden, are you ready? The reagent will take effect within five minutes of being swallowed, and the effect will also last for five minutes."

"That's enough." Hayden took a deep breath. "This is the first time I've dealt with a living person. If I hurt you... would you like to take another dose of painkiller?"

Thor tilted his head back and put the purple potion into his mouth.

Frowning, Thor swallowed the lingering taste in his mouth and glanced at the hourglass.

"No need," he said, walking over and lying down on the teleportation platform where the corpses used to be. "Painkillers will affect my judgment."

Hayden knew that Saul was a ruthless man, so he stopped trying to persuade him, walked to the tool table, picked up a thin needle, and began to quickly sterilize it as Saul had instructed.

"Disinfection?" Hayden wondered. "Is this the difference between performing 'surgery' on the living and the dead?"

A surgery involving both doctors and patients began.

Because the doctor was still a novice when it came to living subjects—this honest and unassuming Hayden had never done any live experiments—the patient had to occasionally guide the doctor on how to make the incision based on his own feelings.

The surgery lasted a total of four minutes and thirty-five seconds.

Although there were moments of panic, the total surgery time did not exceed the effective period of the medication.

In the final twenty-five seconds, Hayden finally used the smallest tweezers to pull the cocoon out of Thor's pupil.

He raised the tweezers, wanting to see what had gotten into Saul's eyes. But his gaze fell on the small silver ball, and he was captivated by its beauty.

However, a silver sphere the size of a grain of rice rapidly expands after being exposed to air.

The silver surface shimmered with starlight, and the deep, tranquil feeling made Hayden feel as if he were gazing at the starry sky in the wilderness.

He unconsciously became engrossed in the task, slowly raising the tweezers closer to his eyes, as if he wanted to insert them directly into his eyeballs.

Suddenly, a skeletal hand appeared before Hayden.

The skeleton brushed against Hayden's cheek and snatched the silver ball away.

"No!" Hayden instinctively wanted to explode in anger.

But when he saw Thor's appearance, his inflated brain was immediately doused with cold water.

Thor had already sat up from the teleportation platform, with a fixator still clipped to his left eyelid to keep it open.

A trickle of blood oozed from Thor's eyelids and flowed down to his chin.

His once black left eye had now turned a dull, dark gray.

This is the result of Hayden's simple treatment.

But Thor paid no attention to his blind left eye. He simply threw the cocoon he had snatched into the clear liquid he had prepared and then sealed the bottle with a cork.

A little of the clear liquid spilled out, and the rest filled the entire test tube.

The silver ball bobbed up and down in the reagent, as if someone were constantly teasing it with a thin string.

After confirming that the sealing was complete, Saul tossed the test tube to Hayden.

Hayden quickly reached out and caught it, his heart pounding with fear.

"Observing like that was dangerous. Now you can look."

But this time Hayden only glanced at it before quickly returning the test tube to Saul.

"No, no, no, although you have sealed this thing away, it is still very dangerous to me. I won't look at it any longer. I almost lost my senses just now."

This time, Hayden adopted an even more humble stance.

He became increasingly certain that Saul had far surpassed him in many areas.

Seeing that Hayden had given up on further observation, Saul put the test tube away.

"This thing really tests one's willpower," Thor thought of the little girl Penny. "But I suspect that people with pure hearts are not easily influenced."

Hayden looked somber; he couldn't achieve either of those things.

If he had a strong will, he wouldn't still be just a first-level apprentice.

Saul picked up a roll of gauze from the workbench, wrapped it diagonally around his head, and covered his left eye.

Hayden stood quietly to the side, watching, seemingly wanting to say something but holding back.

Thor knew what he wanted to ask and answered the question he had left for Hayden before he entered.

"If a wizard remains at a certain level for too long, it will attract unknown terrors. The longer the stay, the greater the possibility of corruption. The lower the strength, the faster the terror will be attracted. In order to prevent apprentices from becoming contaminated, the Wizard Tower will periodically expel apprentices who are too old."

"Compared to other factions that turn unqualified apprentices into experimental subjects as soon as their training expires, the Wizard Tower is considered quite lenient."

(End of this chapter)