The night grew heavier.
Amy's soft snoring gradually ceased, leaving the Medicinal Garden in dead silence.
CREAK.
The soft sound of a wooden door being pushed open flickered past, barely disturbing the tranquility of the night.
"Who is it?" Elan's groggy voice rang out.
"It's me."
"Ugh... Gaode? What are you doing here...?" Elan hadn't fully woken up yet; his mind was still foggy.
"Elan, I figured you'd be fast asleep by now, so I came to find you."
"What do you mean...?" Elan was about to sit up. However, in the darkness, bathed in the moonlight, a hazy silhouette had already used the brief exchange of words to slip right up to his bedside.
A pitch-black shadow was cast against the wall, its hand raised high with a sharp knife. Following the motion of the arm, the blade plunged straight toward him.
"Ah!"
Elan's heart seized in terror. All his drowsiness instantly evaporated, leaving him wide awake as goosebumps erupted across his skin. He instinctively threw up his right arm to block the incoming attack.
But it was too late.
SQUELCH.
A piercing, agonizing pain erupted from his chest as something sharp and ice-cold impaled him.
It was a dining knife—the kind used in the cafeteria to cut rye bread. It wasn't particularly sharp, but it was just sharp enough to serve as a deadly weapon.
Gaode pressed his knee against Elan's throat, using his left hand to pin the boy's struggling body down. His right hand gripped the knife. The grip was steady.
STAB! STAB! STAB!
He yanked the knife out and plunged it back in. Then again. And again...
Scarlet blood washed over his hand. It felt warm in the freezing night, yet it brought Gaode no warmth at all. He only felt nauseous.
It wasn't until Elan's body went completely limp, devoid of any sign of struggle, that Gaode finally stopped. He gasped heavily for air.
"So, this is what it's like to kill..."
Everything had gone according to Gaode's plan, perhaps even smoother than anticipated. Elan, who hadn't fully shaken off the daze of deep sleep and never imagined Gaode would dare commit murder, had been utterly powerless to resist the night ambush. It was much easier than he had thought.
However, the sickening discomfort of taking a life for the first time didn't vanish just because it was premeditated.
He thought, "It's easier to appease King Yama than to fend off his pesky little imps. Even if Elan can't directly kill me like Mage Seda can, he has always harbored a grudge against me. Who knows what petty tricks he would pull to torment me?
"Plus, with him constantly watching my every move, it would be inconvenient for my future plans. If he doesn't die, I'll never have peace of mind!
"Besides, I already died once during the drug trial because he framed me. This is a blood feud. A life for a life is only right and proper.
"He forced my hand."
Gaode's hand was still trembling. He kept finding reasons to force himself to calm down, to adapt. He had to adapt. Gaode understood that in his current predicament, if he didn't want to die, others had to.
CLANG!
Suddenly, Gaode's pupils dilated drastically, as if he had just seen something horrifying. He was so startled that the dining knife slipped from his grasp, letting out a sharp, crisp sound as it hit the floorboards.
Even though his hands had been shaking after the murder, he hadn't been trembling so badly that he couldn't hold onto a knife. He dropped it purely because he was scared out of his wits.
Just a moment ago, Gaode made a clear detection that the Crescent gemstone resting within his mind—the one whose purpose he had never quite figured out—had been activated. It suddenly burst forth with shimmering Spiritual Light.
Immediately after, several lines of an information interface, the kind commonly seen in video games and novels, materialized before his eyes:
Origin:
0th Ring — [Human] (1/7)
Magic:
0th Ring — [Mage's Hand], [Repair Skill]
It was a very simple interface—crude, even. There were only two information fields in total: Magic and Origin.
The Magic column displayed exactly the two Tricks Gaode currently mastered. And right behind the two Magic entries, a tiny yellow plus sign was blinking. Anyone who had ever played a video game would instantly understand the meaning of this incredibly familiar design.
"Allocate points."
Gaode tentatively used his mind to click the yellow plus sign next to the Repair Skill.
In the next second, a piece of information inexplicably surfaced in Gaode's mind, as if it had been implanted into his memory.
"Insufficient Origin."
Obviously, adding points consumed Origin. Gaode's attention naturally shifted to the Origin column on the interface.
[Human] (1/7).
The information was incredibly brief and lacked any supplementary explanation, but Gaode instantly grasped its meaning. He cast his gaze toward Elan's corpse on the bed.
"Do I have to kill seven humans to obtain one point of Origin...?" Gaode muttered to himself.
Before dawn broke.
Mage Seda was startled awake by an inexplicably noisy commotion in the Medicinal Garden. People of his advanced age usually slept very lightly. And they usually had terrible tempers.
Pushing his door open in sheer displeasure, he took a few steps and grabbed a passing apprentice.
"What did you say?!"
Upon hearing the news the trembling apprentice stammered out, even Mage Seda couldn't help but freeze in stunned silence.
After crossing a long, narrow corridor, Mage Seda arrived at the apprentice living quarters—a place he rarely visited.
"Lord Mage..." an apprentice greeted upon seeing him, cowering with a panicked and helpless expression. "Elan... he's dead."
"What happened?" Although Mage Seda's voice maintained a steady pitch, its underlying icy tone was unmistakable.
"I just got here too... This..." The apprentice couldn't answer, stammering over his words.
Losing his patience, Mage Seda stepped forward with a cold expression. He walked down the hallway and finally stopped in front of Elan's door, peering inside.
Elan's rather unimposing body was sprawled haphazardly across the wooden bed near the wall. His chest was a bloody mess, and his pale eyes were bulging wide open. It was obvious that he was completely dead. The cause of death was also straightforward—he had been stabbed to death. The murder weapon was likely a bladed instrument similar to a dagger.
Mage Seda frowned, forcefully suppressing the anger in his heart as he shifted his gaze to another corner of the room.
A young boy sat there. On the floor beside him lay a bloodstained dining knife. His hands were covered in scarlet blood.
Mage Seda usually didn't pay much attention to these apprentices, but his memory wasn't bad. In fact, there was no such thing as a Mage with a poor memory. He remembered this boy; he was the only apprentice to have survived a drug trial in all these years.
"You did this?" Mage Seda asked, his voice brimming with displeasure and frost.
"Yes," Gaode replied, looking up. His face was still pale, but his eyes were remarkably calm.
"What happened?" Mage Seda asked again.
"First, I pocketed the dining knife used for slicing bread while eating in the cafeteria." Gaode pointed at the bloody knife on the floor. "It's not very sharp, but it got the job done.
"Then, I waited until late at night, figuring he would be fast asleep, and sneaked over," Gaode explained. "He's older and stronger than me. If I didn't wait for the right opportunity, I might not have been able to kill him.
"In the end, he died. He died by my hands."