Chapter 168: Surgery
Saul was very polite, but his attitude left no room for refusal.
Hayden hesitated for a long time before finally agreeing.
Because Saul added one last sentence outside the door, "Senior Hayden, do you know why apprentices who fail to advance to the third level before turning thirty are expelled from the Wizard Tower?"
Hayden’s hand, which was gripping the door frame, suddenly tensed. He stared at Saul’s nameplate for a long moment before finally opening the door.
"Come in, then. I’m not comfortable going anywhere else."
Saul gladly accepted and stepped into the second morgue, a room that was almost never open to outsiders.
The moment he entered, he was stunned by its layout.
It was too neat, too clean!
Unlike Saul’s messy experiment table and cabinets stuffed to the brim, Hayden’s morgue was as tidy and spotless as... an exhibition hall?
The walls at the far end were lined with display cabinets, stretching from floor to ceiling.
Each cabinet had glass doors, allowing everything inside to be clearly visible.
The cabinets were organized from top to bottom, containing hair, eyes, noses... all the way down to feet—body parts from humans or other creatures.
The colors of the specimens gradually deepened from left to right.
Yet with just a glance, Saul could tell that most of the body parts were normal.
In other words, they were useless materials.
Hayden’s tool station was also impeccably organized, and even the conveyor belt connecting the two sides was immaculately clean, without a single speck of dirt.
"Senior Hayden, you’re really... skilled at organizing."
Hayden clenched his hands together, pressing his thumbs into his palms.
"I just like to keep busy with things."
Saul had never seen Hayden in any of the public classes for first-level apprentices, so it was likely that he spent all his time in the morgue.
"Saul, you mentioned that apprentices are expelled from the tower at thirty. Isn't it because the Tower Master believes those with poor aptitude are wasting the tower’s resources?"
"I’m not sure if that’s part of the reason, but the real cause is..." Saul deliberately dragged out his words. When he noticed Hayden anxiously looking over, he suddenly stopped speaking.
Hayden waited for a long time, but when Saul said nothing more, he immediately understood his intention.
He stopped pursuing the topic and turned to the real matter at hand.
"You said you need to remove something from your eye. Can you describe its properties?"
Instead of answering, Saul took out several reagents from his pocket.
"I’ve already planned out the surgical procedure and always carry the necessary materials with me. It’s just that performing surgery on my own eye isn’t very convenient, so I came to trouble you, Senior Hayden."
Hayden froze.
So I’m just a tool, huh?
"Alright, what do you need me to do?"
Saul carefully explained the surgical process to Hayden.
As he listened, Hayden’s mouth gradually fell open, his mind filled with thoughts like Is this even possible? and Is he serious?
After finishing the explanation, Saul left Hayden—whose brain was now overloaded—and began preparing the reagents.
He had long planned to extract the Nightmare Butterfly’s cocoon and had made extensive preparations.
This time, Hayden would be responsible for removing the cocoon, while Saul would handle the final extraction and sealing process.
Yes, even though Saul was the patient undergoing surgery, he had an equally crucial role to play.
Whether it was the cocoon mysteriously entering his eye when he first acquired it or the story he had read about a butterfly escaping and ultimately killing the wizard who tried to capture it—Saul understood that this creature was not something that would obediently submit.
The good news was that the Nightmare Butterfly was still in its cocoon stage, not yet fully grown into a major antagonist, and the diary had not warned that it would harm Saul.
For now, he still had the choice to either kill it or retain it.
Both choices carried risks, but the priority was to remove the cocoon first to prevent the constant nightmares from affecting him.
Soon, he finished preparing two test tubes of reagents.
One contained a completely transparent liquid, slightly viscous but still flowing smoothly without clinging to the inner walls.
The other contained a purple liquid bubbling with fine gas pockets.
"Senior Hayden, are you ready? The reagent will take effect five minutes after ingestion, and its effect will last for five minutes."
"I’m ready," Hayden took a deep breath. "This is my first time operating on a living person. If it hurts too much... do you want to take a painkiller first?"
Saul tilted his head back and swallowed the purple reagent.
Frowning at the lingering aftertaste, he glanced at the hourglass.
"No need," he said, walking over and lying down directly on the conveyor table—originally meant for corpses. "Painkillers will dull my judgment."
Hayden knew that Saul was a ruthless person, so he didn’t argue. He stepped over to the tool station, picked up a fine needle, and began disinfecting it as per Saul’s instructions.
"Disinfection?" Hayden wondered.
"Is this the difference between surgery on the living and the dead?"
Thus began an operation in which both the doctor and patient actively participated.
Since the doctor was a complete novice at operating on live subjects—this honest and low-key Hayden had never performed a single live experiment—the patient had to guide the doctor through the incisions based on his own sensations.
The entire procedure lasted four minutes and thirty-five seconds.
There were moments of panic, but they managed to complete the surgery within the reagent’s effective time.
In the final twenty-five seconds, Hayden finally used the smallest forceps to extract the cocoon from Saul’s pupil.
He lifted the forceps to examine the foreign object that had been inside Saul’s eye. But as soon as his gaze fell upon the tiny silver sphere, he was mesmerized.
Though it was only the size of a grain of rice, as soon as it was exposed to the air, it began to expand.
The silver surface shimmered like a starry sky, deep and tranquil, giving Hayden the illusion of standing in a vast wilderness, gazing up at the cosmos.
Unconsciously, he became entranced, slowly raising the forceps toward his own eye, as if he wanted to insert the object directly into his eyeball.
Suddenly, a bony hand appeared in front of Hayden.
The skeletal fingers brushed against his cheek and snatched the silver sphere away.
"No!" Hayden instinctively wanted to lash out.
But when he saw Saul’s current state, his swelling emotions were doused with cold water.
Saul had already sat up on the conveyor table. His left eye was still held open by the speculum.
A trickle of blood seeped from his eyelid, running down to his chin.
His once-black left eye had turned a dull gray—even after Hayden’s basic treatment.
Yet Saul paid no attention to his now-blind left eye. He quickly tossed the cocoon into the transparent reagent he had prepared earlier, then sealed the bottle with a cork.
A bit of the transparent liquid spilled over, but the rest filled the test tube completely.
Inside, the silver sphere bounced up and down as if an invisible thread was constantly tugging at it.
After confirming it was properly sealed, Saul finally tossed the test tube to Hayden.
Hayden hurriedly caught it, his heart pounding.
"Observing it that closely was very dangerous. But now you can take a look safely."
Yet this time, Hayden only glanced at it before quickly handing the test tube back to Saul.
"No, no, even though you've sealed it, this thing is still too dangerous for me. I almost lost my mind just now."
His posture became even more deferential.
He was now completely certain that Saul had far surpassed him in many fields.
Seeing that Hayden had given up further observation, Saul stored the test tube away.
"This thing tests one’s willpower." He thought of the young girl, Penny. "But I suspect that those with a pure heart might not be as easily affected."
Hayden’s expression darkened. He had neither of those qualities.
If his willpower were strong, he wouldn’t still be a first-level apprentice.
Saul picked up a roll of gauze from the tool station and wrapped it diagonally around his head, covering his left eye.
Hayden hesitated, wanting to speak but stopping himself.
Saul already knew what he wanted to ask, so he directly answered the question he had left hanging at the door earlier.
"Wizards who stay in the same realm for too long will attract unknown horrors. The longer they remain stagnant, the greater the chance of corruption. The weaker they are, the faster the horrors come. To prevent apprentices from turning into abominations, the Wizard Tower periodically expels those who have reached a certain age."
"Compared to other factions that simply turn unqualified apprentices into experimental materials, the Wizard Tower is actually quite merciful."
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