Chapter 172: The Components of the Candle

The pipeline behind the candlestick made Saul’s hair stand on end, but it didn’t deter his determination to continue experimenting.

Although Ferguson wanted to harm him, the conditions he offered were truly tempting.

Saul lacked magic crystals, academic credits, and rare experimental materials. On top of that, he had quite a few troubles to deal with. Solving those problems required in-depth research, which meant another huge expense.

Since Ferguson and Kujin wanted to set him up with a sugar-coated bullet, why couldn’t Saul swallow the sugar coating and throw the bullet back at them?

He had no idea what true candles were really worth, but he figured he could create a counterfeit.

After all, Ferguson only wanted to use the candle as leverage against him, not for actual use. As long as it looked convincing enough, it would work.

Of course, “convincing” had to be high quality—if it was obviously fake, there would be no sugar coating to enjoy.

Without hesitation, Saul began replicating the candle based on its properties.

He listed all the observed attributes of the candle, then reverse-engineered the possible materials involved, even going as far as deriving synthesis reaction formulas.

This rigorous process kept him working until midnight.

The intense mental strain left him exhausted, and he didn’t feel like using meditation as a substitute for rest.

"The Nightmare Butterfly's cocoon has already been extracted and sealed away, with no unusual activity... I might as well take this chance to sleep and see if it still affects me."

Reassuring himself, Saul lay down on a short bed beside the long table.

This bed had belonged to Kujin, but since it was too large to move, Kujin had simply left it behind.

Saul had replaced the bedding and continued using it.

Before sleeping, he removed the bandages from his left eye, which remained a foggy gray, unable to see anything.

"Looks like I’ll need high-level healing magic to recover. Hopefully, fixing my eye won’t be too expensive."

Saul slowly closed his eyes.

"I hope I don’t dream tonight."

He quickly drifted into a deep sleep.

---

But that night, others tossed and turned, unable to rest.

The powerful third-tier apprentice, Kujin, and Ferguson secretly met again, discussing their strategy for the next day.

The scarred Kongsha, missing half of her former beauty, curled up under her bed, both anticipating and fearing what the future held.

Angela, who had been slapped by Saul earlier, wore a mask as she moved through the night-shrouded West Tower.

And in the usually silent library, an unusual commotion broke the stillness.

The young, middle-aged, and old librarians had gathered together for the first time.

"Are you certain?" the young librarian asked anxiously.

"I am." The old man raised his hand—nearly all of his ten fingers were missing their first joints, never having regenerated.

The young man’s eyes immediately lit up, though they quickly blurred with tears. "We... we have a chance to escape!"

The middle-aged librarian, however, poured cold water on their excitement.

"Are you all insane? How could we possibly escape?"

He wore a face full of worry, his eyes darting around as he spoke, terrified that a shadow might suddenly appear behind them and watch them coldly.

The young librarian sneered at him. "Afraid? What’s there to be afraid of? What’s the worst he can do—kill us again?"

At the mere mention of "him," the middle-aged man trembled violently.

The old librarian ignored his cowardice and stroked his beard.

"I have an idea… Tomorrow, we’ll send someone to test him."

The young librarian was confused. "Didn’t you already test him?"

The old librarian’s expression hardened. "This time, we’ll push harder—try to break free."

The middle-aged man jumped in terror, sinking into the ceiling before dropping back down. "You’re insane! Completely insane!"

But the young librarian’s face twisted with excitement. "Let’s do it. Who goes?"

The old man clasped his hands behind his back and stood up.

"I’ll go."

The young man pursed his lips but didn’t argue.

Only the middle-aged man kept trembling, muttering over and over, "Crazy... You’re all crazy!"

---

Morning sunlight did not reach the dark wizard tower.

Saul had a dreamless night, sleeping soundly.

He sprang up from bed, feeling refreshed—so much so that even the eerie storeroom seemed a little more pleasant.

He stood up, intending to tidy up before continuing his experiment. However, as he looked at his notes on the table, he suddenly noticed something was off.

His perspective felt wrong.

Saul touched his eye, then closed his right eye to observe the room.

To his astonishment, his left eye had recovered its vision.

Grabbing a reflective knife from the table, he examined himself closely.

His eye had completely healed, returning to its normal black color.

"Did my body... just regenerate?"

Hurriedly, he checked the cocoon he had sealed in a test tube. Upon seeing the silver sphere floating gently inside, he let out a deep sigh of relief.

Thankfully, the cocoon hadn’t returned to his eye, meaning all his efforts yesterday hadn’t been in vain.

Since the healing wasn’t due to the cocoon, did someone secretly heal him? Or was it, as he initially suspected, a case of self-regeneration?

Only two people could enter the Second Storage Room freely: Saul himself and the tower master, Gorsa.

Although the tower master certainly had the ability to heal him, he rarely interfered with Saul’s studies, preferring to let him grow on his own.

That made self-regeneration the more likely explanation.

To confirm his theory, Saul took a knife, sterilized it, then rolled up his sleeve and cut three wounds on his right arm.

Each wound varied in depth.

After disinfecting and bandaging them, he noted the time and wound condition, intending to monitor his body’s healing process.

Once that was done, Saul shifted his focus back to the candle experiment.

Yesterday, he had nearly completed analyzing the candle’s composition. By comparing it with years of past experiment records, he had actually identified one of its key ingredients.

It was the sap of a Companion Flower.

However, this sap had slight differences from the Companion Flower extracts recorded in his notes. It was unclear if this was due to experimental variations or if it was simply a different strain of Companion Flower.

After all, Companion Flowers were a broad category with diverse effects—some were used for poison-making, magic enhancement, or stabilizing spiritual entities.

Saul had previously obtained several Companion Flowers and had preserved many petals.

He immediately took out two petals with different functions and began a new round of component analysis.

The results showed minor differences between the two new samples and the candle’s composition, but the overall trends were similar.

"Since the new samples show the same variation pattern, I can conclude that the candle does contain a type of Companion Flower."

To ensure the accuracy of his findings, Saul sacrificed two more identical petals for further testing.

The results remained consistent.

Saul examined the chemical composition sheet of the candle, then suddenly picked up a pen and wrote:

"Stabilizing Spiritual Entities?"

A large question mark followed.

"The flower in the candle might be a Companion Flower that stabilizes spirits! That’s why the wizard tower cultivates and purchases this plant!"

The countless candles scattered throughout the tower—were they maintaining some entity’s spiritual form?

But if that were the case, merely scraping off a small piece shouldn’t disrupt the candle’s function.

"Kujin, if he’s trying to use this candle to blackmail me, must be demanding an entire one."

However, while he had identified one primary ingredient, he still hadn’t found the other.

His eyes drifted toward the three fresh wounds on his arm.

"Should I test it?"

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