The Righteous Player(s)

Chapter 297: Clarence

“—Hmm, it seems that Uncle Goose is about to suffer.”

“—Does this count as triggering the main storyline ahead of time?”

“—Delicious Wind Goose: I was terrified at the time.”

“—Does Uncle Goose need support? We’re also in Tasque County; the soonest we can get there is in one day.”

Forget about it. It isn’t like Old Goose is preparing for a fight. Instead, his mission is to sneak into the royal capital.

You’re just adding trouble. Don’t get him exposed. Seeing bullet text here, Longjing Tea grinned.

He replied courteously, “Only go when Old Goose asks for support. Calm yourselves if you just want to join the fun.”

Longjing Tea sighed helplessly and closed the book he was reading.

It’s getting dark… Let me head downstairs to get another book to study in my own room.

He had been reading in a library for a whole day.

After realizing that he had a learning aid plug-in, Longjing Tea opened up the forum and left the streaming channels playing in the background while he transcribed the spellbooks.

Even if he wasn’t watching, he could still listen to it.

As a child, he liked to turn on the TV while doing his homework.

Longjing Tea was the type that would be more efficient if there were a little white noise in his environment.

“What are you doing? Your name is… Longjing Tea, right?” A hearty voice came from behind Longjing Tea, “Are you still reading at such a late hour? So hardworking.”

“Teacher Clarence.” When Longjing Tea heard this voice, he immediately got up and held his hands together in front of his chest. Then, he bowed slightly to the person behind him and gave a student salute.

This was an etiquette that could also be used by students who had books and materials in their hands.

The person who appeared behind Longjing Tea was a young man with an amiable air and a thin figure.

He wore light and thin round-rimmed glasses, a heavy cape made from dark red cloth of an unknown texture, and a red robe. Aside from the mismatch of colors, he looked like an oversized version of Harry Potter.

Clarence was also a tutor at Swamp’s Black Tower. He was just about to have his last class of the month before Longjing Tea started here, so they had met a few days ago.

Yet it wasn’t expected that he was still here after several days had passed.

Is this voluntary overtime?

Unlike his seemingly amiable air, Clarence was a tutor of the Soul Snatch school.

After the last tutor of the Soul Snatch school defected, Clarence, who was previously his student, had recently accepted the job of a tutor.

Clarence was a little surprised as he saw the spellbook with a steel cover on the table, “I recall this book “Edict Theory” to be quite difficult…

“Are you constructing spells?” Clarence said somewhat apologetically, “Did I interrupt you?”

“No, no.” Longjing Tea let out a soft voice, a skill he had learned to pretend to be a good boy in school.

He lowered his head and replied politely, “I was just about to leave… Unfortunately, I don’t have enough authority to take it away, so I’m going downstairs to pick up another book to read in my room.”

“That’s easy.” Clarence replied cheerfully, “Give me a piece of paper.”

He reached out to receive the notebook paper from Longjing Tea as he spoke and then put it on the table.

He reached out his right index and middle fingers with long fingernails and lightly tapped the paper on the table.

The paper seemed to have melted— It instantly turned into liquid and reassembled into another sheet of paper. The original blank paper was now covered with text.

Longjing Tea witnessed the entire process clearly.

It was a “Temporary Book Lending License”.

Clarence used his right index finger to sign in the lower right corner. It sounded like a gel pen scribbling across the table. A name that seemed to be engraved appeared on the paper like scars.

Clarence’s distinctive feature was his well-manicured, four long nails on his right hand aside from his thumb.

The four nails were over three centimeters long. They didn’t curl, nor were they yellowish, but instead remained white, clean, and firm.

Longjing Tea heard from Salvatore that Clarence’s four nails seemed to have been carefully cultivated using potions made from centaur’s hand bones, which could interfere with the Prophet magic and serve as a high-quality spell casting medium.

To protect these four nails, Clarence basically couldn’t do any heavy work. Even holding a pen to write was inconvenient— he preferred to use the Shaping spell to reshape the “paper” into a saved template directly. Otherwise, he would use the same magic he displayed right now and engrave the texts onto the paper.

As he retrieved his long nails that reminded Longjing Tea of ??Freddy [1], Clarence adjusted his glasses and said gently, “You should just take this book with you.

“Although there aren’t many students who needed “Edict Theory” in the tower, you should take precautions as there are also not many books from the Edict school here. If a higher authority wizard wants to borrow it, it’s going to be troublesome for you.”

“…Thank you, Teacher Clarence.” Hearing this, Longjing Tea became more solemn and thanked him again.

Clarence waved his hand, “It’s no problem. Unfortunately, I can only help you up to this point. Swamp’s Black Tower doesn’t have a tutor from the Edict School that could help you, and you can only rely on self-learning.

“If you happen to see Tutor Carl, you can ask him how to construct a complete spell cycle. Although he didn’t specialize in Edict school, he is the only Great Wizard here who has mastered Edict spells. If that doesn’t work…”

When he said this, he couldn’t help but raise the corners of his mouth, “You should learn [Reveal True Name]. There is nothing wrong with learning this spell, and you’ll have to learn it sooner or later. After you learn this, your exams will become a little easier.”

“[Reveal True Name]…”

“Yep, this is a common spell used to verify names, and the usage rate is almost comparable to the Alteration spell that uses [Wind-to-water] alteration to make clean drinking water. The jade tablets made with this spell are also necessary regardless if it is for some high-end clubhouse guard or for signing contracts.”

Having said this, Clarence shrugged, “Of course, it’s better to do a spell cycle. Generally, Edict Wizard wouldn’t have much combat power even when they have reached Bronze Rank… They would rest in the wizard tower and work until the Silver Rank before heading out.”

Is it possible that this school consists of only medical students?

The kind of work that required several years of internships and even guaranteed a master’s degree.

Longjing Tea complained in his heart.

But it was hard to come across tutors. Having this rare encounter with Tutor Clarence, Longjing Tea asked, “Teacher Clarence, if I don’t pursue a combat manner in an individualistic manner, do you have any spell recommendations?”

“What do you mean by that?” Teacher Clarence asked.

“It’s like this, teacher. Before entering the Swamp’s Black Tower, I had a few close friends. They were all capable Transcendeds. So I’m learning the Edict spell to help them. It was also then that I had the opportunity to be brought here by Senior Salvatore.”

Longjing Tea recounted the process of being invited to Mist Continent in words that Clarence could understand.

The first time he met Clarence, Salvatore had reminded him — Do not attempt lying to a Soul Snatch wizard. Not only were they very sensitive to the lies, but lies were also meaningless to Soul Snatch wizards who could see emotion.

Some experienced Soul Snatch wizards could even switch their mind-reading abilities on and off at any time with small movements such as blinking or flicking their tongues.

So what Longjing Tea said was also true; it was incomplete.

Hearing his question, Clarence frowned slightly, “You want to help your friends, huh, let me think…”

“I want to learn [Emergency Dodge]. What do you think?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” Contrary to Longjing Tea’s expectations, Clarence nodded and pointed to the book “Edict Theory”. “This book is a bit outdated. It would be best to digest the evaluation of some spells in it with a grain of salt. For example, the latest viewpoint claims that [Emergency Dodge] is a good emergency spell.

“Because when encountering a more complicated danger, many people do not know whether to dodge to the left or the right. Instead, they will freeze in place and delay time. As a result, the victim couldn’t escape from the attacks that could have been avoided.

“It’s better to develop a habit of using [Emergency Dodge] on yourself as soon as you encounter danger. From the traditional viewpoint, you may end up falling into a deadlock after using the spell because you didn’t know the position or state you’ll be in after you dodge. But if you take into account that the other party’s attacks would mostly be premeditated, the enemy would not know which way you’ll dodge if you yourself don’t. In the end, this is a good spell choice.”

Longjing Tea nodded again and again as he quickly understood.

To put it simply, it was to simplify the dodging manner such as [Arrow keys + roll] or [Jump] into a [Dodge Key] so that one could dodge by pressing it.

That’s convenient.

It would be even better if I could add bullet time when dodging…