Ch.13 Here we go again

“Huh?”


“What he did in the library was disrespectful to the Magi guild. He is lucky that I didn't break his legs. If Manning comes to find me tomorrow, Tell him that I left for Ullanna and won’t come back for another 10 days...no for another month.”


“Huh?”


This time, it was Sauron turn to overreact.


‘What’s happening? How could master switch his mood so fast? Wasn’t he having a good chat with Manning just a while ago, now he’s avoiding him like a plague.’


“I guess there was a reason why it took you so long to become an archmage. Why don’t you use your head a little? If I didn’t listen to the rambling of this useless pair of father and son, they’d have gone to the Black tower. Otherwise, I’d have kicked them out long time ago.”


“But master, didn’t you say before that Manning is holding the losing end in this cooperation plan? How could that harm our tower of sages?”


Sauron didn’t understand, since Saruman didn’t explain it.


“That was before.”


Saruman sighed as he looked at his disciple, then said with a sneer :


“That pair of father and son probably thought that I have gone senile and didn’t know that the twin moons chamber of commerce is involved in Rogge Merlin’s accident.”


-_-


This time, Sauron kept his silence and looked at the old man with suspicion.


‘Rogge Merlin had been dead for a month and now you want to seek revenge for him. When did that old man acquire a sense of justice anyway?’


“Why are you looking to me like that?”


The old man became angry all of a sudden.


“Are you implying that you master doesn’t have a sense of justice? No wonder it took you so long to become an archmage. Not just you’re stupid, you also don’t respect your master.”


“No, No,....Master, you misunderstood me.”


The young archmage tried to explain himself.


“Forget it. It doesn’t matter anyway”


The old man decided to spare his disciple this time.


“What matters is that since Rogge’s son was the one to receive the permit, I’ll help him get justice.”


“Why are we exactly doing this?”


“Because this permit was exchanged for a certain bottle of potion.”


“You mean the potion that was sent few days ago?”


As the only disciple of Saruman, Sauron knew that a few days ago, someone brought a bottle of potion to exchange to for the highest level permit. But he didn’t know what potion was that.


“Is this potion that important?”


“If you dared to ask this question in front of Scipio*, he’ll be happy to taxidermize** you ”


(TN: * original text is 索普 with Pinyin: suǒ pǔ, another possible translation is “Thorpe” --- romanizing the names is a pain in the…

** taxidermy is preserving animals by drying them like the stuffed hunting trophies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxidermy)


Sauron shrank his neck in fear. Grand alchemist Scipio was one of the three hegemons in the tower of sages. If he decided to taxidermize him, no one would be able to save him, not even his master. After all, Scipio was the only one that could go against Saruman.


After his initial fear, his curiosity took over. What kind of potion would the three big shots value this much.


Initially, Sauron had some speculations about the potion and thought perhaps it was composed of precious materials or something.


But he didn’t think, it would be important to the degree that Scipio would taxidermize him over it.


“I didn’t mean to frighten you, but you didn’t see Scipio’s reaction when he held the bottle. He kept shouting that it was a masterpiece that was destined to be recorded in history books. His enthusiasm was unnatural”


The young archmage’s face changed when he heard that. Scipio was an authority figure in thousand sails city when it comes to pharmaceutical alchemy. He didn’t put anyone in his eye even the grand alchemist of the twin moons chamber of commerce.




For many years, Sauron rarely praised anyone, and if did he’d just nod his head and say “That’ll do” which many people would consider a great honor.





“Don’t look at me like this. I’m not that good with pharmaceutical alchemy.”




Saruman glanced at his disciple and said:




“But Scipio said that every bottle of that potion would mean a new archmage would be joining the tower of sages.”




As the voice stopped, Sauron hold his breath. Maybe it would be difficult for him to imagine the potion value with words like “Masterpiece” or “Will be recorded in history books”, but “archmage” was different.




After all, the tower of sages has only 13 archmage, and only 7 of them are permanent members. In the past 10 years, as the three hegemons lived in seclusion, the 7 archmagi were responsible for the tower expansion and securing resources. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that half of the tower's authority are in the hands of the 7 archmagi.




If this potion turned out to be like how Scipio described, then no one knows how the situation in thousand sails city would unfold.




It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that if any faction managed to gain the support of this grand alchemist, they would be able to fight the tower of sages for hegemony in the thousand sails city.




As he was thinking about that, Sauron became drenched in cold sweat.




The only good news was that the alchemist didn’t seem interested in a power struggle, for now at least or he would have taken the potion to another faction instead.


Now their only lead was the two young magi, especially Mafa Merlin. His relation to the alchemist shouldn’t be ordinary or he wouldn’t have used such a valuable potion to obtain a library permit for him.


‘No wonder Master would adapt such attitude.’


‘If what master said was right and the twin moons had a hand in Rogge’s accident, then once the conspiracy is revealed, the twin moons would have to face the wrath of a grand alchemist.’


While Sauron was in deep thought, Saruman said :


“Right now, only a fool would make a deal with the twin moons.”


Suddenly, the young archmage had a hint of sympathy for Manning and his son. In order to finalize this deal, they spent half a year negotiation and offered a lot of generous conditions. But all their efforts went down the drain, because of one bottle of potion that was sent casually.


“Now, I told you everything, How to deal with the situation is your decision. Sooner or later, you’ll take my position. It’s best for you to learn how to deal with these things early on.”


“Understood. I will be going now.”


After they finished their conversation, Sauron began to pay attention to the young mage.


Sauron discovered that the young mage was really interesting. His reading scope ranged from light stuff like [Northrend History] to heavier topics like [Kidd’s Formula]. But Sauron didn’t see him take notes, not even once. After a while he suspected he wasn’t reading at all.


Several times, Sauron wanted to remind him that entering the library was a rare opportunity that he should cherish and most magi wouldn’t mind going bankrupt for it. Maybe he would enjoy leisure reading now, but he would regret it later.


Today was also the same. After Sauron had his breakfast, he entered the library and glanced at the disk in the corner out of habit because he knows that the young man would be sitting reading there at that time every day.


Sure enough, the young mage was sitting there holding a book with a red mark on its cover and looking at it with interest.


“ Here we go again.”


Sauron sighed to himself. Even though the book wasn’t a light reading material, in his opinion, it wasn’t that much different.


The red mark on the cover meant that the knowledge contained in this book was of the archmage level. For a level 1 mage, how could that be different from light reading material.


Moreover Mafa didn’t do this once or twice. There was even one time when Sauron found him holding a book with silver mark and reading it with extreme gusto that he found ridiculous. After all, that was knowledge of the wizard level.


Sauron couldn't stand it anymore.


‘How could a mage who has no respect for knowledge, achieve something with his life. Look at him casually reading a book that only archmagi are qualified to hold it. He doesn’t even take notes, Just flipping the pages. As if he didn’t come to learn but to take a vacation instead. ’


Sauron, of course, didn’t know that he guessed it right.