52: Chapter 52 The Retired Monk's Entrustment

After listening to Richard's suggestion, only Black Cat didn't immediately respond.

She sat leaning in the corner, one leg resting on the edge of a bench, her hand crossbow hanging on the back of the chair, within easy reach.

After nearly ten seconds of silence, she finally spoke, her voice as indifferent as ever:

"A month of rest is too long for me. I'll see how things go… if there's a suitable short-term commission, I'll take it; if not, I'll just wait."

"I can rejoin the team after a month."

She paused, then added, "Don't worry, I'll only take jobs that can be completed within two weeks."

Richard nodded without objection. He had known Black Cat for quite some time, but the girl never said why she was so short on money.

She was always very calculating when splitting money from missions, and she never spent recklessly after receiving her pay.

Once, when Jinbao was drunk, he asked her about it to her face. She just glared at the dwarf, her gaze so cold that Jinbao changed the subject himself.

Richard didn't intend to ask any more questions; he had his own secrets and naturally respected the secrets of others.

As long as they could work together tacitly on the battlefield, the rest didn't matter.

"Alright, then it's settled. One month from now, we'll meet at the Adventurers Guild."

"During this time, we'll each do our own thing. If there's an emergency, go to the inn to contact me; I should be there most of the time." Richard finished the last drop of ale in his mug and stood up.

Early the next morning, Richard went to the Adventurers Guild first.

The bulletin board in the hall was still covered with commissions. Besides some daily tasks, there were many new commissions for clearing out Murlocs.

He scanned them one by one, his gaze stopping on a commission squeezed into a corner.

The edges of the paper were curled, and it was covered in a thin layer of dust; it had clearly been hanging there for a while, with no one taking it.

The commission details were simple: the famous retired mage, Bartok, needed someone to help him transcribe notes and elementary magic scrolls. The work duration was one week, four hours a day, with a reward of twenty silver coins.

There were only two simple requirements: neat handwriting and honest hands.

Twenty silver coins—this amount of money wasn't even enough to fill the gaps in Richard's teeth nowadays.

But the content of the commission was very interesting; the key point was transcribing magic scrolls.

Even if it was just copying mechanically, it meant he could stay in the mage's tower for a few days, four hours a day, and come into contact with real magic text and formulas.

This was the most direct and legal way he could access learning magic at the moment.

Although this commission hadn't been taken for a long time, which might imply some hidden risks or difficulties, Richard still wanted to give it a try.

He took down the commission, reported the situation to the Guild, folded the parchment, and tucked it into his pocket.

After returning to the inn and meeting Cecilia, he briefly told her about his plans for this task.

She didn't ask much, only saying that while he was at the tower, she would stay at their lodgings to practice her vampire abilities.

She was already able to make her body briefly lighter; although she couldn't fully transform into mist yet, it allowed her to move faster in combat.

Richard quickly set off for the mission destination.

Bartok's academic tower was located at the northernmost end of the scholar district in Blackwater City, a completely different world from the noise of the Adventurers Guild and the chaos of the harbor district.

The tower was a four-story stone building, its outer walls covered in dark green ivy; some vines had grown so thick that they had cracked the wall bricks from the crevices.

At the top of the tower stood a gargoyle statue so weathered that its features were indistinguishable. The door at the base of the tower was a thick oak slab, with a sign written in ink nailed to it.

"Bartok's Mage Tower. Do not knock; the doorbell is broken. Push directly."

The ink under the sign had faded to the point of being almost illegible.

Richard pushed the door open, and the door hinge let out a sharp shriek, almost making him think he had accidentally stepped into a trap.

Immediately after, he saw the scene inside and subconsciously double-checked whether he had walked into the wrong place.

It didn't look like a mage's tower; it looked more like an old warehouse that had been abandoned for over a decade and then occupied by vagrants and stray cats.

The shoe cabinet at the entrance was piled with old books and loose parchment scrolls taller than a person, and the gaps between the papers were stuffed with empty ink bottles and half-eaten dry bread.

Next to the shoe cabinet stood a crooked brass coat rack; hanging on it were not clothes, but several strings of dried bat wings and a whole faded lizard skin.

The air was filled with the smell of mold and the stench of decaying animal carcasses, along with a faint, lingering scent of something burnt.

A crow crouched on the coat rack, tilting its head and staring at Richard with one shiny black eye.

On the floor next to it crouched two mice, one gray and one brown, gnawing on half a biscuit. When they saw Richard enter, they didn't run away; they just paused their biscuit-gnawing and glanced at him with a "Who are you?" look.

The windows at the far end of the room were tightly covered by thick velvet curtains, and the only light source was a magic lamp hanging from the ceiling.

One of the lamps was still flickering, clearly running out of mana and likely to give out at any moment.

"Is anyone here?" Richard stood at the entrance and called out.

A rustling sound came from deep within the hallway, as if someone was crawling out from a pile of cloth and paper.

Immediately after, an old mage with a white beard dragging on the floor appeared from around the corner of the hallway.

He was wearing a robe that might have once been dark blue but was now stained into a palette of ink, potions, and various unknown substances. The cuffs were frayed, and a half-eaten piece of cheese was stuck to the collar.

Resting on the bridge of his nose was a pair of reading glasses so thick they could serve as a shield. The eyes behind the lenses were squinted into two slits as he stared hard at Richard, then let out an "Oh."

"You are that… that… who was it again?"

"Richard Baimon, the adventurer who accepted your commission, here to help you transcribe scrolls." Richard handed over the commission slip.

Bartok took the commission slip, scrutinized it carefully through his thick lenses for a long time, and then pushed his glasses up onto his forehead.

He fished out an even thicker spare handheld magnifying glass from his sleeve and looked over the parchment again.

After finishing, he slapped his forehead hard, and his glasses nearly fell off his forehead.

"Right, right, right! I posted this! Posted it two months ago… no, three months? Never mind, it doesn't matter. You've come just in time! Just in time!"

He turned and walked back, waving behind him as he went. His white beard, which was dragging on the floor, tripped him twice, but he paid no attention to it.

"Follow me, come inside first. The transcribing can wait… first, help me bring over a few ingredients; the cauldron is already burning."

Richard followed behind Bartok through the hallway that was almost buried by clutter, dodging various unknown objects hanging from the ceiling as he walked.

Several strings of dried herbs, a human skeleton suspended by wires, dozens of bubbling glass flasks, and a strange stray cat sleeping on the rafters.