If she were not someone who paid close attention to the assessment or someone who knew the inside story, no one would pay much attention to her and would only regard her as a low-ranking student among the apprentices.
But she couldn't be that kind of person.
Hitzfeld's eyesight had been trained long ago, and she was very good at judging people. She concluded that Farley must be planning something in secret.
"We are already classmates..." Claire came out from behind the pillar, "There is no need..."
"Claire!" Niss grabbed her hand.
Claire turned around and saw the black-haired girl looking at her almost pleadingly: "Aren't you curious about what the 'supernatural enemy' that Ms. Bram mentioned is?"
Now they know that they must abide by the rules on the mysterious path - even if it is the "human desire" route that emphasizes indulging desires, they have a bottom line to abide by.
If you cross that line, you will be "corrupted", "polluted", your whole body will be deformed and turned into a monster, and you will have to escape to the woods alone.
...This is basically the worst-case scenario that the little witches imagined.
The last words that Witch Bram said were so scary that they sounded like a horror story. Claire could hear many apprentices talking about it as she stopped to watch, and their expressions became a little gloomy.
After all, she didn't forget why she brought up this topic.
Have I, Bram William, crossed that line?
she does not know.
She wanted to know this in more detail than anyone else, and she wanted to go to Bram in private to ask her what "supernatural enemies" meant, who they were and what they would do to the Fallen.
But she couldn't do that.
Although Bram did not say it explicitly, it was impossible for the witch coven to contain such a hidden danger. Doing so would arouse suspicion from the other party and she might be driven out.
The discussion with Niss ended in vain.
After all, the two of them had little knowledge in this area, so they got together and guessed a lot of possibilities, which were nothing more than "external organization", "police in the circle of supernatural people", and "secret forces of world power organizations".
Their guesses were basically the same as those of the other apprentices. They all believed that it was because of the existence of the "supernatural enemy" that they, the supernatural beings, had to hide underground like rats.
Life then returned to normal.
Bram's warning was indeed effective, and now the little witches who stayed up late and went on hunger strike have disappeared.
Only Claire still didn't dare to eat normally.
She was afraid that if she ate normally like other people, she would lose to her "appetite". She was afraid that she would be mysteriously judged as a "fellow practitioner" and would degenerate into a monster.
She could only try her best to cover it up. Every time she brought food, she would show it to others and secretly pour it out. She only replenished her nutrition by injecting glucose and energy potions.
Fortunately, nothing unusual occurred.
Her skin didn't crack, she didn't have that feeling of crossing the line, she didn't turn into a monster... Maybe everything could go on in peace like this.
Claire thought so herself, but this peace was quickly broken.
"boom!"
Late one night, Claire was reciting a theorem in the classroom when a book hit her on the desk.
She didn't read the book, but looked up at the person who lost it.
"Farley?" She raised her eyebrows slightly.
"It's me." Farley sat down on the chair backwards, looked back at the others to make sure they weren't paying attention, and then tried to lower her voice: "Are you looking up 'Supernatural Enemies'?"
Claire stared at her in silence.
"Don't be like this." Farley pursed her lips, "It's all in the past... isn't it? I don't want to make an enemy like you, maybe we can start over and be friends?"
"You clearly guessed that eating would disqualify them."
Claire shook her head slowly: "I won't be friends with someone like you."
"So you want to be my enemy?" Fali's expression darkened and she moved a little closer to her, their foreheads almost touching.
"Don't think I'm easy to mess with, William... I just don't want Bram to pay too much attention to me, it doesn't mean you are really the best among the freshmen!"
Claire remained indifferent and continued to put pressure on her with silence.
"Okay..." Farley gave up and sat back.
"You can also think of this as a deal."
"What do you want?" Claire frowned.
"I'll tell you the information I found, and you give me those serrated leaves."
Farley grinned.
"I need to make a potion... and need to exchange materials with them. How is that? Is that fair?"
After thinking for a while, Claire turned her attention to the book.
"Deciphering the Nobility: The 1000 Most Respected Ancient Clans."
She whispered the overly long title.
Then I started to wonder, “What can I learn from watching this?”
This is just an ordinary record document, right?
It may also include some fabricated rumors... Can the content in it really be trusted?
"Of course a book can't explain anything." Farley shook her head. "When you are unsure whether the knowledge is true or false, you can use different knowledge to reflect each other."
"That's what I did... William. I checked all the ancient families in it - even some extraordinary families - and checked their final fate. Guess what I found in the end?"
Claire frowned and moved her lips slightly.
"Some people's fates don't match up." Farley gave the answer directly.
"Maybe because there are too many names and too many characters, they ignored the book and didn't put it away... I was able to get this opportunity..."
"That doesn't mean anything." Claire shook her head. "It could just be a mistake in the record."
"But what if it includes 'alienation'?"
Farley's next words made her wary.
"I am certain of it, William. The so-called depravity is alienation - the pursuit of mystery at all costs."
"The extraordinary enemy that Bram mentioned is hunting people on the 'alienation' route. All the 'alienation' you can find have disappeared for no reason."
Continuing to move closer, Farley's eyes widened.
“This is a power beyond the ordinary.”
"We can try... to find it."
Chapter 57: Historical Fragments
Farley left after saying a bunch of words that sounded incomprehensible to an ordinary apprentice, leaving only the big book on the table.
Claire looked around guiltily, making sure that this contact hadn't attracted anyone's attention, and then she relaxed a little.
No, we can't relax now.
Opening the bottle and releasing the spider "Clarian", Claire whispered some instructions to it, asking it to make sure there were no hidden companions nearby.
When the mysteries accumulate to a certain level, witches can make high-level potions. Among these potions, there is a famous one called "Same Life Potions". As the name suggests, if two lives drink a pot of "Same Life Potions" at the same time, they can share feelings to a certain extent.
When Claire learned this knowledge, she immediately understood how Bram monitored the entire test - at that time, Bram's symbiotic black magic spider might have been living on the roof of the hall, and everything the spider saw could be transmitted back to Bram synchronously.
So she still couldn't be careless now, she had to make sure... there were no other eyes above her head.
This was something only "Clarian" could do, and she could only sit down and wait silently.
Time passed minute by minute, and just when Claire was stunned, a big, sleek spider suddenly fell in front of her with a silk thread hanging down, and broke its leg with a snap.
This is not Claire...
The girl was a little stunned at first, but she quickly recognized from the features that this was not her pet.
There was a dark red mark on Claryn's head, and she was sure she couldn't mistake it.
That must be someone else's spider... She looked up and found that Claryn was also descending with a silk thread hanging down, waving her claws fiercely at the escaping big spider.
This was driven away by it.
This is normal, because Claryn eats better than all of her kind. Apprentices often forget to feed the black spiders because they are so absorbed in their research that many black spiders have to leave their masters to find food at specific times.
But Claryn doesn't have this kind of worry. Every time her owner prepares food, she takes the opportunity to get enough to eat. She goes out for a stroll and basically uses hunting to digest the food.
"The apprentices haven't mastered the high-level potion yet. It shouldn't be the symbiotic spider..."
After receiving a positive response from Claireen, Claire finally relaxed completely. She picked up the book "Deciphering the Nobility - 1000 Most Respected Ancient Clans", touched the cover and opened it.
My eyebrows jumped. It was only the first page, and there was a note inside. On it was a line of beautiful handwriting: "This book is in my name. No matter what you think, don't leave any traces on it."
No wonder it's so thick.
Claire pressed the entire book and found that it was a bit fluffy and many of the pages in the middle were not neat.
"How many sticky notes did she put in there..." Her brows furrowed, mainly because Claire didn't understand - she could be said to be concerned about these taboos out of fear, but Farley, she could have just walked this path with peace of mind, why did she waste her energy to check this?
"Power beyond the extraordinary..." She chewed over the last words left by Farley, and a vague guess arose in her mind.
"It shouldn't be that serious. After all, she is..."
"Forget it, let's see what she marked in it first."
Opening the book and skimming through the first few pages, Claire confirmed her initial thoughts: this was indeed a record.
Someone summarized all the information about ancient descendants that could be found, regardless of how much real news or legends it contained, and piled it all together to form this book "Decrypting the Aristocrats".
It's such a pretentious book, no wonder it was left outside. Even a little witch like Farley could borrow it at will.
Claire knew very well that the book itself was of little value. There was only one way to tap its value, which was what Farley said: to reflect knowledge against knowledge.
If you see a great surname in "Decrypting the Nobility" and its fate as described in the book is different from what you know, then you have obtained new information: one of the two is false.
It's simple, this is what Farley does.
Claire looked at the important notes, and Hitzfeld was also paying close attention.
[The Bruno-Livichi family was a famous noble family in medieval Europe. Although their influence did not spread abroad and was only known to some people in western France, their erudition, elegance, and wealth still left a deep impression on anyone who met them...]
She read the contents silently, feeling a little nervous.
According to the records in "Decoding the Aristocracy", this family had little influence and was basically at the level of a gentry. What they did was no different from other lords of that era. They did not have any advantages or characteristics worthy of being written about. Even their demise due to the plague was glossed over in passing.
But in Farley's notes, this family is not simple - she said she had read another book that had a detailed description of the myths and legends of western France in a similar period, including a magical castle.
The magical castle does not always appear. It must be a full moon, and someone must step into the wasteland to have a little luck in encountering it. The luckier people will be warmly entertained by the owner of the castle and spend a dreamy night in it.
How dreamy is it? He can step on the carpets woven by the gods themselves, eat the most delicious lamb, drink the sweetest fruit wine, and the master will have a long and happy conversation with them. When he falls asleep, there will be a beautiful maid to serve him personally.
Given the amount of exaggeration in myths and legends, Hitzfeld wasn't too bothered by the flowery words.
But she grasped the key point: the location where this magical castle appeared many times completely overlapped with the residence of the Bruno Liweiqi family described in "The Nobles".
[The Dream Castle in the West. The last legend about it was that someone saw it die in the night.]
Hitzfeld continued to read the note silently.
[The black shadows emerged from the ground, their broken flesh connected by sutures, and they came to the hall and danced like the living...]
[No one knows what happened to it later, because it is said that the last person who saw this scene was frightened to death. Some people said that they saw corpses dancing, and some said that the whole castle was bleeding. This is very different from what is recorded in this book.]
[……] Hitzfeld pondered for a while and felt that it was a bit too arbitrary to conclude that it was the Bruno Liweiqi family.
But credibility is not completely absent.
You have to know that for families in small places like these, because of limited information channels and many locals have never been out of the country in their entire lives, their descriptions of these legendary histories should be highly consistent.
But there is such a big difference, which is not normal.
Hitzfeld was still a little skeptical, but Claire believed it firmly.
She became more and more absorbed in reading, flipping through the entries one by one, and only after she finished reading Farley's notes did she feel a sharp pain in her stomach.
This desire was so strong that her mind was a little out of control.
At that moment, Hitzfeld noticed that she glanced at Claryn.
[……] No comment.
After all, she knew her ending.
