"..."
Benjamin was speechless for a moment. He stared blankly at him before asking again, "A story used to frighten children? Do you know what the abyss trial is?"
"Of course I do." The elderly mage replied impatiently. "The legendary elemental curse, a soul which has been rejected by this world... Do not tell me that you heard that this trial can make people immune to magic and divine arts, and that you plan to use it to train. Do not think about it, it is impossible. "
"Why?"
The elderly mage heard this, put the test tube in his hand down, and rubbed his temples as he said, "Because no one has ever survived from that so-called trial. Rationally, how could anyone possibly survive being pierced through the heart with a magic beast’s fang and being forced to drink a fatal poison? And at the end of all this, you are told that you supposedly have a special ability, do you think it is possible?"
"... It is possible."
Up until here, the elderly mage had an almost angry expression. He might have thought that Benjamin was playing with him, so he slammed the table with his fist and frightened some nearby students who were passing by.
"I studied it all my life, of course I know that it is just a mere rumor!" He glared at Benjamin and fiercely snarled, "What about you? Why do you that it is possible?"
Benjamin looked at the elderly mage with surprise, scratched his head and said, "Because... ... I have seen a successful case?"
"..."
The elderly mage was lost for words and stood there dumbly with his eyes unblinking. He might have been frightened by these words, or he might have thought that Benjamin was still lying to him and had gotten so mad that he lost his mind.
The atmosphere was somewhat awkward, so Benjamin coughed and continued, "If you do not believe me, then I will bring him to you when he returns from the Kingdom of Helius.
"You're serious." The elderly mages came back to his senses and looked at Benjamin in disbelief.
Benjamin nodded emotionlessly.
"Okay, you need to bring that person here!" The elderly mages suddenly got excited, "If there's a guy who successfully survives the trial, then his blood is extremely important to my research. Be it dead or alive, just bring him here! "
"O-okay..."
Then, Benjamin turned and left the potion crafting room.
He was a little surprised.
Before he came, he had not expected the elderly mage to have such a big reaction - was surviving the abyss trial really such an incredible thing? No wonder Benjamin had never seen anyone else who was immune to magic other than Miles.
Moreover, Miles’s physique was hard to replicate.
Benjamin was feeling fortunate, this world still belonged to the mages. However, it was a pity that he was not able to duplicate a group soldiers to fight against the church.
A few days later, the holiday ended and the day of the reopening of the academy finally came around. Even though Benjamin did not really care about the matters regarding the academy, but he still had to walk out and give a speech during such big events such as the opening ceremony.
At least this time, there wasn’t any unexpected accidents during the opening ceremony. After giving a speech of encouragement in the auditorium and complimenting the outstanding students for their work during the last semester, Benjamin’s job was finally done. Since the students were already familiar with the place, they immediately rushed to their classes after the ceremony, ready to once again start their hectic academy life.
"Director Benjamin, so far we have not made any progress in the study of runes, but... this is something that we had just come up with, here, you can have a look at it."
After the opening ceremony ended, Benjamin went to the room assigned to the runes research team for an inspection. Another elderly mage walked with him and introduced himself along the way. He directed Benjamin towards a metal cage and pointed at it.
Benjamin looked inside the cage.
Was that a... pig? From its appearance, besides having the basic structure of a pig, the creature inside looked nothing like a regular pig. Its red fur was radiating with fire-like temperature; after looking at it carefully, he even saw some hidden sharp thorns hidden among his fur, slowly tensing and then relaxing as it breathed.
Benjamin could not help but frown.
Were they not studying runes here? Why did these people start a biological experiment?
The creature in front of him was similar to a magical beast, but after fighting that many magic beasts, Benjamin was sure that the creature trapped in the cage was not a pig-form magic beast, but... something else.
"I've been thinking about applying runes into humans, but it was obviously too dangerous to do so. A mage secretly tried it on himself and almost lost his life in doing so. Therefore, we started experimenting with animals. This is the result of our experiments."
"We engraved a fire element rune on top of a leaf and fed a certain amount of it to the pig every day. Ten days later, it became like this. We experimented on a lot of pigs, and about three-quarters of them ended up mutated. Based on our speculation, the fire element might have bounded to its body and produce some sort of mutation, turning it into a magical beast.
Benjamin heard this and nodded.
These mages were really creative when it came to the study of runes.
However, after thinking about it, he felt that this was a completely new field that no one knew anything about. Therefore, all they could do was to keep experimenting with different techniques. Some people might try to link themselves to the runes whilst others would use the runes to form a sentence or even a magic formation, and still, others would try to infuse the runes into various objects.
This was how it all started, trial and error on every possible theory.
"What is the special ability of this thing? How is its combat strength compared to a regular magic beast?" Benjamin asked.
Benjamin was surprised by the discovery that runes can trigger biological variation. But what was more important to him at this moment was the benefits that these variations could bring to them.
The elderly mage replied, "Its combat capability is very weak, it’s only ability is that it will explode after it detects an elemental disturbance - the power of the explosion is approximately equal to that of intermediate-level magic. Therefore, the cage used to imprison it is made out of anti-magic metal."
Benjamin heard this and raised his eyebrow, "How many animals with such special ability have you studied?"
"Actually, there are quite a number of them, but this is the only one with an even remotely useful ability." The elderly mage said reluctantly, "The previous studies where mostly mice with the ability to laugh like humans, or cats that would freeze themselves when they touch water.... The abilities that they had were rather useless."
"Okay then."
Benjamin was slightly disappointed. It seemed like this study would not have a huge impact unlike the discovery of the magic rune formation, but... he did not expect too much, it was normal for this kind of research to go nowhere even after a decade of research; at least they hadn’t hit a dead end.
At least… they invented a pig that could blow up?
"Did you get any inspiration on how to apply runes to humans?" After thinking for a moment, Benjamin asked.
The elderly mage nodded and said, "That... I did not report it to you, but another mage and I have already started taking rune engraved leaves every day. Two days have passed and so far, we are still healthy, but I do not know what will happen in the future."
"..."
Benjamin was lost for words.
This bravery... were they stupid?