Merlin instantly tightened his grip on the other’s hand. Could this be another new trick this guy had cooked up something to make him feel sorry for him and make him easier to deceive?
Angel felt the pain, frowned, and snapped back to his senses in an instant. He quickly let go of Merlin’s hand and was just about to turn around to see what on earth had tripped him when he suddenly felt something loosen around his body.
In that moment, Angel felt like all the sweat on his body was about to pour out. If his towel fell off in front of this person he’d had a night of passion with, that scene would be so mortifying that even on his deathbed, recalling it would make him want to claw his own face off in sheer embarrassment!
Having steadied himself, Angel instantly released his grip on Merlin’s hand and scrambled to grab the towel that was about to slip off. Fortunately, his reflexes were lightning-fast, and he managed to catch it just in time, but when he looked down to see how far it had fallen, he already felt utterly defeated.
Because the towel had already slipped down to his waist. If he’d grabbed it even a moment later, it would have directly exposed his private parts!!
Angel frantically pulled the towel back up, then turned to look at what he’d stepped on that nearly made him slip it was his staff.
“Merlin’s staff is also made of raw wood, and mine is too, right? Everyone’s first-love staff is made of raw wood? But man, my ‘first love’ really screwed me over.”
Merlin:
He suddenly felt that the staff in his pocket was a little off.
What first love, what nonsense his first love was still alive and well, and had absolutely nothing to do with this staff!!
But wait, why were there so many hickeys and bite marks on the other person’s body? No, wait had he really been that excessive last night?
No, what kind of messy thoughts was he having?!
The other man kept bringing up his first-love staff pfft, what first-love staff, he was getting brainwashed by this liar! It should be his original staff, also known as the learning staff. This was practically the first staff everyone used! Except for those who flaunted their wealth or those with extraordinary talent, the original staff was relatively simple, crafted according to each mage’s attribute. This staff would accompany the mage until they completed their studies.
The reason it accompanied mages for such a long time was, of course, because this kind of original staff had the property of stabilizing the magic power within a mage’s body. Before graduating from university at age 24, a mage’s magic power was actually always unstable, and this staff was the root means of helping mages cast spells more smoothly.
That’s why this kind of staff was also called the student staff, or the baby staff.
However, the notion of using this original staff until age 24 was something that had only recently emerged. Universities had only existed for a few decades; previously, everyone had agreed that one could stop using the original staff at age 20.
The easiest materials for making original staves were wood and metal. Based on the properties of these woods and metals, various staves were crafted and assigned to mages of different attributes.
Merlin’s staff was made of water-attribute Hailian wood, and he possessed exceptionally high water magic talent.
Merlin’s gaze fell on the staff that the liar had picked up. It was indeed the same type of raw wood staff as his own, though the color was different.
His staff was made of wood streaked with threads of blue, while this swindler’s staff was made of wood that at first glance looked like jade this should be a wood-attribute staff, and Merlin believed it was crafted from jade-fold wood.
Anyone who used a staff made of this kind of wood must have considerable talent in wood-type magic, this swindler actually had rather impressive wood-type magical talent. Why not just study magic properly instead of resorting to trickery?
“Good thing it didn’t get stepped on and broken.” Ange let out a sigh of relief, using the self-cleaning enchantment on his staff to scrub it thoroughly clean. Only then did he wave the staff to summon the clothes scattered on the ground to his side, giving them all a complete cleaning, before conjuring up a massive swath of light pollution to block Merlin’s view. Finally, he managed to pull the outfit onto himself.
Once he was properly dressed, Ange felt a surge of security wash over him, no longer plagued by that panic of nearly ending up naked in public.
But that scene just now was still something Ange would look back on with embarrassment for at least the next year. Why did such humiliating things keep happening to him one after another?!
But there was still an outsider present, so Ange struggled to keep his expression composed while his mind began to churn over what had just happened.
“What exactly happened just now? Why did that information pop into my head.”
It was only at this moment that Merlin also recalled the words from Ange he had heard in his mind earlier, what exactly did “only by making skin contact with the other person can you survive” mean?
Merlin racked his brain, connecting it with all the knowledge he had learned at school, trying to figure out what kind of situation this was.
This was a swindler, after all could what he said really not be a lie?
But if it wasn’t a lie, then this guy must have some kind of curse or something on him.
In that instant, Merlin thought back to what the other had said earlier that this had all happened because he ate a piece of chocolate.
Last night, he had been unconscious and disoriented, and the enthusiasm he had shown toward Merlin was all because of that piece of chocolate?
But what was chocolate? This thing Merlin had never even heard of this swindler had dared to casually shove it into his mouth.
Someone must have deliberately planted a curse, and this guy, without a shred of caution, had just eaten it directly, which was why this happened, right?
This was somewhat similar to a love curse forcibly binding to the first person you have relations with, able to survive only through that person. Just thinking about being in the other’s situation made Merlin’s blood run cold. If he could only live like that, without any dignity, Merlin would rather die!
But this swindler wasn’t a fool either; he seemed to have received a fairly good education, and his line of reasoning was similar to Merlin’s.
“If it really is a curse like that, then wouldn’t everyone who ate that chocolate be cursed? No wait, that was Norma Foods could some employee have been oppressed and lashed out at society?”
Ange still found it hard to believe his own speculation. He felt his mind in a complete whirl.
“What terrible luck I have! It wasn’t until after a one-night stand that I awakened my memories of having read this book, wasting a full twenty years of my prime without gaining any advantage from my foreknowledge. If I’d recovered my memories even a year earlier, I could’ve swooped in to take in a runaway Mephitis, sponsored his research on magical phones, and then just kicked back and collected money forever after. But now Mephitis has probably already been taken in by someone, right? And the phone is about to hit the market. Too bad the person who took him in has ill intentions, trying to exploit his technology for free. That person’s about to run into danger, but the protagonist Merlin will come to the rescue, and in the end, the protagonist reaps the rewards.”
His own name being mentioned again made Merlin frown slightly. Was this so-called Mephitis a real person, or was the other party delusional, fabricating things out of thin air?
Did “Merlin” refer to him, or to someone else?
Merlin felt the other party was still a con artist, possibly just spinning pure nonsense.
Had contacting this person really been a good choice? Had he already fallen into a trap because of it?
But thinking of the information about his sister that the other party had obtained, Merlin couldn’t bring himself to let go of this lead he’d just discovered. He didn’t want his sister to face even the slightest danger!
Merlin began to feel a bit panicked. After all, he was just a college student. He thought he should seek guidance from his professor, what if the other party really was a masterful swindler?
A con artist tricking a college student into becoming a test subject for dark magic experiments wasn’t exactly unheard of. Even at Grenor Magic University, the most prestigious institution in the world where he currently studied, such news surfaced every year.
“No, I need to make further contact with this person and see what’s what.”
Merlin only heard the voice in his own mind say this.
Then he saw Ange walking toward him, extending a hand, a faint smile on his face. But even such a deliberately gentle smile still gave off a sinister vibe.
Mainly, those red eyes were simply too unnerving.
Red eyes on a rabbit were adorable, but on a human being, they were far too rare, far too unsettling.
“Hello, my name is Ange Amber. What a coincidence we share a surname. Who knows, maybe if we trace it back far enough, we might even be related.”
Merlin looked at Ange’s hand. Though somewhat reluctant inside, his curiosity about what the other party might do next compelled him to suppress his discomfort and reach out to shake it.
Ange didn’t seem to intend any advantage-taking either, so their hands merely brushed lightly before parting after a moment.
Sure enough, Merlin heard Ange’s voice echo in his mind again: “Ugh, is this information that just popped up really not a scam? Or have I actually been cursed? No, I need to find a specialized curse-breaker to get checked out.”
A curse-breaker with a medical license could treat patients and even open a clinic, since there was no shortage of people mysteriously cursed. And once someone was confirmed cursed by a licensed curse-breaker, they could file a police report and have the culprit arrested.
“But the most important thing right now is how to deal with this handsome guy in front of me, right? What should I say next?”
Judging from the other party’s various reactions, he seemed like a normal person no wait, he was a con artist with a mental illness!
“I’m sorry, last night I really drank too much, so I wasn’t in my right mind and that accident happened. But…” Ange’s face flushed, not from shyness, but purely from embarrassment.
“If I can’t get rid of this curse-like thing for a while, does that mean I’ll have to stay in contact with the other person, so I can’t completely sever the relationship between us?”
“I’ll be staying in this town for a while, and I think we can get to know each other gradually.”
Merlin’s eyes instantly lit up, and a brilliant smile spread across his face, like a lively puppy.
“I feel like I’m hallucinating a big fluffy tail wagging behind him. I really want to pet his hair it’s fluffy and would probably feel great to the touch.”