Wizards: Starting with Synthetic Gems

Chapter 67 Source
Inside Ashgra, Locke and Gabi Montoya arrived at a group of dusty houses.

These houses have been uninhabited for a long time.

The residents of Ashgra dared not approach this area, as all the homeowners had contracted a disease they could not comprehend.

Locke looked at the house made of red and white bricks in front of him. The house was similar to a small villa. He led Gabi Montoya to conduct a brief inspection of the three houses in the vicinity.

It must be said that the average standard of living of mortals in the wizarding world is better than that of ordinary people on the continent of Corfu.

The common people of Corfu live in thatched huts without floors, and some even live in cowsheds with the livestock, without a bed.

But in the wizarding world, every commoner in the southeastern corner of the country owns at least one small, simple yet independent house.

Gabi Montoya, after examining the body, shook his head and said to Locke, "Senior Locke, I still can't see anything wrong."

“These houses are not connected. We inspected three, and each one was separated by five or six separate houses. So why did the civilians living in these three houses contract that strange disease, while the owners of the dozen or so houses in between were completely unaffected?”

Locke glanced at the surrounding houses, some of which still had residents, perhaps because they had nowhere else to go. However, the doors and windows of each house were boarded up.

Only when they saw Gabi approaching did they slightly open the door to observe the situation, and they seemed very excited when they saw the wizards coming over.

They were clearly living in constant fear, terrified that they too would contract that strange disease, and were helpless because the mortal doctors had no way to help them. So, seeing him was like seeing a savior.

Locke shook his head slightly at Gabby's question, "Didn't you notice that these houses actually have one thing in common?"

Gabi Montoya, who was in his early thirties, was stunned.

Locke pointed to a house in front of them and said, "Didn't you notice that the dwellings of these three sick mortals have one thing in common? They're incredibly dirty."

"The walls of the houses are very dirty, and the area in front of the houses has not been cleaned carefully. The owners of these houses have a very poor sense of hygiene."

Locke's gaze swept over the gap between the bottom of the house and the ground, in the middle of the moisture-proof raised floor, where a short-tailed rat was running at high speed.

The rat ran out from the elevated floor and hid in the shade of a tree.

Gabi Montoya was somewhat puzzled. "Senior Locke, are you saying that the residences of those sick people are all dirty? But some of the buildings in the middle aren't very clean either."

Locke said, "That's because they keep cats and dogs."

Locke sped forward and caught up with the mouse hiding behind the shadows of the trees.

Gabi Montoya looked at Locke, "Senior Locke... wait a minute..."

Locke, however, was no longer concerned about her and muttered to himself, "That rat is a big problem."

He astutely noticed the problem. "Ordinary rats will immediately hide when they see a humanoid creature larger than themselves, but that rat deliberately ran out from its hiding place when it saw us approaching."

Locke caught up with the mouse, stood in front of it, and carefully observed its body.

The world of magic is full of mysteries, and even a second-class wizard apprentice must be extremely careful.

As Teacher Sophia once said, in the complex environment of magical plants, it's not uncommon for wizard apprentices to have died in the wild due to carelessness.

"Sure enough, this rat is incredibly slow-witted. Its first reaction upon seeing me approach wasn't to run away." Locke took out a bottle of general-purpose, simple antidote—[Daffodil Antidote]—from his pouch, which he had bought for 1 magic stone at the Chimera Market. He then held his breath and looked down at the rat. "Indeed, just as I suspected, those mortals weren't the first creatures affected. The first were these rodents." Locke discovered extremely tiny, almost transparent mycelia on the rat's neck.

Moreover, there was some hidden rotting flesh on its neck.

Locke only smelled a faint fragrance when he got very close to it. This fragrance was extremely difficult to describe and very special, but it was the kind of fragrance that you would never forget once you smelled it.

This fragrance is somewhere between foul and pleasant, making it extremely unique.

Locke felt a substance enter his body following the fragrance, and the back of his hand became slightly numb, but due to the medicinal properties of the daffodil detoxifying water and the ancient biological bloodline in his body, this slight toxicity quickly disappeared completely.

Locke said, "Found it. This is the source of the illness among those civilians."

Gabi Montoya stood behind Locke, looking at the unassuming little mouse with a slight surprise. She had been searching for the disease-causing magical plant for almost half a month, only to find that the culprit wasn't a plant at all, but a running mouse!

No wonder she couldn't find it even after searching for more than half a month.

Because she went completely in the wrong direction.

Gabi Montoya looked at Locke with increasing respect; this breeding assistant, who was much younger than her, was indeed more capable.

They had only been there for half a day when they had already locked onto their target.

This made Gabi Montoya realize the gap between her and Locke.

Gabi Montoya said, "Senior Locke, so what should we do next? Should we write the report and submit it to the college for them to handle, or should we solve it ourselves?"

Locke considered several types of magical plants, finally focusing on the most suspicious one. 'These rats are essentially being manipulated by that kind of magical plant.'

'The fungus produced by those demonic plants parasitized them, making them no longer afraid of humans and slowing their reaction time.'

'Their purpose is likely to lure humans closer to them, creating a massive plague that results in the deaths of many humans.'

'This is a reproductive mechanism, and the most likely candidate for this mechanism is the taro plant.'

'The seeds of this magical plant can only propagate on a large number of human corpses, and even then, it's likely to fail. It's a magical plant with extremely demanding growing conditions, which is why it's very rare to find in the wild.'

'It's difficult for it to grow without special cultivation.'

Locke's mind raced. 'So, if it really is a Rotten Amorphophallus, then there must be a high-energy-density corpse nearby.'

'The Soil-Rotting Arum is an extremely rare magical plant, highly valuable even to first-class wizard apprentices. Furthermore, it rarely appears in natural environments. It would be a great pity if I didn't record this anomaly and study it.'

Locke looked at Gabi Montoya and said, "We can handle this ourselves. There's no need to make multiple trips to notify the academy."

“I remember you are a wizarding apprentice in Transfiguration magic. I need you to transform into a cat and search for the gathering place of these rats.”

Gabi Montoya nodded without hesitation and said, "Okay, Senior Locke."

(End of this chapter)