About half a year ago, the deceased detective Sparrow Hamilton took over a rather difficult commission. Baron Huntington, who lived in Tobesk, commissioned the detective to find a missing maid. The maid had served the baron's family for many years and resigned a few days ago.
The baron asked his butler to invite the maid back with gifts, only to find that she had disappeared. Although the baron had a certain social status, he was not the maid's family after all, and he himself did not seem to trust the police, so he commissioned several detectives to investigate.
Detective Sparrow is not a famous detective, and his usual commissions are just small matters like investigating extramarital affairs. This time, a noble came to commission him because of the introduction of a former old client.
Sparrow Hamilton took this matter very seriously. Even though he was only a baron, he was still a big shot that ordinary citizens could not get in touch with. He investigated very carefully. In the spring of this year, he spent a month, following various clues, and found the abandoned sanatorium on the banks of the Auxerre River. He determined that this was the cause of the missing persons case.
"This nursing home was abandoned about 30 years ago. I was just a child at that time and heard my family mention it."
Local resident Bill Schneider pointed to the buildings that were gradually becoming clearer in the distance. Although there was also a thin mist outside the city, the clock tower next to the main building, as well as the spire and the cross-shaped decorative spire could already be seen.
"At that time, the royal family instructed the City Hall of Tobysk to re-plan the city to accommodate the huge influx of foreign population and the development of the steam industry. The policy at the time was probably to move hospitals and other infrastructure into the city, and factories to the outside of the city. This was originally a sanatorium for the nobility. I hope you understand what I mean. It was used exclusively for the big shots we dare not imagine. After responding to the call, the sanatorium completely moved out of Tobysk and moved to a nearby city, which can be reached in half an hour by train. It is more convenient than here.
Therefore, this sanatorium was abandoned. Even homeless people would not live here. There was no one living nearby. If someone died, no one would know about it. "
There were large tracts of farmland and wasteland all around, and the nearest town was an hour's walk away. There was a manor and a horse farm nearby, belonging to a certain earl. During the horse racing season, people would choose the road they were walking on as a racetrack, but there were not many people there at the moment.
Although industry developed rapidly in this era, traces of the steam age could only be seen in big cities. Away from the city, everything was regressing to the past, and Shade understood the meaning of this sentence.
The two soon followed the path to an abandoned sanatorium. The doctor did not mention the name of this place, so it seemed unimportant.
From the outside, the wall paint has completely peeled off, and all the windows and doors are missing. However, the wall of the sanatorium is still there, but the courtyard inside the wall is almost the same as the wasteland outside, and there is no trace of the garden in the past.
Tall buildings and spires stand in the wilderness, and only the decorations on the fence gates can vaguely reveal the prosperity of the past.
"Follow me and we'll talk as we walk."
The doctor said, kicking open the two gates that seemed to be rusted together. The gates fell to the ground with a loud bang, startling the birds in the nearby woods.
Even at the edge of the city, the fog had only dissipated a little. The gloomy sky looked like it was going to rain, and Xia De regretted not bringing an umbrella with him.
The two walked into the courtyard of the sanatorium, two pairs of boots stepping on the weeds:
"By ring wizards, we possess the wheel of fate."
The doctor said, looking around and leading Shad towards the front entrance of the main building.
"Wheel of Fate?"
"Time, years, destiny, era, civilization, the world, the wheel forged for us symbolizes ourselves. Pay attention! I want to show you the entire wheel of destiny, not just a corner. Please look carefully-"
The doctor was walking in the weeds, with his arms slightly open and his palms facing up, as if he was holding something, with his hands raised at shoulder level.
Everything behind him became hazy, as if covered by a layer of white mist. But he himself remained unchanged, except for a faint smile on his face.
Afterwards, Shad actually heard the sound and echo of a train whistle in this empty abandoned courtyard.
"What?"
He hurriedly looked around in the waist-deep grass, and at this moment his skin gradually felt the heat.
Turning around, I saw that what was behind the doctor was not white mist, but steam. Hot steam, steam that made me shudder for some reason, and that steam seemed to blur the distance and space, making everything behind the doctor blurry.
In the steam, a huge black shadow was approaching, and the steam behind the doctor seemed to contain infinite time and space.
The whistle roared, the steam exploded, and the shadow was getting closer and closer. The extremely fast speed brought about wind pressure, causing the doctor's clothes, the weeds in the yard, and the collar of Shade's coat to fly, and he had to squint his eyes.
What is even more serious is the sense of crisis that arises in one’s heart.
"What on earth is in that cloud of steam?"
It was getting closer and closer. Behind the doctor, deep in the steam, a huge hammer appeared with momentum and energy. It was silver-gray, as tall as the entire building, and hit the doctor with a loud bang.
The sound of the hammering made Shade's ears ring slightly, his eyes felt dizzy, and he had to cover his chest with his hands due to the strong urge to vomit. The ground shook, the wind howled, and the thunder flashed. In this series of hallucinations, the hammering seemed to have opened up the world and seemed to have hit Shade's soul.
But it was only the doctor who was hit by the huge hammer. The doctor did not move at all, but Shad believed that he saw Dr. Schneider being smashed into a copper cake.
"copper?"
He felt that he was becoming increasingly confused about his own perception.
It was indeed a piece of copper. After being hit by the giant hammer, a huge rotating copper ring appeared behind the doctor. It was a brass metal ring.
The steam gradually dissipated, and a brass metal ring with a pentagonal cross section slowly rotated behind the doctor. A strange light accompanied by more than twenty spirit runes wandered on this life ring.
The halo shone on Shad's face. The stranger heard the woman's chuckle in his mind, and his eyes reflected this magnificent, magical and powerful circle.
"This is the Life Ring. The Ringmaster will only summon it in its entirety when fighting with all his strength. Otherwise, he may not summon the Life Ring, or only summon a part of it... Do you have any questions?"
The doctor stopped in the weeds of the sanatorium courtyard and asked the stunned Shade. Shade could still feel the heat of the steam behind the doctor and the high temperature of the huge brass ring.
The Life Ring is not an illusion, it is a real entity:
"Why steam? Why brass?"
He didn't even notice the anxiety in his tone.
The middle-aged doctor smiled:
“Young man, a person’s success depends not only on personal efforts but also on the course of history.
I said that the Life Ring represents oneself and the world. This era is the era of steam and machinery, so the Life Ring emerges from the steam, is forged by the hammer, and presents a brass color. If this is the age of rainbows, then the Life Ring may be rainbow-colored. If it is the age of the deep sea, then the Life Ring is water. Do you understand?"
Xia De nodded reluctantly, his heart beating faster because of the shocking scene just now:
"clear."
He didn't even want to blink, wanting to imprint the entire image of the ring behind the doctor in his eyes. But the doctor waved his hand behind him, and the life ring slowly became transparent and disappeared, leaving Shade with only a few runes to remember.
Even without the knowledge given by the woman's voice in his head, Shade could read and hear the common language of the Northern Kingdom, but he couldn't speak or write it. And now, Shade inexplicably understood the meaning of those powerful spiritual runes. The ones he glimpsed were the Hound of Joy and the Dust... ...
Suddenly I felt a headache, as if someone had hit me on the back of my head, so I gave up trying to memorize those powerful runes.
In this world, knowledge really is power. So it seems understandable that the extraordinary organization that the doctor invited Shade to join is an academy.
"But if my special ability is to be able to read and understand all texts... is this a good thing in this dangerous world?"
While Shad pondered his own secret, the doctor continued walking forward in the weeds and introduced:
"The cross-section of my life ring is currently a pentagon, which means that I am a five-ring ring sorcerer and also a fifth-year correspondence adult education student at the academy. The first-ring life ring is a flat circular ring with spirit runes imprinted on one side. The second ring is also flat, but both sides can be imprinted with spirit runes. The cross-section of the third ring is a triangle, the cross-section of the fourth ring is a quadrilateral... and so on. Do you understand? The higher the ring, the closer it is to the most standard circular ring."
"Yes, I understand."
The two of them talked as they entered the building. Over the years, countless people must have visited this place. There was no furniture, and there was a layer of dust on the ground, which would immediately raise dust if stepped on.
They did not stay on the first floor, but walked up to the second floor along the unstable-looking stairs. Xia De was very worried about the safety of this dangerous building.
"Spirit Runes are the core of the Ring Warlock system. By engraving Spirit Runes on our own Fate Rings, we accumulate spirits, feel the miracles, blasphemous, enlightened whispers of the four elements, and continue to advance."
"Spirit? Elements?"
Xia De was puzzled, his heart filled with excitement, he was finally going to know these things.
The doctor led Xia Demai up the stairs:
"Regarding the spirit, in the past, it had many names. Magic, ether, mana, spirituality, and light of the mind, but in the current era, it is uniformly called spirit. It is information, elements, energy, and the sum of everything in the world you can understand. It is one of the manifestations of the mind of the ring sorcerer interfering with matter. The way to accumulate spirit is to contact the elements, and the safest way to contact the elements is to read the stories and knowledge before the era - culture, customs, heroic legends, and myths passed down from generation to generation.
It is also dangerous to access this knowledge. If you are not careful, you will fall into madness. So we usually read the original copy or translation. "
Shade simply translated 'spirit' as blue bar.
"But it does not mean that you can enter the next ring just by accumulating enough spirit. The most important thing for a ring warlock is not the spirit, but the elements. By accumulating the four elements of spirit runes, you can effectively increase the upper limit of the spirit, sublimate the soul, and temper the body. The four elements can be felt in many ways..."
Shad thought of the prompts from the woman's voice in his mind, and he was exposed to "whispers", "enlightenment" and "miracles", which were seeing Sparrow's death, stepping on the streets to see the world, and pondering the meaning of God.
"It's not enough to just feel and touch. You need to engrave the elements on your own destiny wheel to prove your integration with the elements. Each upgrade of the ring warlock requires a different combination of miracle, blasphemy, enlightenment, and whispering spirit runes. I will explain this to you when you decide to join the academy. Now, let me introduce you to the differences between the four elements."
The doctor paused, looked forward and smiled:
"I think the person we are looking for should be here."