Faced with Lia's such resolute statement, Dark merely asked offhandedly, "And why is that?"
Lia shook her head. "The Lolo Tree Frog is a specialty of the Demon race's Vampire territories. Vampires often use its skin to make the spellbooks for Blood Magic. Blood Magic is extremely dangerous—anyone without a talent for Blood Magic had best not touch it."
"Blood Magic?"
Dark's mind stirred slightly, and a different flavor crept into the way he gazed at Lia.
Of course he knew about Blood Magic.
Blood Magic fell within the category of higher talent-based magic; like astrology, it required talent as its foundation.
Basically, Vampires—and the lesser creatures subordinate to Vampires—were all born with a command of Blood Magic.
And apart from Vampires, there were a few rare races that also possessed a talent for Blood Magic.
Among humans, only the "Blood Clan" wielded Blood Magic.
They were called the bane of the Vampires.
But the only member of the Blood Clan still seemingly surviving today was, in all likelihood, the "Blood Princess" of unknown fate—Ophelia Blood!
Dark and the professors had, from certain pieces of information, deduced the possibility that the "Blood Princess" was still alive, and had "overlapped" her with the escapee from Bastia Prison—Olivia Copernicus.
So the moment Blood Magic was mentioned, Dark naturally thought of the "Blood Princess," Ophelia Blood.
"Lia... Ophelia?"
Dark muttered it out, feigning casualness.
But Lia Goethe's expression did not change in the slightest, still warm and gentle, just like... a false face!.
The instant this thought arose,
Dark could no longer control the way he stared at Lia's face.
Lia Goethe seemed to sense his gaze, and said softly, "To recognize danger and withdraw, to think it over carefully—that is true prudence. Of course, this is merely my personal opinion. If you insist on touching it, then you must be all the more careful."
With that she winked at Dark, and her pupils, as orange-red as her hair, gave off a trace of mischief.
Then she walked off to one side and went to browse other books.
Dark loosened his fingers, which had been gripping Blood Sacrifice, just a little, and drew a soft breath.
Though his intuition told him this Lia Goethe was not unconnected to Ophelia Blood, in truth she had shown no sign of any link to the Blood Princess.
What was more, the original reason for believing the Blood Princess might be inside the academy had been Robert's divination.
And it had now been confirmed that Robert's divination was due to Vlad's presence, which overturned the earlier assumption.
There was no longer any supporting argument for the inference that the Blood Princess was within the academy.
Furthermore, regardless of whether that intuition was accurate, it was not appropriate to pursue it too bluntly.
Dark was not so arrogant as to think he could go toe-to-toe with a hero of the war.
He lowered his head and glanced at Blood Sacrifice, pursed his lips, then looked again toward where Lia Goethe was, wondering whether to keep observing or to tail her.
But in that single interval of lowering and raising his head, the gentle lady who had been standing before the bookshelf flipping through books had, without the slightest warning, vanished!.
Dark's gaze flickered. He immediately stepped forward a few paces, then dashed out at a quick pace, looked left and right, and discovered that the lady Lia Goethe really was gone.
"Just who is she?"
Dark couldn't help but halt.
His expression shifted slightly.
...
In the end, Dark bought that copy of Blood Sacrifice.
On the way back to the Castle, he recalled Lia Goethe's features.
Her long orange-red hair differed in shade from both the old photographs of the Blood Princess and the photo of Olivia when she turned herself in.
The contours of her face did bear a few points of resemblance.
But in this world there were countless people who looked alike.
Her features, however, were clearly different.
"Is it a disguise effect created with magic?"
Dark reached up and tapped just above his temple, and that wisp of the Wind Spirit's blessing curled around his finger, carrying a touch of coolness.
A pity he had no corresponding talent—otherwise he could have used this strand of fresh breeze to send a message to Professor Silf.
"Let me go tell her about it."
Dark put Blood Sacrifice into his schoolbag and strode quickly toward Professor Silf's classroom.
Even though it was Saturday, the Easter Dueling Festival was tomorrow, and he guessed Professor Silf was surely busy in her office.
Sure enough, it was just as expected.
After knocking and entering the office, Dark immediately told Professor Silf about his encounter with Lia Goethe, and along the way also recounted Professor Medea's "reminder," hoping Professor Silf would stay alert.
"There's no need to worry about safety."
Professor Silf nodded rather prudently. "When the time comes, the professors will be patrolling everywhere."
The professors of St. Marian were, without question, the guarantee of safety.
Dark felt slightly more at ease, then said, "It's only a guess, but my intuition tells me that person is the Blood Princess. Even though she may have disguised herself, the gentle temperament she displayed matches your earlier description very well.
Supposing she has some reason that requires her to be in disguise—if I were in her position, I definitely wouldn't risk exposing myself to give a reminder to a student I wasn't actually familiar with."
Professor Silf's stern face softened a little as well. She looked upward as if reminiscing, and said, "That's exactly the kind of person Blood is—gentle and kind-hearted, so much so that you'd never imagine she could be a member of that Blood Clan. If it really is her, then there's no need to worry at all. She would never do anything to harm a student."
"I hope so." Dark interlaced his ten fingers and weighed his words. "But everyone has two sides—and besides, she's someone who escaped after more than a decade of prison suffering."
At the mention of this, Professor Silf grew somewhat agitated.
She rapped on the desktop and said, "I have always believed in her. She must have her reasons."
Dark raised an eyebrow and said, "Professor, I still have things to do, so I'll be going."
Professor Silf nodded. "See you tomorrow. I wish you a fine performance."
Dark smiled. "My goal is to make it out of the preliminaries."
...
And mind you, in a preliminary battle-royale format, the chance of capsizing in a ditch really wasn't small.
Thank goodness the preliminary battle-royales for the lower and upper groups were held separately—otherwise there'd truly be no chance at all.
After returning to his dormitory, Dark quickly set the matter of the Blood Princess aside for the time being and turned instead to studying that copy of Blood Sacrifice.
It wasn't that he didn't believe Lia Goethe's words, but although he himself had no talent for Blood Magic, there was an expert at home.
Besides...
He'd already bought it—how could he be content without taking a look at what this thing actually was?
"According to Miss Goethe's words, all you need to do is soak it in clean water."
After greeting the Magic Guide Spirits, Dark picked out a basin of suitable size and set it under the faucet to fill with water.
While waiting for the water to collect, he picked the book up again and shook it hard. After confirming there was nothing tucked inside, he turned off the faucet and slowly lowered the book into the basin.
Almost the instant it touched the water, the pages began to absorb moisture with obvious signs.
The originally thin, flimsy paper gradually took on substance.
And upon the paper's surface, tiny characters gradually emerged.
This concealment method was actually fairly rudimentary, far from as advanced as the secret ancient script of that copy of Into the Abyss.
Once the paper had absorbed water to a certain degree, it absorbed no more.
Dark opened the book right there in the water and flipped through it from the first page onward.
The book looked quite thick, but the portion of text was unexpectedly little.
Before long, Dark had grasped the gist of it.
Then he sighed, scooped the whole book out of the basin, and hung it on the rack to one side.
It wasn't that this book was no good.
It was simply of no use to him.
...
Blood Sacrifice, as its name suggested, described a method of "blood sacrifice."
Using the blood of animals, the blood of monsters, things of humans... and various other kinds of blood as energy, it converted them, through blood magic, into powerful force, which could then be used to cast spells, to summon... and even to forge weapons!.
That Bloodthirsty Giant Axe Dark had captured from the Two-Headed Demon had most likely been forged by the method of blood sacrifice.
"Blood sacrifice" did not belong to Magic Guide technology; it belonged to the category of blood magic.
Not only could it not be used to transmute the "Bloodthirsty Giant Axe" into a Magic Guide Card, it was also of no use whatsoever to Dark.
If DemiDevimon or Gatomon could master this method, then after fusion-evolving into Bastemon they could more efficiently make use of the absorbed blood energy.
But at the present moment, when Gatomon had only just learned how to sense and output mana, this copy of Blood Sacrifice could for now only be shelved away.
Thinking of this, Dark's gaze toward Blood Sacrifice carried a touch of regret.
"Wait a moment..."
But right after, a flash of inspiration suddenly struck him.
"Let me think about it from a different angle. The pages of this book are all made from the skin of the Lolo Tree Frog... Although it has been processed to a certain degree, it clearly still retains the properties of Lolo Tree Frog skin. Could this stuff be used for transmutation?"
"Speaking of which, this Lolo Tree Frog... just what kind of monster is it?"
Dark's mind stirred, and he immediately pulled out that copy of Secret Record of Bird and Beast Species—The Unknown Strange Ecology from the bookshelf, then searched through it carefully.
Frogs belong to amphibians, not to the reptile species.
In this world they were classified as "Animal species."
This Secret Record of Bird and Beast Species, a gift from Claire, recorded an enormous number of birds and beasts, and Dark had only finished reading a small portion of it.
"Sure enough, a monster with a special use like the Lolo Tree Frog is indeed recorded in this Secret Record of Bird and Beast Species."
Ten minutes later, Dark finally found the name "Lolo Tree Frog" among the densely packed table of contents.
He turned to the content page by its page number, and the first thing that met his eyes was a color illustration of the Lolo Tree Frog.
Slightly different from the "tree frog" Dark had imagined, this "Lolo Tree Frog" had skin of a white slightly tinged with gray; overall it greatly resembled an ordinary tree frog, without even a single marking on its skin.
It could absorb water and store it within its skin sac, staying moist even under a blazing sun.
Atop the Lolo Tree Frog's head was a small protrusion, which was actually a tree seed.
When the Lolo Tree Frog died, that tree seed, having absorbed the essence of its entire body, would take root and sprout upon its corpse, growing into a swamp tree called the "Lolo."
The Lolo Tree Frog usually lived inside the hollows of the Lolo Tree, in a symbiotic relationship with the Lolo Tree.
In short, it was a rather rare tree frog.
But as for monster rank... that was clearly nothing to speak of.
This meant that, were it used as a core material to refine a Magic Guide Spirit, it would likely only produce a one- or two-star little cutie.
It might even, due to the material having been processed, cause the transmutation to fail.
But Dark, after all, did not value this copy of Blood Sacrifice highly; he had spent less than 100 credits when purchasing it, so even if it were scrapped he wouldn't feel too pained.
So he figured he might as well give it a try.
Before the experiment, though, he needed to copy down the contents of Blood Sacrifice.
Each page of Blood Sacrifice held only a hundred-some characters, printed on one side only, with a total word count of merely a few thousand.
Dark simply took Blood Sacrifice apart into separate pages and had the Magic Guide Spirits help him transcribe.
In this way, in just half an hour, the text of Blood Sacrifice was transcribed completely and in full.
Finally, he kept the page on which the blood sacrifice magic circle was inscribed, and then set about the transmutation.
The transmutation method he used this time was the most ordinary Basic Transmutation Circle, and the materials were, broadly, centered on the Lolo Tree Frog's skin-paper as the core, with the leftover materials obtained from the dungeon as auxiliaries.
In short, it was a case of tossing radishes and greens all into one pot—just casual transmuting.
Back when he first learned the Basic Transmutation Method, Dark had also just casually transmuted like this, and out came his very first gold card—"Shuckle"!.
The later "Hawlucha" and "Popplio" had both been produced this way too.
Although these two Magic Guide Spirits weren't especially powerful, their futures were promising.
"A tree frog, let me think—what Magic Guide Spirits are close to a tree frog in attribute and species?"
"Grass-type, Water-type, frog kind..."
"Bulbasaur or Poliwag?"
"Bulbasaur is Grass-type plus Poison-type, Poliwag is pure Water-type—especially Poliwag's evolution, Politoed, which looks quite similar to the Lolo Tree Frog."
"If it's a Digimon, then Gekomon? ShogunGekomon? What else is there..."
"Or maybe a frog-series Yu-Gi-Oh! monster?"
"Whatever!"
Dark picked up a glass of Shuckle-brand apple juice, downed it in one gulp, and instantly felt his spirits lift.
Nowadays the brewing of apple juice no longer required him to lift a finger; the heartwarming Shuckle could generate its own power, and every night it would prepare a glass of apple juice for him.
Dark glanced at the wall clock.
It was eight forty-five in the evening; there was still plenty of time.
Starting his preparations from this moment, it took him only half an hour to get all the experimental preparations ready.
Then, with another half hour, he completed a semi-finished Magic Guide Card.
After that, once he had drawn and activated the No. 1 Transmutation Circle, he could begin placing materials into the transmutation circle!.
Dark had always felt that, in the transmutation experiments for Magic Guide Spirits, the greatest joy lay in placing materials into the transmutation circle.
It was just like cooking—different ingredients and seasonings could be combined into different flavors.
And the process of cutting open the light cocoon was just like a lottery draw.
No matter how bizarre the materials, there was always a chance of refining a powerful Magic Guide Spirit, which made it endlessly enjoyable.
This time, besides putting in the Grass-type ingredients obtained from the dungeon, he likewise did not forget to add his customary catalyst—saliva.
And at the very end, he even deliberately rebound the Blood Sacrifice that was now missing one page, and tossed it in all together into the transmutation circle.
But even after putting in so many materials, the brightness of the transmutation circle still hadn't reached its limit.
So he kept putting more in, and more...
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