Carey had expected the caster to leave the place that had made him gloomy immediately, but he didn't walk away disappointed, or casually find something to throw at the handless boy - he bought light wine, bread, and salted fish from the vendor, and sat there watching the boy eat his fill.

"Does he have parents?"

As the boy munched on the lightly dipped bread, he quietly asked Kerryburn.

"Yes," said Carryburn, "and they love the kid very much." ”

Cremar looked at Kerryben, and the Elven Ranger could almost make out the words "Impossible!" in his eyes.

"The children here have to find their own food as long as they can go," said Kerryben, "and it is not every day that a man like you is willing to give him bread and wine, and he is still alive, and someone must have given him food and a place to sleep, but even if he grows up, he will not be able to work, and sooner or later he will die, and everything he eats will be wasted - it is stupid for them, so stupid that it could kill them, so I say that his parents love him." ”

"And look at his body," the elf continued, "the dirt is not lumpy, someone has shaved him, and his hair has been cut. "The most important thing," he motioned to Cremar to look around, "there is only one crippled child here, a crippled and alive child, but do you think that this lowly and abundant tool will only appear once in Cape Beach?"

Cremar's pupils were so dark that they were not reflective—only at close quarters can you distinguish them from the iris of the same color—they shrunk and shrunk into small specks like quill drops on parchment, undoubtedly a symbol of horror and disgust.

"The thieves buy them from the children's parents at a cheap price, when the free orphans are not enough - this trade does not violate the laws of the Pilllands, and the children are the property of the parents. The ranger looked at the boy again, "The convict who had been beheaded would be expelled from the fort, and they waited for about a day or two to make sure that no one wanted him, so they picked him up." ”

The boy was full after eating only a loaf of bread no bigger than his fist, and Cremar bought a piece of linen worth more than the food, wrapped the rest and hung it around his neck.

The boy looked at him, and raised his bare wrist to the corner of his forehead, and if he had a hand, it would have been a simple salute, and he had no fingers, no gesture of thanks, and Cremar didn't wonder why he didn't use his tongue - perhaps it was long gone.

As soon as they were gone, an older girl ran over and took the package from the meek boy's neck, and she ran to a sloping, shabby tent, the eyes of the little ones following her. Alone in the same place, covered in sand, the boy crawled forward on his elbows and knees, continuing his previous work of digging up shells and sandworms with his stumps in a clumsy and sluggish way, and grasping them with his mouth.

"Why?" the caster asked confusedly, "...... Since they love him?"

"No dwelling, no surname, no blood, no possessions, no looks, no strong body," Careyburn said calmly, "Becoming a thief is the only chance for these children and their parents to get ahead - it's a wicked and despicable profession, but it brings money and status." ”

"Very few are able to become full members. ”

"Every child thinks they can be one of the few. The elf said.

A woman who could not tell her age came out of the tent, she held a few large Alocasia leaves, walked up to the boy and picked up his sandworm, and stroked the boy's head with her sand-stained hand, and the boy laughed, carefree, with the slime of the sandworm still in the corner of his mouth.

Cremar's throat tightened.

“...... What kind of world is this? ”

"It's not too good," said the Elven Ranger, "but it's not too bad a world." ”

Towards dusk, the whole of Cape Fortress became hot and humid.

Cremar accepted Alva's invitation to live with Kerribben in the cool and safe Rime Hut, where he had three tiles left to finish the last scroll before the night really fell, and the spells that the lich had left him to copy were not complicated, two magic missiles, and one electric claw.

For a mage, the rime hut is much cuter than the egret's feet, and there are not only attentive servants, but also various utensils and facilities that are carefully designed to facilitate the mage's life and work.

In the corner of the wall stood an ebony winged fiery statue with clawed hands holding a fist-sized colorless fluorite, a rare and expensive mineral that emitted a white glow that was soft and bright enough to illuminate the room, and it did not generate heat or black smoke like oil lamps or candles, and did not burn and pollute precious books, making it the most favored lighting appliance for mages.

Next to the ebony statue is a low mica stone table carved into the head of a giant, and on the giant's skull is a delicate silver boat the length of an adult man's elbow, laden with myrrh and sandalwood powder, and a silver incense burner in the shape of a bird rests on the bow, its wings can be opened to hold spices.

Fresh air gushed out from between the giant's sparse teeth and fell into his protruding lower lip—a deep concave stone disc with blisters bursting and water swirling into a small hole in the center of the stone disk.

Directly facing the large bed was a black silk carpet with an adult male's hands outstretched that could not touch the edges, and the Mithril thread, and perhaps other things intertwined into a miniature star map that changed position and color each day in response to the real stars in the sky.

In front of the bed and silk carpet were huge windows inlaid with double glazing, which was quite a luxury even in the Pitney Fortress, but it did well to ensure the silence that the mage needed to meditate.

Under the window is a specially made beveled desk for the mage to copy scrolls, it is walnut, smooth, hard, uniform in color, the table top is tilted inward just enough to allow the writer's quill to form a ninety-degree right angle to the paper, so that the arm does not stain or crumple the valuable paper, and the tilted table top can be opened to store paper and ink.

Before buying scroll paper, the soul of the other world never knew that there were so many kinds of animal skin paper, the common goatskin, sheepskin, pigskin, calfskin and calf skin, the rare deerskin, baboon skin and swamp snakeskin, there may be, but only sold to credible buyers human skin paper, fish-man skin paper (the ones he wasted), as for those demon skin paper and devil skin paper, it basically had to be produced and sold by the mage himself.

The spell book they had obtained from the thief Gülen was ordinary goatskin, which had been carefully coated with a thin layer of oil wax after the spell had been copied, and the scroll could not be copied with this kind of parchment paper, which had only the epidermis and inner skin removed, and had not been specially treated, and the paper was too tough to tear at once, and the scroll copied from it could not be used at all—the paper on which the scroll was copied was either a goatskin with only a reticulated skin, or a fetal calfskin Paper made from the skins of calves, natural or man-made, soaked in a special potion, is light, white, and smooth, so thin that you can see the lines of walnut through it.

But it is also very difficult to copy with this kind of paper, it is too fragile to withstand the grinding of a scraper, and copying a small mistake can be used to scrap the whole piece of paper, and the way the scribe likes to use a scraper to crush the fixed paper cannot be used, you can't use a metal pen to make holes and lines in it, and only lines and strokes are left on the scroll for the flow of magical energy, and a small hole can make the spell disappear or twist - The beveled table for mages is particularly expensive because it has a steel slide rule on the left and right sides, which can be used for both measurement and fixation.

The ink used for copying spells also needs to be modulated according to the needs of the spell, because of the relationship between the sea, the ink sold in the fortress is based on the ink of the purified big cuttlefish as the main material, adding delicate flying fish gelatin, and then mixed with a certain amount of pine charcoal powder, nobles and merchants like to add spices to the ink, and the mages need to add mythril powder, pure gold powder, gem powder, and biological blood (including dragon blood and demons, Devil's blood) and so on, for example, the ink used in the Magic Missile Scroll requires one gram of Mithril powder, and the Electric Claw Scroll requires half a gram of Adamantite Gold Dust.

At first, the soul of the other world thought that copying a scroll was like copying English words, and that it was enough to copy the spells in memory directly onto parchment, but later learned that the scroll not only included the spells to be chanted, but also the gestures that needed to be made when casting spells. It appears on the scroll as a set of intricate figures, thanks to the new body, its arms and fingers are like a competent compass when drawing circles, arcs are like a good cloud ruler, when the corners are discounted, it is a standard triangular ruler, and he still needs a Mithril pendulum to approve angles and dimensions, which vibrates and buzzes when he finds a mistake.

When he was done drawing and writing, the whole scroll was still a dead thing, Cremar lit the incense, closed his eyes, washed his thoughts, he chanted softly, letting his vocal cords resonate with the magic galaxy that cut through the blue sky of the jewels, he smiled as tiny currents that were no longer so strange passed through his body, and made gestures that let the energy flash through the void, crackling blue-white electric sparks burst out from a blinding dot, everything glowed in its burst, Cremar controlled it, it shrunk, silver bands of light wrapped and swirled, from his ankles to knees, knees to waists, waist to shoulders, shoulders to wrists, to fingers tapping the scroll。

It flows into the scroll, like a rushing river, and the graphics and words are pre-set channels, flowing, flowing, flowing, smooth and correct, until the last bit of energy is grabbed and locked by the starry black lines.

"Pretty!" Cremar muttered, complimenting himself without blushing.