The Wizard: Starting as a Corpse Collector Apprentice and Paying for a Monthly Subscription

"I wish to buy osmanthus blossoms and share wine with you..."

A biting wind howled across the building's rooftop, and Tyron stood before the massive floor-to-ceiling glass curtain wall, looking at the shadow reflected in it.

The person in the mirror had a full head of white hair and three wrinkles etched on their forehead.

The eye bags had a sickly grayish-black color, and there were a few glaring age spots at the corners of the eyes.

The body looked like that of a middle-aged man nearing the end of his life.

But in reality, Tyronn is only thirty-three years old this year.

As a former rural exam-taking expert, Tyron has risen from a rural lad to his current position as vice president of a listed group through hard work and talent.

He has assets exceeding 100 million yuan and holds numerous stock options.

By conventional standards, he should have been sitting on a yacht, surrounded by women, enjoying champagne and the sea breeze.

However, when he finally looked up from his perpetually packed desk, he was met not with the service of a beautiful secretary in a pencil skirt, but with a cold medical report.

Pancreatic cancer, late stage. The king of cancers.

Tyron certainly knew the reason.

Since starting my graduate studies, I have been overdrawing my life force.

To secure authorship in those few core journals, he worked tirelessly through the night, churning out data while simultaneously trying to decipher his supervisor's intentions.

He's always available whenever needed, and he's never absent from a dinner party.

By flattering his mentor, he finally earned a ticket to the industry.

This was even more true in his later entrepreneurial ventures.

With his shrewdness and highly refined emotional intelligence, he transformed difficult clients into growth drivers for the company during countless late nights of drinking and socializing.

Regret?

regret.

But if you could do it all over again, would you still make the same choice?

of course!

A poor boy with no background or connections wants to defy fate. What else can he do but fight desperately?

If it were another illness, even a severed hand or foot, he might still have the courage to fight and rehabilitate.

But pancreatic cancer... he couldn't hold on any longer.

pain.

The pain was indescribable.

It felt like countless rusty, blunt knives were churning inside my abdomen, making even breathing a form of torture.

This is death, which is destined to be incurable by modern medicine, and it mocks all money and power equally.

"In that case, let's leave it at that."

The will has been drawn up. The assets of over 100 million yuan are enough for the parents, who are nearly sixty years old, to enjoy their old age in peace, and also enough for the younger brother, who is still in school, to establish himself in a big city.

Although his life was short, it was a remarkable one.

Braving the biting cold wind, Tyron made one last adjustment to his expensive haute couture suit.

He never engages in internal strife and accepts defeat when necessary.

Leaning forward, losing balance.

As he fell, he closed his eyes, and the last half of the sentence flashed through his mind.

"...It is no longer like the carefree days of youth."

……

……

When Tyrone opened his eyes again, he was greeted by a more primal, more intense stench, enough to evoke a primal, instinctive fear in humans.

It was a cloying sweetness from the decay of protein, mixed with the pungent smell of preservatives, and a kind of indescribable, chilling musty odor that seemed to seep into the very marrow.

"vomit--"

A violent spasm ran through his stomach, and Tyron instinctively gagged, but nothing came out.

He struggled to prop himself up, his gaze gradually focusing in the dim, flickering candlelight.

This is a low, damp, and oppressive underground stone chamber.

The walls were covered with moss, and the seeping water droplets gathered into thin streams, dripping onto the filthy stone floor.

In the center of the room, ten huge iron and wood shelves were neatly arranged.

These shelves were divided into two levels, and instead of goods, each level was filled with pale corpses.

They were like cheap frozen meat for sale in a supermarket, displayed haphazardly.

The corpse on the left is a teenager with a huge claw mark on his chest and the look of terror frozen on his face.

On the lower level was a middle-aged man in his forties or fifties, whose skin was an abnormal purplish-black color, clearly indicating that he had died from poisoning;

Further away, there were mercenaries missing arms, scantily clad prostitutes, and even several bodies that showed obvious signs of being pieced together.

Dead silence.

The only sounds were the occasional crackling of the burning candle and the sound of water flowing from the distant sewers.

"The Seven Towers Alliance? Have I...traveled to another world?"

A sharp pain, as if being stirred by a red-hot iron rod, came from deep within my brain.

Two completely different life memories are being forcibly merged in this young body.

Within the Seven Towers Alliance territory, at the Kane Wizard Tower.

A city-level tower belonging to the Soul Wizard school.

His current identity is: Tyron Arthas Magnus.

He was only sixteen years old, of commoner origin, and the third child in his family.

Her father was a blacksmith in the west of Seawave City, and her mother was a full-time housewife.

Among the many transmigrators who are either orphans or abandoned by their families, this is a rare start with both parents alive and a harmonious family atmosphere.

Six months ago, the original owner, with a fierce determination fueled by her addiction to reading, passed the written test of the Kane Wizard Tower and finally obtained the ticket to the extraordinary world.

In this world, wizards are the embodiment of the extraordinary and synonymous with privilege.

Even the lowest-ranking official wizard can easily protect a family and ensure their lifelong well-being.

However, class distinctions are not so easy to overcome.

This formidable barrier was built with money.

The Wizard Tower is not a charity; it's a gold-devouring behemoth.

The basic tuition and required textbook fees for the first year of apprenticeship alone amounted to 22,000 purple gold coins.

Tyron's father wielded his hammer day and night, but even after working himself to the bone for a month, he could only earn 1000 purple gold coins.

This money is barely enough to keep the family of five from starving.

Naturally, the annual tuition fee of 20,000 purple gold coins could only be covered by a loan.

So, before he even learned anything after entering the school, Tyron found himself burdened with a loan of 100,000 purple gold coins.

And this is just the beginning.

In addition to tuition, there is a textbook fee of 2000 Zijin coins per academic year.

If you don't buy the textbooks, you can't even attend the classes!

The family tightened their belts and could only barely scrape together 400 yuan for him.

The remaining 1600 shortfall can only be filled by Tyronn himself.

But that's not the most desperate thing.

The most despairing thing is the suffocatingly strict hierarchical system and rigorous assessment system inside the Wizard Tower.

Knowledge is power, but knowledge has a price.

Here, becoming stronger requires building spell models, refining magic, and unraveling the mysteries of death and spirit.

The truly core knowledge, such as efficient meditation techniques, safe soul-cutting techniques, and stable rune structure diagrams, is all locked in the upper levels of the tower.

Aside from those core disciples from prominent families or rich kids, ordinary apprentices like Tyron don't even have the right to glance at the cover.

The rigorous assessment system is practically a death sentence.

During the five-year program, if a student fails the six-month assessment twice in a row, they will be expelled and stripped of their apprenticeship.

Once expelled, not only will one be unable to become a wizard for life, but the 100,000 purple gold coins in student loans will become a nightmare to be repaid for a lifetime.

His entire life, and even the rest of his family's lives, will be reduced to slavery to repaying the debts of the Wizard Tower.

To survive, to avoid being expelled from school.

Six months ago, Tyren took on the job that was widely considered the dirtiest, most tiring, and most unlucky job in the Wizarding Tower of Kane, a job that even goblins were unwilling to do: the corpse-collecting apprentice.

Wizards of the Soul School have an enormous need for corpses.

They need corpses to study human anatomy, rotting flesh to cultivate corpse poison, fresh brains to test for the remnants of the soul, and complete skeletons to make skeleton servants.

Tyron's task is to satisfy these diverse, even perverse, demands.

The job was not complicated, and Tyron was able to handle it after half a month of training.

During the day, he had to roam like a vulture through the city's slums, sewers, and even mass graves outside the city, searching for unclaimed corpses.

A homeless man, a beggar who starved to death, a gangster who died in a shootout, and an unlucky man who was bitten to death by a wild animal.

At night, he would return to this cold, damp basement to pre-treat the body.

Cleaning the filth, stitching up the remains, removing rotting flesh, sorting and preserving...

The stench of death was like maggots clinging to his bones, deeply seeping into his skin and hair.

No matter how he showers or where he goes, people around him will instinctively cover their noses and cast disgusted glances at him.

But he had no choice.

This job brings him 250 purple gold coins a month, which he can use to offset the cost of textbooks.

Without this money, he wouldn't even be able to afford the textbook "The First Understanding of the Soul," and therefore wouldn't be qualified to step into the classroom!

Now, six months have passed, and next month he will be able to receive his first paycheck since arriving at the Wizard's Tower.

However, while human will may be infinitely resilient, the physical body ultimately has its limits.

Long-term malnutrition, high-intensity physical labor, and enormous mental stress, coupled with the anxiety brought about by the upcoming "mid-year assessment," finally broke this taut string.

Just a few hours ago, in order to memorize a few more formulas, the original owner stayed up all night studying in this room filled with the stench of corpses, and then he died.

"This script..."

Tyron rubbed his throbbing temples, a complex smile curving his lips.

"Why do I feel like I just graduated from a rural junior high school and worked my butt off to get into a top-tier high school in the city for the first semester?"

That's how it was back then.

All around were glamorous city kids, fluent in English, multi-talented, and attending all sorts of tutoring classes.

I studied the textbooks intensively for two months, but I still ranked last in my class in the midterm exam.

However, the price of failing the exam here is not repeating a year, but utter ruin.

The six-month performance review is like a death trap.

This is not only a threshold for measuring an apprentice's progress, but also a watershed moment that determines their fate.

Those with good grades can gain the favor of their supervisors and receive preferential treatment in terms of resources;

Those with poor grades can only become slaves at the bottom, serving as fuel for those above them.

And right now, Tyronn is undoubtedly at the very bottom of the bottom.

Close your eyes and look at your wizard attribute.

[Name: Tyron Arthas Magnus]

[Rank: Level 0 Apprentice]

[Physical Fitness: 1]

【Spirit: 3】

[Magic Control: 0.36]

[Spell: Summoning and Domination Technique (360/10)]

[Skills: None]

Knowledge: None

Forget about unleashing a cool soul shriek or a skeleton summoning spell; he can barely control his magic to make a feather float.

Based on past experience, the passing score for this assessment is 6 points in mental strength and 3 points in magic control.

In addition to the hard metrics, there are also the grueling written tests that can drive you crazy.

*Introduction to Wizardry: Runes and Spiritual Power*, *Soul Unveiled: The Boundary Between Mind and Body*, *Basic Alchemy: Material Processing and Solvent Proportions*, *Meditation Charts: A Detailed Explanation of Spiritual Power*...

The original owner tried desperately to memorize all eight textbooks, but only remembered 30% of the exam content.

There's only one month left until the exam.

This seems like a hopeless situation.

"However..."

Tyron took a deep breath of the air, which smelled strongly of preservatives, and his eyes gradually sharpened.

"This level of suffering is nothing."

In his previous life, he faced pancreatic cancer, an irreversible countdown to death, and countless nights of despair as he writhed in pain in bed.

And now?

Tyron slowly stood up and stretched his young body.

The joints made no wear and tear sounds, and the muscles, though thin, were full of resilience.

No blurred vision, no full head of white hair, no tormenting lumbar disc herniation, and no big belly like a time bomb.

the most important is--

It doesn't hurt.

There was no dull knife stirring inside the abdomen, and no black hole swallowing life inside the body.

Although his hands were covered with rough calluses, there was still lingering corpse oil under his fingernails.

But beneath that taut skin surges the brimming collagen and vitality of a seventeen-year-old.

"Health is fucking good."

Tyron sighed softly, his eyes gleaming like wildfire.

Since God has given him a second chance, and since He has been given this healthy body, he will never admit defeat.

He bent down and picked up a thick book from the feet of a corpse.

This is a large 200-page book in 16mo format—"The Atlas of Meditation: An Introduction to Mental Power".

The cover was worn white, the corners were curled up, and inside was a bookmark made of dried leaves, stuck on page 57.

By the dim candlelight, Tyron turned the pages of the book.

The blank spaces on the pages were densely covered with notes.

The handwriting was neat but somewhat immature, recorded with the cheapest charcoal pencil, showing the original owner's understanding and confusion about each rune.

"You've misunderstood this."

Tyron quickly glanced through a few pages, his brow furrowing slightly.

"It's correct to compare mental energy to flowing water, but forcibly memorizing the trajectory of the water is the dumbest method. It should be understood as the relationship between pressure and a pipe..."

"This record of meditation postures is too trivial, it's all rote memorization, and it doesn't grasp the core logic of emptying the mind at all."

As a former top student who rose from humble beginnings in the countryside, he is a master of academic achievement.

During his student days, Tyron developed a highly efficient learning methodology that suited him.

He immediately saw the original owner's problem: he was diligent, but his methods were wrong.

This rote memorization method is incredibly inefficient when faced with vast and obscure wizarding knowledge.

"If it's a written test..."

Tyron closed the book, tapping the cover lightly with his fingers, his mind racing.

"Give me a month. With my ability to summarize and the memory of this young brain, I can reorganize the logical framework of these eight books and get a passing grade or even above average. It shouldn't be a problem."

He's a professional at solving problems.

But then his brows furrowed again.

Written tests are just a soft skill; the real weakness lies in one's attributes.

Mental strength is 3 points, which is exactly 3 points away from the passing grade.

Magic control is 0.36 points, which is 2.63 points away from the passing mark.

This is the real insurmountable barrier.

The lower-class apprentices, lacking advanced meditation techniques passed down through their families, could only rely on the basic meditation methods provided by the academy: "Meditation Atlas," which was shockingly inefficient.

They also don't have the money to buy "meditation oils" or "spiritual crystals" that can help increase mental strength.

Without resources, there is no attribute growth.

Without attribute growth, you won't pass the exam.

If you fail the exam, you're fired.

Another perfect vicious cycle.

"You just transmigrated and you're already dancing on the death row line?"

Tyron stared at the pile of cold corpses before him, pondering his next move.

"To double one's mental strength in a month... unless there's a miracle, or..."

"Or some unreasonable external force may have intervened."

Just as he was racking his brains for a way to break the deadlock, a strange distortion suddenly appeared in his vision.

[Hey friend, wanna recharge your monthly pass (one big, one small)? It's totally worth it!]

Invest in your future with time!

[Let's shout together: Monthly pass holders will never lose out!]