Chapter 62

If it's a gift, it's not a trade.

If it's not a trade, there's no violation.

Put that way, it makes sense.

The problem is, why would someone give away such precious things for free? Gao De was asking himself, and he also wanted to ask Pierre.

To be honest, he already owed Pierre many favors, and he didn't think he could repay Pierre for anything.

Seeing Gao De freeze for a moment, Pierre seemed to understand what Gao De was thinking and comforted him: "If I give them to you, just take them. You will definitely find use for these three spells."

"That little bit of money is useless to me; it makes no difference whether I have it or not."

After thinking for a moment, Pierre took out paper and pen from the side of the counter, wrote a few lines with a "swish, swish, swish," and handed them to Gao De.

"This is?" Gao De took the note, not yet reacting.

"This is my place of residence in Bremen City," Pierre explained: "If you go to Bremen City one day and can't find a place to stay for the time being, you can come and find me."

"Of course, if you go too late, I can't guarantee I'll still be there," the little old man laughed heartily.

Gao De was silent for a moment, then put away the note, stroked his chest, bowed his head, and said sincerely: "Thank you."

Seeing Gao De off, watching his back with the package disappear from sight, Pierre poured a mouthful of tea into his mouth, his gaze already wandering.

Among magic users, there is a saying that is widely circulated:

Magic is a private domain open only to geniuses.

But only those who have truly experienced it know that magic is a private domain open only to the rich.

If your talent isn't high, it doesn't necessarily mean you can't become a high-rank magic user.

But without money, it is absolutely impossible to become a high-rank magic user.

It is often said that cultivation is difficult, but the degree of difficulty also has a world of difference.

For children of commoners, making a living is difficult, and the difficulty of practicing magic is more than a thousand times that of those rich children. He was also born a commoner and relied on his own efforts to barely carve out a small path.

Now his path has come to an end, and seeing Gao De at this time is like seeing himself in his youth.

When he was young, he really hoped someone would reach out and support him, but he never had that luck.

Since that's the case, let him be the one who reaches out now.

It's just a small favor that costs nothing.

Pierre was silent, poured another cup of tea, and gulped it down.

"Magic enrichment as a precursor to frequent ley lines, increase in subterranean creatures... missing persons..."

On the way back, Gao De kept repeating these keywords in his mind, feeling as if he had grasped some key point, but had also overlooked it.

He couldn't figure it out until he returned to the herb garden.

Burdened with worries, Gao De stepped into the herb garden. Feeling somewhat troubled, he first went to the herb field area to see how the seedlings planted some time ago were growing.

Aiqi and Lei Meng were taking care of the seedlings, loosening the soil and fertilizing, chatting while working.

"Aiqi, while practicing the guidance method during this time, have you noticed that for some reason, the magic concentration seems to have increased a lot?" Lei Meng asked casually.

"It really has. Practicing for two hours these past few days is almost equivalent to practicing for three hours before. It's awesome!" Aiqi exclaimed.

"I don't know what's going on..."

"Why care so much? It's a good thing anyway."

The two chatted aimlessly.

Gao De, however, was stunned on the spot.

"The magic concentration has increased a lot?"

He immediately turned back, returned to his room, sat cross-legged, and quickly entered the meditative state of the guidance method.

As usual, countless stardust appeared in Gao De's consciousness, floating around.

Only this time, he could clearly perceive that the number of these stardust particles was nearly 50% more than before. The next moment, Gao De suddenly opened his eyes.

His eyes were full of surprise.

During this time, he had been practicing the guidance method with the help of basic magic potions.

Because drinking magic potions skipped the step of guiding magic from the outside into the body, it was only today that he learned from the mouths of the two apprentices that the magic concentration in the environment had increased so much for no reason.

"For no reason, how could the magic concentration increase?"

Before the question could fully jump out, Gao De had already thought of the answer: "It's magic enrichment!"

The two major precursors to new ley lines: magic enrichment and an increase in subterranean creatures, had both been verified at this moment.

"The herb garden is in the suburbs, far from the city center and close to the wild, so it can perceive the changes in magic concentration first."

At the same time, he also understood why such an obvious change in magic concentration hadn't been discovered by the big shots in the city, including Pierre.

That's because they lived in the center of Hogen City, and the effects of magic enrichment hadn't reached there yet.

"It's true that new ley lines are going to emerge... right outside Hogen City." Although he didn't dare to be 100% sure, in Gao De's view, this was already a high-probability event.

Gao De got up and paced back and forth in the room.

Many thoughts flashed through his mind.

"The phenomenon of magic enrichment has already affected the herb garden, which shows that the generation of ley lines must have started a long time ago."

"Wait..." Gao De thought of another thing.

Two months ago, at Pierre's grocery store, the city guards had come to deliver a notice.

At that time, the city guard's original words were "The number of dark swamp lurkers in the city sewers has increased recently and they are unusually active."

If you replace "dark swamp lurkers" with their actual identity, "subterranean creatures," doesn't it match the anomaly that has been going on outside the city for a long time?

And looking at it this way, the anomaly actually appeared in the city two months ago.

"The sewer, it's the sewer!" Subconsciously recalling his experience in the sewer, in an instant, a pair of deep red eyes flashed through Gao De's mind.

The doubt that had troubled Gao De for a long time was solved at this moment:

He might have found where the subterranean creature causing the strange events in the city came from and where it was hiding! Two months ago, he went into the sewer to help Pierre clean up the dark swamp lurkers, from which he obtained the second source.

And when he left, he vaguely saw a pair of deep red eyes in the sewer.

"And the objects in the room were very neat; it was definitely not for money and life."

"I suspect this matter is not human-made, but done by a subterranean creature that has never appeared in the Bremen area before, which is why even a Second-Circle Mage couldn't solve this matter."

"Subterranean creatures hiding in the dark in the city center, this is too terrible."

After a moment of silence, Gao De spoke again.

"Just because of this reason?"

"Not entirely, the main reason..." Pierre sighed and turned to say: "Didn't I go to Bremen City to arrange a way out last month? Besides this, I also checked some information through my friends in the Emerald Alliance."

"Under normal circumstances, according to the mana concentration, the subterranean creatures gathered in different areas have an upper limit."

"But during this period, the number of subterranean creatures appearing outside the city has exceeded the total amount that should exist in this area."

"Do you know what this means?"

Before Gao De could answer, Pierre asked and answered himself: "This means that the frequent appearance of subterranean creatures outside the city is not caused by simple gathering, but by the appearance of subterranean creatures from new sources."

"And subterranean creatures only come from the earth's veins."

Pierre said a last sentence that seemed inexplicable, but Gao De suddenly realized, and his face changed drastically, "You mean the abnormality outside the city is caused by the generation of new earth veins?!"

He clearly remembered that in the "Bremen Geography" he bought, there was such a sentence:

"After the planes intersected, earth veins frequently appeared, the number increased day by day, and subterranean creatures surged out, but the Bremen area had not had new earth veins for two hundred years. Jeros XII once praised Bremen as a blessed land..."

Blessed land, no longer blessed? "I'm not sure, but I think it's highly likely."

"At least now, it is highly likely that a new species of subterranean creature has invaded Hogen City, which doesn't match my guess?"