This wizard only wishes to be a teacher

After sending Edison away and completing the preparations, Lucien took a deep breath, looking at the table crowded with various components and materials. He couldn’t help but slightly smirk, "It’s time to start the grand project."

Today, Lucien needed to refine the main body of the "Wizard’s Notes." According to his own design, the "Wizard’s Notes" was a rather special type of combined witch tool; in the current version, its main parts could be divided into "cover" and "pages."

The cover was the core component of the Wizard’s Notes, where the majority of functions were implemented. The pages, on the other hand, were "consumables": after releasing the witchcraft stored within, these pages would lose their function, could be taken out, and destroyed.

Now, Lucien was about to attempt refining the "cover" part of this witch tool.

"I somewhat understand why the wizards during the era of the Wizard Empire liked to use the skins of humans or other Wisdom Species to make precious books. The magic essence conductivity of these Wisdom Species’ skins is definitely the finest among all leathers, even surpassing that of Mole Beast leather in this regard," he remarked while carefully handling the Mole Beast leather.

However, his hands did not stop moving. After cutting the leather into the shape of a book cover, Lucien threw the cut pieces into Edison’s blood and activated a supportive wizard formation to ensure the leather would fully absorb the energy-rich special blood from Edison’s body.

While waiting for the leather to soak, Lucien started working with the Crystal Stone, the hardest step in refining the entire cover. A slight mistake could cause the Crystal Stone to explode into countless useless fragments, announcing an early end to his alchemy plan.

"Mosa... Kuru... Usqi!" Lucien chanted special witchcraft as he activated the wizard formation and slowly sprinkled Red Copper Stone powder onto the surface of the Crystal Stone.

Hiss hiss hiss... The instant the black powder contacted the Crystal Stone, it sizzled, and with the wizard formation’s effect, the temperature around the Crystal Stone kept rising.

Lucien was utterly focused on observing the Crystal Stone, his spiritual power permeating its interior to carefully watch the slow changes in its internal structure.

As several wizard formations activated, Lucien now and then introduced auxiliary materials to aid in the refining process. Some of these auxiliary materials were powdered like the Red Copper Stone, some were liquid, and there was even a kind of live special worm...

After a long and meticulous refining process, the Crystal Stone gradually softened, turning into a state resembling melted glass.

However, Lucien dared not be careless; although the Crystal Stone in this state had some moldability, its internal spatial structure had become exceedingly fragile. Every treatment required utmost caution, or he might completely ruin this precious Crystal Stone.

Sweat trickled from Lucien’s forehead, and with his spiritual power making subtle adjustments time after time, the Crystal Stone had transformed from a very standard polyhedron into two thin rectangles. Furthermore, small pits on the surface were slowly smoothed out under Lucien’s successive applications of spiritual power.

But this process was outrageously taxing on spiritual power. Even for Lucien, adjusting it was strenuous, and after getting its body regulated, he felt slightly dizzy due to the excessive consumption of spiritual power.

"Phew... It has finally been refined successfully," Lucien said, looking at the two "Spatial Tablets" before him and gently exhaling. Although this was just an intermediate product, its refining difficulty was not less than directly using a Crystal Stone to refine a spatial storage witch tool.

Even now, the two "tablets" Lucien had made needed only slight adjustments and then some inscriptions of wizard formations, and they would make a simple storage witch tool that could store items.

However, for Lucien, refining these two tablets was just one part of his grand project. He still needed to further inscribe and draw on the tablets, inscribing 37 different alchemy wizard formations, some of which were extremely complex combined wizard formations.

And after finishing the inscribing, he would need to combine these two tablets with the Mole Beast’s leather and refine them into a whole. That would complete the preliminary refinement of the Wizard’s Notes.

"Continue." After a brief meditation to adjust his spiritual power, Lucien opened his eyes, picked up a small, exquisite engraving knife, and began a more detailed and laborious enchantment task.

...

Elsewhere, inside Gagarin’s residence, Gagarin was looking at Edison, and Edison was also looking at Gagarin, both glancing at each other intensely.

"How many times have I told you, the meaning of this word is ’metal’ or ’metallic object,’ not ’Gatling,’ nor is it some kind of food!" Gagarin, feeling a headache coming on, said to Edison.

Usually, this little guy was quite intelligent, but sometimes when it came to food or delicacies, his brain seemed to fog over.

Like the word for metal, which happened to resemble the name of a bread called Gatling in Black Marsh Duchy, he always categorized both as part of bread or food.

Yet the problem was that translating Gatling bread directly means "iron lump-like bread," but that was clearly just a metaphor!

"Oh," Edison no longer acted obediently in front of Gagarin as he did in front of Lucien. At this moment, looking at the somewhat angered Gagarin, he disdainfully extended his pinky finger and leisurely picked his nose.

Gagarin watched Edison’s behavior and took several deep breaths in frustration, nearly slamming down the teaching plan he was holding.

"I’ve never seen a student like you!" Gagarin gritted his teeth while a sense of absurdity also arose in his heart.

Previously, as a first-level and second-level wizard apprentice, Gagarin had often been exploited by Lilia, a third-level wizard apprentice. So, while he detested how Lilia had drained him dry, he also fantasized about becoming a third-level wizard apprentice himself, imagining the carefree days after escaping Lilia’s control.

Indeed, Gagarin had even devised many methods to inspect other weaker wizard apprentices based on his own experiences, confident that he could surpass Lilia.

Now, having finally risen to the status of a third-level wizard apprentice, his first student to teach turned everything upside down. Instead of profiting from the student, this student infuriated him immensely.

If this had happened in the past, it would be as absurd as a bug furiously biting a crow’s tail.

After all, it was expected that the students who received free education from a tutor should listen attentively, and even additional efforts by the teacher would come at an extra cost.

But now? He found himself wracking his brain, hoping that this fellow could quickly master the wizard’s language and script for a one-on-one intensive session. Yet Edison was not only unappreciative but also dared to challenge his limits!

Truth be told, this was outrageously ridiculous.

"If it weren’t for the points..." Gagarin muttered to himself, daydreaming about those lovely points he would earn after successfully teaching.

After these days of hard work, he had almost accumulated ten thousand points.

With less than a thousand points remaining, as long as he could teach Edison the wizard’s language and script and pass Lucien’s test, he would have enough to exchange for the Meditation Method.

However, when Gagarin turned around and saw Edison, who had somehow, yet again, sprawled over the desk with drool dripping from his mouth, his composure nearly crumbled.

"Edison!" Gagarin was almost going insane, his right hand unwittingly showing fluctuations of Magic Essence.

But ultimately, Gagarin suppressed his impulses.

After all, as a teacher, one must not resort to violence against a student.

Yes, it’s definitely not because he couldn’t win.

"Ah? Is it time to eat?" Edison lifted his head, his eyes looking innocently at Gagarin.

Gagarin, his chest heaving dramatically, took several deep breaths before calming down.

He shakily took out a tranquility potion from his chest, downed it quickly to stabilize his mood, and then felt he could maintain a calm demeanor to continue teaching Edison.

"Alright, since you mentioned it’s ’time to eat’, how do you write ’time to eat’?" Gagarin took a deep breath from his diaphragm, seemingly on the verge of exploding.

But soon, he calmed down and then looked at Edison, "If you don’t take this seriously, I might just have to report your situation to Lord Lucien..."

"So petty," Edison mumbled under his breath, but remembering Lucien had mentioned that poor performance could lead to "cuts" in his meals, Edison eventually gave in and reluctantly picked up the feather pen, yawning continuously as he listened to Gagarin’s ceaseless teaching.

"Stay calm, stay calm..." Gagarin’s hands trembled slightly, feeling that if he always had to teach students like Edison, he would sooner or later suffer from chronic mental illnesses due to severe fluctuations in his Spirit Sea.

"I’m really foolish, truly, Lord Lucien must have his reasons for offering 1200 points as a reward for successful teaching..." Gagarin lamented in his heart, but he had no choice but to toughen up and continue the intellectual battle with the "jerk" in front of him.