This wizard only wishes to be a teacher

Lucien took a deep breath, his spiritual power probing into the "trap" of the painting and retrieved a severed arm belonging to Adeline from within it.

"Hmm?!!" Lucien’s eyes widened quickly because he could feel that the section of the arm cut off by Count Sanasis was alive!

Whoosh—

As Lucien dragged with his spiritual power, an arm from the two-dimensional painting was pulled out into the real world.

However, what made Lucien’s skin crawl was that this arm, belonging to Adeline, was struggling at the moment, like a freshly severed octopus tentacle or a gecko’s tail; it was filled with "vitality" and even attempted to twist its limb to grasp Lucien’s spiritual power.

"Freeze!" Lucien commanded his spiritual power to hold the wriggling arm in place, inspecting it carefully, but soon he found something abnormal.

Because the "cut surface" of the arm was perfect.

Or to put it another way, if one did not regard it as a section of an arm, there would be no wound at all; even at the joint near the shoulder, it looked "perfect," with no injuries or sense of discord, as if the "creature" was born this way.

Altering reality, and even making it feel reasonable to others...

This is like a kind of ability only legendary deities would possess.

"Hiss..." Lucien took a deep breath inside, then he brought Count Sanasis over and pointed at the arm, only to see the latter wearing a smug expression.

"Wizard Lucien, I don’t think he wants to talk," Carly looked at Count Sanaxis, and in her eyes, there seemed to be little devils dancing.

Inside, Lucien silently gave Carly a thumbs-up.

"What’s there to make such a fuss about?" Count Sanaxis glared at Carly with resentment and then explained somewhat reluctantly.

"Dreams can be real or distorted; they’re the bizarre union of anomalies, the incarnation of the grotesque. Each dream in itself is a body of contradictions. The creatures of nightmares spawn from dreams, naturally inheriting some of these traits, and I merely made slight use of this fact..."

"A body of contradictions..." Lucien murmured to himself, as Carly also showed a pondering look in her eyes, because her inherited memories of numerous races seemed to include similar content during her slumber...

"Simply put, it’s like a coin or a playing card," Count Sanaxis spoke indifferently, "Since nightmare creatures are inherently two-dimensional lifeforms, depending on the ’Observer’s’ ’perspective,’ often what is seen is different aspects of nightmare entities."

"Perhaps... What a child sees as a little sprite, in someone else’s eyes could be a demon that traverses freely through every corner of the world; the insects that seem minuscule to some are seen by others as terrifying dragons."

Watching Count Sanaxis, who seemed to be quite serious at the moment, Lucien straightened up slightly, feeling that this guy might be hinting at something deeper.

"So you two bastards better be nicer to this lord! Who knows, in others’ eyes, this lord might one day unite the Dream Layer and even cause it to evolve back into a great existence of the world!"

Count Sanaxis loudly praised himself, incidentally jumping down from Lucien’s hands in an extremely graceful posture and with a splash, diving into Carly’s water glass, taking advantage of the clear water inside to wash off the paint that stained his body.

But soon, Count Sanaxis’s voice became somewhat hollow, "That thing, pointy ears, this lord permits you to fish the great Count Sanaxis out of this water. Gurgle, gurgle..."

"Twist..." Lucien narrowed his eyes slightly, feeling that Count Sanaxis also bore this peculiar sense of contradiction and conflict inherent to nightmare creatures, but this also made Lucien even more interested in Helen Wizard.

He wondered if she, having merged with a "demon" to some extent, had also become a "demon."

Beyond the projection of her powerful, domineering, and maniacal image of a peak first-level wizard in the real world, did she, like other nightmare creatures, possess a contradictory side?

Or, did it require him to switch to some sort of "special perspective" to see it?

Lucien pondered briefly, but soon he shifted his attention to Adeline.

After all, she was a living sample, and the best, most convenient one at that.

Of course, before that, he needed a "good teacher."

With that thought, Lucien looked toward Carly.

More precisely, toward Count Sanaxis in the palm of Carly’s hand.

...

"I wonder if that guy was telling the truth about the special potion..." Carly murmured softly, a hint of anticipation in her eyes.

Count Sanaxis had told her about a "growth potion" that was said to resolve her stunted growth, but Carly always felt that the smooth talker might just be trying to scam her. However, the desire for a potion that could accelerate growth was real, so she was feeling somewhat conflicted at the moment.

Despite her thoughts, Carly kept walking.

She had left the lab and was now heading toward the academy’s transaction area.

"Miss Carly..." Just at this moment, the third-level Wizard Apprentice Burton, who had dealt with Carly several times in the transaction area and even took the initiative to foster a relationship, spotted her and came running over eagerly.

"Burton?" Carly looked at this "friend" perplexedly, unaware of why he was so eager to find her.

"Huff huff..." Burton took a deep breath, trying to calm the urgency in his emotions, "Miss Carly, do you have any spare Recovery Potions or higher-tier healing potions? I need them."

"Desperately in bulk," Burton added.

Carly paused, but then followed Burton into the grocery store, taking out a test tube box from her spatial ring that held 20 "Recovery Potion·Large."

"This is a recovery potion, ’Emerald,’ improved by my mentor, roughly twice as effective as the regular Recovery Potion..." Carly said, also wanting to buy some magical plants from Burton for the growth potion recipe she had obtained from Count Sanaxis.

But Burton was particularly urgent at the moment. He grabbed the potions, gave a few instructions to another second-level Wizard Apprentice helping to keep watch, and then quickly left with the potions.

"Miss Carly, Mr. Burton just instructed us—these potions, we’ll pay two hundred Magic Stones for them. Also, if you wish to acquire any magical plants or seeds, we are willing to help look for or purchase them for you..."