Byron was still used to treating his living space as his laboratory. He took the black powder and went back to his room to study alone.

Saul welcomed his long-unseen senior—though the senior was no longer as powerful as him now—and was delayed by a day before going to see his little apprentice Noah, whom he had left in the Chaos Realm.

The Chaos Realm was still filled with black sand and soil everywhere. Looking around, the terrain gently undulated with no tall mountains or forests visible. Only at the horizon could one see some grayish-black mountainous undulations.

Saul turned back and saw a crooked little house on a small hill.

Or it could be called a little shack.

The building materials were mainly some unused shelving that Saul had thrown to Noah.

Marsh, who was no longer driving carriages, had provided giant mushrooms, but unfortunately these mushrooms couldn’t grow robustly in the Chaos Realm. They could only grow to finger thickness in potted plants, barely enough to satisfy hunger.

Saul walked to this crude house in a few steps and circled around without seeing Noah.

He simply flew into the air and quickly spotted the little apprentice working with his head down in a distant depression.

“Master!” Noah looked up and saw Saul, immediately becoming so excited that tears filled his eyes.

Life in the Chaos Realm was very difficult to endure. He both wanted to encounter other people and feared encountering them. Living alone, apart from sunrise and sunset, there was almost no sense of time passing.

Moreover, since Saul hadn’t come within a month, Noah hadn’t slept well these past two days, constantly worrying that Saul had abandoned him here.

Seeing his teary little apprentice, Saul knew what he was worried about and couldn’t help but smile as he patted the boy’s head.

After Little Algae flew out from Saul’s neck and wrapped around Noah’s waist, Saul took Noah and flew back to his little house.

“Didn’t you use the magical tools I gave you when building this house?”

Some magical tools could also be used by ordinary people without magical power.

Noah shrank his neck. “I, I thought it would be better to conserve magic crystals before getting familiar with this place, so I couldn’t bear to use them.”

He was somewhat worried that Saul would blame him for not trusting him.

But Saul approved of Noah’s choice. “That’s fine. After all, you’re living here alone, so having your own judgment is more important. What are you holding? A plant from here?”

Noah raised his hand. “It’s a plant with relatively high water content. I tested it with the reagents you left me, and it’s basically safe, so I wanted to transplant it near the house to see if I could cultivate more.”

Although Saul had also left a lot of food for Noah, he was still working hard to develop new ways of survival.

Saul examined the other things Noah had brought back one by one: a small amount of withered plants, some remains that seemed to be biological corpses, and many useless stones.

Since Noah’s knowledge reserves were still insufficient, Saul didn’t criticize anything but encouraged him to continue exploring, with the prerequisite of ensuring his safety.

“How many basic runes have you learned now?”

“Three.” Noah immediately squatted down and wrote them out with his finger in the dirt.

Unable to infuse magical power or manipulate mental energy, Noah could only memorize the appearance of runes by rote.

“You learned two runes on your own without guidance? It seems your graphic talent isn’t bad. But when you study compound runes later, this bit of talent won’t be enough.”

Saul also squatted down without hesitation. “Let me teach you a method called the coordinate method. It’s convenient for memorization, and most importantly, it’s convenient for understanding compound runes later.”

With no one around, Saul directly used the ground as a blackboard, combining his experience learning runes with his years of spellcasting to reorganize a coordinate method to teach his little apprentice.

Noah’s eyes widened as if he were seeing a new world.

The day passed quickly in eager learning. Saul finally instructed Noah to be careful of monsters and even more careful of intelligent beings, then left the Chaos Realm and returned to the Purity Wizard Tower.

Sensing Saul’s return, Hope immediately came to find him.

“Tower Master, Mr. Byron came looking for you this evening.”

Senior Byron was actually quite a homebody and generally wouldn’t take the initiative to visit without reason.

Saul hurried to find Byron and saw that his room was already littered with draft papers.

“…” Standing in the doorway, Saul actually felt like he had nowhere to step. “You adapted quite quickly!”

Byron looked up, completely ignoring Saul’s complaint. “Come look at this.”

Saul stepped over the mess on the floor and came to the desk, shocked to discover that Byron’s hands were covered in blisters. Some blisters had already burst and were still oozing greenish fluid.

“Pollution?” Saul immediately frowned.

But Byron pointed at the parchment spread out on the table. “Look at this.”

Only then did Saul shift his gaze to the paper.

He saw that the parchment was filled with crooked writing, reaching a conclusion at the end.

…The composition formula of black powder (Byron’s abbreviation for the powder Saul brought back from the Chaos Realm, which had the same pollution source characteristics as the Black Tide) is reversible. Once this formula is mastered, the unique Black Tide pollution of the Borderland can also be converted into an inert state of black powder… By the same logic, reverse formula operations can also restore inert black powder to active Black Tide pollution.

Saul’s mouth slowly opened wide. He hadn’t expected Byron to reach such a conclusion in just one day.

“Look and see if there are any problems with my derivation. If you don’t spot any issues either, then I’ll continue deriving the formula in this direction. Hmm… let’s call it the Inertization Formula.”

Saul read through the entire formula and couldn’t immediately spot any logical problems.

His first reaction was to show it to Camus, but the next second he dismissed this idea.

This Inertization Formula was better researched together with Senior Byron.

He couldn’t depend on Camus for everything, as that would make him lose the habit of independent thinking.

“I don’t see any problems for now. Maybe it’s because the time was too short. Let me take it back and study it.” Saul immediately cast a 0-rank copying spell, duplicating the parchment that had no magical properties.

This was a problem Saul had never thought of, immediately generating intense interest.

If they could really make the Borderland’s pollution inert into relatively harmless black powder, couldn’t they prevent themselves and those around them from mutating when the Black Tide truly erupted in the future?

He had been too busy recently. Even though he had obtained the black powder long ago, he hadn’t had time for in-depth research.

But then Byron suddenly slammed his palm down on the parchment Saul had copied with a “slap.”

Fluid splattered everywhere.

“No!” Byron refused to research this topic together with Saul. “You just entered second-rank, and your strength isn’t even stable. I heard Lady Kira mention that entering second-rank is different from before. Your knowledge system and world cognition need to be completely rebuilt. Before that, you’d better not participate in any research.”

Looking at the serious-faced Byron, Saul raised both hands in surrender. “Alright, alright, but let me treat your hands first. How did they get cooked in just one day?”

(End of Chapter)