Chapter Ninety-Nine: A Sense of Danger

Peter Clark was not yet prepared.

The day after he left his father’s residence, he went back to see him, only to find that Professor Healy had already departed. The only person he encountered there was the woman he least wanted to see, Flora Orianna. After the two of them exchanged a sharp and rather bitter war of words, Peter left.

In truth, at a time like this, before complications arose, he ought to have acted with decisive speed and rushed straight back to the satellite city where the family was based, then seized control of the family’s authority on the strength of the letters his father had left behind.

But now, in Grim Academy, one matter still weighed on his mind: the item his father had repeatedly emphasized, the thing locked inside the safe in the magical laboratory.

After leaving his father’s residence, Peter could not stop wondering whether Flora might try to tamper with whatever his father had hidden in that safe. The way his father had treated it made it clear that the contents were anything but ordinary.

And his father had said that what lay inside was a family heirloom, warning him again and again to guard it carefully and never let it be lost. Knowing that Flora also had a key to his father’s laboratory only made Peter more uneasy.

What was more, the harsher his father’s words had been, insisting that the thing must never be touched, the more curious Peter became about what it actually was.

Why had his father not simply told him what was inside? Why had he not explained why his descendants were forbidden to touch it? Peter’s mind had been in turmoil, and even as he lay down to sleep, his father’s voice kept echoing in his ears.

A disaster waiting to happen.

A disaster waiting to happen.

A disaster waiting to happen...

With a sudden jolt, Peter could no longer sleep. He hurriedly got dressed and slipped out into the night, heading for his father’s magical laboratory. Fortunately, the laboratory was not attached to the residence, so he need not worry about that woman noticing him.

Seeing no one around, he used his key to open the laboratory door. After a moment’s thought, he decided not to light the magic-stone lamp inside, but instead took out a magical scroll and cast a night-vision spell upon himself.

Then he carefully approached the locked safe.

Peter hesitated for a long while, staring at the safe as though facing a formidable enemy, as if it contained a demon capable of ending the world. In the end, he gritted his teeth and decided to open it and see what was inside. Otherwise, he would never be satisfied.

He muttered to himself, “I won’t touch it. I’ll just open it and take one look, just to see what could possibly matter so much to Father. Just one look...”

Seeing that his father had added not only a password lock but also three mechanical locks to the outside of the safe, Peter’s curiosity only deepened. No number of locks could keep out someone determined enough. As a child of a wizarding family, Peter carried a spatial pouch filled with all manner of scrolls, among them tools for disabling mechanisms and picking locks.

Before long, he had unlocked them one by one. As for his father’s password, it could not hold out against Peter, who was intent on getting in; by the second try, he entered the correct code.

Then Peter reinforced his own magical field with a wind-element shield before taking the protective amulet his father had given him and carefully opening the safe.

Nothing dangerous happened.

He let out a long breath of relief. Peering through the narrow opening, he squinted inside and finally made out a potion bottle, half-filled with a green liquid.

Peter relaxed, though a faint sense of disappointment followed. He had imagined some peerless treasure that could bring devastation and calamity to the world, or perhaps a sealed demon capable of granting immense power while corroding the human soul and leading one into ruin. He had not expected it to be merely a bottle of potion.

But what exactly did this potion do?

Peter opened the safe and took the bottle into his hand. At once, he felt an astonishing surge of vitality pouring out from it. Even through the bottle’s high-grade protective enchantments, the potent medicine still made his body feel strangely refreshed, and he sensed the flow of magic within him becoming much smoother.

“This must be something good!” Peter thought.

Perhaps it was a family heirloom passed down through generations, something only those with exceptional magical talent in the clan could even touch, such as his father. Someone like Peter, with only ordinary talent, might not even have been qualified to know of its existence, were it not for the fact that he was about to become clan head. The thought left Peter somewhat resentful. If you had something this good, why not bring it out earlier? Why all the secrecy, making it forbidden to touch?

Carefully, Peter opened the stopper and could not help taking a sniff.

Ah... bliss.

Peter felt the pores all over his body seem to float, every inch of him suffused with comfort. The magic within his body became more active than ever before, and he could clearly feel his spiritual power beginning to grow as well.

Peter wanted nothing more than to drink the potion on the spot, but at that very moment, a sudden chill ran through him.

The look of excitement on Peter’s face vanished completely. Shivering, he gathered every last ounce of strength and forced the cap back onto the bottle.

This was Peter’s soul talent: danger sense.

With this gift, Peter had escaped death several times. It had been especially vital back when he was in the Castelon secret realm. It was largely thanks to this talent that he had been among the small number who came out alive and successfully advanced to Bronze Wizard.

At the time, even his father, Professor Healy, had no real hope that he would become a Bronze Wizard. Furious, Peter had gone to the trouble of obtaining a Castelon Flame Medal and entered the Castelon secret realm, a place that talented wizards avoided at all costs. Yet he survived and emerged from it alive, even advancing to Bronze Wizard in the process. It was one of the achievements he was most proud of in his entire life, and the beginning of his rise into the core of the Clark family.

That sense of danger made Peter realize that if he simply drank this potion, something very bad would certainly happen. This caused him to take his father’s warning seriously once more. Even so, he still believed the potion must be valuable, and he guessed that it might merely have some unpredictable side effects.

Thinking of this, Peter put the bottle away for now.

For safety’s sake, he planned to have several professional potion masters analyze it before deciding whether or not to use it. He wanted to discover exactly what side effects it had, then find a way to solve them.

Peter remembered that the Clark family had several wizards who specialized in potions, and the family’s own potion masters were naturally the most trustworthy. Besides, he was soon to become the head of the entire clan.

At the thought of this, Peter grew impatient to return to the family and claim its highest authority. He truly could not wait to see the expression on that woman’s face once he became clan head.

As for his father’s instruction that, when the time came, he should leave them mother and son a path to survival, well, that would depend on their performance then.

He had heard that woman also had a niece, and that she was quite a beauty as well. If she and her niece behaved themselves, Peter would not mind keeping them around and giving them a mouthful of food.

Heh heh heh...

Thinking of this, Peter’s face slowly twisted into a strange and eerie smile.