33 The Ring (1/2)

Chapter 33: The Ring

Translator: winniethepooh, Kris_LiuEditor: Vermillion

Grabbing his dagger, Lucien cautiously approached the pile of ash.

The shiny item was actually a carved silver ring, inlaid with a small blue gem on top.

“It belonged to the zombie?” Lucien was surprised. He picked the ring up and started scrutinizing it carefully.

There was a line of letters on its surface, which was written in the common tongue.

“Human nature can be colder than snow.”

The ring was just plain-looking, but when Lucien rubbed it gently he felt a mysterious and amazing power coming from the gem. After a few minutes, when Lucien’s power started slowly recovering from the magic backfire, he carefully examined the ring again using his spiritual power.

Lucien’s injured soul was slightly shocked as soon as his spirit entered into the ring. He felt inside the gem what seemed to be the power of blizzard, but its structure was way more complicated than that of the apprentice-level magic.

“It’s a magic ring! Maybe that’s why the zombie seemed much stronger than the others.” Lucien was excited, “It seems that the ring’s even superior to Benjamin’s Truth Badge. I wonder which power level the ring belongs to…”

With his remaining spiritual power, Lucien couldn’t even understand the magic structure in the ring, not to mention how to leave his own spiritual imprint on the structure, in order to use the power.

A sorcerer with the first circle spell called Identify could directly understand the magic properties of all level one magic items, without having to analyze their inner structures. One’s ability in using Identify would grow along with their accumulated knowledge, and thus the person could progress and start using the items of higher level.

Sometimes there was extra information in some of them, including their makers, for what purposes they were made, and so on.

According to the witch’s notes, all of the magic items could be divided into different standards: apprentice level, level one to nine, and legend level.

The evaluation criteria was based on the power of the magic item: if the power was equal to a first circle magic or to the ability of a level one knight, it was, correspondingly, a level one magic item. Nevertheless, there were four ranks within each level — low, medium, high and perfect. Taking a ring enchanted with the third circle spell Lightning for example, if the ring could be used once a day, it was a low-rank level three magic ring; if it could be used three times a day, it would instead be considered a medium-rank level three one; if the ring had some extra benefits like increasing the magic resistance of the user, it would be a high-rank level three item.

If a magic item had some kind of permanent augmentation effect, it would be a level higher than the other common ones. For example, Mind Blank was an eight circle spell, and a magic item with the immunity towards this ring-eight magic would be recognized as a precious level nine magic artifact.

Furthermore, the grading was also applied to magic weapons and armors.

Lucien did not know the ring very well, so he dare not wear it casually in case there was any curse on it. After putting the ring in his pocket he was in a pretty good mood.

However, when he noticed all the bodies and blood around him, he knew that he had more work to do. Most importantly, he needed to learn how to preserve the aquatic zombie’s brain tissue.

Lucien did not know how to use the apprentice spell called Organ Preservation yet, but the zombie’s brain tissue should be able to last from three to five days, which should be enough time for Lucien to master the spell.