Chapter 69: Amulet

Chapter Sixty-NineAmulet

Klein’s gaze swept over and saw the person asking about tooth peony.

The man stood less than a meter away from him. He wore a black formal suit and matching half-top hat, carried a silver-inlaid cane, and had gold-rimmed glasses on his face. His bearing was quite refined.

“Yes. Do you need it? This little jar is three soli,” said the stall owner, who was draped in a dark-black robe very much in the style of mysticism.

The refined man with pale-yellow temples and spectacles considered for a moment.

“Can it be cheaper? I still need to buy other materials, such as this bottle of white-edged sunflower petals.”

The stall owner thought for several seconds, then answered with great reluctance, “Two soli and six pence. I do not believe you will find a cheaper price anywhere.”

Seeing that the gold-rimmed man not only bought the tooth peony, but also white-edged sunflower and other materials, Klein immediately felt that he might have been overthinking.

Even so, he cautiously tapped the space between his brows twice and swept the other man with spirit vision.

No problem. Your body is healthy and your mood is quite good. Sir, please keep it that way…

Klein withdrew his gaze, turned back, and once again looked at the stall selling homemade amulets.

In his pupils, those amulets appeared clearly: some made of pure silver, some iron, some cast from gold.

Yet among all those amulets, only two or three possessed faint aura colors—crimson, pale white, or golden.

That meant they had initially gained spirituality. It meant those few amulets had some effect.

Klein had examined them very carefully earlier and confirmed that the stall owner had a certain foundation in mysticism.

There was not the slightest error in the power sources he selected for different incantations, and the corresponding materials chosen for those sources were even more correct.

Of course, an ordinary mysticism enthusiast would inevitably have omissions. Klein discovered that the stall owner did not understand the incantations themselves very well. It was not enough to translate the requested content into Hermes according to its grammar and call that an incantation. A true incantation had to conform to a certain format and contain unique rules.

Another issue was that, when the stall owner chose appropriate symbolic signs for the incantations and “power sources,” he also made mistakes to varying degrees. As a result, out of dozens of amulets, only two or three were completely correct and emitted a “faint glow.”

As for how effective those two or three could actually be, Klein could only say that having something was better than having nothing.

A truly effective amulet required its maker, while carving the incantation and symbolic signs, to let their own spirituality surge out through the knife tip.

And if one wanted even better results, one needed the assistance of ritual magic.

For someone who was not a Beyonder, both requirements were nearly impossible.

Klein knocked at his glabella as though thinking, then tapped the upper-left corner of the stall twice with his black cane.

“How much for these two?”

The ones he pointed at were not the amulets that had initially developed aura colors, but half-finished products that had only their shapes and no carved incantations or symbolic signs.

For Klein, there was no need to buy those weakly effective few. What he wanted was to turn the half-finished pieces into true amulets himself.

Mm. I will make Benson and Melissa each a charm to ward off misfortune… As for my own, I can use the materials provided by the Nighthawk team… Hiss. Have I been corrupted by Old Neil? To think this way and feel not the slightest guilt…

Klein’s thoughts wandered as he watched the stall owner pick up the two half-finished silver charms.

One of those silver charms was long and narrow, hollowed out at the center, surrounded by clusters of angel-like feathers. The carving was delicate and very beautiful. The…