Warlock Apprentice

Two days later, inside Angor's soundproofed training room.

Angor was trying to construct a spell model in his mind space, which looked like a simple "W" when observed from one side.

More mana was drawn from his mana pool as the model was perfected, which only took several seconds.

The shape of a crescent moon showed up on Angor's palm, and it began to attract wind element from the environment.

He pushed his hand forward and triggered the mana, thus allowing the inconspicuous wind blade to be released.

The blade reached the touchstone in an instant and created a shallow cut on it.

"A single wind blade isn't so powerful…" Angor inspected the cut on the stone. "But this is not the original Wind Blade cantrip."

In the next second, dozens of wind blades appeared from Angor's stretched hand and all assaulted the touchstone together. The stone could no longer stay intact this time and was quickly cut in half by the constant attacks.

By the time Angor finally finished his move, he had already released 27 wind blades.

"Wind Blade" was a level-0 cantrip which created a sharp blade of wind to damage something within a certain distance. The farther it traveled, the less damage it could do.

"Crescent Barrage" was a level-1 cantrip. It created a magic sigil which turned mana into wind blades. How much mana it could convert depended on how well its model was constructed.

And Angor just successfully used "Crescent Barrage". His first attempt almost created a perfect model for it. A basic Crescent Barrage could only release three wind blades. As the model grew better, the number of blades it released would increase. The most perfect one ever recorded released ten times as many, which meant 30 wind blades in one cast.

Angor's initial attempt just now almost reached the same level. Most apprentices only managed to use six to nine blades. In other words, two or three times of the cantrip's basic power. It was usually difficult for them to get any better.

Angor had the Axes of the Universe to help him build a superior cantrip model. With just a little more effort, he would likely wield the most powerful version of Crescent Barrage.

In other words, he turned a single level-1 cantrip into something as powerful as a level-0 cantrip used 30 times. This was a miracle in the history of wizards.

Angor took out his notebook to note down the important factors of his first level-1 cantrip. At the same time, he activated his hologram tablet to rearrange the element combination for the cantrip.

The tablet showed that it would take 126 hours to gain 417 different results.

Angor simply left the device working on its own. During his tower matches, he always left the tablet inside the soundproofed room to work on altered models for the cantrips he already learned.

Apart from today's Crescent Barrage, he now studied 23 level-0 cantrips in total, most of which were defensive ones. During the last two months, Angor already got the possible different combinations for each one of them.

The cantrips led to 14,000 variations. Most of them were useless, but a few of them were potentially outstanding. Only potentially. Angor had not done anything to test them out yet.

At least the tornado he created out of "Cleanse" was not bad.

He put the tablet aside and began to sense how much mana was left in his mana pool.

A "ninefold" Crescent Barrage cost him around a quarter of his mana resource.

Angor was glad at the result. It meant he could use the cantrip four times under full condition. A powerful level-1 cantrip for four times!

Just two days ago, he still could not find enough mana to cast a single level-1 cantrip. Forcing his way despite the lack of mana would result in magic backfire.

To gain so much strength in only two days… Naturally, Angor was satisfied.

Although the achievement was not a surprise—Angor already expected it.

The quantitative change led to qualitative change. Angor sensed that one of the new spirit tunnels on his singular point felt different from before. It changed his mana flow efficiency to a whole new level.

Unlike the other tunnels that "stuck out" from the singular point, this one went around the point and surrounded the singular point in the center.

Also, this particular tunnel connected with six other spreading tunnels on its way.

Successfully constructing the tunnel increased Angor's mana capacity tenfold. This was why Angor finally decided to try out Crescent Barrage.

Inside his mind space, Angor's spirit model had just taken on another look. Most apprentices would have their spirit models fixed in a short time, which also determined their mana flow efficiency and capacity. Angor's model, however, did not seem fully developed at all.

This meant he held more potential compared to his peer.

At this moment, his spirit model consisted of three parts.

First, the singular point, a sphere in the center.

The second part was made of "tubes" that stuck out from the surface of the sphere. He had constructed 81 of them, and it made the model looked like a spiky sea urchin.

The third part was the "run-around" tunnel he built today. It looked like a halo around certain planets. However, it also connected with six of the tubes which allowed it to transfer mana with the singular point.

As a whole, these three parts gave his spirit model a really strange appearance. However, this model also granted him the ability to channel mana efficiently better than any other channeling methods known in the south.

Once he could fully build the model according to the book… what the model could bring would be unimaginable.

However, that would not happen for now since Singularity Dispersive Meditation was an unfinished book.

…

A perfect channeling method still could not help someone to grow strong overnight.

Meditation was a training process which required lots of time. After getting over his excitement of having a strengthened mana pool, Angor had to return to this slow routine.

Still, his mana pool grew bigger by the day.

One week later, he could release five level-1 cantrips with full mana. This was already above what an average level-1 apprentice could do.

If added together with other factors, such as his alchemy weapons and Toby, he could probably defeat average level-3 apprentices by this point.

Angor did not give up other jobs at the same time. After spending ten days, he had read through the first two editions of Enchantment Cyclopaedia. In the end, he found an anti-undead enchantment in Enchantment Cyclopaedia: Advanced.

The enchantment was called "Prelude to Elimination".

The name itself was way different from the runes recorded in Enchantment Cyclopaedia: For Starters such as "Rune of Something Something". Its creator obviously tried to give the rune an outstanding name, which meant it was something powerful.

The difficulty of the rune was plain to see. From a quick look, Angor believed that this one required a hundred times more work compared to "Rune of Sharpen".

Or… this was not a rune at all. It was a magic array!

Runes and magic arrays were both used for enchantment, but they were of completely different levels. A magic array consisted of multiple functioning runes. Also, unlike a single rune, a magic array allowed the user to actively trigger its effect.

For example, when Angor applied Rune of Sharpen to his scythe, it only improved the tool's sharpness, which was a passive effect.

With the correct magic array, he could make the scythe release energy and freeze up everything it connected with, or toss the weapon in the air and fly away while standing on the weapon. With proper materials, he could even make the weapon into a kind of space storage.

There were various magic arrays with different effects. The effects were still weaker than the result of synthesis, but they could also achieve something unique.

For alchemists, rune enchantment was all about memorizing runes, getting used to them, and recreating the runes.

Magic array required more than a memory. The process of making a magic array asked for the absolute concentration of an alchemist. Looking away, even just a little, would cause fatal flaws in key points. Besides, one had to also comprehend how different runes could work with each other.

When drawing runes, Angor could "cheat" with his tablet by copying runes with the help of projections. With enough practice, he could memorize them and proceeded to draw runes on himself without using the tablet. Also, drawing smaller runes due to limited space on items was not really hard for him.

For magic arrays, however… Angor was not sure he could do the same.

He checked "Prelude to Elimination" which contained six runes again. Angor thought "Rune of Sharpen" or "Rune of Frost" looked complicated enough, but they were just child's play compared to what he was looking at now.

He used his tablet to project the pattern of "Prelude to Elimination" onto a piece of paper.

The 1:1 projection of the magic array looked like random ink spread on paper. Angor moved his eyes closer to the paper, and everything still appeared to be a black mess.

From the "messy blackness", he could barely see some really thin, congested lines which were drawn next to each other.