The Golem Mage

Alec scrolled all the way to the top of his notifications, finally spotting the first issue he knew he needed to deal with.

He quickly realized that just like his earth element, his fire element had also advanced to the second stage of Manipulation, meaning he was now to possess two variant flame abilities, and it wasn’t just that it had advanced; there were already two distinct powers present, which left him slightly confused.

He could easily understand where the Magma Control had come from, considering it was like a natural progression of his red flames, and honestly, Alec would be lying if he said he didn’t like it, he knew Magma was an extremely destructive flame type, one many considered beyond the limits of ordinary fire powers.

As far as he was concerned, it was a seriously cool ability to have, and he was already hoping he’d get the hang of it sooner rather than later.

But what unsettled him a little, though, was the second variant that came with his fire element: something called Black Ashes.

It threw him off because he’d never heard of it before, still, since it seemed connected to the black flames (Hell Flames) he’d awakened, flames others seemed both wary of and deeply interested in, Alec figured that whatever variant was born from it wouldn’t turn out to be useless.

In fact, a part of him felt it might be something very special.

Even so, in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but question its importance, after all, it had ashes in its name, and that didn’t sound particularly powerful, but despite that lingering thought, he wasn’t too bothered by it, the Magma Control alone had already left him more than satisfied.

Pushing those thoughts aside for now, Alec’s eyes landed on the glowing new Tier 6 mark in his status panel, and right then, it finally made sense why his body felt so overwhelming.

He also swiftly confirmed that a total of one hundred stat points had been spread around his four basic stats as his bonus for advancing into a new realm, and it also seems that his mental stats were unlocked.

The sheer qualitative changes those numbers brought weren’t something that could be achieved by simply levelling up one level or slowly accumulating points to dump in one of his physical stats, this was the kind of power leap that set a person on an entirely different tier of strength.

Though Alec would have preferred if all his level-ups came with such massive gains, but he knew it wasn’t possible, this kind of leap only happened because he was stepping into an entirely new realm, a rare milestone few reached without years of toil.

He quickly brushed the thought aside and moved on to review the rest of his notifications, he was pleased to see that even his mental stats had improved with the breakthrough, but what really caught his attention was his mana capacity.

It had surged noticeably, and for the first time, Alec felt he could fight for extended periods while still falling back on the vast reserves stored within his cape.

The thought of being able to unleash more devastating attacks over a longer stretch made him smirk in satisfaction.

Another welcome change was the system’s new layout, his elemental affinities were now neatly separated from his bloodline powers.

There is now a thin, indistinct line between the two, as the system had officially categorized his bloodline abilities as special abilities, distinct from his elemental affinities, a clarification long overdue.

He drifted over to check his weapon masteries and noticed that while many had reached their peak in the current Intermediate Tier, and it was time to push them further, to ascend to the next level, he’d need to slay high-rank lifeforms and test his skills in real combat.

Though Alec still had the Golem Assimilation skill, which let him borrow the advanced weapon masteries of his golems, but the system spirit had advised him against relying on it unless absolutely necessary.

Every mage reaches a critical point where their mastery with a chosen weapon type births a weapon intent, a powerful force that perfectly aligns with their personal combat style, so no matter how refined his golems’ skills were, the he couldn’t use their intents, and that couldn’t compare to Alec advancing his own weapon mastery and awakening his unique intent that matched his fighting style.

At times like this, Alec found himself appreciating the daily drills of the Blood Reaper class, which had forced him to practice some sword techniques relentlessly; those routines had been one of the main reason he had elevated three of his weapon masteries to the intermediate level, weapon masteries he could truly call his own.

It wasn’t that he lacked skill with other weapons, but there was a noticeable absence of essence and intent behind his strikes when he wielded anything besides a sword, blade, or scythe, with any of those mentioned weapon in hand, he became a deadlier, a more dangerous fighter, and capable of not only producing weapon Qi but also standing at the threshold of forming an intent of his own which might just be power as his Killing intent.

He was also grateful to his golems for indirectly helping expand his arsenal of weapon masteries, as thanks to them, and the second seal of the Blood Changdao, his divine weapon which is still slowly repairing itself, Alec had always gained different minor buffs with every weapon he equipped in that state.

And though those boosts were temporary, they stacked up to make a difference in battle.

Jumping off from that, Alec came across his 27 free stat points quietly sitting in his panel, waiting for him to allocate them.

But since he wasn’t in any tight spot, he simply left them there to continue accumulating.

After all, he was still adjusting to his new strength, and adding more right now would only complicate things.

He glanced at his system points and sighed, the current amount confirming one thing, his golems had definitely managed to kill a decent number of demonic beasts before they’d been kicked out of the Amulet world, Alec clearly remembered how much system points he’d spent awakening his Fire Manipulation, one of the sub-abilities alone had cost around 500,000 points, a price he’d memorized from the time he evolved his Earth Affinity too.

But looking at it now, he couldn’t even be bothered to feel bad about the losses, in fact, he felt pretty damn good.

It seemed he had seriously underestimated the collective battle prowess of eight Tier 6 golems which captain rank golems under them, as not only had they recovered what he’d spent, they’d surpassed it, adding an extra 3 million system points to his reserves.

Considering everything he’d already spent on harvesting zombie corpses and other resources, this windfall made Alec feel much more secure about the future, with his overall power rising so sharply, he was now looking forward to the upcoming auction more than ever.

He could already picture the chaos and excitement that would erupt once the Golem New Auction House opened on that day.

Satisfied, Alec opened the door, planning to step out into his courtyard for some air, but the scene that met him made him freeze.

He rubbed his eyes, half-convinced he was still hallucinating from the exhaustion and strain of his recent breakthrough.

But the scene didn’t change.

There, in his courtyard, stood several figures, three restrained, three free, It didn’t surprise Alec to see intruders attempting to reach him though, what did shock him was that his master, Terran, was standing there too, dressed in the most casual wear Alec had ever seen on the man.

With everyone staring at him with those unreadable gazes, and the sight of the massive array rune still glowing in the sky, holding back the thick fog of mana that had gathered from multiple breakthroughs, Alec quickly realized that stepping out for fresh air might not be the best idea after all.

“Hell no, I’m going to bed,” Alec muttered, sliding the door shut behind him, leaving Terran, his grandfather, and the Fifth Elder blinking in surprise at his sudden retreat.

While Terran might’ve been clueless about Alec’s reaction, both the Patriarch and the Fifth Elder understood perfectly why he’d made a break for it.

After all, to them it was all Alec’s doing of giving out pills that so many mages had broken through at once, and they knew the moment the commotion settled and the lingering mana cloud dispersed, the other Elders would surely come knocking, each with a fresh stack of responsibilities to dump on him, now he was back home and seems reliable enough for them though they claim it’s patriarch grooming but they were just being lazy on him.

So Alec was just claiming his rest while he still could.