Age of Adepts

Three days later.

With disheveled hair, a dirty face, and two red eyes, Greem breathed out a long sigh and closed the book sitting on the table in front of him.

A moment ago, the Chip’s alert tone, which he had been waiting on for a long time, had finally resounded in his brain.

*Beep* “Data Model of Fire Arrow has been constructed successfully!”

Finally!

Thinking back, the Burning Hand was a spell Greem had mastered completely. So long as he could cast it once, the Chip would be able to visualize its model in Greem’s Spiritual Dimension via precisely monitoring how he controlled his Spirit Energy and the Spiritual Frequency he had used.

It had been so simple and easy.

But Greem hadn’t mastered the Fire Arrow spell… he couldn’t even successfully cast it even once. Thus, the Chip’s ability to record, store, and mimic his spells were unable to be used.

So Greem had to find another method, and thus he memorized all related magic theories and casting techniques of Fire Arrow. Then he let the Chip proceed with the arrangement and sorting of them, analyzing them to find out the best casting technique that matched him most precisely.

The Data Model the Chip had constructed with this method wouldn’t replace a real Spiritual Model, which made this a unique spell experiment, rather than the actualization of a spell.

Greem massaged his forehead and took a few deep breaths. After that, he said, “Let’s begin the simulation!”

*Beep*

With a crystal clear alert tone, a nearly perfect virtual image of Greem was projected into his mind. Following the specifications of the data model, it started to recite the spell words of Fire Arrow in a sonorous, yet forceful, voice.

Via his connection with the Chip, Greem’s mind merged with the virtual image, following along with the reciting of the spell and adjusting the frequency of his Spirit to match that of the Data Model. At the same time, both hands of the virtual image were making small gestures in the air, guiding the attracted elemental energy and molding it into the shape of an arrow.

Too bad, due to his unfamiliarity with the casting, when he was reciting the 14th magic word, its hand gesture was clearly a half second slower. Within Greem’s Spiritual World, the half molded Fire Arrow exploded, and a raging fireball instantly swallowed the virtual image.

If it was in the real world, perhaps nearly half of Greem’s room would have been destroyed, but in this virtual world, simulated with his Spirit Energy, after the violent wobbling of lights and shadows, the perfectly simulated explosion disappeared, and the entire scene was restored to its initial state.

Although he knew beforehand that everything was just a simulation, Greem still couldn’t help breaking into a non-existent cold sweat in his spiritual World.

Witnessing a huge fireball explode in front of his eyes, and seeing his virtual body being ripped apart, even Greem, who was not faint of heart, felt his heart stop for a second.

In order to let himself truly experience the complete process of casting the spell, Greem had placed his entire conscious into the virtual image. Therefore, you could say what happened just now, while not being real, could be described as an unreal reality.

Greem didn’t jump right back into practicing, but closed his eyes, meticulously studying his first attempt in his mind. After he confirmed the reason for his mistake, he opened his eyes and began his second simulated casting attempt.

Unfortunately, it was a failure again! This time, he failed at matching his Spirit frequency with the 17th syllable. The half-constructed Spiritual Model exploded once again. As a result, the raging element flames once more swallowed Greem’s virtual body.

The digitized wobbling of lights and shadows slowly faded.

Soon, his Spiritual World was restored to its initial state.

Greem let out a helpless and bitter laugh, then he took a moment to calm down. Soon, the sonorous and forceful voice of the simulated Greem’s voice once again resounded throughout the empty Spiritual World.

Many explosions occurred…

Every time, his mistake was nearly the same. Either his hand gestures couldn’t keep up with the spell’s syllables, or his Spirit frequency wasn’t right. To put it simply, no matter which part caused the problem, there was be only one result: a massive explosion.

If this had happened in the real world, Greem’s weak body would have become powder after the first explosion. But since it was not, he was sitting safely beside his writing table, staring blankly into space.

After practicing it so many times, his Spirit had finally been depleted.

Whenever his Spirit was completely depleted, he would struggle back to his bed and fall asleep. Once he had slept and restored his Spirit, he would then rush to the cafeteria, order himself a huge meal, then return to his room and commence the next round of Spell Simulation practice.

With this incredible persistence and fortitude, finally, during an instance when everything worked flawlessly, Greem successfully completed a simulated casting of Fire Arrow.

When the burning elemental flame formed into a magic arrow and was stably floating between Greem’s hands, he nearly couldn’t hold back his tears. When he let himself get excited, a massive explosion, once again, devoured his body again.

But he didn’t get discouraged this time. Instead, he let out a loud and satisfied laugh while his Spiritual World was destroyed around him.

……

Greem sat up straight in front of the writing table, opening his eyes for the first time in a few hours. A look of joy could be seen at the corners of said eyes.

“Chip, do you have a recording of my last Simulated Spell attempt?”

“Video has been recorded and saved. You can replay it at any time…”

Greem tried his best to calm down and nodded his head, but the way he tightly clenched his fists revealed how excited he was.

This new found function of the Chip was really a huge help to him.

Without the virtual Spiritual world constructed by the Chip, Greem could only practice this Fire Arrow Spell in the Spell Practice Room over and over. He would have to personally endure the backfire to his Spirit and body caused by his casting failures. Every serious casting backfire would require a period of time to heal and rest before being fully recovered. No doubt this would seriously delay the progress of learning any spell or progressing one’s Spirit.

This was the reason most of the Apprentices in the Tower only mastered one to two spells.

Of course, there was a possibility that some Apprentices had hidden what they knew, never really exposing their true abilities. After all, the field of research and progress for all Apprentices was secretive, and trying to learn about one’s private matters was a huge taboo within the Tower.

There probably were not that many Apprentices hiding what they knew, as the number of unlucky guys who were struggling, even among Beginner Apprentice Adepts, was really quite high, and thus there was very little need to hide one’s abilities. In the past, Greem was one of them.

But with the activation of the Chip, Greem felt it was time for him to soar up into the sky.

“Chip, play the recording of the successful casting!”

*Beep*… with the appearance of data streams, a ‘Greem’ who was concentrating on spell casting was projected into his mind. Greem placed his entire focus on this virtual image, repeatedly watching the entire process of spellcasting. He watched every detail of it, not missing the slightest change in his Spiritual energy.

Although it was only a Spiritual simulation, Greem’s mind followed the normal spellcasting process and completed it. Therefore, excluding the lack of real elemental energy, nothing was different when compared to casting the spell in the real world.

It went without saying that this recording of a successful spellcasting would go a long way in helping Greem mastered the magic spell. At least, it helped Greem save at least half a year of restless effort, and avoided the painful cycle of being injured, resting and healing, and being injured again.

Since he had a single success out of a hundred attempts, that meant that Greem’s knowledge and ability were enough to support the minimum requirement for casting the Fire Arrow spell. Thus, the only obstacle that preventing him from mastering the Fire Arrow was his familiarity with casting the spell.

And this was the strength of the Chip!

After repeatedly reviewing the successful simulated casting, and making sure he had mastered all the key elements of the spell, Greem hurried out of his room and went straight to the Magic Spell Practice Room.

This was also one of the inconveniences that an Apprentice Adept had to face.

Their mastery in magic spells was too low, which made the consequence of practicing an unfamiliar magic spell in their own room too severe. Thus, the only option for them was to rent the Magic Spell Practice Room in the Tower, allowing them to experiment with a new spell. That’s why there was a saying, the mastery of a new magic spell was always supported by the huge amount of knowledge… and an incredible amount of money.

……

The Magic Spell Practice Room was located on the third floor of the Tower and was set up to handle any mishaps that a backfiring spell might cause.

Although he was part of the Tower, Apprentice Adepts were only allowed to set foot on the first to third floors. The first floor was mainly for Probationary Apprentices, who had only recently joined the Tower. The second floor was the living quarters and recreational areas for official Apprentice Adepts. The third floor was a public area where they could experiment with magic spells and practice.

The area where official Apprentices were allowed included: The Library, the Potion Brewing Room, the Summoning Room, the Alchemy Laboratory, the Magic Spell Practice Room, the Room of Seals, the Curse Altar, the Magical Plant Cultivation Room… But as a lone wolf who always by himself, the only places that Greem normally visited were the Library and the Magic Spell Practice Room. As for all the other places, he did not have deep enough pockets to waste money visiting them.

It was dinner time when he arrived, hence, there weren’t many Apprentices at this place.

After Greem impatiently paid 10 gold coins to Amn, who was the administrator of the Magic Spell Practice Room, he was given a special card. With this card, he had an hour of practicing time in a practice room.

For an Apprentice Adept, an hour of practicing time was considering pretty long. With their pitiful amount of Spiritual Energy, they couldn’t last more than half an hour of continuous spellcasting. If Greem didn’t control the output of his Spiritual Energy, he could deplete it all within fifteen minutes.

Greem walked up to a stone door that had a number above it that matched the number on his card. He raised up the card and waved it gently in the air. The heavy stone door immediately opened up, not making any noise as it did so.

The so-called ‘Magic Spell Practice Room’ was, in fact, a simple stone room that had about 40 square meters of space, but there was a gigantic human-shaped target, made of stone, placed on the other end of the room. The dull and dark material showed that it was made from a dark augite stone, which was capable of repelling magic.

With the ability of an Apprentice Adept, the low-grade magic spells they were able to experiment with were definitely not enough to destroy such a solid and strong magic repelling stone target. That’s why it was the most suitable target for magic practice.

Of course, for those Apprentices who needed to practice their Curse Spells, or some other unique types of spells, they had no choice but spend money to purchase some suitable demons as their practicing target, or else they would have to sneak outside the Tower, where they could practice those bizarre spells in secret.