Chapter 668 Efficiency
"Welcome again, everyone. As the major distractions have all gone home, I was hoping to start the day with some of the most essential functions that you have come here for. I'm not sure how much more my spell will grow you, as it won't take you past your natural bottleneck, but you should still get something out of it with the speed that you have been advancing." The King greeted Wolfe as the group entered.
"Then I thank you in advance for your efforts." Wolfe agreed.
The King didn't waste any time at all, and the air shimmered with magic as the world seemed to freeze around Wolfe. The King's spell was seeping into his body, seeming to put it into overdrive, and he could feel the mana density in his body skyrocketing.
The point was to increase the strength of his mana cores, so that was what Wolfe focused on. He pushed the mana that was flowing into him into the cores, exchanging old mana for new, and adapting to the nearly liquified mana that the King's spell was creating.
He had thought that his Mana Cores would suddenly start growing, and that he might instantly gain a rank, but it looked like that was not it at all.
The thin liquid of the mana was getting thicker, from a misty state to watery, then thick like syrup, but still, it was progressing, and beginning to solidify.
The solid mana was a strange feeling, it didn't really flow in his body, it was more like a Mana Crystal in his cores, but of incredible density.
The mana entered his body as a mist, and as it approached his cores, it solidified, forming something akin to the intricate lattice of a snowflake around six gemstone cores. Each was a different colour, and as he watched the process, Wolfe gained a flash of insight.
This was how Earth Magic was supposed to be. The formation of a solid from nothingness, the attunement to the world around him. That was the essence of Earth Magic.
Of all the things that he gained, Wolfe hadn't expected an affinity for another Element to be part of it. As the King had described the spell, it should take him to "The extent of his natural growth", and he had just assumed that meant in rank.
But perhaps Rank Six was the bottleneck for him, and it was the rest of his power that was going to advance easily after this point. It certainly wasn't something to complain about, his mana storage was dozens of times what it had been last night, and he had a whole new Element of spells to learn.
That might be something that he could do here. Saying that they focused a lot on the arcane was an understatement, this whole Palace was magic themed and magic adept. He could feel it from everyone around him, they were all skilled magic users.
From Wolfe's perspective, he had been undergoing the process for hours already, but it didn't look like the world around him was moving at all. Everyone was frozen in place, and even the lights weren't flickering. It was the strangest thing that he had ever experienced, and Wolfe vaguely wished that he could learn to do this as well, but it seemed to be beyond his abilities.
Then, once the feeling of affinity for the Earth Element began to feel natural to him, his sixth mana core began to grow a little before pausing and finally stopping as everything around Wolfe returned to normal.
The King smiled at Wolfe as the spell ended. "It is customary to keep any revelations you might have gained while advancing to yourself, but it looks like you should have gained quite a bit of power without giving away any new secret spells that came to you during the waiting. So, how long did it feel like to you?
The last time that I used this spell, they looked much more traumatized and spent over a year stuck in time."
"I didn't keep track, but likely not more than two hours. Unfortunately, it didn't give me any great insight into new spells, but I was more focused on my mana system." Wolfe explained.
The King cast some sort of spell and stared at Wolfe with an increasingly shocked look on his face.
"What did you do to your body? I am quite certain that it is not supposed to look like that. I have met many Magi in the past, and I have never seen anything like it." The King inquired, his curious tone in direct contrast to his startled words.
"I believe that you've seen Mana become a mist and then liquify, yes?" Wolfe asked.
The King nodded, and Wolfe continued.
"If you continue to compress and refine the mana you will end up with mana cores that look like this."
The King drummed his fingers on the bookshelf beside him as the considered that answer, and then drew mana in front of him as a mist.
"I am the most accomplished magic user in an entire plane, and this is the best that I can do."
Wolfe smiled and pulled the mist together into a single droplet of mana floating in front of the King.
"It's just a matter of mana manipulation. The real difficulty is trying to convert your Mana cores to work with that. Without your spell to help, it would have been like learning to breathe water."
The King sighed. "Who would have guessed that the spell could be used to allow someone to surpass me? I didn't expect that it would help you gain much in rank, there is a change at Rank Seven, which is why every species treats them specially. Being at Rank Six already, everything that comes afterwards is a matter of training and exertion."
Wolfe was about to reply when the rapid clanging of a bell filled the air, and the King's excited look turned very dark.
"Wait here while I see what happened. The statue is already in place and active, so the bell must be mistaken, or for an outlying region." He insisted, then bolted from the room, leaving a single royal blue feather floating in the air behind him.
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