Age of Adepts

"Drops, the promotion data has been integrated, are we pulling it out now?"

Immersed in deep meditation, Grim was awakened by the latest chip prompt.

He slowly opened his eyes.

"Tune out!"

There was a trance in my mind, and then the tidal wave of data and information began to swipe wildly.

At such a speed of information transfer, it would have been impossible to capture it in time with only the naked eye. But the good thing was that Elemental Sorcerers were good at mental energy, and when powerful, their mental energy not only changed a million times, but also had an extremely high ability to aid their thinking.

This was also one of the main reasons why a high level sorcerer could never forget what he saw, and could grasp the complicated three-dimensional witch formations with just his brain.

According to Grim's estimation, after becoming a sorcerer, every little increase in mental strength was similar to connecting to an intelligence center in parallel. The higher the mental strength, the more intelligent hubs working in parallel. In contrast, the more intelligent the sorcerer's mind became, the more intelligent it could be used to process those massive amounts of mystical information.

So to put it politely, each witch's brain was actually already equivalent to a terrifyingly intelligent computer. Only that they obviously lacked the necessary operating system, and could only drive them to work with their childish and rudimentary thinking instincts.

And in this process, the chip that Grim possessed undoubtedly played a huge role!

Only with the integration of the chip's data and resources could the true effectiveness of each share of mental energy be maximized.

"Chip, bring up the basic parameters of my current body!"

"Roger, data transmitted..."

With a slight zipping noise, the extremely familiar data panel appeared in Grim's mind again.

Grim, the peak of the 2nd stage, occupation status: elemental sorcerer (flame specialization), body base data: strength 14+1 (20) physique 17 (21) agility 11+1 (9) spirit 29 (30), note: in parentheses is the data after transformation, occupation skill: body of flame, inflammatory transformation....

After all these years of accumulation and exercise, Grim's mental strength had finally reached the top of the 2nd stage, 29 points. It was no wonder that the chip was unable to capture any signs of mental strength improvement these days, no matter how much he was allowed to meditate and exercise.

It should be known that with the cooperation of the chip and mental energy, it was now able to capture the change in the mental energy value 5 decimal places later. Unfortunately, half a month had already passed, and no matter if it was deep meditation or swallowing some spiritual voodoo potion, it could no longer increase the spiritual power by a fraction.

Even the 2-point increase in mental strength that the Flame Suit had brought him had failed!

From this point, it could be concluded that if he didn't manage to advance to the next stage, his mental strength would be forever trapped at 29 points.

Spiritual Perfection this was only a basic condition for advancing to Level 3, and the rest was whether or not the sorcerer's knowledge was up to standard. At this point, with the aid of the chip, Grim was even more problem-free.

"Chip, how's the parsing of the disciplinary knowledge required for advancement?"

"Drops, all wizard knowledge has been parsed and is ready for transmission..."

"Transmit now!"

With a trance in his mind, a series of sorcerer knowledge centered on flame sorcery began to pour into Grim's brain in different categories. Much of this knowledge was something Grim had never come across before, but after the chip's deep parsing and statistical classification, and then the removal of the dross and erroneous components within, it had now been transformed into a mere stream of data surging through Grim's mind.

Although most of the knowledge was unfamiliar, when it flowed into Grim's brain and then stored deep in the sea of consciousness, it had become part of Grim's soul instincts like inherent knowledge that had been immersed for decades.

How a wizard's knowledge went from sketchy to introductory mastery, which required countless witchcraft experiments to verify, and a long period of time to ponder and accumulate. But now with the chip, this water-mill effort is skipped right over.

Every piece of knowledge transferred in was so skilled and transparent to Grim and had been transformed into part of his own inherent body of knowledge.

Completely grasping and parsing the Higher Application of Spiritual Power immediately allowed Grim to understand where he had gone wrong in his past use of spiritual power, and initially showed him how those High Sorcerers were able to quickly and efficiently apply their spiritual power to battle.

This contrasted with the memories of that Yurga wizard when he fought, and quickly found a resonance point.

When fighting, a high level sorcerer would rarely bother to inspire sorcery that had a fixed elemental model, instead driving a large number of primordial elemental particles to bombard the enemy. This saves an elemental shaping process and makes their casting and attacks sharper and swifter.

As for that slight loss of elemental power, you could completely rely on faster spell casting to make up for it. And compared to the old-fashioned step-by-step spell casting, this was more flexible and more spontaneous in battle.

However, manipulating unshaped elemental particles was definitely more difficult than manipulating shaped sorcery, so this fighting style was only possible for high ranked sorcerers. Even if a low level sorcerer wanted to do so, he would still be unable to do so due to his lack of mental strength.

And Elemental Transformation was a must for elemental sorcerers!

Only by becoming skilled in elemental transformations could an elemental sorcerer perfect their sorcery system according to the local conditions. Like the Lava Shield and Lava Fireball that Grim used the most, they belonged to the fusion of fire and earth sorcery. If Grim didn't have any knowledge of earth sorcery, this kind of composite sorcery wouldn't be mastered at all.

Moreover, Elemental Transformation was also the key knowledge for the future to step into the Outer Void. If Grim couldn't master it, it would be difficult for him to survive in the harsh environment of the Outer Void.

Not to mention, the water problem alone could trap a high-ranking sorcerer to death!

Grim still retained his flesh and blood after all, and while the need for food and water had been pressed to the lowest point of the human body, it still couldn't be completely eliminated. Equally free, Grim would not be affected by not eating or drinking for three to five days. But if it stretched to ten days, Grim would also suffer a severe decline in his battle strength.

Grim also risks dying of starvation and thirst if he is unable to consume the minimum food and water requirements to sustain flesh and blood for a month!

However, as long as Grim advanced to Level 3, this physiological need could be delayed for as long as half a year.

This also meant that Grim would only need to eat once in half a year to sustain his survival needs.

The reason why elemental transformation was important was because of the 'water creation' technique invented by the witches.

In certain exotic or ancient ruins that were temporarily impossible to get out of, if no edible water source could be found, the witches would have to use the 'Water Making' technique to concoct some elemental water for their own consumption. And elemental transformation was undoubtedly the pre-requisite discipline for mastering 'water-making'.

Of course, the 'Cold Flame' rune that Grim had previously mastered was also part of the elemental conversion discipline. It was just that Grim had relied on some defective runes in the past, something that he could only use but did not understand the principles of.

Now, having mastered Elemental Transformation, Grim would have the opportunity to completely and thoroughly analyze the 'Cold Flame' rune as well!

However, neither of the first two items are as helpful to Grim as the Energy System Self-Building Model. This item was the core discipline for Grim's advancement to Level 3.

In the past, when Grim had exercised his Flame Body, he had relied more on his body's instincts to reach a delicate energy balance between his flesh and blood and flame energy. This process was to destroy the primitive structure of the body, absorbing countless fire elemental particles from the outside world to slowly penetrate the flesh, blood, tendons, bones and internal organs, protecting the fragile human parts with a small and delicate flame energy field.

Seriously speaking, Grim's flame body might be powerful, but his human body was still as fragile as a fine piece of porcelain. The slightest amount of force could cause it to suddenly disintegrate!

And now with this knowledge of the Energy System Self-Construction Model, Grim would be able to adjust and optimize according to his own situation, and converge each individual tiny energy field into a complete and self-consistent energy circulation system.

In this way, the human body would no longer be his shortcomings and flaws, but could instead become the solid foundation of his powerful battle power!

........

........

A door of necessary advancement knowledge slowly flowed through Grim's mind, each one moving Grim's mind and heart. And all these learnings united together, they also clearly and unambiguously pointed out a pathway to a higher level!

It was just that Grim would always have some 'missteps' in certain areas during his past training and development. So before he could actually advance, he needed to correct all of these 'errors and fallacies' one by one.

And this, undoubtedly, was very time consuming!

What's more, Grim had also researched some results on the orc totem runes that he had captured from the Johnson's Position, which had a tremendous aid to his transformation magics.

Therefore, before the promotion, he still needed to finalize the latest 'Infernal Transformation' magical pattern.

At that time, by taking advantage of the great transformation process of his body and spirit during the promotion period, Grim would also be able to incorporate the new magical pattern, giving him a formidable fighting ability once he entered the 3rd level!

Moreover, there were some good research results on the sustenance technique from the orcs, and it would be cost-effective to use this process to turn it into part of one's own strength.

Moreover, the sorcery contract bound in Grim's own soul was a bit too much, and it was extremely difficult to cross the 3rd level threshold with such a heavy burden. Therefore, Grim thought about it and gave up the soul contracts of 'Sewing Ghost Puppet', 'Dragonman Zacha' and 'Goblin Cappy', retaining only the soul marks of Alice and Plague Poison Spirit.

After this period of time, Grim was confident that he would be able to gain the allegiance of Dragonman Zacha and Goblin Cappy without relying on the soul contract. As for the soul demon pets having a Plague Poison Spirit was already enough, adding the Sewing Ghost Puppet would only slow down their path to advance in power.

But now that the Sewing Ghost Puppet had been cultivated by him into a 2nd rank ghost spirit, it was a bit too much of a pity to just throw it away for nothing. So Grim planned to use the soul transformation process of the promotion to peel the Sewing Ghost Puppet off and make it into some kind of strange witch weapon.

This way, it would not only bring out its effects, but also lighten the burden on his own soul!