Four Split Personalities

But the reality was that the old man had painstakingly studied magic for many years, and the only result was that he had increased his low-level spell casting success rate from the mere 1% he had during his late teens to about 60% for the Low Rank Fire Element School spells. As for basic elements like wind, water, and earth—even for low-level spells—Jadka Diesel’s success rate never exceeded 50%.

In other words, if you discount the explosive damage from his magic wand and his combat strength when forced to resort to fisticuffs, Jadka Diesel’s abilities amounted to, at most, a magician’s apprentice, and even then, only a novice who had just started a couple of months ago.

This was ridiculously unbelievable, of a level worthy of historical record.

It was as shocking as a student of sound intelligence who, after seventy years of diligent study, still failed their exams for junior high.

He wasn’t stupid, nor was he lazy, but he just couldn’t produce results.

This predicament had always troubled Jadka, yet no one was able to help him, as even the poorest magician’s apprentice couldn’t truly empathize with him.

Even with thick-skinned embarrassment—and the covert help of Chris—he had sought advice from one of the strongest individuals in Anka Market, the chairman of the Adventurer’s Guild Anka branch, also known as the Great Sage of Starlight. It wasn’t that there were no results; after all, it was because of that consultation that Jadka’s (Low Rank Fire Element) casting success rate barely exceeded half, but he gained little else.

"The profession of a magician is not suitable for you."

Countless people had advised Jadka thus, and he was well aware of it himself.

At thirty years old, had he given up continuing to become a magician and returned to the path of a knight, he could still have reached the pinnacle of this world’s power hierarchy.

At forty years old, he could have done so as well.

At fifty years old, with his exceptionally fierce talents, he just might have had a chance.

At sixty years old, he couldn’t become a Great Lord, but turning back then, he would at least certainly have achieved being the next best, a Knight Lord.

However...

To this day, Jadka Diesel was still a bumbling, self-proclaimed junior magician... a magician’s apprentice.

It was laughable, like God not only opened a door for you, but even helped smash half a wall, yet instead of choosing the path bathed in sunshine, you desperately try to squeeze through a mouse hole in the corner of the wall—it was laughably pitiful.

Old Jia was such a laughable man...

A pitiable person who almost couldn’t sense elements, yet was determined to become a magician.

True, he couldn’t sense elements—not absolutely none, but in Jadka’s world, elements were like a few mudskippers thrown into a huge bathtub—sparse and hard to catch.

It was his single weakness, and his most fatal one at that.

How fatal? Like someone who wholeheartedly wants to be a football player... with a crippled leg.

Spiritual power, creativity, magic power, effort, talents—these five are the foundations of being a magician, with physical strength as a bonus criterion. Possessing just two or three of these attributes could make a decent magician.

So how did Jadka perform in these aspects?

Well, if spiritual power, creativity, effort, magic power, talents, and physical strength were each scored out of a hundred, Jadka’s average score would reach at least eighty-five.

And what does eighty-five mean? Simply put, as long as one lives up to sixty years, they could almost certainly become a Sage specializing in a single element.

Of course, his 100-point physical strength and effort might indeed be a bit unconventional, but this still couldn’t conceal the fact that the old man was indeed a promising seedling.

So, even if his elemental perception was a bit weak, what did that matter? After all, that attribute wasn’t even listed as a threshold requirement.

Wrong, terribly wrong.

Elemental Perception was not listed as a basic requirement, not because it was unimportant, but because it was fundamental.

Take a simple example, a soccer coach giving a lecture at a sports primary school, outlining the qualities needed to be selected for the team, which might include stamina, mindset, speed, explosive power, shooting accuracy, feigning realism, attack power, marksmanship, etc., but they would certainly not mention "the ability to walk on two legs" as a threshold requirement.

The concept of ’Elemental Perception’ is similar to ’the ability to walk on two legs.’ It doesn’t matter whether one is a Magician or not. In the highly magical world of The Realm of Innocence, any normal person capable of utilizing Magic can naturally perceive the existence of elements, just as most people have the senses of smell, hearing, taste, and the like.

But...

Jadka couldn’t do it, although nobody knew why he was unable to.

Decades of daily meditation did not yield even a single day’s interruption, and his accumulation of Magic had become as profound as it possibly could be. Yet, transforming this Magic into a ’Spell’ was exceedingly difficult for him.

Take the simplest example of the Fireball Technique. In the concept held by players, the only requirement for this technique is having 50 Magic Points; it doesn’t demand the ability for Elemental Perception. If a player has certain innate issues, the system would certainly provide a passive talent such as ’when casting any spell, the success rate is reduced by 50% and the Magic consumption increases by 300’—with that, 50 Magic Points is all one needs for a Fireball Technique.

For NPCs and some gaming experts (like Double Leaf), there would be an additional step.

First, the Spellcasters need to arrange a Magic array for the Fireball Technique using 50 Magic Points, which, in most cases, would only be visible to themselves. Then they direct about 30 units of Fire Element into this array. Once filled, the array is complete, and pointing in the desired direction, the Fireball is launched.

Because the requirement of thirty Fire Elements is so low, it’s akin to grabbing a handful of sand from a beach, making the casting time of such a spell virtually zero—essentially what we commonly recognize as an ’instantaneous spell.’

Incantation spells, on the other hand, fall into two categories. One where the amount of Element needed is so great it’s like filling a bucket with handfuls of sand, which constitutes the ’incantation process.’ The other not only demands a large quantity of Elements but also involves a complex array construction, and the process follows the same principle.

For most players, this entire procedure would be simplified into ’Magic consumption’ and ’incantation time.’

For most NPCs, although there is an extra step, it hardly complicates matters...

But for Jadka, it was a completely different concept.

A Fireball Technique, the consumption of 50 Mana Points for him was a drop in the ocean, easily managed, and setting up a Magic array was a familiar task, quite simple. However, when it came to the step of channeling Elements into the Magic array...

To use the earlier analogy, if others were scooping sand from a beach, Jadka was collecting sand from the floor of a clean-freak’s living room.

It was completely a different level of difficulty, which is why originally, even after attempting to cast spells a hundred times, he might not succeed even once.

His ability for Elemental Perception was about 3% of what regular people possessed and less than 0.1% of what some geniuses had.

Therefore, under any circumstances, from a data perspective, Jadka Diesel’s spell-casting success rate was just 3%—where others might succeed a hundred times out of a hundred, he would succeed only three times out of a hundred.

Yet under such conditions, the old man had stubbornly trained his low-level Fire Element spells to a 60% success rate.

What if one day he could perceive the same amount of Elements as a normal person?

He had dreamt of this since the first time he had cast a spell, constantly dreaming about it over and over.

However today, a bottle of bright red chili powder appeared before Jadka.

For the first time in his life, the Old Mage saw a ’beach’...

Chapter 497: The End