From Wizard Apprentice to Conqueror of Myriad Worlds

Roy didn’t hesitate for a moment, casting the thought of ’definitely not looking at any papers tonight’ to the back of his mind.

He immediately stepped toward the transfer station and, with a face full of excitement, picked up the stack of papers.

The last time, thanks to Lord Terry’s patronage, the first paper from The River Flows Eastward had been counted as his "merit."

For recommending such an exceptional paper, the society had given him a special reward of 10 extra Black Tower Points.

What he enjoyed even more was that the incident had spread throughout the society’s circle of reviewers, earning him a great deal of prestige.

Had any other First Level Apprentice written the word "innovative" in a paper’s title, Roy would have scoffed, considering it mere grandstanding.

But the author was "The River Flows Eastward," who had earned a Silver Pen Badge with a single paper. Roy had no such thoughts about them.

Roy sat down again and turned to the first page of the paper.

He quickly finished reading the paper’s abstract.

It was a complex system of equations composed of sixteen Divination equations, and it addressed a notoriously difficult isolated-state problem.

Yet the author had introduced multiple intermediate variables, treating them as part of a seventeenth equation. Such an approach was simply unheard of.

A fire of excitement lit up in Roy’s eyes. He decided to study it in earnest.

Just five minutes later, Roy stopped, completely dumbfounded.

He hadn’t even finished the first page. He had only reached the eleventh step of the formal derivation before he became completely stuck.

The paper stated clearly that this step applied the "Aisha Super Ring Transformation."

The problem was, while he knew it was a difficult transformation, he couldn’t for the life of him understand how it produced the subsequent result.

Roy shook his head in resignation. "It seems the paper skipped a lot of intermediate steps."

This wasn’t surprising.

For a complex system of sixteen equations, if every detailed step of the derivation were written out, a hundred sheets of scale pattern paper likely wouldn’t be enough.

Almost all papers involving Divination had their derivation steps condensed to some extent.

Roy pulled a blank sheet of scale pattern paper from his drawer, planning to try and fill in the missing derivation steps himself.

The previous incident had taught him a profound lesson, and he had no intention of using the original paper as scratch paper again.

「The next half hour.」

Roy attempted three different derivation paths, each one leading to a dead end.

Finally, he put down his pen in defeat and muttered, "The level of Divination derivation in this paper is completely beyond my current ability."

He quickly flipped through the rest of the paper, his gaze lingering on the conclusion on the final page.

The straightforward statements left Roy somewhat stunned.

An irrepressible question surfaced in his mind: ’Can a paper by a First Level Apprentice really create an entirely new Divination Theory?’

Honestly, it felt like an exaggeration.

But his profound lesson from last time stopped him from dismissing it outright. He didn’t dare let arrogance and prejudice cloud his judgment again.

Roy suddenly recalled a saying that circulated widely within the society: "Sometimes, with just your Divination intuition, you can tell at a glance whether a paper is good or bad."

When he had flipped through it just moments ago, his intuition alone sensed a certain fluency and elegance that was hard to describe in words.

It was unlike the vast majority of papers he reviewed, which always felt a little disjointed.

Roy murmured, "This has to be a genuinely good paper. I have to do something."

After a moment’s hesitation, he headed toward Lady Nai Luo’s office.

As her name might suggest, Nai Luo was a Female Wizard.

This was indeed the case.

Lady Nai Luo was a First Level Wizard of the society and the Reviewing Editor-in-Chief on duty for the day.

Thanks to the power of various Spiritual Items and Witchcraft, there wasn’t a single plain-looking Female Wizard in the academy, but Lady Nai Luo’s beauty significantly surpassed the average.

But what was truly memorable was her style of dress.

She always kept her arms and legs completely covered, yet the area around her chest was left wide open, revealing a large expanse of pale skin, to the point where one could even see the pale, gentle curves of her breasts.

This did not mean Lady Nai Luo was popular among the Apprentices.

Quite the opposite, the male Apprentices were terrified of dealing with her.

Any male Apprentice who dared to steal a second glance at her exposed skin would be immediately and publicly reprimanded, leaving them utterly humiliated.

Lady Nai Luo was also extremely perceptive. If a male Apprentice entertained any lewd thoughts, she would sense it and proceed to chew them out mercilessly.

What was most baffling was that Lady Nai Luo seemed to enjoy appearing before male Apprentices, as if she took pleasure in tormenting others.

The Apprentices all privately agreed that the Female Wizard had the personality of a vicious little Demon.

Roy had to summon all his courage just to dare to head to the Female Wizard’s office.

He felt that a paper with such a high potential for innovation shouldn’t be left sitting on his desk all night.

That would be disrespectful to the Silver Pen Badge, and even more so, disrespectful to knowledge itself.

So Roy decided to take the risk.

Soon, the reviewer arrived at the office door.

The dark oak door, which had been shut tight, slid open noiselessly as he came within a meter of it.

Roy, of course, recognized it as a Level Zero Witchcraft—the Automatic Door Opening Technique.

Once the Witchcraft was cast on a door, it would automatically open for anyone who approached for a certain period of time.