Wizard: I Have a Cultivation System

"Little Dragon~ Looks like you’re in for some trouble."

"What trouble—" The grand, ancient voice, tinged with impatience, immediately spoke up, but the words had barely left...

"Hmph." The Dragon Witch let out a soft snort.

CRACKLE! SIZZLE!

The light of the crystal flickered violently, throwing off a few multicolored sparks. The ancient voice was cut off mid-sentence, immediately replaced by a frantic, childish one:

"Dragon Witch! That’s enough! Are you still using the Imperial Decree? Is that something you should be wasting?!"

The Dragon Witch giggled, her whole body shaking with laughter. "Oh, now this is much easier on the ears. Little Dragon, that voice of yours is so cute. Why insist on putting on such old, stuffy airs? It’s no fun at all."

The crystal’s light flickered violently, betraying the extreme turmoil in its master’s heart.

The childish voice was thick with resentment. "...What do you want? If it’s nothing, then get out! Don’t bother me while I’m absorbing Energy!"

"I came to give you a reminder." The Dragon Witch’s smile faded, but the playful glint in her eyes remained. "Haven’t you noticed? Things have been quite lively in the Holy City lately. His Holiness the Sword of Divinity has made a rather grand move. He’s openly spreading the Path of the Wizard—oh, they’re calling it the Path of the Priest now—across the land. Aren’t you getting anxious?"

The crystal fell silent for a moment before the childish voice spoke again, now tinged with coldness and disdain. "Anxious? Why should I be anxious? He can’t possibly succeed. It’s like a human life, which lasts only a few short decades. This brief uproar will change nothing. Once he is forced to leave, everything will naturally revert to its original state. That so-called new knowledge, that new system... without his power to prop it up, it’s nothing but rootless duckweed. It will soon be forgotten, swallowed once more by the torrent of the old faith."

"Is that so?" The Dragon Witch tilted her head, her crimson hair flowing over her shoulder like fire. "But Little Dragon, a few decades of a human life, though brief, can bring about incredible miracles. Ten years ago, for example, who could have imagined that an outsider could achieve such a degree of Elementalization within the Old Realm? Or that he could shatter the Wall of Faith with a single stroke of his sword? A few decades is more than enough time to light many fires."

"Fires?" the childish voice scoffed. "Do you think I don’t know what that Holy Sword is truly after?"

"He is merely using the Path of the Priest as a pretense to unify the knowledge of the various Wizard schools, break down their ideological barriers, and find a Path to stabilize one’s consciousness against the erosion of Elementalization. However..."

The childish voice suddenly rose, taking on a tone of final judgment. "The Ancient Wizards had complete legacies and generations of geniuses. They spent countless ages studying this problem and could never solve it. What makes him, a mere outsider and a newcomer at that, think he can succeed where they failed? As long as he cannot solve this problem, the process of Elementalization cannot be stopped. He will eventually be rejected by the Old Realm. And once he leaves, everything will return to the way it was. These are the Laws of Heaven and Earth, and they are beyond the power of any mortal to defy."

The Dragon Witch listened quietly. The smile on her face faded, but her gaze grew more profound.

"You’re wrong, Little Dragon. The decline of the Ancient Wizards—or rather, the root cause of the Dawn War that changed everything—might just be that they overlooked a single variable. A variable that should have been considered ’normal.’"

Her gaze seemed to pierce through the crystal, seeing into the distant past. "They were high and mighty, absorbed in exploring the fundamental mysteries of the world. They saw mortals as nothing more than ants. They never imagined that an ordinary planar uprising would attract the attention of a being from a faraway world..."

"And in the end, that ignited the war that brought their entire glorious era to ruin."

The crystal’s light wavered, and it seemed to fall silent.

After a long pause, the childish voice spoke again. Its tone was softer, but its stance was firm. "And what of it? History is history. He is he. So what if he comes from an Otherworld and has seen different laws and civilizations? Visitors from the myriad worlds are countless. They have brought new knowledge and caused temporary ripples, but in the end, they either assimilate into this world or are rejected by it. This Holy Sword will be no exception. He is fundamentally no different from all the other visitors from countless other worlds."

Hearing this, the Dragon Witch’s lips suddenly curled into a meaningful smile.

She took two steps forward until she was almost touching the pillar of light. Looking up at the massive crystal, her golden-red eyes reflected its brilliant radiance.

"Really... no difference at all?" Her voice was soft, yet it carried a strange, piercing quality. "Are you sure about that, Little Dragon?"

She paused, her smile turning sly and unreadable. "Just like... you?"

The crystal within the pillar of light froze instantly.

Its rotation halted for a moment, and even the converging motes of Dimensional Energy fell into a brief state of disarray.

Then, the crystal erupted in a light far brighter and more violent than before, even letting out a low hum.

"I am unique!"

The childish voice shrieked, "I am not like them! I’m not like any other being in existence! I am... I am..."

Its voice cut off abruptly, as if it had realized its own outburst.

The light quickly subsided, the humming ceased, and the crystal resumed its steady rotation. The only difference was that its flowing radiance now seemed a shade dimmer than before.

"...Leave." The childish voice spoke again, its composure restored. It was even colder than before, tinged with an aloofness that pushed everyone away. "I’m tired."

The Dragon Witch watched the crystal, the smile slowly fading from her face.

She didn’t press the matter, nor did she tease it with the Imperial Decree again.

She simply gave the crystal one last, deep look, a complex and unreadable emotion flashing through her golden-red eyes.

"Rest well, Little Dragon," she said softly. The earlier playfulness in her voice was gone, replaced by a rare touch of gentleness.

With that, she turned. Her deep purple figure began to fade, dissolving like ink in clear water, silently vanishing from the pure white room.

As if she had never been there at all.