Wizard: Starting With Synthesized Gems

Locke turned and gave chase after the Crimson Deep Court's black wizard. The black wizard glanced back, saw Locke in pursuit, and gritted his teeth as a vivid crimson river appeared behind him once more.

That river spread out like a heavenly river stretching across eight thousand miles, surging and crashing toward Locke.

In an instant, Locke found himself as though forcibly shrunk, appearing within the river of blood, surrounded on all sides by churning waves of crimson that crashed and thundered, threatening to drag him down into the depths of the blood river.

Locke took out the Wish Lingzhi from his astral ring, then opened the water hyacinth system and entered the simplified digital library of Golden Crown Mountain housed within it.

That library had only been constructed within the past ten years, and its internal materials were not especially extensive, but it had the advantage of being free and quick to access.

Locke entered the library and immediately pulled up records on the Crimson Deep Court.

In the next moment, a great crimson wave crashed toward him, and his ears filled with tens of thousands of voices, all of them extreme, the sounds of agonized screams and savage brutality, and the sound of iron hammers crushing bone.

"The Crimson Deep Court... the special magical realm they have created is divided into three rivers, the River of Pain, the River of Savagery, and the River of Blood, corresponding to suffering, harm, and brutality. The three rivers converge and flow into what they call the Sea of Truth. That is said to be the dwelling place of their so-called Supreme True God, a group of madmen worshipping an evil existence they themselves fabricated."

Locke noticed that the free digital library made special mention of the fact that, on account of the Five Great Wars, many wizard academies throughout the Cloud Marsh Wetlands had established research programs focusing on the Crimson Deep Court, and many wizards had attempted to determine exactly what the Crimson Deep Court's black wizards truly worshipped.

On this point, opinions varied widely.

Some wizards' papers argued that it was a demon god from another dimension, possessing a soul essence at a level equivalent to a Truth Wizard.

Other wizards' papers argued that it was an ultimate existence created by the divine mages of Hofmann University, the Crimson Deep Court's predecessor, and that it had nothing to do with any genuine divine being whatsoever.

Golden Crown Mountain's side had a Third Circle wizard who suspected that the so-called Crimson King was in fact a wizard, hypothesizing that he was a Crimson Wizard.

If that were the case, what he had done was rather sinister indeed.

The reason Golden Crown Mountain's wizards had formed such a hypothesis was that Golden Crown Mountain's research in the life school was quite deep, and by tracing the spirituality of the Crimson King back to its origins, they had discovered that his spirituality bore the traces of multiple reincarnations.

In any case, research into the Crimson King worshipped by the Crimson Deep Court had never ceased, and even now, white wizards could not say with certainty exactly what the Crimson King truly was.

The quality and quantity of materials in the free digital library were also limited, and besides, this was a matter of sharpening a spear at the last minute, so Locke only skimmed through it briefly to understand the enemy before him.

After all, for a wizard, information was power.

Locke glanced over the introduction to the Crimson Three Rivers and confirmed that the river before him was most likely the River of Savagery. All of the currents flowing through this river were special spiritual torrents, carrying within them a spirituality suffused with various forms of violence and martial worship.

It was a magical realm formed from three dimensions of spatial coordinates combined with one dimension of spiritual coordinates.

This river would engulf all living things and drag them into the land of savagery, where the Crimson Deep Court's holy weapon spells, holy servant magic, and holy commandment magic would all receive enhancements.

At the same time, ordinary wizard apprentices who entered this river would easily have their minds shattered by the spiritual assault of the eight-thousand-mile River of Savagery, forgetting everything they were doing, drifting in a daze as they were swept into the river and dragged down into the deeper layers of the Crimson Deep Court's territory.

As for First Circle and Second Circle wizards who entered it, their souls would gradually become tainted by the waters of the River of Savagery.

One could say that for formal wizards, this river was a defiling current that would corrupt both their power and their souls.

Through his research, Locke also confirmed one thing, which was that the opponent had summoned this River of Savagery not merely to flee and trap him while buying time, but because in theory, this river was a part of the Crimson Deep Court itself.

Since it was a part of it, that meant the opponent could follow this river and travel directly back to his home base.

It was clear that the black wizard intended to summon the River of Savagery and then use it to return directly to his own territory.

Locke curled the corner of his mouth and used the First Circle spell Voice of Grass and Trees to carry his voice outward.

"My friend, now that you are here, why the hurry to leave? You have traveled far to be a guest, and as your host, there is something I would like to borrow from you."

In the next moment, the Second Circle climbing fern transformed into a bolt of lightning and fire, piercing straight through the crashing waves.

For other magical plants, entering this River of Savagery might result in spiritual contamination, with their power suppressed and corrupted. But for the climbing fern that had been bathed in the Moon of Evolution and undergone a reverse infusion of planar information, this place was equally home territory.

And so, after locking onto the black wizard with the three-eyed tiger cat's pupil technique, Locke decisively struck with the botanical spell Lone Tree Cannot Form a Forest.

The Second Circle climbing fern shot forward like a bolt of blood-colored lightning and fire, cleaving through the waves of blood as it hurtled toward the Second Circle black wizard.

The Second Circle black wizard had just been about to follow the river and flee this territory, when he felt a magic pressure lock onto him. He turned to look back, and his courage nearly shattered on the spot.

"Why is his magical plant completely unaffected inside the River of Savagery?"

"It has actually become even stronger!"

This Second Circle black wizard only had time to summon a shield studded with iron rivets before himself, a shield inlaid with a piece of dwarf skin, but in the next moment the shield was pierced through, and he himself was run through by the fern spear.

Locke furrowed his brow. Through the fern spear he could sense a sticky and strange spiritual contamination clinging to it. No wonder white wizards called the Crimson Deep Court's black wizards lunatics, and called them filth. The greatest difficulty in fighting these people lay in the Deep Court Contamination.

Their Grand Magic was essentially the Crimson Deep Court itself, which was not particularly unusual in itself, because holy school divine mages' Grand Magics were generally also a portion of a collective divine kingdom.

A divine mage's Grand Magic would always be affiliated with a collective divine kingdom.

The Crimson Deep Court was simply a rare case of holy school magic that had fallen into corruption.

In that regard, they were no different from ordinary divine mages.

But the black wizards of the Crimson Deep Court, once harmed and struck, would uncontrollably radiate the magical power and spirituality within their bodies outward. And because they themselves were already extremely aberrant, and the Crimson Deep Court that they had collectively constructed over thousands of years was even more so, striking them would simultaneously cause severe spiritual contamination from the Deep Court.

Had his magical plants not undergone an adaptive evolution, the moment he had pierced through the black wizard just now, his magical plants would likely have suffered an immediate severe drop in power from the contamination, along with certain special forms of distortion.

At this moment, he was himself becoming somewhat abnormally violent, most likely the result of the River of Savagery's spirituality contaminating him.

Fighting these people was like striking at a cesspool.

That was the most revolting aspect of it.

Locke immediately gave chase, preventing this prey within his grasp from escaping.

At this moment, the black wizard continued his savage prayer, "Righteous Crimson King, bestow your blessing upon those blind ones of this world."

"Inflicting pain is the only method of awakening the foolish, fury is the eye of those who see clearly, and violence is the finest means of discovering truth."

The Second Circle black wizard recited an incantation, his eyes burning with fanaticism.

"Locke Augustine, you have underestimated me."

This was the Deep Court holy magic, Pain Angel Summoning Curse.

A blood angel descended before Locke, and it was a deeply terrible sight, with hands and feet severed, as though the tendons of its limbs had been cut away, while the greater part of its body was stripped of skin.

That Deep Court angel was an utterly specialized, fallen, and corrupted version of a special angel.

Even so, this was still a Second Circle-level Angel King.

That Angel King raised a blood-colored torture cross three times larger than itself and brought it crashing down toward Locke's head, while the blood-red River of Savagery rose up around them in towering waves.

The Second Circle black wizard gripped a sacrificial dagger and slashed open his left wrist, using this method to strengthen the Second Circle Angel King he had summoned.

Within this River of Savagery, the use of violence would be enhanced, and all blood obtained through violence would strengthen his magic.

Locke swept a glance across him and gradually worked out how to exploit the properties of the River of Savagery.

Locke made a slight on-the-spot adjustment to the spell model of Lone Tree Cannot Form a Forest. In the next moment, the Second Circle black wizard watched in horror as from his pierced heart and his shattered right arm, blood began to flow ceaselessly outward.

That blood converged upon the Second Circle climbing fern spear, boosting its magic pressure.

The black wizard swallowed hard, immediately realizing that Locke's magical plant was likewise exploiting the rules of the River of Savagery.

For one brief instant, he even thought he was fighting one of the Crimson Deep Court's own black wizards.

What in the world was this?

Boom.

The Second Circle climbing fern spear, in a single instant, pierced through the angel once more, and simultaneously destroyed it along with the holy weapon in its hands, obliterating both the holy weapon and the holy servant within the River of Savagery.

That fallen angel was a symbol of the violent creed worshipped by the Crimson Deep Court's black wizards.

But now, the climbing fern, carrying sixteen thousand magic pressure and having completed its adaptive evolution through the Lunar Cultivation Method, was a far closer embodiment of the definition of violence than that angel, and so the angel was destroyed in an extremely brief span of time.

The climbing fern spear did not linger even for a moment. Within the River of Savagery, it continued hurtling forward, and like a straight line that had suddenly changed direction, it abruptly shifted course and transformed into a bolt of lightning and fire, piercing through his chest once more, this time striking directly against the permanent defensive force field of his soul structure.

Locke furrowed his brow. This black wizard's combat strength was actually considerably greater than Solas Light Foot's Witch Jesse.

Witch Jesse had been genuinely weak, dispatched by him fairly quickly.

But this black wizard was different.

When he had used the 2.5x Alternation of Generations, he had directly shattered Witch Jesse's Grand Magic, leaving her with virtually no capacity to resist.

This black wizard, on the other hand, had only had one arm shattered by that opening strike, which barely even counted as a wound for a wizard.

And just now, he had pierced through the black wizard's heart, briefly testing how much instantaneous magic pressure output would be needed to destroy his permanent defensive force field.

He had used the Flowing Gold Fern Spear to pierce through his abdomen again, launching a second attack targeting his soul.

Yet the black wizard's soul had only been severely damaged, not instantly killed by the destruction of his permanent defensive force field and magic pressure structure.

By comparison, Witch Jesse was like a joke.

Though this was understandable enough. After all, Witch Jesse was absolutely one of the weakest Second Circle wizards imaginable, and having spent years in the state of a debt slave, her entire fortune had long since been mortgaged away, with everything that could be mortgaged having been mortgaged.

So she was extremely feeble, like a patient who had been bedridden for many years.

The black wizard before him now, on the other hand, was a complete and ordinary Second Circle wizard, and so was indeed considerably harder to deal with than Witch Jesse.

The Second Circle black wizard seemed to understand the gap between himself and Locke, and rather than continuing to fight, he turned and attempted to flee into the deepest part of the River of Savagery, intending to pass through the river and return to his home base.

But in that very instant, the tiger's eye on Locke's forehead lowered its gaze. His powerful insight, refined through their several exchanges, had already seen through the opponent's true capabilities and perceived his weakness.

In the next moment, the energy of the Second Circle fern spear concentrated once more to an extraordinary degree, and simultaneously the red crescent behind Locke's back shifted into a black full moon. That was the fallen moon that Witch Georgina had woven during her earlier bout with Locke, using the Fate Loom to cast Celestial Garment Hunters.

At the same time, Locke's climbing fern had transformed into a green heart-shaped leaf, and then changed once more from the heart-shaped leaf back into the shape of a sporophyte climbing fern spear.

In that moment, the fern spear's instantaneous magic pressure increased by 50%, and it once again possessed the Abyssal Devourer Body organelles. In the next instant, a bolt of black lightning and fire descended from above, piercing straight through the Second Circle black wizard's midsection.

It was like a black flame suddenly crashing down to earth, with black fire scattering in all directions, and in that same moment, the black wizard's soul structure was destroyed.

A Bronze Cauldron plunged into the depths of the River of Savagery, collecting both the opponent's collapsed body and soul within it.

During their exchange just now, Locke had noticed a particular issue.

The Crimson Deep Court's black wizards were like a cesspool, their magical power and even their souls saturated with chaos, so that an ordinary wizard striking them was like pouring ordered force into a cesspool.

Naturally, this would yield half the result for double the effort, making it difficult to take effect.

Because the more one tried to bring order to that cesspool, the more helpless one would feel.

So ordinary life magic fighting within this River of Savagery was genuinely at a disadvantage.

And his own botanical magic had merely adapted, with its offensive power still somewhat lacking, which was why, even after dealing severe injuries to the opponent several times over, the opponent had still managed to catch his breath.

It was precisely because life magic would inexplicably weaken upon striking him.

But, he had just used the Alternation of Generations and the Moon of Evolution to grant the climbing fern the Abyssal Devourer Body, transforming it into an abyssal-attribute plant.

And abyssal power happened to be a state of even greater chaos than the Crimson King's power. These Deep Court divine mages' power was already rather chaotic to begin with, and blending in a touch of abyssal power would turn everything completely upside down, inverting the inversion itself.

This would instead cause their soul structures to become even more chaotic.

He had just tested it a moment ago, and indeed, it worked.

Locke watched with satisfaction as the Bronze Cauldron flew back to him. At the same time, he stood atop the flowing gold fern spear and moved through the eight-thousand-mile River of Savagery, surveying the area, finding nothing worth scavenging.

Only then did he turn his satisfied gaze toward his Bronze Cauldron.

He used the Reverse Refinement Method directly there and then. In an instant, complex spell models appeared on the surface of the Bronze Cauldron, and within it appeared a spirituality in the form of a human being. Within that human-shaped spiritual body were three spiritual rings and two spiritual meridians.

The black wizard's contaminated spirituality was forcibly extracted by Locke and cast into the River of Savagery. He then preserved only the purest spirituality, kindled a flame of primordial fire, and refined it following the method for producing Zero Potion.

After a brief while, the second batch of Zero Potion was complete.

"This way, I will be able to evolve a second magical plant," Locke said, using a special alchemical technique to convert the Zero Potion into spiritual mist and disperse it into the Moon of Evolution.

Then he took ten pairs of Snow Crown Bromeliad shoes from his astral ring and shone the Moon of Evolution upon them.

He followed the same method he had used when evolving the climbing fern, though this time the process went considerably faster, because Locke was far more practiced with the Moon of Evolution than the first time he had used it, and he also had the Firetree Silver Blossom Curse to serve as an enchanting blade for trimming planar information, combined with his botanical knowledge to avoid plant essences that might potentially conflict with one another.

And so, in only half an hour, he completed a Second Circle-grade Snow Crown Bromeliad wizard shoe.

Moreover, thanks to the Firetree Silver Blossom Curse's enchanting blade, the wizard shoes had already undergone a preliminary design process and were no longer entirely wild magical plants.

They occupied a state somewhere between a wild magical plant and an artificially designed magical plant.

This was a benefit attributable to the Firetree Silver Blossom Curse he had exchanged with Wizard Edgar.

At this moment, the Snow Crown Bromeliad wizard shoes had already reached Second Circle magical plant grade, and a virtual root had grown from their surface.

He had obtained a large supply of virtual roots from the Temporal Shadow Fern. He only needed to take out a single one and graft it onto the Snow Crown Bromeliad wizard shoes.

Of course, virtual roots also had grades. This was the most ordinary kind, a sparse virtual root, the most primitive form of virtual root.

His knowledge of virtual roots was still fairly superficial, but virtual roots would take root in a special spiritual sea world. A basic virtual root could only take root at the surface of the spiritual sea, while higher-grade virtual roots took root progressively deeper.

In theory, all planes should possess a spiritual sea.

This was much like how all planes possessed space and time. The spiritual sea was one of a plane's inherent attributes, and magical plants had developed the ability to absorb the spiritual sea as a means of further evolving.

If the present world were a leaf on a tree, then the spiritual sea would be the vascular bundles and leaf veins of that tree.

Only Locke had not yet fully worked out why wizards and other living beings could not readily make use of the spiritual sea's energy themselves.

At this moment, these Snow Crown Bromeliad shoes still took the form of a pair of ice skates. The bromeliad leaves retained the shape of Pixiu Horn spiral fractals, with storage roots like ice blades at the core, and glandular root pouches had grown along the storage roots, converting energy into agave ketone bodies and storing it temporarily.

Among their properties, because the planar information of the River of Savagery had been used in their creation, they had acquired a set of Blood Information Plant Essences, which included the following:

Flowing Gold Bromeliad Vascular Network Heart Factor

Blood Demon Essence Plant Factor

Composite Blood Crystal Cluster Network Plant Factor

In this way, Locke's Second Circle Snow Crown Bromeliad shoes retained the appearance of red ice skates with a red gemstone-like heart at the tip, and armor formed from converging blood appeared along both sides of the skates.

After Locke put them on, he could immediately walk through the River of Savagery as if on level ground, because they had fully adapted to the planar environment of the River of Savagery, and could instead exploit the river's properties to form a blood crystal cluster network beneath the feet, achieving the ability to glide along the blood current.

The Blood Demon Essence Plant Factor was a natural magical power structural component that some Second Circle magical plants would actively synthesize, and it was relatively common. It was the core of blood magic's power, capable of greatly enhancing the strength of blood magic. Some wizards even considered it the very foundation upon which blood magic existed.

Locke said, "These wizard shoes can serve as the fifth pair of wizard shoes under the Augustus Wizard Shoes brand."

"Let us call them the Great Blood Wave Bromeliad wizard shoes."

However, he was not yet certain how these wizard shoes compared in quality to the Second Circle wizard shoes designed by the magical weaver community, nor where they ranked among the current Second Circle wizard shoes of the Cloud Marsh Wetlands.

He suspected they would not be especially impressive.

After all, the Pixiu Horn and glandular root pouches would not provide as significant an advantage at the Second Circle level, and the Great Blood Wave Bromeliad shoes had not undergone careful design, meaning they were not an especially powerful Second Circle magical plant to begin with.

Even so, at this moment, Locke took the simpler approach. Carrying only the black wizard's remaining robe, he walked across the surface of the River of Savagery and returned to everyone's line of sight.

The Great Blood Wave Bromeliad wizard shoes possessed the special ability to walk across the surface of the River of Savagery as though on level ground, a special result born of surge evolution, allowing the Great Blood Wave Bromeliad wizard shoes to directly adapt to the River of Savagery's growing environment.

At the same time, the wizards from the various academies watching from the surrounding mountains all turned their gazes toward Locke.

"He is out. He really did kill that black wizard. The Crimson Deep Court's black wizards are no easy prey, yet the Eye Demon Wizard had barely just become a Second Circle wizard before swiftly and decisively killing two Second Circle wizards. The Cloud Marsh Wetlands has produced yet another fearsome figure!"

"The Crimson Deep Court's black wizards often escape by following the rivers of their divine kingdom. They are incredibly elusive."

"Wait, look, the wizard shoes on the Eye Demon Wizard's feet seem to have changed. Those look like a new pair of wizard shoes, and they appear to be Second Circle-grade magical plants. Could those be the fifth product from the Augustus Wizard Shoes brand? I wonder how effective they are."

"Those wizard shoes appear to allow the wearer to walk across the River of Savagery. That alone is sufficient proof of those wizard shoes' powerful magical plant traits. Hmm? Has Arthas not listed these shoes for sale yet? I will place an order for his previous product first in the meantime."

At this moment, the sight of Locke walking across the River of Savagery as though on level ground left a deep impression on all the wizards watching.

Not far away, the wizard shareholders and wizard agents of the two shop alliances who had been secretly watching the battle all shook their heads and sighed, and quite a number of the wizard shareholders simply turned and walked away.

The Second Circle directors of Solas Light Foot and Melechi Magic Step could not help but call out anxiously, "Please don't leave, everyone, please don't leave."

"Everyone, please, keep your faith in Solas Light Foot, in Melechi Magic Step!"