Wizard: My career panel has no upper limit

The aircraft landed on the private platform on the top floor.

Eve stepped off the gangway first, then turned and reached out her hand to her mother.

The action was so natural that it surprised both of them.

Upon entering the main building of the ancestral land, Cassandra found that the layout had hardly changed.

The gray and white stone walls are still the same as I remember them, and the corridor lights also retain their original style.

Even the marks she made on the stone pillar when she was a child are still intact and have not been repaired.

But the differences in the details kept reminding her that a lot of time had indeed passed.

The garden now has many plants she doesn't recognize.

Those wisteria vines and silver shrubs, with their small and exquisite aesthetic logic, are not their own style.

Her approach to gardening has always been pragmatic.

Plant only a few species with ornamental value, plant more species with medicinal value, and leave the remaining space for experiments.

Today, this garden is clearly the work of Eve, with its color scheme creating a gradient effect that changes with the seasons.

Even under the moonlight, you can see the designer's dedication.

Cassandra walked and looked around, her pace slowing down.

Her gaze swept greedily across every corner, trying to make up for seventy years of absence in the shortest amount of time.

Upon entering the hall, portraits of past clan leaders hang on the wall in front of you.

Cassandra stopped in front of the portrait wall.

The one on the far left, of course, can only be Hector.

His portrait is as "unconventional" as ever, with the figure playing with a crown in his hand and making a funny face.

It is said that this painting was revised countless times during its creation.

Because the King of Absurdity insisted that the artist draw His most handsome appearance, but each version of "most handsome appearance" was more outrageous than the last.

Further to the right are the clan chiefs of each generation.

Some were dignified and solemn, some were spirited and vigorous, and some had indifferent expressions.

A legacy spanning an era is condensed on this wall; each painting is a slice of history.

Cassandra's portrait is second to last.

The woman in the painting is at the peak of her life—wearing a long purple dress, a silver scepter, and a faint, disdainful smile on her lips.

Even in a portrait, those purple, swirling eyes exude a suffocating sense of oppression.

But the portrait was covered by a veil.

The veil was gray and light, yet it obscured most of the portrait's brilliance.

Cassandra knew what this meant.

Covering the body with gauze was a compromise adopted by the Crown Clan regarding the "unknown whereabouts".

It doesn't count as "death" because there is no definitive death certificate.

It doesn't count as "in office" because the person is no longer alive.

The matter remains unresolved, much like her situation over the past seventy years.

Next to her portrait hung her daughter's.

Eve's portrait appears to have been painted in recent years after she broke through to the Dark Sun level.

Her black hair cascaded down her shoulders, her amethyst eyes were bright and resolute, and she was surrounded by a faint ethereal light.

Without any covering, the colors are bright and dazzling.

The two portraits, hung side by side, created a stark contrast:

A veil of deathly gray, like a faded old photograph from memory;
The other one is so bright it looks like it was painted this morning.

Cassandra stood there, looking up at the sky for a long time.

Eve thought she was about to say something, but she remained silent.

Finally, he simply reached out and lightly touched the edge of the gauze curtain with his fingertips.

"Mom, let's go."

Eve's voice came from behind: "Settle down first, we can talk about other things tomorrow."

She arranged for her mother to stay in a guest room in the east wing.

It wasn't Cassandra's original master bedroom; that master bedroom was converted into a study twenty years after she went missing.

It was filled with all sorts of documents, star charts, communication records, and research materials.

As Cassandra passed by the open door, she only glanced at the furnishings inside before lingering.

After dinner, the two began to stroll along the stone path in the courtyard.

The night sky was clear and filled with stars.

The mother and daughter walked side by side, their pace unconsciously becoming synchronized.

“Mom,” Eve broke the silence first.

"Ok?"

There's something I've been wanting to ask you.

"what?"

The black-haired princess stopped in her tracks:
"When you decided to cultivate 'The Star Eater's Whispers'... did you ever consider that it might change you?"

This question weighs heavily on the night sky.

Cassandra also stopped.

"...I've thought about it."

The reply came very slowly.

She was trying to recall what she was thinking back to that distant era.

"Then why do you still need to cultivate?"

The silence under the moonlight lasted for a full minute.

"Because at the time I felt that strength was the most important thing."

She spoke slowly, her voice very soft.

“Back then, I wasn’t the only one with exceptional talent in the Crystal Spire; the competition was so fierce…you can’t even imagine.”

"When I was presented with 'The Star Eater's Ramblings,' my mentor repeatedly warned me about it."

It amplifies the cultivator's desire for 'devouring' and 'conquering,' gradually eroding their emotions and judgment over long-term cultivation.

"At the time, I felt that the price was acceptable."

"Because I believe my will is strong enough to control it."

She looked down at her roughened hands.

"I later realized that this idea itself was the biggest trap in 'The Star Eater's Ramblings'."

"It won't change you all at once; it happens little by little, so slowly that you won't even notice it."

"You'll only feel yourself becoming more and more 'rational,' more and more 'efficient,' and more and more capable of making 'correct' decisions."

"By the time you truly realize that you have changed, it is already too late."

Cassandra's voice trailed off.

Looking back now, I may have been wrong.

After she finished speaking, her shoulders relaxed slightly, as if she had finally unloaded something heavy.

Eve shook her head.

You're not entirely right.

Cassandra looked up and met her daughter's gaze.

“Strength is indeed important, extremely important.”

"You're not mistaken about that."

Eve's gaze fell upon the towering spires of the ancestral land, the moonlight outlining their stark silhouettes against the stone walls.

The existence of each tower seems to silently proclaim that in the wizarding world, strength is the foundation of order.

"In the years since you went missing, I have personally experienced this truth."

"When the Crown Clan was in your hands, no one dared to look down on us."

"Your very existence is a deterrent, and what happens when you disappear..."

The black-haired princess's tone held a hint of bitterness:

"Everyone thinks we're easy to bully."

“Those ‘allies’ who are usually respectful have begun to test the boundaries. The forces that you have suppressed for hundreds of years are starting to stir. Some have even openly proposed to ‘redistribute’ the Crown Clan’s resource quota.”

“If it weren’t for the help of my mentor and ancestors, and if it weren’t for Grandpa Yutel’s backup plan, I wouldn’t have lasted more than a few years.”

She looked away and turned her gaze back to her mother.

"So you're saying that strength is the most important thing, and that judgment itself isn't wrong."

"The problem is... you're confusing 'the pursuit of power' with 'being driven by power'."

This statement made Cassandra pause slightly.

“Cultivating ‘The Star Eater’s Ramblings’ is not a mistake,” Eve continued.
"The mistake is that you haven't found a way to coexist with it."

You let it dictate your judgments, emotions, and choices, not the other way around.

"In the end, it wasn't this meditation method that ruined you; it was that you underestimated its impact and overestimated your ability to control it."

She paused for a moment:
"In addition to bad luck, the decision to launch an expedition to the Vital star system was not entirely unreasonable under the circumstances at the time."

"In this world, the winner takes all, and the loser goes home empty-handed."

If you had won that battle, you would now be at least a near-Witch King, only one step away from becoming a Great One.

"By then, everyone will regard the conquest plan as a great strategic vision, and the 'Whispers of the Star Eater' will be regarded as the only way to the top."

"But you lost."

"If we lose, everything will be different."

Under the moonlight, Cassandra gazed at her daughter for a long time.

The way the other person analyzed the problem made her vaguely see the shadow of another person.

That kind of objective analysis without emotional bias, that calmness that clearly separates personal grievances from factual judgment, is something Eve can only develop on her own.

This is Ron Ralph's way of thinking.

“You’re starting to look more and more like that kid,” Cassandra said.

Eve paused for a moment, then smiled and said, "Of course, good things are worth learning."

………………

Just as Cassandra entered the Crystal Coffin for deep healing, the public server on the small chessboard was not calm.

The spores land in the early morning.

It was an extremely covert method of invasion, without earth-shaking footsteps, horns, or battles, only tiny green particles quietly drifting down in the morning mist.

The sentry on duty was the first to notice something amiss.

She hunched over, pacing back and forth along the ridgeline on the northeast side of the settlement, her boots scraping against the dew-dampened pebbles with a soft, rustling sound.

Then, she felt a slight tingling sensation on her cheek.

It was as if someone had dipped a fine needle into acid and then subtly poked her.

The sentry raised his hand and gently touched his cheek with his fingertips.

There was no blood, nothing at all.

But the stinging sensation lingered, spreading across the skin as a small patch of light heat.

She tilted her head back.

The morning mist had not completely dissipated, and countless tiny green particles, like smoke and fog, slowly and deliberately descended from the sky.

The sentry stood there stunned for a long time, then turned and ran toward the heart of the settlement, shouting as he ran.

Ron witnessed this from the observation platform.

He looked at the western boundary of the miniature planet on the data panel, where a thin veil of countless green particles slowly unfurled from the sky.

"It's a little faster than I expected." He gently placed the cup back on the table.
“The edge spore groups of the green tide have mutated, and the model of the diffusion rate needs to be revised.”

The spores of the Pioneer Vine themselves have limited effect on Bloodline. He had taken this into account from the very beginning of the design.

The high temperatures continuously generated by stellar debris create a natural repulsion field, preventing spores from taking root.

Soil is different from skin.

The soil is cold, dark, and silent; it has no will to resist.

Once the spores fall into the soil, they have found their mother's embrace.

This is a tactic that Green Tide has repeatedly used successfully.

If I can't erode medium to large living targets for the time being, I'll first transform the land you depend on for survival and gradually nibble away at it.

The first tender shoots break through the soil on the third day after the spores fall.

It quietly peeks out from the edge of the bushes on the west side of the settlement, no more than the width of a human thumb, yet it extends outward at an astonishing speed.

With the added benefit of specialization in reproduction, the original bushes disappeared within a week.

A deep green, net-like structure lay flat on the ground, its roots intertwined, forming a dense net that refused to be cut.

If you cut one, three will grow back the next day;

Pull up one clump, and seven clumps will sprout on the third day;

After a fire burns down and the smoke dissipates, even more vigorous new shoots will burst forth from the ashes.

Miners were the first to realize where the real trouble lay.

That day, they went to survey the direction of a mineral vein as usual.

Upon reaching their destination, one of them swung a hammer and broke open a piece of rock.

The vibration from the hammer handle transmitted to his palm, and he sensed that something was wrong.

Vibration is incorrect.

He knelt down, brushed away the topsoil, and saw the sour, rotten roots.

Those fine, hair-like strands are densely wrapped around the outer layer of the pyroxene vein, gradually seeping the acid into the pyroxene.

Those invaded crystal surfaces have lost their luster.

The pyroxene we depend on for survival has been invaded! This is outrageous!

Thus, the Bloodline's first military operation came swiftly and in disarray.

Hundreds of warriors stood in several discontinuous rows, holding stone spears and broadswords.

On the grassland west of the settlement, they engaged in a completely unskilled direct confrontation with the green tide.

The soldiers charged into the vines in hand-to-hand combat, hacking with knives, kicking with their feet, and using stone spears to pry them open from the roots.

The vines were limp and had no foothold, making them difficult to cut. Sap gushed out where the knife struck, and the smell was grassy.

But that evening, as the soldiers dragged their weary bodies back to their settlement...

The sentry in the watchtower brought news that chilled the hearts of all the bloodline.

"One-third of the land that was cut down today has already grown back."

The next morning, it was half.

On the third day, the marks of the cut had almost completely disappeared.

The new vines are thicker and have deeper roots than the ones that were cut down; they are responding to the knife marks with their own growth.

A sense of oppression arose in the settlement.

As Ron looked at the emotional data of those individuals in the observation room, a certain part of his heart tightened slightly.

"They are afraid."

Nari, who was watching from the sidelines, was also somewhat worried: "Honey, are you really not going to help these kids?"

"It's not the right time yet."

"you sure?"

"They haven't reached a real dead end yet. The predicaments before reaching a dead end are the breeding ground for creativity."

As if to confirm his words, a turning point came unexpectedly at the Lightsmith Workshop.

The Lightmaker Workshop is nestled under a natural rock formation on the southeast side of the settlement, where there is an opening facing south that receives ample sunlight year-round.

They were used to working in that sunshine.

That day, a young polisher was polishing a batch of pyroxene fragments in preparation for the next batch of armor.

The grinding stone and pyroxene rubbed against each other, producing a soft hissing sound.

The powder floated in the air and turned into a golden nebula as it passed through the beam of light.

The polisher's hand froze in mid-air.

The beam of light passed through a pyroxene fragment that he had specially polished.

The term "special" doesn't actually refer to any prior planning.

He simply ground a cross-section of a fragment into an extremely smooth concave surface during an experiment.

Initially, I just wanted to observe how light refracts.

After passing through the concave surface, the light converged on the stone wall to form a tiny, extremely bright white spot.

The polisher stared at the spot of light for a moment, but didn't pay it any mind, and continued polishing.

Then, a slender tip of a pioneer vine somehow crept into the corner of the rock shelter and entered the range of the beam of light.

The instant the light fell on the vine tip, Vita smelled a burnt odor.

He looked up abruptly and saw that the vine tips were withering rapidly, with a ring of necrotic area spreading outward from where the light touched.

The emerald green at the edges receded at a clearly visible speed, replaced by charred blackness; the whole process was short and clean, like lighting a candle.

Guangjiang was stunned for about ten seconds, then flicked himself hard on the side of his forehead with his finger.

He raised the concave pyroxene, aimed it at the sunlight outside the rock shelter, and shifted the focal point toward the remaining part of the vine tip.

When the light touched the emerald green, it withered quickly and smelled burnt.

He put down the shards and ran towards where the leader was.

………………

The soldiers stood in a row in the midday sun, holding pyroxene focusing lenses of various shapes.

Hundreds of beams of light converged and pressed down on the verdant, sprawling boundary to the west.

Thin, white, and scorching rays of light shone outward from the crowd.

The green receded so decisively that a neat dividing line appeared at the edge of the vine thicket.

On one side of the line, there is lush, vibrant growth; on the other side, there is scorched, silent death.

For the first time, the soldiers felt they had overpowered their opponents, and cheers, unseen for a long time, erupted in the settlement.

Ron, who was in the observation room, couldn't help but laugh when he saw this.

"They just invented... a magnifying glass to burn ants."

"What?" Acelia's tone was blank.

"It's nothing, just a childhood game for humans."

You dragons can start a forest fire with a sneeze, you probably wouldn't understand this kind of fun..."

Ignoring the sullen dragon soul, he suppressed his smile and added a few more lines to his notebook:

"However, from the perspective of technological evolution, the significance of this step is far greater than that of games."

The essence of pyroxene focusing lenses is the technology of manipulating light.

This represents a leap forward in tool utilization and also signifies that the Bloodline has officially developed its own technology tree.

He thought for a moment, then added a question mark next to the record and wrote: To be seen.

Because the cheers quickly subsided.

Someone was the first to notice the problem and voiced it in a puzzled tone.

Then, doubts spread like waves from the speaker to all around.

A magnifying glass is only useful on sunny days.

On cloudy days, the light is insufficient, and at night, nothing can be used.

Nighttime is when the vines grow most vigorously.

Bloodline needs a way to continuously suppress the vines even at night.

After the discovery of convex lens technology, light engineers seemed to have their doors opened to wisdom, and soon came up with all sorts of ingenious ideas.

One of them discovered after experimenting that throwing a handful of pyroxene powder into a campfire was effective.

The flames will suddenly turn into high-temperature incandescent white the moment they engulf the powder.

The burning time was extended by a full three times, and the flame volume increased by nearly half.

The heat was so intense that even those blood descendants who were far away instinctively took a half-step back.

Thus, the Sunburn Front was born.

During the day, rows of descendants held magnifying glasses, focusing the sunlight into scorching beams that shone continuously outward along the boundary line;
At night, a ring of incandescent white flames, sustained by pyroxene accelerant, burned at the edge of the settlement.

Two shifts work in rotation, day and night.

………………

In the Azure Garden, Serafina sat alone in the observation room, focusing all her attention on the live feed.

Zoom in and look down from the air at the area covered in lush greenery, along the southwestern boundary of the green tide.

Then zoom in and zoom out until that thin arc of sunlight appears in the image.

She stared at it for a long time.

The title "woman with bright eyes" is sometimes misunderstood, with people thinking that the remarkable thing about her eyes is that she can see far or clearly.

In fact, the meaning of those two words always lies in "seeing accurately".

She can decipher an individual's entire decision-making logic from the most subtle behavioral patterns.

It allows us to peel back the layers of packaging beneath a mere tactical change and get to the fundamental direction of its development.

At this moment, she was looking at the sunscorching front.

To be precise, what she was looking at was what was behind that line.

A magnifying glass is a tool, and a ring of fire is a tool.

Both were developed in the same predicament and combined in shifts to form a defense system.

This incident reveals something far more alarming than advancements in tools—systemic thinking.

"At this rate of development, Ralph must have gone all out..."

She zoomed in again and captured the outline of the Echoing Tree.

"The core of their social organization is undoubtedly this tree."

That tree was now over seven or eight meters tall.

When Serafina accessed the superimposed observations of the spirit world, the sheer size of the root system made even this plant expert drool.

She compiled all the data into a concise image report, which she attached to the observation records.

Then he stood up and went to the soft curtain separated by flower petals in the main hall.

Inside the soft curtain, Aisha was still resting in a semi-fused state.

Serafina stood outside the curtain and quietly stated her judgment.

"Increase the density of the edge vines."

This time, Ashe responded quickly:
"If the ordinary Pioneer Vine is not enough, then we'll use the Spine Tree instead."

Her voice carried that usual languid quality:
"Didn't you say they depend on sunlight? Then take away the sunlight."

"Let's see how long this small tribe can survive without a light source."

The petals returned to silence.

Serafina left the main hall and activated the channel connecting to Darius in the corridor.

This time, she only added one sentence at the end of the order:
"Try to keep it within the normal ecological expansion range, and don't let it exceed that range."

"Is normal enough?"

Darius found the ambiguous degree word somewhat amusing:

"Okay, I understand." (End of Chapter)