Wizard: Starts with Advanced Meditation

Soon, another week passed. After a week of meditation, Hughes could now barely sketch out the second rune, but it was still quite a distance from being fully formed in his consciousness space.

After class, a letter appeared on his wooden desk. It must have been delivered by Xue Ling. The Everfrost Spire has a setting that automatically opens the window for Xue Ling if a student is not in the dormitory.

I opened the envelope, and there was a notification from my mentor, Serafina, about the assessment time: 4 PM today.

After two weeks of study, Hughes had almost mastered the contents of the crystal ball. He did ask his sister Nora, who said that it was highly likely he would be asked to process some materials.

In fact, the knowledge on the crystal ball is just basic introductory knowledge, and of course, the amount is very large, not to mention that courses and meditation must also be taken into account.

In the afternoon, Hughes arrived at Serafina's private botanical garden and followed the route he remembered to the ancient tree. Sensing his arrival, the oak door slowly opened.

Serafina was working on a Nairo plant with dark green leaves that shimmered with a phosphorescent blue glow at the edges. Its roots, like pale spiderwebs, seemed to take hold of skeletons.

Serafina's slender fingers danced up and down, gently scraping away the faint blue light from the edges of the Nairo grass leaves.

Hughes recognized the plant; its eerie blue glow was the main ingredient in the Death Breath Water. When scraping it, one had to sense the flow of its necromantic energy and then scrape it accordingly.

The Potion of Death's Breath can prevent skeletons from being resurrected as undead, but it is only applicable to undead resurrection magic below the third-rank wizard apprentice level. It is an essential potion for apprentices exploring areas with dense necromantic energy.

Seeing Hughes enter, Seraphia glanced at him, noticing his status as a first-class apprentice. She scanned him with her mental energy, her expression slightly surprised.

"Your mental strength is stable. It seems your aptitude is very close to fourth-class. If you want to use mental strength potions to improve your meditation efficiency, I suggest you take them when you are close to breaking through to second-class apprentice. Otherwise, your body will quickly develop drug resistance. Come with me."

Hughes followed Serafina to a garden where many plants were grown, and advanced planting techniques allowed them to be mixed together in one place.

The assessment involved their ability to collect and process materials.

These plants are very basic materials and do not require magical means, but processing techniques are still necessary.

Fortunately, he remembered the knowledge on the crystal ball quite well, and by the time he finished processing everything, Hughes was covered in sweat.

Serafina glanced at it, nodded and said, "Okay, come to me every Friday to learn how to make potions. You'll be officially my student after six months at most, when you can make a bottle of basic potion."

"...Teacher, I would like to learn a level zero spell."

"Yes, but I specialize in plant and ice elemental magic, not spatial magic."

Supervisors will receive students' information and materials, which is one of the factors they consider when deciding whether to accept a student.

With that, Serafina pulled out a crystal ball that was slightly larger than the previous one and said, "Pick one from here."

Hughes took the crystal ball, which contained several level-zero spells in the ice, darkness, and plant elements.

Hughes decided to choose a level 0 ice-based spell with offensive capabilities, since his affinity for ice elements was the highest, making ice-based spells more powerful and less resource-intensive.

Hughes selected three level-zero spells that met the requirements:

Frost Blast: Applies ice element with explosive properties to an item without damaging it. Contact with the ice element will cause it to explode, resulting in frostbite.

Freezing Ray: Emits a ray of concentrated ice elements, causing frostbite.

Summon Ice Sparrow: Generates a sparrow formed from ice elements that attacks enemies with its claws and beak.

Hughes pondered, while Serafina, unhurried, turned back to continue processing the materials.

After a few minutes of brief thought, Hughes decided to choose Frost Blast, since he already had the Flame Orb on his ring for ranged attacks.

Moreover, the freezing ray has low penetrating power and is more suitable for freezing enemies from a distance to control them.

As for Summoning the Ice Sparrow, although it is very flexible, its attack power is really low and it is easily broken. It is actually a derivative spell of the reconnaissance spell Frost Feather Patrol, but the founder did not add the function of visual sharing to this spell.

"I choose Frost Blast," Hughes said after making up his mind.

"Same, direct mental contact."

Serafina told Hughes to leave after he absorbed the energy.

Back in his dormitory, Hughes began to learn the sorcery. The sorcery from the Everfrost Spire was quite expensive, but at least it was a little cheaper than the market price outside.

This is also why many wizard apprentices have to do tasks as early as level one.

Sorcery is essentially the use of mental energy to outline corresponding runes, then using Esso incantations to activate magic and unleash the runes. Mental energy controls the direction in which the sorcery is cast.

Hughes observed the runes of the Frost Blast spell; they were much simpler than those of the Meditation spell.

Third-tier wizard apprentices typically refine level-zero spells based on runes, accumulating experience to create new spells after becoming full-fledged wizards. As they were studying this, the door to the room rang.

"Knock knock knock, is Hughes there?"

Well, it's Mor again. Hughes raised an eyebrow, got up and opened the door, Mor's figure came into view, and Hughes also noticed the first-class wizard apprentice insignia Mor was wearing.

Moore also noticed Hughes's attire and exclaimed, his eyes widening, "You've been promoted to First-Class Wizard Apprentice! That's amazing!"

"You're not bad either, what's up?" Hughes asked.

"Oh, Boss Rice has taken on a quest to hunt frost wolves. He plans to lead everyone to earn magic stones after we learn sorcery. A properly processed frost wolf is worth 1 magic stone. I've seen your dissection techniques. Want to join us? I can recommend you to Boss Rice."

"A mission?" Hughes wondered.

That's true. Although his family only has three wizard apprentices left, his ancestors had produced several generations of formal wizards. Moreover, he and his sister are the only two children in the family, so even if the resources are scarce, they are still enough for him and his sister.

The central district is mostly comprised of families of wizarding apprentices with no hope of advancement, and with many children, it's even less likely that magic stones will be available to support them.

This is why so many people follow Rice; being from a family with a level two wizard, they certainly have enough scrolls of magical artifacts.

It would be safer to do missions with him, but Hughes had no intention of taking the risk. After politely declining, Moore didn't say anything more and left.

...After closing the door, Hughes touched the storage bag under his robe.

He had just noticed that Moore kept glancing at his waist, probably looking for this. The only unusual things inside were the ring and the two books. Could it be? Hughes became more and more certain of his previous guess.