Wizard's Journey

Chapter 509 Pursuing Self-Will

Ten years have passed.

Even though he had imagined the vastness of the wizarding world, in reality, Grimm had never truly experienced it step by step, and realized just how expansive the wizarding world was!

It was so vast that no world Green had ever experienced could compare to this boundless and immense world.

Only a vast and boundless world like this could contain the arrival of an endless sovereign.

Each night, Green only had a short time to follow the flight path of the three-colored sprites in the sky, a little distance away. After five years, Green knew for certain that he had flown out of the vast expanse of the Seventh Ring Holy Tower and passed through a dense area of ​​Holy Mark Craters before arriving at the Nightmare World's Fourth Ring Holy Tower.

A sense of reverence and admiration arose in my heart.

Over the course of ten years, Green traversed one vast crater after another—the Stigmata Crater and the Spirit Crater—which became the history of the wizarding world. Each crater had its own unique backstory, far more than the mundane appearances that later generations might perceive.

"The wizarding world is so vast, I am so insignificant."

The crescent moon hangs high in the nightmarish world, accompanied by loneliness. Like a solitary traveler in the nightmarish world, Grimm carries the lamp of awakening, following the fairytale rules in the sky step by step in the darkness. When one foot is already halfway up, he suddenly stops.

Whoosh whoosh whoosh...

The group of over a hundred little tricolor sprites gradually flew away, but Green still didn't move, remaining in place to survey the surrounding nightmare world environment.

A hundred meters away, the area was shrouded in a nightmare fog, a blurry expanse that exuded an aura of oppression, foreboding, and fear.

From the initial panic, disgust, and rejection of being trapped in the nightmare world, Green seems to have gradually become accustomed to his identity as a terrifying creature in the nightmare world, and has naturally grown used to these nightmare world environments.

This habit is like the changing seasons, the sunshine and rain, the rising and setting of the sun and moon, and the cycle of the seasons in the wizarding world.

"No……"

Green suddenly shook his head, bent down and picked up a handful of Nightmare Mud from the ground. Watching the Nightmare Worms crawl between his fingers, his eyes gleamed.

"Trapped in a nightmare world? No... this isn't what you call being trapped. The nightmare world is just a part of the wizarding world; I've actually returned to the wizarding world!"

A moment of realization, a moment of change of mindset.

Just a moment ago, Green was feeling lonely and depressed, being hunted by the Dreadlord and secretly on the run. But now he suddenly felt a sense of peace as he traveled through the wizarding world, learning about its vicissitudes and vastness.

Nightmare world?

Perhaps in the ancient wizarding world, nightmares were mysterious, unknown, and repulsive to both humans and wizards.

However, as the wizarding world gradually grew, the nightmare world and the wizarding world gradually merged and adapted to each other, just like the underground abyss world and the surface wizarding continent, the two had long since become one.

Nightmares have also become part of the natural rules of the wizarding world.

A wizarding world that is humanoid but lacks nightmares is no longer a complete wizarding world.

The myriad things in the endless world seem to be interdependent and inseparable, like the material world, the illusory world, and the void world.

Looking down from the top, there is no distinction between good and bad; there are only the wonderful and wondrous journeys of each life under the endless fate and rules of the world.

"This feeling...maybe it's time to try advancing to level two wizard."

A sudden burst of inspiration brought Green's long-accumulated knowledge and understanding of ice elements as a first-level formal wizard to a peak of confidence. It was time to try his hand at advancing to the level of a second-level wizard.

Even failure is a wonderful experience on the path of a wizard.

Thinking this, Green looked at the dilapidated and oppressive forest trees around him, and at the hazy nightmare fog in the distance. In this silent and empty nightmare world, Green actually sat down directly on the muddy ground.

Green removed the mask of truth, revealing a face etched with the experiences of many years. His long golden hair fell naturally, and his eyes, a blend of ice and fire, burned with the light of wisdom.

Three books were placed in front of Green.

The first book is Grimm's "Research Notes on the Power of Annihilation". This notebook was written with almost all of Grimm's energy after he became a formal wizard. It includes three parts: the fire element knowledge system branch, the ice element knowledge system branch, and the basic understanding of the power of annihilation.

What Green needs to advance now is this branch of the ice element knowledge system.

The second book was "The Secret Technique of Ice Marrow Crystallization," which Millie gave to Grimm to repay him for saving her life during their first demon-hunting expedition to the world of Shadow Mystery.

Because Green's Three Secret Holy Body Great Magic successfully replicated Millie's Ice Marrow Body, he also gained the qualification to conduct in-depth research on the Ice Marrow Crystallization knowledge developed by Millie's father.

It was precisely because this wondrous knowledge of witchcraft had a strong auxiliary effect on advancing to the second level of wizarding that Green originally planned to make an attempt at advancing to the ice element after returning to the wizarding world.

The third book is the Book of Grimm, a gift from the Black Sota Stigmata Wizard to Grimm.

However, at this time, the Book of Grimm had no text at all, including the title page. It was called the Book of Grimm only because it was a casual remark made by the Black Sota Stigmata Wizard when he gave it to the book.

As far as Green knows, there are generally three research paths to advance to the second level of wizardry.

One approach, which is the direction taken by the vast majority of elemental wizards, involves transforming their bodies into elements, thereby allowing each cell in their body to detach from its pure flesh and blood biological essence and undergo a process of evolution from a half-elemental to a half-flesh and blood biological.

Generally speaking, this process can even last for decades.

Secondly, there are those similar to the Faceless Mask Wizard or the Tomb of the Holy Mark Wizard.

He can break himself down into countless clones. Although he is not very good at controlling the level two wizard abilities of elemental decomposition and elemental teleportation, he can perfectly combine them with some of his own abilities.

Thirdly, there is the choice for the elemental surge body-refining wizard.

By infusing and tempering themselves with elemental energy, each cell in their body is filled with powerful energy. Although such elemental wizards cannot perform elemental decomposition and only possess elemental teleportation abilities, they can preserve the self-evolutionary potential of their own cells.

There are many other ways for elemental wizards to advance, but these are only suitable for a very small number of wizards who conduct special research.

For Green, the third way to advance to the second-tier wizard was naturally to choose the method of elemental infusion to refine the body's cells.

This method requires the least amount of time among the three ways to advance a wizard, only requiring a momentary breakthrough in peak mental power.

…………

A layer of ice crystals gradually began to spread in all directions.

The nightmare mud beneath Grimm gradually froze, turning from pure black to a layer of snow-white. The frost rules of the nightmare world from all directions subtly formed a vortex, converging towards Grimm.

The cold outside felt like a wonderful hot spring to Green, who was like an ice sprite at that moment.

Gradually, a blizzard formed around Green, freezing him layer by layer until he was trapped inside an iceberg more than ten meters high. Green quietly closed his eyes inside the iceberg, striving to undergo a life advancement that belonged to a wizard.

At this moment, Green felt that every cell in his body was filled with ice element energy, reaching the limit that his knowledge of ice elements could achieve.

However, it is far from enough to provide the energy needed for each cell to advance to the second-tier wizard level. In other words, the accumulation of knowledge about the Green Ice Element is still far from sufficient for a second-tier wizard.

Suddenly, Green inside the iceberg opened his eyes!

The diamond-shaped ice crystal on his forehead shattered with a "bang," turning into specks of ice that melted into the iceberg. However, a "thumping" sound of compression came from inside the iceberg. The ten-meter-high iceberg continued to shrink, decreasing to nine meters, eight meters, seven meters, six meters...

The process of ice element concentration inside the iceberg only stopped when it reached a depth of five meters!

At this moment, every cell in Green's body was filled with astonishing ice elemental energy, but under Green's mental control, it did not attempt to transform into a half-flesh, half-ice elemental being. Instead, it persisted in using the vitality of its cells to control this ice elemental energy.

Finally, Green vaguely sensed a familiar leverage rule.

This is……

A new rule-based lever has been erected between Green's physical vitality and mental strength. Instinctively, in order to harness the immense ice elemental energy within every cell of his body, Green chose to reduce his mental strength in order to increase his life vitality.

After a few breaths, Green's mental strength dropped to the level of forty points of mental strength of a peak wizard apprentice.

But at this moment, Green's vitality has increased significantly. He is radiant and his body exudes an unbelievable will to grow, just like the vitality of a volcano erupting during the life desires of adolescence.

"Now!"

With a loud shout, the ever-condensing iceberg shattered into pieces with a "bang," the ice chunks exploding hundreds of meters away before landing on the ground of the Nightmare World.

Green's astonishing vitality was rapidly decreasing and being consumed, as he used that rule lever to pry his mental power in the opposite direction, attempting to surpass the one hundred points of mental power limit of a first-level wizard.

Fifty points of mental strength, sixty points of mental strength, seventy points of mental strength...

As if it were a natural progression, Green reached the limit of one hundred points of mental power of a first-level wizard in almost a single breath. Then, with that momentum, Green roared, and the will to live deep within his soul was forcibly stimulated.

The soul is divided into two parts: the instinctive will to live and the emotional will to live. What Green is doing now is evolving and sublimating his will to surpass his instincts to live.

This is another reason why wizards actively evolve, besides their pursuit of external knowledge.

(End of this chapter)