When you devoted yourself completely to work that demanded intense concentration, you discovered that time passed so quickly it was almost imperceptible. This held equally true for Legendary powerhouses with extraordinarily long lifespans.
Punk was like that now. Having advanced to Legendary so long ago, he had long forgotten the standards by which ordinary creatures judged time. To him, the stages of an experiment's progress were the best clock for measuring the passage of years.
However... whether or not a spellcaster immersed in magical research cared about time passing, time itself never stopped moving forward. With one sunrise and sunset after another, more than seventeen hundred years had quietly slipped away within the mage tower, sheltered from worldly disturbances...
Quite a few things had happened during those nearly two thousand years, both good and bad.
Naturally, nothing that could remain in the mind of Punk, a Legendary spellcaster, was insignificant.
Compared with the unfortunate maiden goddess "Smile," who was still suffering in her divine kingdom, Punk's path forward had been far smoother. While crafting magic equipment, his casting level had advanced to level twenty-seven. Although his advancement speed could no longer compare to the meteoric progress he had made immediately after advancing to Legendary, the Legendary Mage could still directly feel his clear improvement as he immersed himself in research every day.
As the saying went, practice was the best way to master knowledge. As a "Netheril inheritor" who possessed Archmage Wedraxia's interests, Punk deeply understood that practicing spells with theoretical foundations and integrating vast knowledge was the most effective method of learning. Sitting somewhere in meditation and seeking enlightenment was far less efficient than personally experimenting and researching.
Because he had always upheld the correct principle that practice produced true knowledge, Punk's advancement so far had not only encountered