Testing

After leaving the area near the teleportation point, Benjamin relied on the Movement Rune Artifact to race through the vast wilderness of the Savage Wilderness Plane.

The gray rocky ground below, twisted ancient vegetation, and the occasional strange beast streaking past together formed this world's primitive and dangerous landscape.

He had no specific destination. Every move was meant to find suitable "test subjects" and environments for the upcoming field trials.

The first creatures he encountered were a group of beasts resembling enlarged lizards. Their bodies were covered in hard keratinous armor, and they could spray corrosive acid from their mouths.

There were around seven or eight of them, lying in wait amid gaps in the forest. Their huge, moss-covered bodies were disguised as boulders as they waited to ambush passing creatures.

After spotting their traces from high above, Benjamin stopped the Movement Rune and landed lightly on the ground.

He did not avoid them and walked straight toward the area where they lay in ambush.

The first lizard beast attacked, shooting a stream of green acid at him.

With a thought from Benjamin, the shield that had been concealed immediately activated at full power. A thick, earth-yellow shield instantly condensed over his body.

Sizzle! Sizzle!

The acid struck the shield, producing a piercing corrosive hiss as clouds of smoke rose.

The shield's surface remained unchanged, while acid continually slid down its surface and dripped onto the ground.

"It hasn't caused any damage to the shield... There's no energy enhancement at all. Is it merely a highly corrosive liquid?"

More acid came flying at him, and Benjamin immediately switched the defensive talisman seal to a wind elemental shield.

An invisible film of wind flowed over his body. When the ensuing acid struck it, a subtle force guided it away from both sides of his body and sent it shooting into empty space.

The acidic mist rising from the corroded ground was also blown elsewhere by the airflow stirred up by the wind shield.

"Against kinetic attacks without much impact force, the wind elemental shield's deflection effect is better than expected. It's also exceptionally effective against mist-based attacks."

Seeing that their attacks were ineffective, the lizard beasts rushed from their hiding places, intending to bite and tear him apart directly.

Benjamin seized the moment and activated his offensive Rune Artifact.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Four fireballs condensed at his fingertips and shot out in less than a second, smashing toward the beasts charging at the front with astonishing speed.

Rampant fire elements caused the fireballs to swell mid-flight, making them terrifyingly powerful.

Before four of the beasts could even get close, they were swallowed by a series of explosions. They let out only brief, shrill cries before turning into charred remains and chunks of flesh.

The other lizards were terrified by the sight and immediately turned to flee.

Benjamin did not stop. He advanced while adjusting the output frequency of the offensive talisman seal, attempting even more extreme rapid-fire casting.

The Rune Artifact heated up slightly, but it could still maintain the release of three to four fireballs per second.

Like a walking turret, Benjamin accurately picked off the remaining lizard beasts one by one.

The battle... or rather, the slaughter, ended in an extremely short time.

Benjamin stepped forward and used Analysis Art and Alchemy to scan the remains, collecting samples of the keratinous armor and residual acid from their bodies.

"The offensive talisman seal's instant casting and rapid-fire capabilities far surpass those of ordinary wizards. However, at high frequencies, the talisman seal itself heats up slightly faster than it did in the training ground. Perhaps the plane's elements are too active, making activation too efficient, while energy release cannot keep up with the material's heat dissipation."

Benjamin analyzed inwardly, Do I still need to find a way to add heat dissipation or an energy-buffering structure to the talisman seal materials?

He activated the Movement Rune again and left the lizard beasts' nest.

As he ventured deeper into the forest, Benjamin soon encountered another type of beast—massive in size yet extraordinarily agile.

Their bodies resembled giant apes, but their heads looked like those of insects.

They possessed formidable physical strength, excelled at leaping and climbing across rocky cliffs, and attacked with tremendous force.

Benjamin chose a lone giant ape as his target.

Rather than attack directly, he lured it into pursuing him, then weaved through complex terrain to test the Movement Rune's performance in evasion and changing direction.

The giant ape roared as it pursued him from behind, constantly attacking from above or the sides.

Using the Movement Rune, Benjamin sometimes skimmed along the ground, sometimes leapt into the air, and sometimes briefly pushed off sheer cliffs. Every change of direction flowed as smoothly as drifting clouds and running water.

While evading, Benjamin tried raising the Movement Rune's power to its limit.

Wind elements formed a visible vortex of airflow around him, and his speed surged once more.

However, after maintaining maximum speed for less than a minute, the Movement Rune began to emit an overloaded hum, while the rune patterns on its surface became abnormally scorching hot.

He had no choice but to reduce its power immediately and let it cool down.

"The Movement Rune far surpasses standard Flight Spells in base speed and agility, but its sustained high-speed capability is a weakness. Its duration at maximum output is considerably inferior to a Flight Spell cast independently by a wizard," he concluded.

After all, one relied on material buffering, while the other relied on guidance from a wizard's own Spirit Sea. There was indeed a considerable difference.

After thoroughly determining the Movement Rune's limits, Benjamin shifted from defense to offense. Several full-power fireballs were hurled out in an instant, and the giant ape's massive body crashed to the ground under the successive strikes.

Benjamin stepped forward to collect materials.

The giant ape's fur and bones were exceptionally strong. Perhaps they could be used to improve a Defense-Type Rune Artifact.

Over the following days, Benjamin conducted his "experiments" in different regions of the Savage Wilderness Plane.

He faced pangolin-like beasts that could burrow underground to launch sneak attacks. He tried using Alchemy to analyze the geological structure to help determine their positions, then controlled the Fireball Spell to turn into a sea of flames that scorched the ground and forced them to emerge.

He also encountered strange plants that sprayed poisonous mist or ensnared prey, adding many novel materials to his collection.

Every battle and every encounter was a test of the Rune Artifacts' performance.

He constantly challenged the limits of the Rune Artifacts, recording data and analyzing the results.

Besides the usual heat dissipation problem, he also noticed another limitation of Rune Artifacts—regional elemental depletion.

During one high-intensity barrage of Fireball Spells, he felt the surrounding fire elements being drained completely in a short time. The subsequent fireball talisman seals activated far less efficiently, and their power dropped sharply.

Although Rune Artifacts possessed performance far beyond others of the same level, they had obvious limits under continuous high-intensity use. They did not truly possess "infinite energy"; the energy source had merely shifted from inside the Wizard Artifact to the external environment.

Once the elemental power within an area was drained, the surrounding elemental power would rapidly gather again, but its concentration would remain relatively low for a short time.

Benjamin had no good solution for this for the time being. He could only choose to move quickly while releasing spells.