Zero-level Spells

"Did I succeed?"

Although Zhao Xu had already confirmed the result, he still could not help muttering to himself.

"You succeeded halfway."

"Halfway?" Zhao Xu nearly failed to process that. There was still another half to the ritual?

"It should be because all of you are projections. To truly complete it, we'll probably have to wait for some future opportunity for materialization. Only then will you truly gain this ability. For now, though, it doesn't affect anything. It's enough for you to memorize spells."

Only then did Zhao Xu relax. As for what she had said about true materialization...

She was probably referring to everyone crossing over to Arthur a year from now.

Zhao Xu had always suspected as much in his Previous Life. In fact, many people on Earth believed this game itself was an initial screening process.

If six or seven billion Earthlings suddenly arrived in Arthur, then even though the Prime Material Plane was vast, nearly boundless, it would still be difficult to handle such a sudden influx of people.

That was why players like them, those who had come into contact with Arthur, were the advance guides.

As for how they had managed to get TC to develop this game, first, the game's content had all been deduced and defined by AI.

Second, Arcane mind-affecting enchantment spells were as numerous as hairs on an ox. Manipulating people's hearts was hardly a problem.

Some even suspected that a Divine Incarnation had reached Earth during that year.

But none of that had anything to do with Zhao Xu. Even if he knew who the Divine Incarnation was, he would not court death by approaching and trying to befriend one.

All he had to do was wait patiently.

It was just that no one knew, even ten years later, whether the super meteorite that descended upon Earth and destroyed humanity had been a coincidence or deliberately arranged.

From the game's launch on Monday night until the following Monday, a full seven days later, the first Wizard in the game finally completed training.

Although players had already learned from Wizards' complaint posts just how complicated Wizard training was,

nearly seven days was still far beyond many people's expectations.

Moreover, the power of those First-level Spells, along with Wizards' limited Spell Slots, left those who knew the details deeply disappointed.

Forum sampling surveys reflected the same trend. Among the players joining the game each day, the number choosing Wizard kept falling, nearly reaching the bottom of the rankings.

That was only because Wizards still benefited from the faith players had in them from traditional online games.

No one knew that once they reached level 5, Wizards could basically contend with martial classes and even surpass them. By level 10, they would leave those classes far behind.

The environment players lived in gave them no way of knowing how high-level Wizards truly fought.

As for Zhao Xu, aside from browsing the forums and maintaining a certain amount of exercise, he spent most of his time in Arthur.

He had finally made it through the hurdle of memorizing basic models and all sorts of spellcasting gestures.

He had reached the stage of truly studying Zero-level Spells.

Compared with the first player to complete Wizard training, Zhao Xu was not that far behind.

Each of the three First-level Spells required twenty-four hours of study. Excluding four hours of deep sleep per day,

that still took three and a half days.

In other words, the first Wizard player had used only three and a half days to finish learning models, spellcasting gestures, Summon Familiar, and Scroll Scribe.

As for the later skill training, Zhao Xu heard that player had temporarily given it up and planned to make up for it later, all for the record of being first.

Everyone had also seen that, forget all of Arthur—even if someone was merely the first to complete training locally, the local Mage Association would issue some rewards.

But there were no glowing halos above one's head or extra titles or anything like that.

Zhao Xu was likewise still stuck on Zero-level Spells after three and a half days, let alone the fact that he no longer needed to learn Summon Familiar or Scroll Scribe.

That made him realize the gap between himself and those players with genuine Wizard talent.

Yet Zhao Xu barely heard anything about those exceptionally gifted players who had stood out early on afterward.

That included the player who had been the first to complete Wizard training.

Five Resurrection Stones were both players' hope and the poison that numbed them.

Speaking of gambling with one's life, who could be bolder than these players who could resurrect?

Slumped over his desk, with a lamp that provided eternal magical illumination beside him, Zhao Xu propped his chin up with one hand and spread open the Compendium of Zero-level Spells with the other.

From Read Magic to Mage Hand, there were nineteen Zero-level Spells in total, all spells that every novice Wizard ought to master.

Some wild Wizards might miss a few.

But as long as they could find the Mage Association in a major city, copying down these Zero-level Spells was no difficult task.

Zhao Xu had heard Antinoa mention Read Magic from the very beginning.

After casting it, one could read those Arcane writings without needing to identify the spell. Its duration was ten minutes per Caster Level.

Although Zhao Xu had not yet become an official First-level Mage, he could barely count as level 1, so casting this spell lasted exactly ten minutes.

At a reading speed of one page per minute, that was just enough to read ten pages.

If the previous models had been definitions of concepts and the like, then the specific spells he was learning now were formulas that could solve problems.

Actually copying a Zero-level Spell into a Spellbook took only half a page. One merely had to finish copying the model.

Yet in this Compendium of Zero-level Spells, each Zero-level Spell occupied no fewer than dozens of pages, recording all kinds of predecessors' experiences, principles, and possible pitfalls.

Only then did Zhao Xu realize that the supposed twenty-four hours of study did not include the time spent reading these supplementary materials.

If someone failed to decipher a spell within twenty-four hours, some Wizards would turn to predecessors' notes or introductions. Such materials could all be found in the local Mage Association library.

The compendium in Zhao Xu's hands was precisely that sort of book.

Otherwise, Antinoa only needed to provide him with a total of nine and a half pages of Spellbook content.

And the sign that a Wizard had learned a spell was successfully copying it into their own Spellbook.

If they could copy it in, then they could prepare that spell the next day.

Thus, whether Zhao Xu could move on to the next stage of learning First-level Arcane spells was simple: it depended on when he could copy these nineteen Zero-level Spells into his heart.

Zero-level spells were also the only spells Zhao Xu could copy without applying that mind-stimulating ointment.

First-level Spells were different. While he was studying Zero-level spells, Antinoa had placed three jars of mind-stimulating ointment on his desk, each worth 50 GP.

As far as he knew, any Wizard with a craft skill such as alchemy could spend money to make these ointments themselves, and the source of the ingredients would not become a shackle limiting Wizards.

The materials used merely to copy spells into a Spellbook were the same. Once their levels were high enough, Wizards could even use spells to create them themselves with money.

Aside from needing guidance from predecessors to learn spells, Wizards faced the fewest restrictions in every other respect. At worst, they could learn a Feat and make things themselves.