Forbidden Meditation

There was no doubt that forbidden spells were incredibly powerful.

The price a wizard paid to cast one was just as steep.

Practicing magic meant trading one's body for power. The greater the power, the more easily the body broke down. Even so, wizards still yearned for it—you might not need it, but you couldn't afford not to have it.

If the pursuit of knowledge was an ideal and an expression of scholarly spirit, then using forbidden magic to intimidate enemies and secure one's family's standing was a practical, utilitarian goal. When ideal and reality pointed toward the same thing, what reason did they have not to reach for that power?

Besides, the pursuit of learning had no end. No one knew where the mysteries ultimately led.

If quantitative change could bring about qualitative change, and an endless supply of magic could free someone from mortal flesh and set them on the Divine Path, wouldn't they regret not practicing forbidden spells?

Of course they would.

But there was no cure for regret in this world.

So they had to learn forbidden spells. It was also one of the requirements for a wizard to reach the seventh tier and become an Archmage.

The Beginning of Forbidden Spells taught wizards how to make more of their bodies undergo autophagy. It was a prerequisite for all forbidden spells. It wasn't a spell, but a different form of meditation with a much broader "scope."

The autophagy induced by ordinary meditation was limited to cells in the body that stored reserves. Those cells existed to be digested by the body and release energy in a crisis. Even if they were all depleted, it wouldn't cause much harm to the wizard. At worst, they'd look a little thinner or a few years older. It wasn't fatal.

Forbidden Meditation was different.

Take the desert Sean had first seen as an example. With Forbidden Meditation, eating only half a cactus wouldn't be enough—not nearly enough. It would put you in even harsher conditions, inducing or forcing you to eat everything you could see. The cactus was only one option. There were rocks, sand, passing camels, flying birds, even the sun hanging in the sky.

As for how to eat it...

That was the wizard's problem.

If you couldn't pluck the sun from the sky, you would never fully master this power.

Eating things you shouldn't, as reflected in reality, meant that all the body's vital parts underwent autophagy and released energy.

The conversion rate remained the same, still determined by the depth of your meditation. But the amount of matter converted into energy was far greater than with ordinary meditation. Even a Newborn wizard could use this method to temporarily gain magic far beyond their tier.

The only catch was that one careless mistake could get you killed.

Sean remembered plenty of cases like that.

Some wizards had only meant to power up, sacrificing an arm, a leg, or a kidney to win a battle. But they'd lost control, turning a burst of power into an explosion of their own bodies, and a hard-won victory into a mutual demise.

Both of them had died for nothing.

The Beginning of Forbidden Spells was clearly terrifying knowledge.

"The more you know, the more danger you're in"—that applied just as well to the study of the occult.

But Quill had guessed right.

Sean really was the kind of person Quill imagined—the more dangerous something was, the more he wanted to try it.

The instant Sean saw The Beginning of Forbidden Spells, his eyes lit up. He looked eager to learn something new, his passion and yearning even more intense than when he'd lifted the covers off big sister Elvily in his dream. The crushing weight of the rich woman on his shoulder seemed to vanish, too.

In that moment, the only thing Sean saw was the book.

At this stage, he had countless powerful spells but not enough magic to cast them. Nothing could be more valuable to him—and, most importantly, it didn't conflict with ordinary meditation. Forbidden Meditation was still meditation. It could expand the scope of autophagy and deepen it, too. In other words, he could practice forbidden spells and increase his basic magic at the same time.

There was a reason the Hall of Truth had become a holy site in the eyes of all wizards during the Scholar Era. This one book alone was enough to establish its place in academia.

That was also why most occultists and Archmages of the time came from the Hall of Truth. In a sense, The Beginning of Forbidden Spells had directly raised the potential of low-tier wizards, giving them a better chance of becoming Archmages someday.

You had to start cultivating talent early.

If the holy temple didn't have any geniuses, it would cultivate them itself.

Sean suddenly wondered if, back then, he might not have been quite as stupid as he thought.

Honestly, he'd already learned about a lot of spells through his dreams. In that respect, he might know more than some high-tier wizards. So he hadn't expected much from the holy temple's third floor. He'd mostly wanted to find something to bring Kate, since he couldn't just let him do all that work for nothing.

Elvily deserved something, too.

After all, she was the little sister of someone who might be his brother-in-law.

But Sean hadn't expected the third floor to surprise him so much. Now he was more and more curious about the floors above—especially the top floor. The Divine Path...

"Could there really be no end at the tenth tier?"

Could people truly break free of mortal flesh and become gods, standing high above and looking down on the world?

Sean realized he was getting ahead of himself and reined in his thoughts.

He'd said it before: he wasn't one to reach beyond his grasp.

Still... everyone was curious. Sean's eyes darted about as he went up the stairs. Carefully, he stuck one foot onto the fourth floor, hoping to sneak in and see if he could get away with it.

But that little test turned out to be fatal.

The instant his right foot crossed the line and touched the fourth-floor landing, a pressure several times stronger than the third floor's crashed down like a mountain. It crushed his foot and shin to dust, and they dissolved into motes of light that seeped into the air, adding to this mental world.

The pressure was so sudden and brutal that Sean didn't even feel pain. Like being hit by a bullet, all he felt at first was numbness.

Still, Sean couldn't help sucking in a sharp breath.

His foot was gone in the blink of an eye. Just watching it happen was intense.

He remembered the wizard who'd been flung away by a statue in the plaza.

"Just you wait. I'll be back!"

Seeing that there was no way through, Sean turned around at once and jumped down the stairs. He took The Beginning of Forbidden Spells and some books recording True Formula techniques, then hopped all the way to the dormitory.

He couldn't take the books back to reality. They were, after all, products of the mind, and from what he'd learned recently, they couldn't even be taken outside the holy temple. They could only be read inside.

But that was fine. He was the only one on the third floor, so he could read wherever he wanted and in whatever position he liked.

Unlike Sean, who was thrilled with his haul...

Outside Floris Hospital.

The attendant had just taken the driver's seat and was preparing to drive to Old Sigel City when his eyelid suddenly began twitching. He even paused while fastening his seat belt.

He glanced at Quill in the back seat and said hesitantly, "Dr. Quill, I have a bad feeling."

"Oh?"

The attendant explained, "My eyelid won't stop twitching."

Quill chuckled. "That means you're about to get rich. It's a good sign. I was just thinking about giving you a bigger bonus this time, after we catch Sean."

"But it's my right eye."

"Your right eye, huh?" Quill said, giving another "oh." "That's just a superstition. Ignore it."

The attendant fell silent.

"Drive," Quill said with an unconcerned smile. "Once we bring our author back, your eyelid will stop twitching."

The attendant seemed to want to say something else, but after hesitating for two seconds, he kept it to himself and nodded. "All right."

He pressed the accelerator, and the black car sped away toward Old Sigel City, ninety-seven kilometers away.