Advancing to High Rank

Karen searched through the memories in his body and learned what Drew had done and experienced while controlling it during his absence.

He understood the situation he was in now.

Karen didn't rush to go out. Instead, he began sorting through what he had learned from the soul fusion.

During that year of soul fusion, Karen had been unconscious.

Once their souls fused, his old memories and the memories from that year came flooding back, filling his mind all at once. He needed to sort through them carefully.

First, he understood what had happened.

It all began when he crossed over.

He had been playing a game at home that day when everything suddenly went black and he crossed over.

According to the system's analysis, when that planet activated its final measure, the gravity device, it triggered a spatial collapse. Somehow, it had pulled Karen through.

Crossing over was one thing, but then he, an ice block, and a spaceship collided, setting off an explosion.

The spaceship's system—Drew—underwent a strange reaction, and fused with some ice fragments and Karen's soul.

His soul had also split in two during the explosion. One half crossed over into Karen, who had just been born at the time. The other half followed the pull of his soul, crossing the vast universe and spending over a hundred years before finding Karen.

That was what had happened when Karen had been struck.

The two halves of his soul began fusing as soon as they met, and Karen's body was transported onto that teleportation array.

The energy contained in the other half of his soul activated the array. Karen's consciousness fell asleep, and Drew took control of his body. Then Drew came into being.

Since only half of Karen's soul had crossed over, it lacked energy and fell into a deep slumber. (The other half was the same, carried across the universe by the system.)

A new consciousness awakened in Karen's body.

With only half a soul, Karen had a flaw and could never advance to high rank.

Only after that new consciousness faded away did this half of Karen's soul absorb some energy and awaken, taking over the body. He thought he had just crossed over, when in fact more than a hundred years had passed.

Now that the souls had successfully fused, the flaw that had kept Karen from advancing was gone.

Karen had advanced to mid rank long ago. By now, he had accumulated far more than Joseph had when he advanced to mid rank.

Karen realized he was immediately faced with another problem.

His mind was actually forming magic runes on its own. These were all things he had comprehended before, but the flaw had kept them from taking shape. Now that they had formed all at once, Karen was about to advance to high rank.

If the magic runes formed by a low-rank mage were patterns resembling a hexagram,

then a mid-rank mage's magic runes were complex patterns like a maze.

A high-rank mage's magic runes, meanwhile, were spherical, making the leap from a flat pattern to a three-dimensional one.

That was why the academy Drew had founded taught plane and solid geometry: they corresponded to the magic runes of these ranks. Of course, learning geometry didn't mean you could construct magic runes and advance.

Just look at all those students who had learned their lessons well. Only a few had advanced.

Studying geometry simply helped mages construct their magic runes more smoothly and with less effort.

It made the structure of their magic runes more stable and increased their chances of success. But to construct magic runes in the mindscape, what you needed first was mental power and an understanding of magic.

It was like painting: mental power and an understanding of magic were the paints, while learning geometry gave you a brush that was easier to handle.

Now, let's take a look at the magic runes Karen had constructed.

The magic runes most people constructed were spherical, with patterns like those on a soccer ball.

But the patterns on the surface of Karen's sphere were as densely packed as the lines on a globe.

The number of magic runes represented not only how much one understood magic, but also one's spellcasting ability.

After all, the magic one cast had to travel along the lines of one's magic runes. If you didn't have enough runes, you simply couldn't cast the spell.

Although Karen was older than most people (by human standards) and had a deep understanding of magic, he shouldn't have been so far ahead of ordinary people. The reason for the enormous difference had to do with the bottleneck in advancing to high rank.

Why was advancing to high rank a watershed?

Why could most people become mid-rank mages through steady effort once they became formal mages, with eccentrics like Joseph being the exception?

Yet no matter how hard high-rank mages worked, they couldn't advance simply by wishing to.

It came down to talent.

Anyone who became a high-rank mage had to awaken their own talent.

These talents were innate to the soul.

That was why people with flawed souls, like Karen had been, couldn't advance to high rank.

Of course, most people couldn't advance not because their souls were flawed, but because they had no talent.

What did talent do?

Why couldn't mages without talent advance to high rank?

A high-rank mage's magic runes formed a sphere, but it was hollow.

What was inside the sphere? A core made up of talents. Yes, made up of them.

People didn't have just one talent. The powerful could have several.

Each person's talent core supported their magic runes.

The stronger the core, the more magic runes it could support.

People with few talents and weak abilities could support fewer magic runes.

Those without talents naturally had no talent core to support the entire spherical structure of their magic runes. That meant they couldn't advance to high rank.

The talent core did more than just support the magic runes.

As each spell traveled along the lines of the magic runes, it also received a boost from one's talents.

Talents could make spellcasting faster, increase a spell's damage, make it more penetrating, and grant all sorts of other enhancements.

That was why high-rank mages were much stronger than low- and mid-rank mages, and why their social circles were separate from those of lower-ranked mages.

As time passed, Karen's magic runes finally finished taking shape.

Karen looked at the lines of his magic runes and felt dizzy himself.

To support such complex patterns, he must have more than one talent, and they must be quite powerful.

Karen sent his mind into the sphere of magic runes to sense his talents.

When he sensed his talent core, Karen froze.

He saw another sphere.

His talents were so numerous that they had formed another little sphere.

Karen sensed his talents.

Why were most of them ice-related?

As a member of the Sunstrider family, wasn't he supposed to have mostly fire-related talents?

Even the name Sunstrider suggested fire.

His father and brother were both powerful fire mages.

Actually, Karen had misunderstood the Sunstrider family's talents.

Influenced by the Sunwell, the Sunstrider family's talents leaned toward Arcane magic. Arcane was the source of all magic and could be transformed into spells of other schools.

The Sunstrider family had discovered a passage connecting to the Fire Elemental Plane.

That made it very convenient for the family to study fire magic, and they could reach great heights in it.

So the Sunstriders were generally fire mages. Before Karen awakened, he had also focused on fire magic.

(At the beginning, Karen had been practicing the high-rank fire spell Flamestrike.)

Karen's brother's signature fire elemental creature, Al'ar the Phoenix, had been discovered there.

It wasn't that all Sunstriders were fire mages by nature; they had all become fire mages.

They hadn't found the passage to the Fire Elemental Plane because they were fire mages. They were fire mages because they had found the passage.

Karen had gotten it wrong.

Karen continued exploring.

And it seemed there was something inside the hollow little sphere, too.

What could it be?

He had never heard of anything being inside a talent core.

When Karen saw what was inside, he realized it was something vaguely familiar.

So that was it.