What did an ordinary Wizard Apprentice have? In strength, knowledge, and every other respect, Wizard Apprentices had precious little. Often, courage and a willingness to risk their lives were their only assets. To take that next step, they sometimes came up with extraordinary ideas that even High-Rank Wizards could never have anticipated. This also had to do with their sheer numbers. If low-rank Wizards outnumbered High-Rank Wizards by thousands or tens of thousands to one, then the numerical gap between Wizard Apprentices and low-rank Wizards was beyond any straightforward comparison.
Of course, more often than not, those extraordinary ideas left Wizard Apprentices in a complete mess, or even transformed them into all manner of inhuman things.
Those who succeeded were ultimately few.
Ruger stroked the Black Book, once again recalling the Ascension Rituals and the notebook recording the Split Ascension Ritual.
The Divine Object Art spell model had finished charging.
He rested one hand lightly against the Black Book.
In truth, the approach taken by the attempted Split Ascension Ritual in the notebook did not quite align with what he wanted. That experiment had aimed to reduce the so-called difficulty, dividing a perfect Ascension Ritual-a single exhilarating advancement and transformation-into three stages to be completed on three separate occasions. The idea was to make ascension easier, to make becoming a Wizard easier. The experiment had overcome obstacle after obstacle and ultimately succeeded, yet it had also failed. The difficulty of advancement had decreased, but only by a pitiful amount. More resources were consumed, while the powerful Ascension Ritual traits the person advancing would originally have gained were weakened considerably.
Ruger kept reviewing the notebook's contents. It was a different path, but there were lessons he could draw from it.
As he probed deeper into the Black Book, he continued recalling