Research into forbidden spells had always been one of the Magic Academy's subjects.
After rune meditation became widespread, magic entered a new era, and naturally, they began trying to reclaim the things they had discarded. But so far, the complexity of forbidden spells had caused them enormous trouble. Those minute elemental controls were difficult to accomplish through one person's power alone, while joint casting by multiple people was a secret art The Church never passed on, one they had never managed to decipher.
In the end, although they developed a method to skip incantations and cast spells directly through runes, the practical difficulty still somewhat exceeded the limits of humanity.
But... Gu Bei had already surpassed what ordinary people considered the "limits of humanity."
Within the Deep Sea Domain, surging water elements seemed to form a vortex, flooding toward the Triangle Glyph in Gu Bei's palm. The forbidden spell he was casting was called Ice Prison Art, one of the relatively simpler forbidden spells. Even so, he felt his mental power burning away at a frightening pace. He had to focus completely on controlling that glyph just to barely maintain its form.
—He had never practiced forbidden spells before, but the moment Grant mentioned "a caster's way of fighting," the thought had instantly surfaced in his mind.
He would show the other side what true magic was.
Thus, recalling the Magic Academy's research results, Gu Bei first constructed the glyph, then mobilized every water element he could command, tracing dense and intricate structures within it. It felt like writing an entire program: he had to enter lines upon lines of code, coordinate countless trivial instructions... until, at last, everything worked together to become a smoothly operating "core."
This process immediately triggered a strange disturbance in the sky. Ghostly shadows of