Mage Hand

Luo Lin focused completely, pouring all his attention into memorizing and understanding the spell model.

Time passed second by second.

An hour later, the crystal chip trembled slightly and dimmed.

The model information that had been forcibly instilled into Luo Lin's mind began to blur and fade.

But he had already grasped the core!

He had committed the main framework, more than eighty percent of the nodes, and the energy circuits to memory!

What remained was practice and construction.

After leaving the library, Luo Lin hurried back to his wooden cabin.

He sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and began trying to construct the spell model for [Mage Hand] within his Mental Sea.

This was an extremely taxing process, both mentally and spiritually.

He had to guide his spiritual power with his thoughts, weaving it like strands of silk and following the blueprint in his memory to construct that complex three-dimensional structure bit by bit.

On his first attempt, before he had completed even a tenth of it, one node proved insufficiently stable, and the entire structure instantly collapsed.

His spiritual power rippled slightly, bringing a faint wave of dizziness.

Luo Lin was not discouraged. After resting for a moment and reviewing the cause of his failure, he began his second attempt.

The precise control over spiritual power granted by [Efficient Scholar] played a decisive role at this moment.

He constructed the spiritual power lines faster and judged the stability of the nodes more accurately.

On the second attempt, he reached one-third of the way before failing again due to a slight deviation in energy circulation.

The third attempt passed the halfway point...

The fourth attempt...

The fifth attempt...

He did not know how many times he had failed. The drain on his spiritual power had turned Luo Lin's face pale, yet his gaze remained focused.

Finally, on who knew which attempt, a complete miniature transparent hand model made entirely of pure spiritual power steadily emerged within his Mental Sea!

He had succeeded!

With a thought, Luo Lin followed the model's activation method and guided mana into it.

The next moment, he felt his spiritual power and mana extend outward through the model in a strange manner.

Half a meter in front of him, a palm-sized hand made entirely of translucent energy slowly condensed in the air.

The energy hand still looked somewhat blurry, and its edges were not particularly stable.

But it truly existed, swaying slightly in response to Luo Lin's thoughts.

[Spell: Mage Hand (Not Yet Initiated)]

A new entry appeared on the panel.

Luo Lin let out a long breath, unable to suppress the faint smile that appeared on his face.

Though this was only the first step of a journey of a thousand miles, and he still had a long way to go before he could use it proficiently, he had finally mastered his first extraordinary power.

This meant he was no longer a First-Rank Wizard Apprentice who could only be slaughtered at others' mercy, utterly incapable of fighting back.

He had gained the first claws and fangs with which to change his fate.

Looking at the blurry energy hand in the air, Luo Lin knew that only at this moment had his path as a wizard truly taken its solid first step.

The challenges ahead remained severe. The assessment two months from now still hung over his head like the Sword of Damocles, but he now possessed the confidence and means to face it all.

He dispelled [Mage Hand] and began meditating to recover.

Likewise, after mastering the initial construction method for [Mage Hand], Luo Lin did not waste time congratulating himself.

He knew that an unstable zero-ring spell was far from enough to deal with the crisis that might come.

He needed to raise his proficiency as quickly as possible and continue strengthening his fundamental abilities.

In the days that followed, Luo Lin's life became even more tightly scheduled and regular.

Every day before dawn, he woke in the cold wind and meditated for the first time, using the relatively quiet morning environment to increase his spiritual power.

After meditating, he immediately headed to the task hall to accept five Moonlight Moss processing tasks.

This had become his steady, low-risk source of contribution points. More importantly, it allowed him to continuously obtain Shadow Fungus.

Inside the material processing room, Luo Lin's movements grew increasingly skillful.

The [Efficient Scholar] talent kept his efficiency at an extremely high level.

Processing five batches of materials had originally taken nearly half an hour, but now he needed only around twenty minutes, while the quality of the finished products remained perfect.

After submitting the tasks, he could reliably obtain 10 contribution points and five portions of Shadow Fungus.

He divided his afternoons into two parts.

The first half was used to practice [Mage Hand].

Inside the wooden cabin, he constructed that complex model in his Mental Sea again and again.

Failure, review, reconstruction.

The severe drain on his spiritual power often left him dizzy and disoriented, but he persisted.

As his number of practice sessions increased, the model's construction speed visibly improved, and its stability also rose.

The energy hand, which had initially been vague and could only last a few seconds, gradually became more solid. Its duration extended to half a minute, and it could slowly move small, light objects according to his thoughts, such as a pen or an empty cup.

[Spell: Mage Hand (Initiated 12%)]

The data on the panel directly reflected his progress.

After practicing spells exhausted his spiritual power, he did not force himself to continue. Instead, he switched to physical training.

This body was simply too weak. A constitution of 0.8 was an obvious shortcoming.

He performed simple squats and push-ups in the wooden cabin and, when the weather was better, jogged outside the apprentice district.

After training, he drank the cheap herbal tea directly to help ease his fatigue.

In the evening, he meditated for the second time, recovering the spiritual power and mana he had consumed that afternoon.

At night, he worked on brewing potions.

With the experience from his previous attempts, his success rate in brewing [Lesser Mental Boiling Potion] remained at one hundred percent. Its quality was also basically stable between good and ordinary, and he never failed again.

Every two or three days, he sold one or two potions through Black Rat.

He strictly controlled the volume and frequency of his sales to avoid attracting too much attention.

The transaction prices remained at 35 contribution points for good-quality potions and 30 contribution points for ordinary-quality ones.

Though Black Rat was curious about his reliable supply, he kept to the rules and did not ask questions in the face of profit.

His contribution points steadily accumulated.

Luo Lin did not spend them lavishly on enjoyment. Instead, he planned every expense carefully.

Aside from necessary food and herbal tea, he began selectively purchasing a few items.

He spent 20 contribution points on a dagger polished from some kind of hard beast bone. It was sharper and easier to handle than the standard bone knife provided by the academy.

Whether for processing materials or self-defense, it was more useful.

Afterward, he spent another 50 contribution points to buy a copy of <Analysis of Common Cantrip Model Structures (Apprentice Edition)>.

Although this book did not directly provide any new spell models, it explained the general construction techniques of zero-ring spell models, common causes of failure, and methods of avoiding them in clear and accessible terms.

It was enormously helpful for Luo Lin's practice of [Mage Hand] and his future study of other spells.

[Efficient Scholar] showed its effects once more. He read and understood the book far faster than ordinary people, rapidly absorbing its knowledge and applying it to his actual spell practice.

The rate at which [Mage Hand] proficiency increased visibly sped up.

And so, amid this tense yet fulfilling routine, nearly three weeks passed.

That evening, after Luo Lin completed a long meditation session, he felt that both his spiritual power and mana were completely full.

He summoned the pale blue panel and reviewed the results of this period:

[Subject: Luo Lin]

[Race: Human]

[Status: Healthy (Mild Fatigue)]

[Level: First-Rank Wizard Apprentice (Progress 71%)]

[Attributes:

Constitution: 0.9

Spirit: 1.8

Mana: 16/18]

[Mastered Knowledge:

Basic Meditation Method (Initiated 89%)

Basic Rune Identification (Initiated 17%)

Basic Magical Plant Studies (25%)

Basic Potion Material Processing (Professional 2%)

Analysis of Common Cantrip Model Structures (Initiated 45%)]

[Spell: Mage Hand (Initiated 63%)]

[Talent: Efficient Scholar (Passive)]

The data on the panel had changed significantly.

His apprentice rank progress had increased greatly, and he was not far from becoming a Second-Rank Apprentice.

His spiritual power and mana had both grown noticeably.

Most striking of all was [Basic Potion Material Processing]. Through a large amount of high-success-rate practice, it had actually broken through to the professional level, representing an extremely high degree of proficiency in this field.

[Mage Hand] had also passed through its most difficult initiation phase and was becoming more practiced.

With continuous training and adequate nutrition, his constitution had increased by 0.1. Though the increase was not large, he had at least escaped his weak state.

Luo Lin was satisfied with his current progress.

At this rate, reaching Second-Rank Apprentice before the assessment—or even attempting to advance to Third-Rank Apprentice—was not impossible.

However, just as he was considering whether his next step should be to continue accumulating contribution points or try borrowing a second spell, trouble quietly arrived.