Resonance Art

After eating and drinking his fill, Dago lit a candle.

He sat inside the shelter and took out the black-covered wizard book he had managed to read through without difficulty today.

He already understood the book's general contents. It recorded only a single spell.

A spell born from the wild imagination of a genius wizard from Emerald Life.

Yet it had ultimately caused a disaster. The spell had been sealed by Emerald Life, and the genius wizard had been erased as well.

Since ancient times, a wizard's body had always been a weakness. Only high-ranking wizards, whose bodies could be elementalized, had solved this problem.

As for low-ranking wizards, they often died to all kinds of assassinations.

So one day, a wizard had wondered: could low-ranking wizards elementalize their bodies too?

The facts proved that before achieving an immortal soul, allowing one's body to accept elements was no different from roasting flesh over burning coals. Death was inevitable.

Then why could ancient species wield elemental power with their flesh, while humans, the spirit of all things, could not?

He believed it was because of their environment. Ancient species lived in places rich in elements, and thus gained the power to control them.

Could humans likewise live in element-rich environments and acquire such power?

Just as magical beasts gained elemental affinity by inheriting a trace of ancient bloodlines.

He had succeeded, and he had failed.

Making humans live in elemental environments like magical beasts had indeed granted elemental affinity to a very small number of people.

But most of them eventually suffered uncontrollable bodily decay, much like radiation sickness.

As a type of energy particle, prolonged contact with elements would cause energy to erode the body, eventually reducing it to ruin.

Those few people also awakened a trace of ancient bloodline. They were called Bloodline Wizards, the darlings of the elements.

This spell was the Body–Element Resonance Art, or Resonance Art for short.

Dago's heart pounded. The spell was amazing, but practicing it to the end meant developing radiation sickness and dying with his whole body rotting away.

Gritting his teeth, he still decided to practice this spell and place his faith in the system.

He walked out of the shelter and stood in the clearing where he often practiced. The twin moons still shone overhead.

He lit a fire with wood, then used the firelight to carefully read the entire book from beginning to end once more.

The entire spell had only one incantation: "Veritas." It roughly meant that lingering elements should return to their own world.

While the elements lingered, they required a tiny amount of spiritual power to sustain them.

Then one used spiritual power to control the elements and attach them to the body, applying pressure from the outside inward and forcing the body to adapt to that environment.

At present, Dago could only command ice elements, so he could only use the Ice Crystal Technique to assist in practicing this spell.

A sapphire-blue halo swirled in his eyes, scattering light as he murmured the Ice Crystal Technique's incantation.

A small number of ice elements appeared, awaiting Dago's command.

"Veritas," Dago called out the Resonance Art's incantation.

Most of the ice elements vanished, leaving only a few scattered specks behind.

Carefully, he used his spiritual power to guide those ice elements above his palm, where they formed a glowing orb the size of a fingernail.

Then he controlled the output of his spiritual power. The orb's chill and glow instantly faded by ninety percent. Under a normal Ice Crystal Technique casting, these ice elements should have dispersed long ago.

"Looks like the Resonance Art worked." Dago looked at the ice elements resting in his palm as though asleep.

He then controlled the ice elements and attached them to the nail of his index finger. The ice elements lazily drifted over and gave his nail a snowy-white manicure.

His nail instantly felt icy cold. Then the Resonance Art was complete, and the system panel flashed up a prompt.

[Detected an improvable skill: Resonance Art. Choose to improve?]

As usual, he selected yes, and the panel shifted.

[Universal Wizard Meditation Method (Beginner 139/1000); Air Bullet (Beginner 166/1000); Ice Crystal Technique (Novice 15/100); Resonance Art (Novice 1/100)]

From then on, he had another skill he could improve.

He returned to training, cycling through the Meditation Method, Air Bullet, Ice Crystal Technique, and Resonance Art.

The Beginner-level Meditation Method was far more effective than before with every session. The rate at which his Soul Entropy was expelled grew faster and faster, and his glowing orb had grown considerably.

As his spiritual power increased, it would nourish his soul more quickly.

The speed at which his soul was repaired would also increase, and his spiritual power capacity would grow.

The number and quality of his other spells would also rise. At full spiritual power, firing off ten Air Bullets was no longer a problem.

At this rate, he would soon become a walking human cannon.

However, Dago felt that he lacked practical combat experience. Aside from the various animals in the forest, he had never fought another person.

But he was not worried about that. He was already prepared to inflict violence upon this cruel world.

The calendar was flipped forward two pages by the wind. It was the morning two days later.

Dago, dressed in hunting clothes, sat on a tree stump and wolfed down a simple breakfast of a few coarse buns.

His large hand, with its ten snow-white nails, grabbed a bun and took half of it in one bite. Two bites finished one.

He no longer went to the academy. Wizard Rosalyn had not returned either, and he could not be bothered to go.

He spent most mornings hunting. He chose the southwestern part of the forest, where the lake with the Moonlight Flowers lay.

He would cautiously advance toward that area step by step, familiarizing himself with the terrain in advance.

When he stood, his body had grown several more centimeters. He was now around one meter seventy-eight tall.

His flowing hair was starting to reach past his shoulders, and Dago did not like that.

It would affect his vision while hunting. He drew the coldly gleaming dagger from his waist, grabbed his hair, and began cutting.

Before long, he had dealt with the troublesome hair and brushed the loose strands from his clothes.

He then slung his pack over his back and strode toward the southwest of the forest.

Since humans rarely ventured into this area, there were far more animals.

Dago had to keep his nerves taut at all times. From time to time, he took out his little notebook and recorded the nearby terrain, landforms, and distribution of trees.

After circling around an enormous tree, he marked it and continued onward.

After walking for around ten minutes, a dense forest appeared ahead.

The trees in the dense forest blocked out the sky and sun, leaving even spots of sunlight unable to penetrate.

"This place is much quieter than the others," Dago thought, growing more vigilant.

As he carefully observed his surroundings, a low snoring sound echoed from within the woods.

A low-frequency vibration like "Hrrr... hrrr..." echoed through the forest. Dago did not dare move, remaining perfectly still where he stood.

He carefully traced the source of the sound and saw an enormous black leopard sprawled on a tree ten meters away, sleeping soundly.

"This is probably a magical beast, a Shadow Leopard." Dago stared at the sleeping black leopard, his pupils shrinking as he muttered inwardly.

This was the first magical beast he had ever seen. A living magical beast.

According to old Marico's description, this was a magical beast with a strong sense of territory. It rarely traveled in packs, so there was no need to worry about being surrounded and attacked.

Shadow Leopards ran incredibly fast. They liked to lurk in the shadows before launching deadly attacks and tearing open their prey's throats.

Their fur was excellent magical material and highly sought after in the wizarding world.

Their meat and bones were also delicacies, and noble lords were willing to pay a high price for them.

Especially their whips, which were always in demand and rarely available.

"It hasn't woken up yet. I have to seize this chance and kill it with one Air Bullet." Dago made his decision at once.

Sapphire-blue light flared in his eyes. The airflow suddenly accelerated, and an Air Bullet the size of a fist gathered two meters in front of him.

Several seconds later, the blue light in Dago's eyes surged as he fired the fully charged Air Bullet at the Shadow Leopard.

Dago stared fixedly at the Shadow Leopard in the tree. Its ears instantly pricked up, its eyelids snapped open, and its pupils narrowed into vertical slits like two poisoned daggers.

Its body stretched like a drawn bow, its front claws tensed like sickles, and the muscles in its hind legs erupted with unbelievable force.

It had noticed too late. The charged Air Bullet was too fast, and its usual comfort had dulled its sense of danger.

Boom! The Air Bullet still struck one of its hind legs, and the explosive gale sent its body flying.

In midair, mottled light and shadow flowed across its body, as though it wore a black cloak woven from slaughter.

Dago aimed at the airborne Shadow Leopard again and fired another Air Bullet, with less than ten seconds between the two attacks.

The Shadow Leopard's body twisted through the air, its tail controlling its posture like a propeller...

The Air Bullet streaked past its abdomen on a fierce current.

It then exploded against a distant tree. Dago's heart sank...

The Air Bullet's casting cooldown had not ended, and the Ice Crystal Technique's casting time was too long.

The Shadow Leopard landed and lowered its body, stretching its front limbs forward and raising its hindquarters. The first Air Bullet had seriously injured it, leaving one hind leg twisted and broken.

Its tail swayed from side to side like a rudder, adjusting its attack angle. Then it used its remaining hind leg to launch itself at Dago.

Ten meters, nine meters, eight meters, seven meters, six meters, five meters... Only its prey's heartbeat drummed in its ears—the beat of death's countdown.

Just as the Shadow Leopard closed in on its prey as quickly as always, ready to tear open his throat as easily as paper.

Its world fell silent. An arm-thick icicle had pierced its forehead, and its body rolled across the ground, sending dead leaves flying.

In a world where the strong preyed on the weak, elegance and cruelty had always been twin brothers, while death was merely the most precise punctuation mark in the cycle of life.

Dago elegantly blew away the lingering chill from his fingertips, then patted his wildly pounding chest.

The snow-white color faded from all ten nails, returning them to flesh color. This was another discovery he had made about the Resonance Art.

The ice elements attached to his body could be instantly awakened to form a weakened version of the Ice Crystal Technique. It had only one-third the power of the full version, but its casting time was far shorter—around five seconds.

"Looks like I'll have to get another manicure when I get back," Dago muttered.