Body Tempering Method

"Pat, pat."

After brushing off the gravel scattered on his clothes with a wave of his hand, Guter gave a sudden burst of effort to wrench his body free from the deep impression it had left in the wall.

Turning back to look at the human-shaped crater left behind on the wall, he let out a sigh and couldn't help but remark.

"So when Elf Mages become teachers, they all like to use this method to embed their disciples into walls, huh?"

He really hadn't expected that something that happened to Feren in the original story would one day be replicated on himself.

But thankfully, Guter's physical constitution was markedly different from Feren's, who was a fragile mage.

For Feren, an injury of this degree would require a few days of bed rest, but for Guter, he just needed to pat himself off and stand up.

Yet the shock such an instantaneous spell left in the disciples' hearts was no less diminished.

Before his body had flown backward on its own, Guter hadn't detected any spellcasting fluctuations around Serie—not even the slightest trace of mana leakage.

It wasn't that the casting motion was concealed; it was that there was no such process at all.

As if, for Serie, all that was needed to cast this spell was just that one look.

"Truly terrifyingly strong, Teacher Serie."

Guter, now down from the wall, looked at the figure emerging from the residence before him and spoke with heartfelt admiration.

"Heh."

Serie let out a noncommittal light snort. "Just a small warning from a teacher to her disciple."

"Go home and rest. After an all-night epiphany, you need enough sleep to recover your energy."

"Lairn and Gumi can handle maintaining order at the exam venue. Just make sure you come back before today's exam ends."

"Thank you, Teacher."

Sensing the concern in Serie's words, Guter gave a slight nod, thanked his teacher, and turned to leave.

As for Serie, she stood at her doorstep, gazing absently at her departing disciple's back.

"Though I deliberately reduced the force of that impact, even so, for an ordinary warrior, it would still be a formidable attack."

"And yet, it didn't affect this disciple in the slightest, did it?"

"Truly impressive, Guter."

Thinking this, the corner of Serie's mouth lifted slightly, and the image of a deceased disciple surfaced in her mind.

"Bodi, the regret you had at the end—your junior disciple is here to fulfill it for you."

At the city inn.

After returning to his room, Guter changed his clothes and lay directly on the bed. But due to his physiological habits, he tossed and turned for a while without feeling sleepy, so he simply pulled out the notes left by his senior disciple from his coat and started flipping through them while lying in bed.

Guter had originally planned to read for just a little while, hoping it would help him fall asleep.

Unexpectedly, the more he read, the more awake he became. At first, he was just lying in bed flipping pages, but as he read on, he sat up. In the end, he got out of bed entirely, pulled a chair over to the desk, and hunched over it to study, occasionally grabbing a piece of scratch paper to jot down notes and diagrams to aid his understanding.

To be honest, the "Body Tempering Notes" left by his senior disciple were not difficult to understand—they could even be called simple.

The entire notes were divided into just two parts: Body Tempering and Practical Combat.

In the [Body Tempering] section, the notes provided an extremely unique method of mana circulation.

According to the description, this circulation method would generate a special mana fluctuation within the mage's body.

The mage's physique would then be comprehensively tempered by this fluctuation, with an effect far surpassing the Body Tempering Methods practiced by ordinary warriors.

As for the [Practical Combat] section, the notes offered another special secret technique for mana circulation.

This secret technique would greatly enhance the mage's physical abilities in a short time and amplify the destructive effect of their attacks. In Guter's understanding, this technique was a combination of the "Lightning Release: Chakra Mode" and the "Monster Strength Fist" from Naruto.

The main text of the entire notes ended with the explanation of the [Practical Combat] secret technique.

The remaining pages afterward contained the senior disciple's own account of his creative journey and his regret at not being able to see his theories come to fruition.

After reading the last page of the notes in his hands, Guter carefully closed them and put them away, then took a deep breath and rubbed his temples.

How should he evaluate this painstaking work left by his senior disciple?

The cultivation principle was relatively simple, and the cultivation effect was extremely outstanding—but.

The threshold for cultivation was astonishingly high.

This wasn't something that could be practiced just by having a talent for magic and doing a bit of physical training.

The mana circulation method in the [Body Tempering] section made Guter's eyelids twitch. Even a mage with a relatively good physique would probably faint before completing a single cycle.

And what the notes required was for the mage to precisely control the mana's movement throughout the entire process, while also using oscillation to temper every part of the body with mana fluctuations.

This kind of Body Tempering Method—even an ordinary warrior might not be able to endure it.

Those who could endure it would undoubtedly be elite warriors.

But how many such warriors also possessed the talent to become mages?

Admittedly, warriors, through years of tempering their bodies, would passively accumulate some mana to enhance their combat techniques.

But the amount of mana warriors passively absorbed through their bodies, compared to what mages actively gathered through meditation, was a difference as vast as heaven and earth.

Moreover, warriors do not cast spells as frequently as mages, lacking the skill to finely control the flow of mana within the body. Even if they accumulate enough mana as their lives near their twilight years, they still struggle to direct it along the prescribed pathways.

This shows just how high the threshold for practicing this [Body Tempering Method] truly is.

Even Guter is not certain whether he has met the entry requirements at this point.

Yet this secret method is indeed worth attempting.

Guter looked at the drafts he had copied on his desk. The difficulty of the senior disciple's [Body Tempering Method] lay in its development process, but the final product was relatively simple to learn.

If one had to pinpoint the challenges, it would be memorizing the mana circulation diagrams for the [Body Tempering Section] and the [Combat Section], and doing so with such thoroughness that it approaches an instinctive level.

Achieving that level of memory requires no small amount of time, but as luck would have it, Guter happened to possess a tool that could skip this entire process—the [Memory Bread (Enhanced Edition)].

"Scratch—scratch—scratch—"

Guter's pen moved swiftly across the draft paper, and before long, two detailed circulation diagrams appeared on the page.

Thanks to his long experience copying texts in the abandoned monastery, Guter's hand reproduced documents with both speed and precision.

After finishing the transcription, Guter took a piece of [Memory Bread] from the [System Space] and slapped it onto the draft paper with a smack.

Once the Memory Bread had fully absorbed the two mana circulation diagrams, Guter put it into his mouth.

Not long after, when Guter opened his eyes again, the mana circulation methods from those two diagrams had already achieved deep comprehension and reflex-level memory in his mind.

"Whoosh—"

Guter let out a long breath. Now that he had fully understood and integrated it, it was time to try this Body Tempering Method and see if he was qualified to take the first step.