Over the past month and a half, Arnold had fought many battles. He had become adept at using magic and had developed his own understanding of the Gravity Spell.
When a Fifth-level Earth Element mage cast the Gravity Spell, the pull of the earth on an object at least doubled. Arnold had wondered whether he could make the effect one and a half times as strong instead, but after many experiments, he had gotten nowhere.
Arnold figured his grasp of magic was still too shallow. He couldn't even alter a spell's incantation. To do that, he would need to read extensively and reach a certain level of strength. He had an idea for the Gravity Spell now, but he lacked the power and knowledge to put it into practice.
Once this training trip was over, Arnold planned to spend more time in the academy library.
Drawing on his experience as a young man from Earth, Arnold had a vague theory about the fantastical world of the Yulan Continent.
Cultivators on the Yulan Continent were divided into warriors, who used battle-qi, and mages, who used magic. Warriors ranged from First-level Warriors to Ninth-level Warriors, just as mages ranged from First-level Mages to Ninth-level Mages. Above them stood the legendary Saint Domain experts. Saint Domain Warriors and Saint Domain mages had different titles, but both were considered Saint Domain experts. That meant warriors and mages had at least something in common at that stage. What could it be?
Arnold suspected the answer was the so-called Laws! At the Saint Domain stage, both warriors and mages probably studied the Laws. Mages expressed them through forbidden magic, while warriors likely expressed them through their attacks.
Take the Wind Blade, a basic wind spell. It advanced into the Wind Blade Chain, then the Wind Blade Soaring Dance and the Vacuum Binding Art. These were clearly branches of the same line. Along another branch, the Wind Blade could eventually evolve into the strongest forbidden spell, the "Dimensional Blade"...
Clearly, spells from the first through ninth levels formed the most basic foundation of the Elemental Laws. If someone studied and understood those spells thoroughly, they might just comprehend the so-called Laws.
One thing still baffled Arnold, though. The Earth Element's forbidden spells included "Earth-Rending Rupture," "Meteorite Descent," "Earth Guard," "Pulse Guard," and "Earth Guardian Sacred Armor."
As Arnold understood it, when an Earth Element mage cast Earth Guardian Sacred Armor, the armor covering their body was formed from magical diamond. Its defense was formidable. It was essentially one application of the Earth Element.
Earth Guard was terrifyingly powerful—the strongest single-target attack of an Earth Element Saint Domain Magus. Earth Element magic also had an eighth-level spell called Earth Golem, which could create an "Earth Howling Wolf," a construct made of Earth Element magic. The Earth Howling Wolf and Earth Guard could both be seen as applications of the Earth Element. They were no different in principle from Earth Guardian Sacred Armor; each simply used the element in a different way.
When Earth-Rending Rupture was cast, the ground heaved like ocean waves. Houses collapsed, cracks split the earth, and magma erupted from below, leaving countless dead and injured.
When Meteorite Descent was cast, countless enormous meteors fell from the sky. In the blink of an eye, they could reduce a city to ruins.
Earth-Rending Rupture, Meteorite Descent, and Earth Guard could all be regarded as different applications of the Earth Element. Pulse Guard was another matter.
Pulse Guard was a large-scale forbidden defensive spell. Once cast, it protected a city from above, below, and every side without leaving a single opening. It could even withstand "Thunder Annihilation" cast by a Lightning Element Saint Domain mage. Arnold understood Pulse Guard as a defensive spell that used some special power of the Earth Element. It felt fundamentally different from forbidden spells like Earth Guard, but he couldn't say exactly how.
Then there was the fact that the earth nurtured all things and could embrace everything. Arnold called this aspect Life Force. Yet surely Life Force should fall under Life Magic.
On the surface, elemental magic on the Yulan Continent was divided into seven types: earth, fire, water, wind, light, darkness, and lightning. But the Pope of Light could cast the Fate Law, which clearly belonged to none of them. There were also tales of Necromancy and Life Magic on the Yulan Continent. Arnold was a commoner and knew little more than that, but he suspected those three types of magic were unusual. The fact that they were not widely known suggested they concealed some secret.
Then there was the Gravity Spell, an oddity among Earth Element spells. It had neither a lesser form nor an advanced one. Yet it was clearly related to what Earth called gravity. The Gravity Spell should therefore count as its own distinct branch of the Earth Law.
Arnold summed up the branches of the Earth Law he had deduced: the most fundamental was the Earth Element; he named the branch related to gravity Gravity Law; there was Life Force, which concerned vitality; and he named the branch related to Pulse Guard Pulsation...
That summary left Arnold dumbfounded. All these branches seemed to belong to the Earth Law. Did fully comprehending the Earth Law mean he had to comprehend every single one of them?
And there were surely more branches of the Earth Law that Arnold had yet to identify.
Arnold figured even the branches he had identified were matters for Saint Domain experts to comprehend. He also suspected that a Ninth-level Mage who grasped even a little of a Law could advance to the Saint Domain.
Ordinary people on the Yulan Continent lived to around a hundred and twenty or thirty. Powerful mages and warriors tended to live longer—usually two or three hundred years, sometimes three or four hundred. The longest human lifespan was five hundred years, as Ninth-level Mages demonstrated. Only by reaching the legendary Saint Domain could someone gain an extraordinarily long life, almost without end.
What made Saint Domain experts so special? Arnold suspected it had to do with the Laws. Even their longevity might come from comprehending them.
That thought made Arnold want to complain. The Yulan Continent had two legendary Deity-level figures he knew of: the War God and the High Priest. There was actually another, but he had only heard of those two. Both were said to have lived for thousands of years. Arnold could believe Deity-level experts lived forever. But why would Saint Domain experts, a level below them, also have unlimited lifespans? He guessed that perhaps the Earth Element was particularly abundant on the Yulan Continent, giving rise to the tale of immortal Saint Domain experts. On another continent, somewhere entirely separate from the Yulan Continent, perhaps they lived for only ten thousand or a hundred thousand years.
Of course, Arnold had no way of knowing that Saint Domain experts had unlimited lifespans on every plane.
Having thought it all through, Arnold settled on a path. He would focus his research on the Gravity Spell and use it to reach toward the Laws. As for forbidden spells that pointed toward other branches, perhaps he would comprehend those aspects of the Earth Law once he encountered them.
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