The Graveyard Upgrades (2)

Green woke feeling better than ever, as though his mental strength had undergone an indescribable transformation.

Has my mental strength reached the threshold of Formal Rank? Green wondered. He had no experience with this, nor a teacher to guide him, so he could only explore and judge by his own condition. That made the Graveyard's status panel especially important: at the very least, it could confirm his current state.

Green quickly focused his mind and entered the Graveyard.

The Graveyard had changed little, apart from the Town Hall growing grander after its upgrade to [lv3] and gaining two tall towers, one on either side.

Green hurried to check the status panel:

Host: Xu Mu (Green Wilson)

Class: Undead Necromancer

Level: Junior Formal (???)

...

Green's eyes lit up at the level. The Graveyard had assessed his strength as that of a Junior Formal Mage. The string of question marks in parentheses was not hard to understand, either. Under this world's system of Transcendent professions, advancement from apprentice to Formal Rank was never achieved in a single leap, whatever the profession. It took a long period of accumulation. During that time, one had to hone oneself constantly and rely on external aids. A mage, for example, needed a Mage Tower and had to use the soul as a bridge to bind themselves to it. As a second body, the Mage Tower could aid a mage in training and battle. It also served as an external reservoir of Magic Power, giving the mage more power to draw upon.

That was a major reason for the vast gap between a Magic Apprentice and a Formal Mage. With a Mage Tower's aid, a Formal Mage possessed a mighty, boundless reserve of Magic Power. A Junior Formal Mage often had ten times, or