Preparing to Act

Green smiled. He had never felt better. With a thought, he activated the Eye of Spirit Sight, and numerous rifts connecting reality to the Spirit World appeared before him. At the same time, he cast Enter the Spirit World. It was his first time using the spell, and he was clumsy with it. First, he slowly formed four rotating circular Spell Circles. Then he began to turn his body ethereal, until he stood there as a translucent shadow.

That process alone took twenty seconds. Even though Green had successfully cast the spell, such a slow casting speed was useless in combat, let alone capable of producing an effect like Shadow Flash.

Once his body was fully ethereal, Green picked out a rift leading to the Spirit World. He sprang forward, about to plunge into it.

Just then, the Spell Circles faltered. It was as if someone had hit the brakes: the outermost ring caught, and the magic that had been running fairly smoothly came to an abrupt halt.

Green could not maintain his ethereal state for an instant longer. He returned to normal as a stabbing pain struck his head. His body swayed, and he nearly fell to the ground.

He grunted. A surge of agony made him clutch his head, but he gritted his teeth and refused to cry out.

More than ten seconds passed before the pain subsided. Green shook his head helplessly. "Looks like Enter the Spirit World at [lv1] is hard to use reliably. The slightest disruption makes the spell fail. Just now, all I did was start moving after turning ethereal to enter the Spirit World. That barely disturbed the Spell Circles, but it was enough to make the spell fail. The casting time is far too long, too. Even if it hadn't failed, it