With only 50% of the toxins left in his body, Leo could distinctly feel his flesh beginning to breathe. His body, which had felt heavy for ten years, finally felt relieved of its burden.
"What you call permeation, we call transfer. It can draw away half the toxins in your body and reduce the harm caused by side effects." Benji was utterly speechless at Leo's determination to get to the bottom of things. A madman—that was his assessment of Leo.
But that did not stop him from showing off shadow energy. Easily reducing the damage from side effects by 50% was a lifesaving ability.
"You can dispel the remaining half yourself, or keep absorbing it with shadow power, provided the toxins in your shadow decrease," Benji added as a reminder.
"Reducing the toxins in my shadow couldn't be simpler."
Wearing a harmless smile, Leo looked at Gru, who was lazily basking in the sun in the middle of the courtyard.
Leo separated the shadow from his body again. It collapsed and returned beneath his feet, becoming an ordinary shadow once more, with no visible difference whatsoever.
With a thought from Leo, the shadow beneath his feet twisted and changed shape. A shadow tentacle only as thick as a finger slithered toward Gru like a snake.
There was no fluctuation in aura, no killing intent, and no sound. If someone ambushed him this way, Leo believed he would definitely have no chance to dodge.
This method of attack could be called the pinnacle of assassination. It was hard to imagine anyone being able to evade it.
Just as Leo had thought, Gru, a Level Two Body Refinement Wizard, showed no reaction either. Leo's shadow tentacle easily touched his shadow.
Leo cautiously stole glances at Gru from the corner of his eye, not daring to look directly at him. A Level Two Wizard could pinpoint emotional fluctuations from someone's gaze alone.
Seeing no reaction from Gru, he sent invisible energy from the shadow beneath his feet rushing along the shadow tentacle toward Gru's shadow.
Like floodwater pouring over the land, it flowed with ease.
"49%... 40%... 30%... 25%..."
"???"
Just as Leo was happily transferring toxins into Gru's shadow, Gru raised his head in bewilderment and surveyed his surroundings. His first glance locked onto Leo.
His second fell on the strange shadow tentacle beneath the sunlight.
There was clearly nothing there, yet a shadow lay in the empty courtyard. An anomaly!
"Kid, what are you up to?" Gru asked in puzzlement.
"Teacher Gru, I'm trying out my new ability. I didn't have a test subject, so I thought I'd practice on you." Leo smiled faintly and tapped his toes against the ground. The shadow tentacle swiftly retracted, so fast it was as though he feared Gru would catch it.
"I'm so weak. You won't be angry, will you, Teacher Gru?" Leo asked apologetically.
Looking at the formulaic smile on Leo's face, Gru's expression grew serious. He repeatedly probed with his mental power, but ultimately found nothing unusual.
He had merely sensed something amiss by instinct just now. It could not be called dangerous, but he instinctively rejected it, as though someone had attacked his body hair.
"No, but I'll be giving you special attention in your upcoming training too. I hope you won't mind."
Faced with the ferocious grin Gru forced onto his face, Leo could no longer smile.
Gru was not sure what Leo had done to him, but knowing that Leo had made a move against him was enough. Suspicion alone established guilt.
"Every living being's shadow is unique. It's a reflection of its own body and falls within the domain of shadow energy."
"Damage to a shadow can also be reflected in the body. You just spread half the toxins in your shadow into your teacher's shadow, so his physical body will also be affected by the toxins. Because he doesn't possess shadow power, the toxins won't be transmitted to his body immediately. They'll slowly affect him over time. Perhaps he'll suddenly fall ill one night, or silently die one day."
Benji's smug voice rang out in Leo's mind. Seeing a Level Two Body Refinement Wizard suffer had made him positively cocky.
"Fall ill? I've never seen a poison Teacher Gru fears. He eats poison like meals every day. He doesn't fear poison, only poison that isn't toxic enough."
"Have you forgotten that one of our training methods as Body Refinement Wizards is to use toxicity to stimulate cellular activity and draw out the body's potential?"
"My body only weakened because the toxicity exceeded what I could withstand. Otherwise, I could recover in minutes."
As soon as Leo finished speaking, the Healing Rune Array on his chest lit up. Waves of power from the array washed through his body, and Benji could feel the toxins inside Leo rapidly diminishing.
At 100%, the toxicity far exceeded Leo's healing capacity. But once it fell within what he could withstand, his recovery speed surpassed imagination.
Yet when only 20% of the toxins remained in his body, Leo stopped the Healing Rune Array.
"Leaving a little puts it just within my tolerance. I can use this 20% to stimulate cellular growth and save quite a bit of money. From now on, I'll store toxins in my shadow and maintain a balance of toxicity inside my body to stimulate my cells as quickly as possible."
As Leo spoke, his eyes lit up. He took out his experimental notebook and actually listed a series of plans. He wanted to find the optimal toxin concentration and maximize cellular stimulation.
Benji fell silent. These people were a bunch of freaks. They could clearly eliminate it all quickly, yet they insisted on enduring the pain and even using themselves as experimental subjects.
Leo felt the energy in his flesh rapidly recovering. Like parched earth receiving welcome rain, every muscle ravenously absorbed the energy in the air.
After being held back by mixed toxins for ten years, his powerful physical foundation awakened the moment they were removed!
His aura rose and his muscles tightened. Leo estimated that he would recover to his level from ten years ago within a month, then reach his physical peak within two months.
The physical peak that had lain dormant for ten years!
He did not know how strong he would be, but a Body Refinement Wizard Apprentice's peak stamina was 50 points, and he could reach that easily.
But this was only the beginning. The difficulties lay ahead.
The difficult part was repeatedly training and tempering himself to unleash combat power several times, or even ten times, his stamina.
This was what made wizards terrifying. They did not pursue the pinnacle of base stats, but rather how many times their base stats they could consistently unleash as combat power.
According to Benji, his world had no such method of advancement at all. Generally, once people felt their bodies had reached their peak, they entered seclusion to pursue advancement rather than greater combat power.
At the same level, a wizard from the Wizard World could beat dozens of them effortlessly.
Leo merely smiled without speaking, because Benji had missed the most fundamental issue. How many times their attack power they could unleash was only the surface. The essential factor was a wizard's research and understanding of the unknown.
Only after completing an entirely new research subject on the unknown and absorbing new knowledge could a wizard unleash several or even dozens of times their combat power. Advancement was merely a byproduct.
The mysteries of the unknown lay within!
Leo quietly made his calculations. Further development of his shadow ability had given it the capacity to transmit energy. Although he still did not know the principle behind it, the greatest directly observable benefit was reducing the side effects on his body by 50%, while also allowing him to attack enemies.
These side effects were not limited to toxins. They could include other things too.
Wizards' methods could be described as endlessly varied. Beyond that, throughout the myriad worlds and countless planes, methods of attack were too numerous to count. The shadow's ability to reduce side effects by 50% could be said to have given Leo a modest initial means of preserving his life.
Transmitting 25% of the toxins through shadow power just now had seemingly had no effect on Gru because the gap between their levels of life was too great.
A Level Two Body Refinement Wizard was not someone ordinary toxins could affect.
But to some ordinary living beings, these toxins were a deadly threat!
This method undoubtedly gave Leo another type of attack, adding a little flexibility to his limited offense!
"Interesting. If I can figure out the principle behind this, could I pioneer a new attack sequence?"
As his body recovered, Leo's mind did not stop either. Merely developing shadow power further had prompted an association. He had only just stopped writing in his experimental notebook when he immediately began writing something else.
"Benji, does your world have better ways of using shadow power? For example, attaching dozens or hundreds of attack methods to a shadow?"
"Yes, but nothing as exaggerated as what you're imagining. Usually there are only a few, and they're all innate abilities that can't be changed afterward."
Although Benji was only a strand of consciousness, he felt a chill throughout his entire body at that moment. He suspected that Leo was researching something very dangerous, something that could shatter his worldview.
"As long as they exist."
Leo smiled again. As he smiled, a contemptuous look appeared in his eyes, and he muttered in a voice only he could hear, "Heh. Innate abilities? Can't be changed afterward? What a joke. It's nothing more than a crude use of abilities."
Three months passed in a flash. After ten years, Leo's body finally returned to its peak. This unprecedented sense of power gave him the inexplicable confidence that he was the strongest under heaven.
Of course, Leo knew perfectly well that this was merely an illusion caused by not yet having complete control over his strength. Once he fully mastered it, he would no longer have such presumptuous thoughts. A rookie was still a rookie.
"Good, good. Strength: 50 points. Stamina: 40. Mental power: 38. Your strength has already reached the peak for a wizard apprentice. Your stamina is a little low, but it'll soon reach 50 points too."
"Before you break through to become a Level One Formal Wizard, your strength won't increase. Next, you need to learn to control it."
"Punch me with everything you have."
Boom!
At Gru's request, Leo mercilessly squeezed out every last bit of strength in his body and slammed his fist into Gru with a sharp rush of air.
But it felt like hitting a steel plate. Gru did not move, while faint sounds of cracking bone came from Leo's fist.
Pain. Three tiny fractures.
Fortunately, after one activation of the Healing Rune Array, the pain across his knuckles eased considerably, and his finger bones rapidly healed.
"Only 250 points of attack power. In other words, you can only leverage five times your strength stat as attack power. Nothing has changed from ten years ago. You actually haven't improved at all in ten years," Gru said disdainfully.
At 250 points, his attack power appeared to be 50 points higher than the 200 he had possessed ten years earlier. In reality, however, those 50 points came from the increase in his strength stat, not an improvement in Leo's abilities.
Ten years ago, he could leverage five times his attack power, and now it was still five times. There had been no growth whatsoever. It was entirely due to his body's passive growth.
"All right. We'll make up for the time you wasted now. Prepare yourself. I won't go easy on you anymore."
Leo looked up at Gru's cruel smile and felt something very familiar returning.
Thump! Before Leo felt anything, Gru struck his stomach with one palm, directly over the Gravity Rune Array. Before Leo could speak, his entire body felt as though sandbags weighing over a hundred kilograms had been placed on it all at once.
Before Leo could react, Gru instantly activated the Gravity Rune Array on his body.
As soon as the Gravity Rune Array activated, Leo felt as though he had become a little shorter. His fairly robust body shrank considerably. He had not lost weight; gravity was compressing him, pressing his muscles and fat tightly against his bones.
"Kid, now punch me with all your strength." Gru crooked a finger at Leo.
Leo took deep, gulping breaths. The Gravity Rune Array subjected his body to comprehensive gravitational pressure, affecting not only the surface of his flesh but also his fragile internal organs.
Beyond that, even Leo's mind felt muddled. The gravitational pressure was acting on his brain too.
This left his normally agile mind dizzy. Leo felt that his IQ had dropped by more than a few dozen points, turning him from a clever person into an ordinary one.
Thump.
His feeble punch landed on Gru's chest. Leo felt that he had not even disturbed Gru's body hair.
"Too weak. That wasn't even as loud as my fart. Only 160 attack power." Gru showed his disdain again. With a light flick of one finger, he sent Leo flying several meters.
"Kid, I just activated triple gravity for you. From now on, you'll need to adapt to this pressure."
"According to the training plan, you'll spend one-fifth of every day sparring with me, one-fifth training on your own, one-fifth absorbing mana to temper your body, and one-fifth meditating. The remaining fifth is for sleep and rest."
"Treasure your rest time. Back when I was an apprentice, I went without sleep every day."
"Oh, right. You studied potion-making with Gavarci, so you should be able to brew poisons yourself. Find a little time to brew potions that stimulate cellular activity. As for wizard coins, I imagine you aren't short of those."
"That's the current training plan. If you keep it up for two years, you should be able to adapt to the present change in gravity. Once the additional gravity is removed, you'll be able to unleash combat power beyond your normal limits, enough to reach 300 points."
"Three hundred points of attack power is above average among wizard apprentices. With your shadow talent as well, you'll be able to protect yourself."
Without giving Leo any chance to speak, Gru single-handedly decided his fate.
Leo did not resist, because he was at a stage where he needed a good teacher's guidance. All of this was more than he could have asked for.
In fact, Leo did not think Gru's training plan was difficult at all. Rather, he felt that Gru was going somewhat easy on him.
Should I add a little more myself? Leo wondered privately.