Once again buried in the library, Leo was deeply grateful for his nine years of compulsory education and four years of undergraduate study. Although they had not made him a great scientist on Earth, they had taught him the most fundamental learning skills and a basic framework of knowledge.
This allowed him to quickly absorb the foundational education of elemental wizards. In Samatchi's words, this kind of universal education had enormous advantages: it could save a great deal of time when people first received foundational knowledge and cultivate a great many talented people.
But it was not suitable for development in the Wizard World, because the prerequisite for becoming a wizard was not basic education, but mental power.
After all, only a minority possessed enough mental power to become wizards. The wizards hoped the remaining ordinary people would live out their lives peacefully, rather than become like those in many worlds they had seen, where the more people knew, the greater the trouble they caused.
No wizard wanted to deal with the tiresome trouble commoners stirred up.
So rather than implement universal education, it was better to first screen for qualified people and then teach them together. That was the reason the various academies existed.
Ever since Leo had understood the basic operating principles of elemental wizards, he had grown fond of the feeling. Viewed through numbers and calculations—in short, mathematics—everything in the world was so clear.
With a quantified framework of knowledge, Leo could gain more and learn more quickly and conveniently.
Mathematics truly deserved its place as a foundational science, the foundation of every discipline!
Leo now also understood why wizards quantified attack power numerically. The first person to do so had definitely been an elemental wizard. Body refinement wizards could not have done something so meticulous.
A body refinement wizard's attack power came from the physical body, from strength, while an elemental wizard's attack power came from mental power. Although Leo had never systematically cultivated his mental power, the stimulation from his body had brought it to the wizard apprentice limit of 50 points.
Just as with body refinement wizards, reaching that numerical limit was easy, but how much attack power one could unleash depended entirely on one's understanding and modification of witchcraft.
Leo had tested it. Casting spells exactly as recorded in wizard books posed no problems, but their attack power was weaker than what he could unleash through body refinement.
200 points of attack power.
The simple spells Leo could currently cast only produced 200 points of attack power.
That was four times his 50 points of mental power. In other words, on the elemental wizard side, Leo could only unleash a fourfold attack multiplier.
Compared to the tenfold attack multiplier of peak wizard apprentices, and Ice Woman Alice's clearly greater-than-tenfold multiplier, Leo's fourfold multiplier seemed as weak as an ant.
How much attack power could Leo unleash through body refinement? 400 points—a full twofold difference!
Only after stepping through the doorway of elemental wizardry did he realize that cultivating it was even harder than body refinement wizardry.
Leo now also understood why elemental wizards looked down on body refinement wizards. In their eyes, body refinement wizards really did not amount to much!
Even though body refinement wizards intimidated countless worlds, elemental wizards still thought nothing of them!
At the same time, Leo discovered another wizard path within the wizard systems: the elemental body refinement wizard!
This wizard path was very simple. Cultivating both the body refinement and elemental wizard systems simultaneously made one an elemental body refinement wizard!
Elemental body refinement wizards were far stronger than other wizards, but the difficulty and time involved in cultivating were also far more demanding!
In webnovel terms, only those with immense perseverance and immense luck could succeed!
It was not actually that difficult. The difficult part was establishing the theoretical foundation connecting body refinement and the elements.
The wizards of earlier generations had long since analyzed the elemental body refinement wizard system thoroughly. If the body refinement and elemental systems an elemental body refinement wizard cultivated were completely isolated from each other, success was absolutely impossible.
The best cultivation method was for body refinement and the elements to reinforce and merge with each other. Cultivating this way not only reduced the time required, but also greatly increased strength by stacking the systems.
It was a wizard system that surpassed any single system!
The hardest part of cultivating as an elemental body refinement wizard was establishing the theoretical foundation for cultivation and determining the direction of future development. Without a solid foundation, there would be no future.
"Brother Leo, do you want to try the elemental body refinement wizard path too?" Samatchi asked curiously after seeing Leo read books about elemental body refinement wizards for several days in a row.
"I'll pass on cultivating it. I know my own circumstances. I'll be doing well enough if I can cultivate one side properly." Reluctantly, Leo returned the wizard book to its place.
It was like having a peerless secret manual right before his eyes without any way to cultivate it. It really was a pity.
Whether one was an elemental wizard or a body refinement wizard, wizard cultivation consumed enormous amounts of time and resources. Otherwise, wizards would not have been so enthusiastic about conquering myriad worlds. Did anyone really think they had nothing better to do?
It was all for resources.
As an Earthling with no foundation here, Leo would be doing very well just to support cultivation on one side. Cultivating both the elements and body refinement was something he could simply dream about.
It was not as though he were the protagonist of this book!
"That's fine too. Every wizard apprentice who learns about elemental body refinement wizards imagines succeeding in cultivation and intimidating myriad worlds. But so far, I haven't heard of a single wizard around me who has succeeded. Of course, that's related to my low level. With how vast the Wizard World is and how many geniuses it has, there must be plenty who have succeeded."
"Ordinary elemental peak wizard apprentices can unleash attacks at ten times their mental power, but I've heard that elemental body refinement wizards can unleash at least 120% of their combat power. It's terrifying," Samatchi said with a sigh.
He too had once dreamed of becoming an elemental body refinement wizard, imagining himself spreading the glory of wizards across countless worlds. In reality, however, he had not even managed to break through to become a level one elemental wizard.
"Enough about that. How is your experiment progressing?" Samatchi changed the subject and asked Leo.
"I'm currently working on laying out the theoretical foundation and dissecting experimental subjects."
"I've already dissected 17 species of poisonous creatures, performing 253 dissections in total. I've gained a preliminary understanding of the structure and location of poison glands, but I'm still analyzing how they form."
Leo reached out, and an experimental notebook appeared in his hand from the shadow space. It was densely filled with the results of his experiments over the past three months, including experimental data and diagrams of the experimental procedures.
This was Leo's first substantive experiment, born from an explosive collision of knowledge and ideas. Its objective was to modify his own body with toxins.
As a body refinement wizard apprentice, taking toxins to stimulate his cells was one of Leo's most basic daily routines. All body refinement wizards did this.
Leo had originally wanted to follow Gru's training method: ingesting large amounts of toxins to stimulate his cells and increase his body's vitality, continually increasing his cells' vitality through accumulation over time.
Wizards lived very long lives. Although the improvement from toxin stimulation seemed small, over a long period, the increase in strength was still very substantial.
Leo had already learned the most basic pharmacological knowledge from Gavarci, so concocting poisons for himself posed absolutely no problem.
But after learning about the elemental wizard system from Samatchi, Leo suddenly had a new idea.
Why could he not add an organ to his body that produced toxins, like those of venomous snakes, toads, and scorpions?
There were countless poisonous creatures in nature. Why could he not be poisonous himself?
If he could achieve that, why would he need to take any poisons? Would it not be better to produce them automatically every day?
Doing things like Gru required not only large quantities of wizard coins to purchase toxins, but also analysis of the toxin composition most suitable for his body. It took time and effort, and every increase in level required a great deal of time to reformulate the toxins.
But once his body had an organ that could automatically produce toxins, all of that could be skipped!
It would not only save time and effort, but also improve along with his level, stimulating his cells at every moment. It would be like adding a permanent passive enhancement skill to his body, far more effective than taking toxin potions!
Whether in terms of economic benefit, increased strength, or cost savings, this idea held advantages that were hard to rival!
Once the idea arose, it could not be suppressed. Leo also thought the idea of adding an organ to his body was absurd, but plenty of wizards modified themselves, so what was absurd about adding an organ?
Leo had a laboratory: a portable miniature laboratory he had purchased from Skye at the Purple Golden Flower Store. It was entirely sufficient for dissecting ordinary poisonous creatures.
So the moment the idea took shape, Leo purchased large numbers of poisonous creatures from an old commoner hunter.
He dissected them to study how they produced venom, hoping to develop a poison gland organ himself in the same way.
"I have to acknowledge your excellence. The hardest thing for an elemental wizard is keeping one's thinking free of constraints. I can't help you much with an experiment on a new organ, but I can offer an idea for your consideration," Samatchi said.
"City Lord Samatchi, please go ahead." Leo was extremely respectful. He was willing to bow his head before any idea that could help his experiment.
"Although our bodies aren't quite the same, both have detoxification systems. Rather than creating a new organ, why not modify an organ your body already has?"
"If that's possible, wouldn't your experiment become much less difficult?" Samatchi said softly.
Leo's eyes instantly went unfocused, and he clutched his experimental notebook so tightly that he could not let go.
Samatchi's casually spoken words exploded in his mind like a bolt from the blue.
That's right. Why am I so fixated on creating a new poison gland? Why can't I modify an existing organ?
In the human body, the liver, kidneys, intestinal tract, respiratory system, and skin all have detoxification capabilities. Could I modify them, changing detoxification into carrying toxins?
Blood circulates throughout the body, so why can't it circulate toxins? If it could, wouldn't that be more convenient?
His brain worked so furiously that Leo did not notice when Samatchi left.
Samatchi was right. An experiment involving a new organ really was very difficult for Leo at present.
It seemed to be merely the creation of a new organ, but ensuring stability between that new organ and every system in his body was more complex than Leo had imagined. Even though his brain's processing speed could rival a computer's, calculating the changes to his body after adding an organ was still difficult!