"You still can't draw out your body's full potential, and you can only use shadow power in rudimentary ways. Get used to your strengthened body first. Take it one step at a time. With my help, your future will be limitless."
Having demonstrated its worth, the voice in his heart grew noticeably louder.
"Thanks, old grandpa." Leo smiled, showing his white teeth.
"Don't tell outsiders about my existence. I shouldn't need to say more."
"This is a secret between you and me. I won't tell a third person," Leo said with a chuckle, a strange gleam flickering in his eyes.
"Equivalent exchange is one of the fundamental rules of the wizard world. To gain something, you must pay. Nothing ever comes for free."
"Wizards must not slaughter commoners at will. The vast population of commoners is the foundation of wizards' existence."
"A wizard's strength comes from knowledge. Knowledge is priceless. Master knowledge, and you master power."
Leo had already spent over half a year studying at the Purple Flame Academy. Two elemental wizard classes a day made up for his lack of knowledge and cleared up many things for him.
He had never imagined that one day he would study hard in another world, working ten times harder than he had before his college entrance exams.
At first, Leo had wondered whether he could use the academy's resources to find his family from Earth, but after learning more, he realized the idea was nothing more than a pipe dream.
Leaving aside whether they could have survived Earth being torn apart, even if wizards had successfully rescued them, they would first have had to survive being treated as sacrifices. Even if they were lucky enough not to become sacrifices, there was still no way to know where they were.
Unlike Earth, where everyone had an ID card and information could be searched online, the wizard world had no such system.
The wizard world was ruled by various major powers. They could not even count the number of wizards, let alone ordinary commoners.
Leo had asked several instructors about finding a few ordinary people in the wizard world. All of them said no wizard could do it.
Leo was different from the other students at the Purple Flame Academy. As he understood it, he was a transfer student and a day student rolled into one.
His classes seemed designed more to acquaint him with this world. Everything else involved studying the path of a Body Refinement Wizard under Gru.
Wizard was an umbrella term encompassing two main categories: elemental wizards and Body Refinement Wizards. The Purple Flame Wizard Academy was a standard elemental wizard academy, and all the wizards it trained were elemental wizards.
Gru was a Body Refinement Wizard. The Purple Flame Wizard Academy had hired him only to broaden its students' horizons, not to have them follow the Body Refinement Wizard path.
Precisely because Gru was an outside wizard, he could only be housed on the academy's outskirts rather than in its center.
Among all the students, Leo was the sole exception, because he had already been assigned to the Body Refinement Wizard path. Whether he liked it was irrelevant, even though he was more interested in the mysterious path of elemental wizards.
When Leo returned to Gru's courtyard after class, Gru, who taught very few classes, was already waiting there. Seeing him, Leo tossed the wizard book in his hand onto the ground, then stripped off his wizard robe and threw it down as well. Strangely, the instant the book and robe touched the ground, both sank into the shadow beneath Leo's feet and disappeared.
At the same time, before Gru could act, Leo shifted his feet and vanished on the spot. Not a trace of him remained in the spacious courtyard.
Gru seemed prepared for Leo's disappearance. Laughing heartily, he spread his large hand and suddenly grabbed behind himself.
Like a weary bird returning to its nest, Leo's head landed squarely in Gru's grasp!
Using some unknown method, Leo had crossed dozens of meters from the entrance and emerged from Gru's shadow, only to have his ambush stopped in midair.
Feeling the unmatched strength in the large hand gripping his head, Leo had no way to resist it head-on. Having fought Gru many times, he knew all too well how terrifying he was. The instant Gru caught him, he could drag him out of the shadow and smash him into the ground.
The short blade in his hand slashed upward, hissing as it cut through the air. Leo had no intention of holding back. If he could hack Gru to death, he would never settle for severely wounding him.
Gru's large hand paused slightly. In that fleeting instant, Leo swiftly sank into the shadow and disappeared.
Gru snorted derisively, his nose twitching slightly, then suddenly punched out. Like the roar of a large-caliber howitzer, a fist-shaped blast of air visible to the naked eye hurtled toward the edge of the courtyard.
A small tree stood there, with a patch of shadow beneath it. A head was poking out of that shadow. It was Leo, who had traveled from Gru's shadow to the one beneath the tree, trying to use his shadow ability to put some distance between them.
But the moment Leo's head emerged, a sense of mortal danger made his scalp prickle. Having fought Gru so many times, he knew what had happened. Without even looking, he instantly disappeared into the shadow.
Boom!
The fist-shaped blast of air grazed Leo's scalp. The small tree was instantly pulverized, and even the ground was blasted into a crater half a meter deep.
Had Leo not dodged in time, half his head would have been reduced to ash.
With such power in a casual strike, Gru swept his eyes playfully over the entire courtyard, paying particular attention to every patch of shadow.
At the slightest movement, he raised his hand and unleashed an attack like an artillery shell.
Within a few strikes, the entire courtyard was riddled with devastation, as though it had been carpet-bombed.
"What, can you only dodge? Did half a year of teaching only teach you to run away? That's not how Body Refinement Wizards do things."
"Dodge again, and don't blame me for blasting you out of the shadows."
No sooner had Gru spoken than the house nearby suddenly exploded. Stones and chunks of wood flew into the sky, casting fleeting shadows across the ground.
The crucial point was that there were now more than twenty patches of shadow around Gru!
"Then, as you wish."
From a shadow beside Gru's feet, Leo's hand emerged, clutching a short blade, and slashed at Gru's leg tendons. From the look of it, he seemed intent on severing Gru's leg.
"Weakling."
Gru gave this disdainful assessment of Leo's sudden attack.
Gru raised his foot and kicked toward Leo's hand, a kick guaranteed to shatter it into more than a hundred pieces.
Had Gru been able to see Leo's expression at that moment, he would certainly have seen the smile of someone whose scheme had succeeded.
The instant Gru raised his foot, all twenty patches of shadow around him suddenly erupted. Twenty short blades controlled by shadows sprang out, slashing densely at his entire body.
An instant later, shrill ringing from the blades filled the air around Gru.
"Not bad. You've actually developed your shadow talent far enough to manipulate physical objects."
Faced with the dense barrage of blades, Gru showed no intention of dodging. His body, covered in wizard runes, merely trembled slightly before his aura erupted. Every blade near him was instantly blasted away, and even the shadows controlling them were shattered.
As for Leo, who had only one arm exposed outside the shadow, Gru's erupting aura blasted him out like a radish pulled from the ground.
Leo flew backward dozens of meters and slammed heavily into the courtyard wall. His right hand was twisted at an unnatural angle, broken by Gru's sudden burst of aura.
Just as he tried to move, a large foot planted itself on Leo's chest.
"Gah!"
He spat out a mouthful of blood. With a single stomp, Gru had injured Leo's internal organs.
"In just over half a year, you've reached the standard expected of a wizard apprentice. Although it's only the standard of a low-level wizard apprentice, that's still enough for you to be proud of."
Gru moved his large foot aside and gestured for Leo to get up, thoroughly satisfied with his performance.
"You should have a fairly good understanding of wizard civilization by now. You don't need to study any more elemental wizard knowledge. That would all be a waste of time."
"Your strength has exceeded 40 points, and those slashes you aimed at me just now reached 200 points of attack power. Although you only produced attack power five times your strength, it's passable."
"Your next task is to stabilize your current strength, then inscribe the Gravity Rune Array on your body. Once you've adapted to the change in gravity, you can go out on missions with me," Gru said, pointing at the rune tattoos on his body.
Leo also had rune tattoos, though not as many as Gru. He had only a few simple runes linked together into a small array.
Leo channeled the little mana he had cultivated, and the rune tattoos on his body lit up. His freshly broken right hand and his injured internal organs actually began healing rapidly. In exchange, his aura was rapidly weakening.
This was the first ability Gru had taught Leo: the power to heal.
By treating the body as a wizard artifact and inscribing wizard arrays on it, one could use the mana within the body to activate those arrays and unleash different powers. The cost was a substantial expenditure of stamina and energy, requiring large amounts of energy to replenish afterward. Simply put, that meant eating.
In Gru's words, Leo's body was barely stronger than a chick's. At first, he could only have the Healing Array inscribed on him. Other arrays would have to wait until his body grew stronger.
Gru had also shown Leo the rune arrays on his own body. Although he had not explained their functions, Leo knew from his limited knowledge that Gru had no fewer than ten kinds of arrays inscribed on him.
Body Refinement Wizards were a bunch of lunatics. They took no care of their bodies, constantly using all kinds of methods to push their bodies to the limit.
Activating any array overtaxed the body. Leo did not even dare keep the Healing Array, the weakest kind of array, active for too long.
More than once, Leo had seen Gru drink all kinds of poisons like water. He also maintained fifty times normal gravity year-round to train his strength.
Yes, even while fighting Leo, Gru had still been under fifty times normal gravity.
These freaks, these lunatics, these reckless bastards!
That was Leo's assessment of Body Refinement Wizards: no success without madness. He completely disregarded the fact that he, too, was following this path!
With a light tap of his foot, a shadow tentacle drew his wizard robe out of the shadow beneath him.
Thanks to the bloodline power of the Shadow Power that had permeated his body, Leo's shadow was no longer merely a shadow. It was more like a semisolid life-form, capable of performing simple actions at his command.
Holding the short blades to slash at Gru just now was one such newly acquired ability.
Over more than half a year of training, Leo had also learned a second ability: a stable space could form within his shadow. Like the storage rings in novels, it allowed him to store a certain amount of supplies.
Spatial equipment did exist in the wizard world, but its price was beyond what Leo could afford. Even the short blade in his hand, his only weapon, was merely a low-end item costing 100 wizard coins.