Necromancer, What the Hell Is Summoning a 055? Part 19

This was what a mage tower truly rooted in the heartland of a great nation looked like! Compared with the gloomy, obscure Black Raven Castle where Chen Mo had briefly stayed, the difference was like heaven and earth.

Chapter 29: Apprentice Chen's Career Plan

Chen Mo never even got close to the castle's towering silhouette. Still more than a kilometer away, he found his path blocked by a neatly maintained high wall glowing faintly with magic.

This was the first gatehouse of the Radiance Mage Tower.

After Chen Mo respectfully explained why he had come, the middle-aged gatekeeper looked him up and down. His gaze paused briefly on Little White behind him, and he let out an almost inaudible snort, a trace of condescending pity on his face:

"Kid, didn't your teachers ever tell you? Mage towers traditionally take apprentices in the spring. That's when everything comes back to life, vitality flourishes, and the magic elements respond most clearly. You can't just show up whenever you please."

"This year's apprenticeship ceremony ended long ago. Find out the dates and come back next year!"

Before he had even finished speaking, and without giving Chen Mo a chance to ask questions or explain, the heavy gate creaked shut mercilessly in his face.

"Is that really a rule?"

Josie scratched his mop of messy hair, looking utterly bewildered. "I don't know! I never went to school. I learned all my martial skills from my dad and uncles at home. I really don't know anything about what those mage lords do."

Little John was a little sharper than Josie. He craned his neck and peered around the entrance for a while before offering a guess. "Could it be that he didn't like your skeleton, sir?"

"Take me, for example. I carry a bow around even though I haven't officially changed classes, so an archery instructor would give me a bit of consideration. But if I went to a high-level warrior, there's no way he'd be friendly!"

His eyes darted around, and he leaned closer, making a suggestion with a touch of youthful sneakiness. "How about... once it's completely dark, we have Josie climb over the wall and scout things out inside? He's nimble..."

Chen Mo's face darkened. He shot Little John an annoyed glare and turned to leave.

"Climb a wall beneath a mage tower? If you want to get yourself killed, leave me out of it!"

Setting aside Little John's rotten idea, Chen Mo thought he might have had a point.

The name "Radiance Mage Tower" made it clear that its master was an arcane master of the holy light school.

Before reaching level three, low-level mages all underwent the same kind of basic training, and their professional schools generally weren't strictly distinguished. Their career paths were usually only formally chosen when they changed classes at tier four.

Still, with someone from the holy light school in charge, it seemed understandable that the Radiance Tower's gatekeeper would dislike a "prospect" like Chen Mo, who openly had an undead skeleton following him around.

If he wasn't welcome here, he could just try somewhere else.

On the way to the next mage tower, Chen Mo learned his lesson and made a point of leaving Skeleton Xiaobai in the carriage.

Unfortunately, the second and third mage towers both flatly rejected Chen Mo's request, using the same reason: come back early next year.

Chen Mo tried a silver-bullet offensive.

But he had barely begun to broach the subject, before he could even pull the money pouch from his robes, when the gatekeeper's expression changed drastically. With a loud bang, the gate was practically slammed shut, driving the "Preparatory Apprentice" straight out.

Chen Mo was numb.

Wait? The so-called spring enrollment season was still half a year away. What would it mean for him to waste half a year just like that?

At Black Raven Castle, because Archmage Black Crow was a true necromancer, Chen Mo had been able to study a relatively complete body of basic necromancy knowledge. After successfully performing Bloodline Sacrifice, he had settled on his career plan and direction of development early on.

He wanted to become an Undead Summoning mage who took a different path.

A necromancer's combat strength came from the level of undead creatures they could summon, and that was usually limited by two things. First, what did the lord on the other side have, and was the lord willing to send it for you to use? Second, was your mental power strong enough to bear the overload of a powerful creature?

It was like getting into trouble and asking your connections to solve the problem. Whether you called on a neighborhood auntie, a township head, a county official, or a high-ranking prefectural official, the price you had to pay would naturally be completely different.

Connections, ability, and resources were all indispensable.

Applied to undead summoning, connections corresponded to true-name spells and marking spells-who could you find a way to contact?

Personal ability corresponded to a mage's level and maximum mental power-how much "official pressure" could you bear?

Resources and assets corresponded to the value of the sacrifice-how high a price could you afford?

Without the corresponding means, you simply couldn't get anyone to come. If you forced them over, you wouldn't be able to bear the consequences.

In particular, during altar transportation, the summoner presiding over the altar had to bear the overload imposed on whatever was being transported. Whoever summoned it was responsible for it.

Why couldn't elementary mages at the Stardust or Moon Wheel level summon high-level undead like black warriors or black knights, even if they sold everything they owned to scrape together a sacrifice? Because in a summoning that crossed space and time, the mental burden on the summoner was enough to make their heads explode like watermelons.

To give a simple example, on Blue Star, the faster a vehicle accelerated, the greater the overload its passengers experienced.

Ordinary car acceleration could be endured by elderly people; high-speed race car acceleration required a strong body; supersonic fighter acceleration required a rigorously trained professional pilot, one in ten thousand; and as for a rocket blasting out of the atmosphere... that required an astronaut, one in a hundred thousand, wearing a specially made anti-g suit!

Spacetime transportation, on the other hand, was equivalent to crossing who knew how many galaxies in an instant. Even with the altar's protective mechanisms, the load still far exceeded the limits a living body could withstand.

Why was undead summoning the easiest of all summoning disciplines, allowing necromancers to become so widespread? Because undead creatures had no vital signs. All one had to do was protect that little soul flame.

Put a skeleton on a launch rocket, and no matter how quickly it accelerated, you wouldn't have to worry about its heart stopping or its internal organs rupturing.

Of course, as an undead creature's soul energy increased, the summoning burden of protecting its soul flame also grew heavier. If the mental strain of summoning a skeleton was like a small hammer tapping your skull, summoning a bone dragon was like taking a hundred-ton truck to the face.

But Chen Mo's summoning was a special case.

First of all, the supreme leader on the other side of the summoning altar was, you could say-his mom! And she was the kind of mother who absolutely doted on her only son! It was like the underworld lord's precious only son had come to a third-party plane to experience life.

When he "summoned" something, there was basically no question of whether she agreed or was willing. As long as they had it on the other side and he needed it, she would make absolutely sure it was arranged for him!

Second, Eastern Xia was a technological and industrial empire. It had never relied on the strength of individuals, but on cold technological creations.

Technological creations could basically ignore the tremendous overload of crossing space.

Thus, Chen Mo's core advantage was completely different from that of other hard-pressed necromancers. His only bottleneck lay in the transfer efficiency of the Bloodline Summoning Altar when activated:

How many times could he activate the altar per unit of time?

How much material could the altar transfer each time?

Those two figures directly determined how quickly he could get the snowball rolling!

At his current meager level of mental power as a Preparatory Apprentice, it took nearly a month to perform Bloodline Sacrifice once, and he could transfer only a tiny amount of weight each time. It would take half a year just to piece together a heavy machine gun.

If he received good instruction and training during those six months, he might have a tank rolling out by then.

Round it up, and the difference was a hundred million!

So Chen Mo had carefully planned things out and set himself two core goals that he had to achieve at all costs at his current stage:

First, find a mage tower! Obtain a suitable training environment and magic materials, and combine them with a meditation method to increase the strength of his mental power as quickly as possible.

Second, learn a spell skill of particular importance to him-Psionic Diversion.

Chapter 30: Preparing for Another Sacrifice

Psionic Diversion, also called the Diversion Spell, was not a particularly high-level skill. Along with the Glimmer Spell, Fireball Spell, and Ice Arrow Spell, it was known as one of the four basic introductory skills for magic classes.

These skills represented the most basic roles a magic-class adventurer could perform in a party: providing light, starting fires, making ice that could be melted into drinking water, and using Psionic Diversion to break magic skills into smaller parts and use them in a weakened form.

Its core effect was to weaken a powerful spell normally cast all at once into an ordinary spell that could be split up and used in parts.

For example, an advanced apprentice might normally be able to summon a skeleton army only once a month, summoning fourteen skeletons each time. But after learning Psionic Diversion, the apprentice could adjust that to once a week, summoning three skeletons each time.

That was roughly the idea.

Although this kind of diversion reduced the total spell effect to some extent, the greatly increased flexibility made it a basic skill that magic classes had to learn.

The more proficient one became at Psionic Diversion, the more frequently one could split a spell, and the smaller the loss from diversion. For someone in Chen Mo's unusual circumstances, Psionic Diversion was nothing less than a divine skill.

Therefore, he had to find a mage tower and complete the basic studies of his "magic kindergarten" stage!

There was a reason the old mercenary Luke had recommended those three mage towers to him. All three were on the western bank of the North Foothills River, in the area near Clear Marsh City, which was traditionally part of the Roosting Moon Language region.

At the height of the Moonrest Dynasty's power, its territory had stretched across the Dark Forest. Seventy percent of the Creek Moon Federation's territory had belonged to the Moonrest Dynasty. You could tell from the names alone: Moonrest and Creek Moon were almost descended from the same lineage.

Later, as the Moonrest Dynasty was beset by internal strife and the turmoil of war, it lost all its territory on the southern continent. The lands of Creek Moon also split into more than a dozen tribes, which only came together as a loose federation through a twist of fate more than two hundred years ago.

There were many descendants of Moonrest in the region west of the North Foothills River, so, like the Mirror Lake Kingdom and Emerald Duchy across the Dark Forest, it commonly used the Roosting Moon Language-the one Chen Mo had managed to get a rudimentary grasp of.

If he looked for another mage tower, who knew what language they spoke? He would have to tackle the language barrier all over again and pass "CET-4 and CET-6" once more. That would be far too painful.

Besides, crossing the river was no guarantee he would be accepted.

Now that things had come to this, Chen Mo thought it over and decided to forget it for the moment. He would recuperate first and get himself back into peak condition.

The mental power damage caused by his last Bloodline Sacrifice had nearly healed. He felt that in another two or three days, he would be able to perform the next Bloodline Sacrifice. He would put the mage towers aside for now and write home to report how he had been doing.

All this time, he didn't know whether the elders at home had been tossing and turning, unable to sleep through the night.

Over the next two days or so, Chen Mo worked on getting his body and mind back in shape while taking the two youngsters to nearby market towns to purchase a dazzling assortment of strange and novel items.

Hyaenodon teeth and Long Sky Mountain ore; Snow-Kissed Flower buds and Sword-Retaining Tree leaves;

Moonlight Forest moss and big-headed insect specimens; Gale Fox tails and giant Great Wild Grass roots;

As well as some local handicrafts, specialty snacks, metal fragments, unidentified materials...

All told, they filled two large bags. Because the items were so small and varied, they weighed less than five kilograms in total. The altar could easily hold and send them.

At the very top of the packages, he placed a portion of the Heart of the Magic Tree taken from the Dark Demon Tree, along with the pill Commandery Princess Liushuang had given him.

Judging by Captain Peiwen's reaction, the pill was probably a pretty good life-saving item. But this was already his second summoning, and if he still didn't send anything presentable home, Chen Mo felt he would be too embarrassed to face them.

A child away from home had decided to send the most valuable things he had back to his mom and pretend he was doing well for himself!

For the summoning site, he chose an inn in town that was said to have powerful backing.

He booked a guest room in a corner, then booked the room next door for the two youngsters. After paying a sufficient deposit and getting enough food, Chen Mo gave them solemn instructions:

"I'm going into seclusion for a while. It might be a day or two, or it could be three, five, seven, or nine days. During that time, take turns standing guard around the clock. Triple commission."

"Remember, until I come out, don't let anyone enter my room."

Little Josie and Little John nodded their heads like they were pounding garlic.

Mercenaries who roamed the streets might not be mature in character, but there was absolutely no question of them not knowing how to behave.

Mercenaries who really didn't know better would quickly be weeded out by the cruel laws of nature.

The fact that this lone prospective necromancer Preparatory Apprentice had killed several mercenaries, including a ranked swordsman and archer, was so shocking that the old hands at the Hedgehog Tavern had already asked around thoroughly about it back in White Stone City.

Chen Mo's single-handed confrontation with the Mountain Vine Squad was no secret that could be kept hidden. The driver might have been so frightened that he had wet himself at the time, but once he returned to the city, it made a fine story to brag about.

He hadn't seen what happened, but he had personally cleaned up the scene afterward.

The driver swore up and down, spittle flying. "There wasn't a decent piece of flesh left on any of the four! Bloody, far too bloody!"

And so the rumors around town grew more and more outrageous. The skeleton Chen Mo brought with him could not possibly be an ordinary one. It had to be either a golden skeleton from ancient legend or a deep blue level-seven skeleton addicted to killing.

Josie didn't believe any of it. He had even tripped Little White once.