Necromancer, What the Hell Is That 055 You Summoned?

It was like taking the same difficult test over and over. The first time, you gained a great deal. The second time, all it did was reinforce what you had learned a little. By the third and fourth attempts, there was hardly anything left to gain except a pounding head.

That was how the diminishing returns of meditation worked. If the first two-hour session of the day increased your mental power by around 0.02, the second might have only a tenth of that effect, and the next would drop to less than one percent.

The strain was just as severe, not to mention the astronomical cost of the additional cultivation materials.

But Chen Mo didn't care. Right now, he wanted to "grind practice problems"!

By the time his first meditation session ended, his tactical watch read 7:05.

He spent five minutes constructing the Glimmer Spell's spell model in advance, then closed his eyes and rested for ten minutes. Instructor Morton arrived and began the day's lessons on basic knowledge and spell model analysis.

Starting at 8:20, the other students began entering the cultivation room to meditate, and Chen Mo began his second meditation session of the day.

Two hours later, his head was ready to explode. When he came out, his temples were throbbing.

After 10:30, Morton held a question-and-answer session. Chen Mo chose to return to the dormitory and rest his mind instead. He couldn't understand the questions those veteran apprentices asked anyway.

He woke to his alarm at eleven and dashed back into the cultivation room. This time he opted for a short meditation, cultivating for only forty minutes. It was like moving his brain from a pot of red broth to a pot of clear broth: it was still being boiled, but not quite so spicily.

He entered the dining hall before noon, a little late for the meal. But with the power of money, Student Chen Mo had Kato set aside a lunch for him. It didn't matter if it was cold, as long as he could eat it.

After eating, he rested briefly and constructed a spell model, then entered the cultivation room again at one.

It was another long, two-hour meditation.

Then came a fifth session of one hour, a sixth of half an hour, and a final, seventh session of two hours. He returned to the dormitory to rest, limp all over.

Again and again, Chen Mo followed his dull, tedious four-stop circuit. Dormitory, dining hall, schoolhouse, cultivation room-one circuit after another, back and forth every day, as though it were a loop he could never escape.

He gradually became an unusual sight throughout the Glimmer group.

Always the first to arrive and the last to leave.

He ate as though snatching food and practically sprinted wherever he went.

In the large water bottle he carried everywhere, he brewed mind-nourishing tea so strong it tasted bitter.

When he left in the morning, his backpack bulged with magical materials. When he returned late at night, it was empty, and all that remained was an utterly exhausted body.

He took no part in the apprentices' meals, entertainment, or idle chatter, and would not say even one extra word.

It was as if Chen Mo had been thrown back onto the battlefield of a charge called "the final year of high school in Eastern Xia," with nothing left in the world but the bright red digits of a countdown and cultivation that never stopped.

Come rain or shine, he continued without a day's rest.

Faced with Chen Mo's silence, all the students who had hoped to laugh at him fell into a profound silence of their own.

Chapter 47: The Long-Overdue Basics

Chen Mo came to Instructor Morton once again to buy magical materials.

His instructor seemed less and less inclined to talk, and the looks he gave Chen Mo grew increasingly strange. The undisguised dislike from before had become a blend of many complicated emotions.

The kind even a microexpression analyzer couldn't decipher.

It wasn't just the instructor, either. His classmates all seemed the same. When they saw him, it was as if they were looking at a black knight, their eyes full of curiosity and awe.

Morton led Chen Mo to the small storeroom where the potions were kept. The room was dark, with no natural light, and the air carried a mixture of herbs and some kind of fur. It wasn't unpleasant; on the contrary, it was refreshing.

Chen Mo took the magical materials Morton had wrapped up, stuffed them into his backpack, paid, and thanked him. He turned to leave, but Morton spoke up and stopped him.

The middle-aged instructor's expression was complicated. "Why haven't you come to a single one of the daily question-and-answer sessions?"

"I can't understand them!" Chen Mo answered sincerely. "Everything I know about the basics of spells came from what you taught me on the first day, so I can't understand the questions they ask at all."

Morton's brow furrowed even more deeply. "Where did you study magic before? For how long?"

Chen Mo scratched his head. "At... at a necromancer's castle. For... a little over two months, I think."

After a pause, he added, "I only learned basic meditation and altar summoning. I don't know anything else."

"Bastards! Those cult wizards are leading students astray!" Morton suddenly grew agitated and slammed his hand down on the table, an unnatural flush spreading across his face.

It seemed the instructor had recalled some unpleasant experience of his own, and the memory had struck a nerve.

He looked up at Chen Mo, started to speak, and stopped. Finally, he said somewhat stiffly, "Uh, Ro... Roy... cultivation is important, of course, but you still need to learn the basics of spells. If you're willing, come to me every afternoon from now on. I'll help you catch up on the basic lessons you missed."

"If you don't understand the principles and rules governing the use of basic psionic energy, you can never join the ranks of true mages!"

He paused, pulled a stack of silver coins from a drawer, and pushed it across the table. "Before, I thought you were buying magical materials on a whim, like some young master, so I charged you extra. That was wrong."

"This is the money I overcharged you. Take it back. From now on, any materials for normal cultivation will be sold to you at the basic apprentice price. You can come to me anytime!"

Only at that moment did Chen Mo truly understand the weight of Kato's words: "He's a good man."

The rigid, stern, and even somewhat pedantic middle-aged mage before him had an almost stubborn sense of fairness and responsibility running through him.

"Thank you, Instructor!" Chen Mo bowed slightly. "I've always wanted to learn real knowledge about spells! It's an honor to receive your personal instruction."

He pushed the stack of silver coins back, then took out his own money pouch and placed it on the table. "Instructor Morton, you've already taught the lessons covered by my tuition. My weak foundation is my own problem, so I think I should pay you an additional teaching fee for this!"

Chen Mo's reasoning was clear. He had taken someone else's place, and the original Roy had already learned the basic knowledge. Now that Chen Mo had become Roy, Instructor Morton had no obligation to teach it again.

Since the instructor was willing to give him separate remedial lessons, he ought to pay for them.

Back on Blue Star, Chen Mo had often attended his teachers' regular classes during the week and their small-group lessons on weekends.

That situation was even stranger: things left untaught in their regular classes had to be taught in private lessons. But wasn't everyone used to it?

Besides, private remedial lessons naturally cost extra.

It took Morton a little while to understand what Chen Mo meant. For the first time, he felt that perhaps the thinking of certain "rich people" wasn't entirely made up of greed and arrogance.

And so Chen Mo, who had already thrown himself into cultivation with competitive frenzy, began his life of after-class tutoring.

As a former spellcasting genius who had also spent years teaching the basics under Har, Morton explained spells with considerable clarity and thoroughness.

"The essence of spells lies in controlling and using psionic energy!"

"All our powers beyond those of ordinary people do not originate from ourselves. Rather, we borrow and draw upon the energy contained in the laws of heaven and earth. In essence, this is true of both warriors and mages!"

"A strong body can take external psionic energy into itself and use it to strengthen itself. That is the warrior path."

"A strong mind can guide and use psionic energy, thereby triggering psionic reactions over a wider area. That is a mage."

It was a lesson that overturned Chen Mo's understanding. In the past, whether at Black Raven Castle or among the mercenaries, the prevailing view had been that warriors and mages belonged to two entirely different systems. Warriors looked down on those "weak lunatics," while mages despised those "brainless brutes."

Now, Morton made it perfectly clear to Chen Mo that in this world, the barrier of knowledge was the greatest obstacle of all.

Morton drew a symbol in the air with his finger, and Chen Mo's eyes lit up. It was the basic spell model of the Summoning Altar, and Morton's construction was far more beautiful than his own.

It had the beauty of a perfect geometric shape.

"Everyone has a domain of laws they are more attuned to. That is what we call talent. Unfortunately, talent cannot be detected with magical instruments; you can only sense it for yourself."

"Some people spend their whole lives studying summoning, only to discover in the end that they actually have an affinity for the light element. They've practically wasted their lives."

"That is why all warriors and mages are urged to build a foundation during their first three tiers rather than rush to choose a profession. Choose your path too early, and you may end up on one that doesn't suit you!"

"Anyone who pushes you to settle on a profession right from the start belongs to a cult!"

Chen Mo was a little touched by Morton's earnest instruction.

The instructor reminded him of his homeroom teacher from junior high.

That "menopausal old woman" who, when she wasn't teaching, was watching the surveillance cameras; who assigned homework that could never be finished and texts that could never all be memorized; who high-handedly took over physical education, music, and even recess, earning the unanimous complaints of the entire class!

Even now, Chen Mo still felt that not everything that teacher had done was right. But since then, he had never met another teacher who devoted all her time and energy to her students.

Now, he studied with utmost diligence.

Breaks between classes? No such thing!

Having been educated on Blue Star, he gradually understood why Morton repeatedly stressed the importance of fundamentals and choice.

Unless you had learned the basics to a certain level, you shouldn't rush to specialize, because without enough knowledge, you might not be able to make the right choice.

As for the approach at Black Raven Castle, it was no different from teaching you hairdressing and beauty treatments straight out of elementary school and telling you that your goal in life was to become a more skilled, better-paid stylist Tony!

You might end up standing in the way of a Nobel Prize. It really did lead students astray.

But by a stroke of luck, it had also made Chen Mo who he was.

If the Summoning Altar hadn't been the only thing he knew, he would never have been driven to stake everything on a desperate risk and, as if finding a way out of a dead end, make contact with his greatest source of support.

Fortune and misfortune truly went hand in hand!

Chapter 48: People Richer Than You Work Harder Than You

Over the following days, Morton raced against time, teaching in exhaustive detail, as though determined to make up for all the time Chen Mo had lost.

"At their core, spellcasting professions accumulate their own mental psionic energy through meditation, then use mental ability to construct spell models. By combining their own mana with various magical materials, they move and guide the much greater external psionic energy of heaven and earth, producing a chain reaction step by step."

"For example, consider fire magic, the most common kind of elemental magic. The vast psionic energy between heaven and earth is like an endless forest. But note that the trees in this forest are not joined together. They stand apart, and you must personally ignite each one."

"A mage's mental power is the flint, while mana is like the dry firewood you carry. How large a fire you can ultimately start depends on how long your flint lasts and how much dry firewood you have stored!"

Chen Mo scribbled furiously in his notebook. Naturally, he made sure to record both audio and video, too. He had paid for private lessons, so recording them for later viewing should be fine, right?

He definitely had to give his mother a copy of the secretly recorded videos later. When the time came, he could pay Instructor Morton a little extra in royalties. Surely the instructor wouldn't mind, right?

Oblivious, Morton continued passing on everything he had learned in his life.

Morton greatly appreciated Chen Mo's earnest attitude toward learning, and he was even more pleased with Chen Mo's ability to understand.

Without exaggeration, having gone through Blue Star's complete education system, Chen Mo had an overwhelming advantage over his peers on the Starry Continent. It was roughly like someone who had studied calculus going back to learn arithmetic with the four basic operations.

Of course, there was another reason that couldn't be ignored-Chen Mo paid far too much!

Morton had even considered that, if he could personally train this student to the Moon Wheel realm, he might be able to build Teacher Har's main magic tower to more than three stories.

Meanwhile, the other apprentices in Glimmer Group Three felt as though their world had collapsed.

"Look at the spell models you've constructed! They're skewed this badly-have goblins been gnawing on your brains?" Morton's roar echoed through the schoolhouse, spittle nearly landing on the faces of the apprentices in the front row.

"Roy, help me out here. Demonstrate a Glimmer Spell model!"

Without a word, Chen Mo raised his hand and made the model he constructed with psionic energy visible in the air: a flawless Glimmer Spell structure.

"Look! This is what a standard model looks like, a standard model worthy of being engraved on a magic recording tablet!"

"Even if Roy's mental power isn't a fraction of yours right now, I dare say that as long as he maintains this attitude toward learning, you won't even be able to see his back in the future."

Or else, Morton would wave a page of notes with neat handwriting and orderly rows, even the corrections made with meticulous care.