Mana Circulation

"Ellie, what time is it?"

"Eight. Breakfast should be coming soon."

It was eight o'clock now, and Richard had begun meditating at around five. In other words, although he had felt as if he had only spent a moment in the Sea of Souls, he had actually meditated for three hours.

"Looks like meditation distorts my sense of time."

As Richard thought this, his stomach growled again.

"Richard, aren't you scared?"

Ellie's voice came from the lower bunk. From the sound of it, her emotions had already settled down.

"Scared?"

Richard lay on the bed, curling up to ease his hunger as the experiences of the past month surfaced in his mind.

He had lived in fear every day that month—his frail body, scarce food, the violent drunkard. Whenever Richard woke up in the morning, he wished from the bottom of his heart that it was all a dream.

Compared to the previous month, things were better by who knew how much.

"I've been through worse than this. There's nothing to be afraid of."

"..."

The room fell silent.

Before being chosen, Ellie had been the daughter of a wealthy merchant. The pressures of survival had been like clouds in the sky to her.

Visible, yet almost impossible to touch.

She found it hard to imagine what Richard had gone through to remain so calm even when facing a deadly fight.

He was so thin and weak that a gust of wind looked capable of knocking him over.

"So what are you going to do? We can't beat those nobles."

Ellie recalled the knights she had seen before. Those armored monsters could lead a few Knight Aspirants and punch straight through a hundred-man formation on the battlefield.

If she encountered someone like that, Ellie could not imagine how she was supposed to deal with them.

"Ellie, who do you think is stronger, wizard apprentices or knights?"

"Of course it's..."

Ellie instinctively wanted to answer wizard apprentices. Wizards, even apprentices, wielded miraculous magic. There was no way knights could withstand something like that.

But before the words left her mouth, she thought of the book in the bag—How to Become a Wizard Apprentice.

Blinded by fear, she had actually forgotten that the Academy had left them with a means to fight back.

"Richard, you're a genius!"

Ellie threw back the blankets and jumped out of bed, then ran to the table with the Wizard language dictionary in one hand and How to Become a Wizard Apprentice in the other.

She might not have trained in martial arts from childhood like those nobles, but when it came to reading, those nobles were absolutely no match for her.

Richard ignored Ellie's reaction. Right now, all he wanted was to eat breakfast as soon as possible.

After a while, someone knocked on the room door.

The instant Richard heard it, he flipped out of bed.

Breakfast was here!

Opening the door, Richard saw something resembling a puppet pushing a food cart. Dozens of portioned breakfasts were neatly arranged on it.

"Room 225. Breakfast for two."

A somewhat strange human voice came from inside the puppet's body, sharp and grating.

Richard carried the two trays into the room, then handed last night's trays to the puppet.

The puppet took the trays, then pushed the cart as it swayed and staggered toward the next room.

"This is magic."

Richard watched the puppet, a glint of fervor flashing through his eyes.

Inside the room, Ellie held the dictionary in one hand and the book in the other, translating at a tireless pace.

"Ellie, your breakfast."

"It's yours."

Ellie answered without even raising her head. At this moment, she had already begun roaming the sea of knowledge, with no thought of eating at all.

Richard scratched his head, thinking that youth really was wonderful—she could skip meals and still be bursting with energy.

Though, his current body did not seem to be much older than Ellie's either.

Richard sat cross-legged on the bed, his eyes shut tight.

At this moment, his Spiritual Power had replaced his eyes in observing this world.

It was now the seventh day since he had connected to the Sea of Souls.

The past seven days aboard the airship had been peaceful.

Following the instructions in the book, Richard methodically constructed his Mana Circulation. The process was nowhere near as swift as linking the Sea of Souls, but it was almost entirely without difficulty.

Over those same seven days, Ellie, who shared a room with Richard, had been translating How to Become a Wizard Apprentice day and night. Even Richard was astonished by her diligence.

Sure enough, when faced with a life-or-death crisis, everyone unleashed the potential buried within them.

Linking the Sea of Souls freed a wizard apprentice's Spiritual Power from the soul, allowing them to use it to sense the mana drifting through the world.

In Richard's perception, the mana floating between heaven and earth resembled countless fireflies, flickering with bright yet faint light.

Richard's Spiritual Power transformed into tentacles, and every speck of mana light they passed clung to them.

Then the tentacles withdrew, drawing all those specks of mana into Richard's body.

If linking the Sea of Souls was the foundation for becoming a wizard apprentice, then constructing Mana Circulation was the walls and roof of that apprentice's house.

Wizards needed Spiritual Power to manipulate mana when casting spells, and temporarily controlling the mana of heaven and earth with Spiritual Power was not only time-consuming and laborious, but also terribly inefficient.

Mana Circulation, on the other hand, stored mana within the wizard's body in advance and stabilized it with Spiritual Power, allowing the wizard to go without drawing upon the mana of heaven and earth when necessary.

However, the mana stored in Mana Circulation was not limitless. A wizard's Mana Circulation depended on the upper limit of their Spiritual Power. If a spell required more mana than that limit, the wizard could only return to primitive methods or seek another solution.

As the final speck of mana light entered him, the mana Richard had accumulated in his body for so long finally underwent a qualitative change born of quantitative accumulation. It turned into a trickling stream that began at his heart, passed through his internal organs, and finally returned to his heart, forming a complete circulation.

"It's done."

Richard opened his eyes, unable to hide his excitement.

The completion of his Mana Circulation meant he could now rapidly cast the Zero-Ring Spells recorded in the book.

So-called Zero-Ring Spells were low-level spells that could be used directly without establishing a spell imprint within the soul.

In the eyes of some wizards, such spells did not even count as magic, merely techniques for applying mana.

At the end of How to Become a Wizard Apprentice, its compiler had thoughtfully prepared four Zero-Ring Spells for apprentices who had completed their Mana Circulation.

They were: Magic Missile, Force Field Barrier, Light Body Technique, and Silence Spell.

These four Zero-Ring Spells covered attack, defense, escape, and concealment. It could be said they were exceedingly comprehensive.

And he, Richard, was finally no longer a weakling incapable of tying up a chicken!

Just as Richard was immersed in his joy, Ellie, who had been translating the book tirelessly these past days, suddenly slammed down her dictionary.

Fed up with translating again? Richard thought.

"Haha, Richard, come down and take a look. I've finished translating it!"

Ellie stood and stretched, a series of crisp cracks sounding from her body.

After seven days of tireless translation, she had finally translated the entirety of How to Become a Wizard Apprentice. In the process, she had also learned Wizard Language to a fair degree.

"Congratulations, congratulations. Looks like you've already got one foot through the examination."

Richard flipped off the bed and cupped his hands in congratulations.

"Hehe."

Ellie walked over to Richard and gave his back a hearty pat.

After spending these days together, Ellie and Richard had grown much more familiar with one another. Richard knew that Ellie was the youngest daughter of a wealthy merchant and had been doted on since childhood. Ellie also knew that Richard was a farmer with a deceased alcoholic father.

Yet the two held completely different attitudes toward the future.

Richard's calmness and longing when facing the future fascinated Ellie somewhat. Whenever she wanted to give up, Richard could always dispel the thought with just a few words.

Now, it was time for her to repay him.

"Learn Wizard Language from me over the next couple of days. You can become a wizard apprentice too."

"Hm?" Richard froze for a moment, but warmth soon filled his heart.

"Don't worry, Wizard Language is easy to learn. A lot of its words are very similar to our language. As long as you study seriously, you should still be able to understand this How to Become a Wizard Apprentice within this time..."

"Ellie." Richard interrupted her, his expression carrying a faint smile that was not quite a smile.

"Have you considered that if you help me become a wizard apprentice, there'll be one more opponent in your examination?

"One more opponent means one more danger. Aren't you afraid that I'll stab you in the back?"

Richard's tone was calm, but the meaning behind his words frightened Ellie a little.

One more wizard apprentice meant one more opponent. In this deadly examination, any opponent could become a fatal danger.

Did she truly want to teach Richard?

"Well..."

Ellie's voice rose from soft to loud, and her tone became firm, as though she had found a loophole in Richard's words.

"Richard, you wouldn't do that, would you? If you were going to do something like that, you could simply have kept quiet and not told me."

Richard stroked his chin.

"Generally speaking, I wouldn't stab someone in the back. But there's always that one chance in ten thousand..."

"But beyond that one chance, there are still nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine chances."

Ellie suddenly punched Richard hard with her left hand.

"You're really strange. I'm clearly trying to help you, yet you keep refusing again and again. Keep talking like that, and be careful—I might really decide not to teach you."