Ethan opened his eyes.
In his mental sea, his total mana was nearly five times what it had been before the transition, and its circulation efficiency had increased more than tenfold.
The quality of his runes had also all been upgraded to high-grade, with the Primal Seal even reaching the peak-grade level.
The resonance between the runes was stable and harmonious, with no sign of conflict.
This was the effect of a High-Level Meditation Method.
The Myriad Forest Meditation Method's thirty-six runes were now completely recast.
Now, he could prepare to promote to an Official Wizard.
Ethan took a palm-sized knowledge crystal out of his ring.
Recorded inside was the First-Tier spell model for Thorn Blood Armor.
Densely packed runic lines flowed across the surface of the crystal plate, each line glowing faintly. Ethan pressed the crystal plate to his forehead, and his consciousness sank into it.
The complete spell model unfolded in his mental sea.
The structure of the Thorn Blood Armor was more than a hundred times more complex than that of the Wood Armor.
While the Wood Armor only required condensing wood-element energy to form armor on the body's surface, the Thorn Blood Armor required the armor to be woven from blood-colored wood fibers, with inch-long poisoned wooden thorns growing evenly across its surface, and it also had to link with the caster's surface nerves.
At the core of the model were 372 mental power incisions, with the depth, angle, and curvature of each incision having precise requirements.
The incisions were connected by seventeen energy nodes, forming a complete energy circuit.
The ends of the circuit were distributed at the base of every wooden thorn on the armor's surface, ensuring that the thorns could automatically launch when attacked.
Ethan opened his eyes.
Three hundred and seventy-two incisions, seventeen energy nodes, a complete energy circuit.
He repeatedly constructed the model seven times in his mental sea, and every single time was flawlessly accurate.
Next was fusing the mental crystal.
Ethan took a deep breath.
The essence of fusion was to integrate the thirty-six scattered mental power condensation points into a single whole.
The process required drawing all thirty-six runes to the center of the mental sea simultaneously, allowing them to fuse upon collision.
The moment of collision would generate violent mental power fluctuations, and the slightest mistake would cause a collapse.
And the consequence of a collapse?
Was something that most—no, all wizard apprentices—dreaded to face.
Ethan took a deep breath.
Begin.
At the exact same instant, the thirty-six runes were drawn toward the center of his mental sea.
His mental power precisely controlled the trajectory of each rune.
Thirty-six emerald-green trails of light cut through the mist, converging toward the center from different directions.
The closer the runes got to the center, the stronger the mutual repulsion became.
They trembled within his mental sea, trying to break free from the shackles of his mental power and return to their original positions.
This was the first step of fusion.
Forcibly pulling the thirty-six runes together.
Under the pull of his mental power, the thirty-six runes continued to close in on the center, the distance between them shrinking rapidly.
The emerald-green light on the surfaces of the runes began to interweave, forming a steadily expanding ball of light at the center.
Inside the ball of light, the repulsion between the runes reached its peak.
They trembled frantically.
The repulsion in his mental sea was like thirty-six magnets of the same pole being forced together; every tremor sent a wave of violent ripples through his mental sea.
The greyish mist churned wildly, stirred by the ripples, and the barriers at the edge of his mental sea let out an overburdened hum under the impact of the repulsive force.
His mental power continued to apply pressure.
The thirty-six runes were forcibly pressed into the center of the ball of light.
Collision.
The moment they collided, the runes erupted into a blinding flash of emerald-green light.
The light burst from the center of his mental sea, spreading in all directions.
Fine cracks surfaced simultaneously on the thirty-six runes, spreading along the incisions from the edges toward the cores.
The fusion had begun.
The cracks on the surfaces of the runes grew increasingly dense.
The edge of the first rune began to melt, emerald-green mental power pouring from the cracks to interlace with the mental power of the other surrounding runes. Then the second, and the third.
All thirty-six runes melted simultaneously within the ball of light.
Their mental power structures disintegrated in the collision, turning into the most primitive mental power particles.
These particles spun, collided, and reorganized frantically inside the ball of light.
Ethan's mental power guided this process, rearranging the scattered mental power particles according to the fusion chart recorded in the Myriad Forest Meditation Method.
The ball of light began to contract.
Shrinking from its initial fist size to the size of an egg, and then down to the size of a thumb.
The color of the ball of light was also changing, turning from emerald-green to deep green, and then to a nearly transparent pale green.
Ethan's consciousness locked tightly onto that ball of light.
There could not be the slightest deviation in the precision of his mental power output.
The mental power particles of the thirty-six runes rearranged themselves within the ball of light. For every layer successfully aligned, the next layer had to follow within hundredths of a second.
Any slight delay or deviation would cause the entire alignment to collapse.
The thirty-seventh layer of alignment was complete.
The thirty-eighth.
The thirty-ninth.
The fortieth.
The forty-first layer of alignment began.
Ethan's mental power guided the mental power particles of the seventeenth rune toward their designated position.
The particles landed in their designated position.
Off by 0.003 degrees.
0.003 degrees.
This deviation was so minuscule that no Official Wizard would ever detect it.
In a normal fusion process, a deviation of this level was not a problem at all.
Ninety-nine percent of Official Wizards would have far larger errors during fusion. Those errors wouldn't affect the formation of the mental crystal; they would only slightly lower its quality.
But this was something Ethan could not tolerate.
He raised his right hand, splaying his fingers.
An emerald-green wooden spike shot from his palm, easily piercing through his own skull.
【Deceased. Consumed 1 year of lifespan. Perfect Resurrection.】
Ethan sat back up from the stone slab.
In his mental sea, the thirty-six runes were still hovering in their respective positions.
Start over.
Once again, the thirty-six runes were drawn toward the center.
The fusion process was identical to the first attempt.
The runes collided, shattered, and melted in the ball of light, and the mental power particles rearranged themselves in a spin.
The first to the fortieth layers were all completed smoothly, and the ball of light shrank to the size of a grain of rice.
The forty-first layer of alignment.
The mental power particles of the seventeenth rune descended.
Off by 0.001 degrees.
The wooden spike pierced his skull once again.
【Deceased. Consumed 1 year of lifespan. Perfect Resurrection.】
The third attempt.
On the forty-first layer, the mental power particles of the thirteenth rune were off by 0.004 degrees.
The fourth attempt.
A deviation occurred as early as the thirty-ninth layer. The mental power particles of the seventh rune were disturbed by the fluctuations of adjacent particles during alignment, causing their landing point to drift by 0.007 degrees.
The fifth attempt.
The last particle of the fortieth layer was off by 0.002 degrees.
The sixth attempt.
The forty-first layer passed perfectly.
Rate on N.U.
