Pressed by his own brothers, Lin Lei honestly confessed his relationship with Alice, which left the two playboys Rein and Yeru clicking their tongues in amazement.
Ever since confirming they were boyfriend and girlfriend with Alice, the two of them—though separated at different academies—had set a date to meet around the middle and end of each month.
In the blink of an eye, nearly a whole month had passed. On December 28th, since he would be heading to
"Hey, Lin Lei."
"Oh, David."
Lin Lei walked along the pathways of
"Boss, you got that worked up just because you hooked up with some Alice?"
In the past, Lin Lei hadn't exactly been cold and heartless toward people, but he hadn't been particularly warm either. Over the past month, though, his mood had clearly improved, and he'd taken to smiling at people all the time.
"What do you know, you little guy?" Lin Lei gave Bei Bei an exasperated glance, then strode into the library in high spirits. After picking out a couple of books on Wind System magic, he settled into the reading room.
The reading room was very quiet—the spacious hall held only twenty or thirty people scattered about.
Lin Lei chose a seat near the edge and began reading quietly. At the Ernst Academy library, he had dabbled in just about everything: history, magical beasts, the continent's geography, and the various magic systems… But the area where he invested the most effort was Wind System magic.
After all, Lin Lei's primary studies were Earth and Wind System magic. Earth System magic had Deinkoort, a Holy Domain Grand Mage, to guide him. Wind, however, was a different matter entirely.
As he read, insights came to him, and he nodded inwardly with admiration.
Two hours slipped by in the blink of an eye. Lin Lei closed the book in his hands. "Grandpa Derinkoort, just fully grasping the mysteries of Wind System magic is hard enough, let alone creating new wind spells."
Most spellcasting involved reciting a magic incantation and executing the spell step by step. You knew what to do without knowing why. But if you understood the underlying principles of magic, you could even streamline the incantation or control your mental power to push the efficiency of your magic power to its limits.
"Of course—did you think magic was so easy to create?" Derinkoort's voice echoed in Lin Lei's mind.
"Creating new spells, forget it. I'd be happy just learning some seventh-rank-and-above spells. Too bad the academy is so stingy—seventh, eighth, ninth rank, even forbidden magic, they don't release any of it." Lin Lei was quite unhappy about this, though he understood full well that behind Ernst Academy stood the Church of Light, and the Church of Light was never going to hand over powerful magic to people from other nations.
Lin Lei felt somewhat fortunate that at least he had Grandpa Derinkoort to guide him. At least he didn't have to worry about Earth System magic.
He picked up another Wind System magic book and continued reading…
"Taken as a whole, it's not just the Wind System—in truth, higher-level spells in every system are mostly extensions of foundational magic. Take our Wind System's 'Wind Blade.' One step above that is 'Chain of Wind Blades.' Higher still is 'Dancing Wind Blade Storm,' all the way up to the ninth-rank Wind System spell 'Vacuum Bind.' They all belong to the same branch. Of course, the Wind Blade can also develop along a different branch, eventually giving rise to the ultimate forbidden spell, 'Dimensional Blade'…"
Reading this detailed description of the Wind Blade, Lin Lei felt a surge of excitement.
This book's descriptions were written from the vantage point of someone who stood at the pinnacle of the magical world and described things in a unified way. For anyone with a solid foundation, this kind of book was incredibly beneficial—it helped them form a complete system of magic in their minds.
"Levitation is actually a fairly simple spell, but casting it is not so straightforward, because this spell places the greatest importance on affinity with Wind System elements. The higher your affinity, the more precisely you can control Wind System magic power and Wind System elements, allowing Levitation to reach tremendous speed. 'Flight' is one rank above Levitation. Levitation only moves straight up and down, whereas Flight can move in any direction. Though it appears to move in all directions, it's really just Levitation with four extra directions: front, back, left, and right. For example, if you fly toward the lower left, you simply control yourself to move down and to the left at the same time. In fact, from this principle, combined with the incantation for Levitation, it's quite easy to deduce the incantation for Flight…"
Reading this passage, a flash of insight lit up Lin Lei's mind.
Yes—Flight only added four directions compared to Levitation. In essence, it was about using Wind System magic power to control Wind System elements and guide the body to move forward, backward, left, or right.
"Right, it's really just four additional streams of wind. If that's the case, deducing the incantation for Flight shouldn't be difficult." Several possible incantations immediately took shape in Lin Lei's mind.
Of course, whether these incantations were correct would need to be verified through actual testing.
In the past, Lin Lei had assumed that Flight, which involved movement in every direction, would be extremely difficult to design an incantation for. But now it was clear that Flight differed from Levitation by only four directions—just four extra streams of wind. For Lin Lei, that wasn't much of a challenge at all.
Lin Lei continued reading in excitement.
"Naturally, high-level spells that can be easily deduced this way are exceedingly rare. The next rank above Flight is 'Wind Wing.' Wind Wing requires shaping formless wind into the appearance of two wings, which is extraordinarily difficult. Its incantation is also vastly different from that of Flight—there's no way to reason it out."
Lin Lei nodded slightly.
The further he read, the more he believed that the author of this book was absolutely a master of magical research and creation. The book's explanations mostly came from the underlying principles of magic—how to research incantations, how to control elemental arrangements, and so on. It said nothing about something as mundane as increasing a spell's raw power.
An ordinary person, upon seeing how complex some magical element arrangements were, would have given up on this book. But Lin Lei understood that once you grasped the principles, you naturally knew how to control magic to achieve greater power using the very same spell.
"Lin Lei." Just as Lin Lei was immersed in the book, a clear voice sounded beside him.
He looked up to see a tall, strikingly beautiful girl standing next to him. It was his good friend Dilia—though her expression didn't look particularly pleasant.
"Dilia, what's wrong?" Lin Lei asked with a smile.
Dilia pressed her lips together and stayed silent for a long moment before finally speaking. "Lin Lei, I heard… you have a girlfriend?" Her captivating eyes stared intently at Lin Lei.