This oppressive sensation that a great battle was about to descend — with Leilin's cunning and experience, he would never mistake it.
It wasn't just the atmosphere. The increasingly brutal and bloody missions posted in the trading hall, the circumstances of his own recent deployment, and the appearance of the Forbidden Ancient Bell at the Blue Mountain Auction — all of these served as powerful evidence supporting his premonition.
The military strength of the Central Continent far surpassed anything Leilin had previously encountered on the South Coast or in the Dark Extreme Region. Once the Morning Star Wizards unleashed their killing moves, the resulting devastation would be truly terrifying.
Under such heaven-sent, world-ending attacks, the question was no longer whether innocents would be caught in the crossfire — it was that low-level Wizards wouldn't even qualify as cannon fodder!
This time, Leilin couldn't even flee from the maelstrom if he wanted to.
The volcanic rift connecting to the Dark Extreme Region was still filled with molten lava. Besides, he had no intention of giving up the Ouroboros Ring — after all, he was quite satisfied with life here.
"The rise of a Morning Star is paved with corpses and painted with blood. I, too, have been lacking this kind of baptism of fire and blood…"
A flame seemed to kindle in Leilin's eyes.
"The Central Continent represents the peak martial power of the entire Wizard World's surface. Once things fall apart here, nowhere else will fare any better. Worrying about anything else is pointless. Right now, the most important thing is to raise my own strength as quickly as possible…"
After a moment's thought, Leilin issued his command: "Tower Spirit! Lock down my bedroom and main laboratory. Announce to the outside that I'll be conducting a critically important experiment and do not wish to be disturbed. Everything in Storage Unit Number One — extract it all and supply it to my laboratory!"
"At once, Master!" The winged green sprite bowed in midair, then swiftly vanished…
More than three months later.
In a quiet chamber within the Wizard Tower, Leilin sat with disheveled hair, his clothes wrinkled and unkempt — impossible to tell how long it had been since he'd changed.
Yet in stark contrast to his ragged appearance were his eyes, which burned with piercing radiance, a startling and crystalline brilliance.
All around Leilin, countless empty potion vials littered the floor. The entire room looked like a disorganized heap of refuse.
"Chip! Pull up my current status!"
Leilin ordered.
"Leilin Farell. Warlock, Level Three (Liquefaction). Bloodline: Colossal Python. Strength: 30. Agility: 30. Constitution: 45.5. Spiritual Power: 349.9. Mana: 349 (Mana is synchronously determined by Spiritual Power)."
The Chip reported back with faithful precision.
This was the fruit of Leilin's efforts over the past few months — a dramatic surge in Spiritual Power that was inseparable from the terrifying consumption of potions.
If these Spiritual Power potions were supplied to the Ouroboros Ring, they would be enough to last other Warlocks an entire year. This was the kind of terror that could only be forged through sheer resource investment!
During the more than a century he had spent lying low beforehand, Leilin had endured every single day without using Spiritual Power potions. He had even sealed away all the Spiritual Power potions he had concocted himself, relying solely on the power of his bloodline to push his Spiritual Power forward. His goal had been to completely eliminate the drug tolerance that had built up in his body.
Continuous use of potions would have been detrimental to his growth.
Now, however, with his foundations firmly established, the sudden leap to the peak of Liquefaction had been as natural as water flowing downhill — without the slightest hint of resistance.
"The third level has three stages: Vaporization, Liquefaction, and Crystallization…" Leilin murmured to himself. "The data threshold for Vaporization is a Spiritual Power above 250, for Liquefaction it's above 300, and for Crystallization, a Wizard's Spiritual Power must definitely exceed 350! Now, I've reached the point where I can attempt to break through the Crystallization bottleneck!"
Unlike raw Spiritual Power numbers, the gap in actual combat strength between the different Spiritual Power tiers within the third level was strikingly pronounced.
After all, one hundred pounds of cotton and one hundred pounds of steel might have the same mass, but their density and hardness were worlds apart.
The same principle applied to a Wizard's Spiritual Power — the distinction between Vaporization and Liquefaction was already significant, and Crystallization was on yet another level entirely.
A Wizard at that stage could already be considered a candidate for Morning Star Wizard. Crystallized Spiritual Power was the fundamental material needed to construct a "Quality Point"!
Once a Wizard successfully crystallized their Spiritual Power, they would undergo a transformation as thorough as being reborn!
Leilin had caught a faint glimpse of the outlines of this transformation through Torlan and Number Five, and the Chip was also actively researching it.
"But Warlocks are different from Wizards — they also need to satisfy a bloodline condition!"
Leilin smiled. Previously, his personal progress had far outpaced his bloodline. By the time he had advanced to third-level Warlock, the Colossal Python bloodline had still been stuck in its nascent stage!
Had his bloodline not been extraordinarily pure, the boost it provided during each breakthrough would have been considerably smaller.
But now, through the continuous radiation from the Snake Woman's bone segment, his bloodline had entered its mature phase, perfectly synchronized with his own level.
The bottleneck that had been holding his breakthrough back had vanished without a trace.
Combined with Patriarch Vans's "generous contribution" and that Diamond Jellyfish, Leilin felt confident that this attempt to break through to Crystallization had at least an eighty percent chance of success — if not quite a sure thing.