Itchy!!!
Unbearably itchy!!!
Leilin felt his bones cracking open, crawling with ants. An excruciatingly intense itching sensation spread throughout his entire body.
"Damn it! I actually have to enter a deep meditation state and reconstruct my Will Rune under this kind of influence!"
Leilin's face flushed red. Gritting his teeth, he suppressed the urge to scratch and closed his eyes.
Because of the overwhelming bodily sensations, it took Leilin several times longer than usual to fully enter a meditative state.
In the haze of consciousness, Leilin seemed to arrive somewhere.
Everything around him was shrouded in grey fog. Only in midair were there numerous points of light, like stars, casting a faint glow over the place.
Leilin looked up. Twenty-four strange Runes hovered in midair, glowing with a soft luminescence, arranged in a circle.
These were the Will Runes he had painstakingly constructed over the years.
Each Will Rune was composed of numerous special structures, and crafting one required an enormous investment of time and effort. It had taken Leilin more than a year to finally meditate them all into existence.
"The Will Runes of a Second-rank Apprentice are still not fully consolidated. Promotion to Third-rank means integrating all the Will Runes on the foundation of the Second-rank ones, and reinforcing the Sea of Consciousness!"
Leilin was genuinely curious about this process.
In his current state, he existed here purely as "consciousness." The Sea of Consciousness didn't exist in any physical location within his body—at least, even under the Chip's atomic-level microscope, a full-body scan couldn't find it.
"Wizards' Spiritual Power training must have already delved into the realm of the soul!"
Leilin marveled inwardly. At that moment, the always-calm Sea of Consciousness underwent a sudden transformation.
A layer of orange-yellow radiance continuously stained the grey mist. Before long, the entire Sea of Consciousness had turned a brilliant orange-yellow.
"This is the Active Potion taking effect! It's a potion that only acts on the body—I know the formula inside and out—yet it can influence the Sea of Consciousness. How incredible…"
Before Leilin's wonder could fade, the orange-yellow radiance surged upward toward the twenty-four Will Runes, as if trying to dye them orange-yellow as well.
Boom!!!
The Will Runes blazed with fluorescent light, resisting the foreign intrusion. A tremendous shockwave struck, and Leilin's vision went black—he nearly passed out on the spot.
"Suppress it!" Leilin hurriedly used his Spiritual Power to rein in the Will Runes' resistance.
Crack!!!
Leilin's control over his own self-constructed Will Runes was formidable. Within seconds, all twenty-four Will Runes ceased their resistance, each coated in a layer of orange-yellow.
Under the radiance's influence, mysterious patterns suddenly appeared across the surface of the Will Runes.
These patterns spread continuously until they covered the entire surface of every Rune.
Boom!!! The twenty-four Will Runes converged together, merging into a single far more massive symbol.
Surrounding Leilin's Sea of Consciousness, identical patterns also appeared. With these patterns in place, the Sea of Consciousness became more crystalline and transparent, seemingly far more resilient.
Once the reinforcement was complete, as if responding to some silent command, the orange-yellow radiance rapidly retreated, vanishing entirely from the Sea of Consciousness in an instant.
The enormous, extraordinary symbol emitted a soft glow, and Leilin's consciousness was instantly expelled.
"Where… am I?"
Leilin's vision swam, and he suddenly found himself in a bizarre place—utterly dark all around, with no light to be seen.
He tried to reach out his hand, but there was no concept of "hands" at all, as if he had never possessed them.
He simply floated in the void, with no sense of time passing and no ability to move.
For Leilin, a single minute in this space felt like it had stretched into over a decade.
This sensation was enough to drive any normal person to the brink of madness.
Leilin grew somewhat agitated: "Wasn't I in the middle of promoting to Third-rank Apprentice? How did I suddenly end up here? How long has it been?"
A sudden flash of inspiration struck Leilin's mind: "Chip!"
*Ding!* A pale blue projection of light appeared before Leilin's eyes. Though it still couldn't illuminate the darkness, it made him feel considerably better.
"Abnormal state detected in the host's consciousness. At the current rate, in 5 minutes and 23 seconds, the host's promotion to Third-rank Apprentice will fail! In 13 hours and 45 minutes, organ failure will occur, resulting in death! Shall magical power be deployed to dispel the abnormal state? Yes/No?"
"Yes!" Leilin could no longer perceive any magical power within his body, but the Chip could still channel it—that fact filled him with immense relief.
"Host authorization granted. Deploying magical power to dispel abnormal state…" As the Chip's mechanical voice resonated, a peculiar wave of energy suddenly materialized within the dark space.
Leilin's vision brightened. He opened his eyes and found himself still inside the meditation chamber—barely any time had passed at all.
"So there are unexpected complications during promotion to Third-rank Apprentice!"
Leilin's expression turned grave. His progress had been too rapid, and much of his knowledge had come from books in the library supplemented by the Chip's simulations and predictions.
There were situations that Third-rank Apprentices might encounter during promotion that he simply hadn't known about.
"Normally, many Second-rank Apprentices would receive a dedicated briefing from their mentor before promotion… What a pity! Guofate wouldn't have expected me to reach a breakthrough this quickly!"