A mage's journey begins with a battle mage.

Chapter 18 Entering the Extraordinary

Jiang Shuzhou is the most qualified to speak about what Tieba (a Chinese online forum) is like in the middle of the night, because he is eating claws right here right now.

As he expected, a large number of posts were filled with complaints. These people were all involved in the bread incident, and Jiang Shuzhou only had two words for them.

Deserve it.

They're not unaware that this is hype; in fact, they understand it perfectly well. They're just confident that they won't be the last batch.

Just think about it. Bread isn't that hard to get in the game, so how could its price keep going up?

That must be someone hyping it up; they must have stockpiled a lot of goods, just waiting for you to take over.

That's terrible. Luckily, it's not my fault. I've really been set up by capital this time.

It's foreseeable that the hospital will be very busy again in the coming days.

After browsing Tieba for half a day, Jiang Shuzhou felt like he was back home. As expected of Little Blue Book, this is the episode that gay fans love the most.

It wasn't until midnight that Jiang Shuzhou reluctantly put down his phone, pulled up the covers, and peacefully fell asleep.

Tonight is another sleepless night. How many people have amassed wealth they could never spend in several lifetimes? And how many have lost everything, their families torn apart?

Jiang Shuzhou didn't know, and he didn't want to know, because he was dreaming, and it was a beautiful dream.

"Those legs...that...they're so cool."

"No, wait, why are you a man?"

"Oh, right, right, men are even better, I love Sichuan Opera the most."

Just by listening to this dream, you can tell that the person who had the dream must really like Chengdu and must be a Sichuan Opera enthusiast.

------

The next day.

Jiang Shuzhou sat up in bed. A good night's sleep made him feel refreshed and in a great mood.

First thing to do upon waking up: Launch Astral Descent!

Reality? Reality is nowhere near as fun as games!

In games, I can survive in the wilderness, but in reality, I'd get punished for cutting down a tree. In games, I can get revenge and be vengeful, but if I dared to do that in real life, I'd be shot long ago.

Of course, Jiang Shuzhou didn't forget about the bread either. First of all, he didn't eat it the right way yesterday. He should have eaten it with cheese or cured meat, which he obviously didn't have that habit. Also, there was something wrong with the bread he took. He took black bread at the time.

As someone accustomed to industrial society, Jiang Shuzhou didn't realize what black meant. He even thought that black bread was healthier and more sophisticated. In fact, quite the opposite, this kind of bread is made from a mixture of barley, rye, and wheat, and has a rough texture. It may even contain impurities such as sawdust.

It can only be said that they suffered from their youth and did not realize that good bread is not something that ordinary people can afford.

Fortunately, there was still plenty of white bread, which should have been for the captain and first mate. In addition, there was plenty of cheese, pickles and cured meat on board, enough to last him for more than ten days.

Jiang Shuzhou picked up a piece of white bread and quickly finished it in no time.

He has no time to worry about food right now; learning magic and mastering the extraordinary is his top priority.

Opening the book, Jiang Shuzhou once again became engrossed in the ocean of knowledge. When learning is for the purpose of becoming stronger in a physical sense, and you are also very talented, it is hard not to become addicted to learning.

Spells are the crystallization of the wisdom of mages; each spell is the result of countless mages refining and creating it over countless years.

First, there are the levels of spells, which are the same as the levels of mages, divided into twelve ranks, which are further divided into three major stages: apprentice, ranks one through nine, holy realm, and legendary.

Apprentice spells are the beginning of everything. A typical apprentice spell consists of two runes, is not very powerful, and is mostly a utility spell.

From first to ninth tier spells, first tier spells consist of four runes, second tier spells consist of eight runes, and so on, with the ninth tier spell having 1024 runes. And this is only the number of primary runes. Depending on the degree of modification to the spell and various requirements, spells can add many secondary runes, which can also be called auxiliary runes. Some spells even have more auxiliary runes than primary runes.

The code for "Shit Mountain" belongs to this category.

The realms of Sanctuary and Legendary spells represent the pinnacle of magic. From then on, there were no more restrictions on the number of runes a spell could have, and spells became increasingly wild. According to the book, the longest Legendary spell had as many as 15 runes, and it's unclear how that was achieved.

Jiang Shuzhou was just looking at these spells; he could only use apprentice spells at the moment, and the book only recorded some first-tier spells. As for higher-level spells? Those were only given to those who joined the Mage Alliance.

Although the book makes it sound appealing, with its slogans like "We monks must unite," "Knowledge comes from sharing," and all sorts of motivational platitudes, it's all just talk. In reality, you still have to join to get what you want, right?

However, Jiang Shuzhou did not intend to make any special arrangements. Once he learned first-tier spells and had some self-defense capabilities, he planned to use the lifeboat on the pirate ship to row to that place called Verisco. After all, it was a place recommended by an old senior. Who knows, he might be able to join the old senior's faction. After all, it's good to be under a big tree. They've already called it the Mage Alliance. If you don't join, are you even a mage?

Don't make things difficult for others. As the saying goes, you have to be a grandson before you can be a grandfather. If you want to gain something, you naturally have to lose something else.

As long as the exploitation wasn't too severe, Jiang Shuzhou accepted it, treating it as finding himself a job.

Surely the Mage Alliance can't be more ruthless than those capitalists, right?

Having reviewed all the knowledge points about spellcasting, Jiang Shuzhou was ready to put them into practice.

First, start with the easy and then move on to the difficult. Although the book says that most apprentice spells consist of two runes, there is one exception: the Mage's Hand.

The hand of a mage, as the name suggests, is the hand of a mage. So the question is, what exactly is the hand of a mage?

That's definitely mental energy. The Mage's Hand doesn't consume much magic power because it mainly consumes mental energy.

The Wizard's Hand consists of a rune called "Guidance," which is a rune composed of three horizontal lines and four dots.

To unleash the Mage's Hand, one must first use mental power to guide magic to construct such a rune. Only then can mental power be guided out through the rune to successfully unleash the Mage's Hand.

Of course, the book also provides another method, which is to release mental energy directly without relying on runes, which sounds easy.

However, this is a characteristic of mid-level mages, that is, only mages of the lowest level four and the highest level six can do it. Once you have successfully done it, it means that you can perform mental scanning, because the mage's hand guided by magic is like wearing gloves, and the perception of the outside world is reduced by many times, making it impossible to detect information.

Returning to the topic of casting spells, Jiang Shuzhou had attempted to construct them more than a dozen times, and without exception, they had all failed.

Fortunately, as the simplest spell, even if the Spell Hand is not successfully cast, it will only result in the loss of some magic power and will not cause consequences such as the spell going out of control.

Even so, Jiang Shuzhou's magic power was completely depleted after these dozen or so failed attempts to unleash it.

There was no other way but to prepare to cultivate again. This time, he needed to absorb two more rounds of elements to raise his magic power limit to at least thirty points, otherwise he would have to frequently recover his magic power.

This must be the legendary case of "you only realize how little blue you have when you need it."