A Sorcerer’s Journey

In the Holy Tower of Seven Rings, at Grimm’s Demon Castle.

The Gnaw prepared mouth-watering dishes under the Little Myna’s orders, while the Rain-dew Flower Spirit had entirely become the Little Myna’s lackey, completing all the strange orders of this picky person whose determination to stay in command was ever so strong.

Anything from giving the palm tree a bath, cleaning out the dust stuck in between ceilings, mowing the garden to fertilizing the garden…

Under his control, the two poor Rain-dew Flower Spirits barely had any free time, running around here and there like busy bees, but somehow the Myna still managed to think of new things for them to do.

The most peaceful place in the castle, is none other than Grimm’s laboratory.

With a big and comfortable coat fitted on his body, Grimm held a carving knife finer than a needle, and engraved detailed runes on a lava crystal under a microscope, his body still as a statue. Even with both hands on the knife, he needed all the concentration to finish the task.

That was why other than breathing, Grimm made no unnecessary movements, like a sorcerer in the midst of deep thoughts.

The habit of directly using the ancient sorcerer’s voodoo scrolls had left Grimm with some extra hours for his own research, and the research that took up most of his time was of course— Destructive Energy.

After a long time spent on planning, for the sake of researching Destructive Energy, Grimm created an experiment to observe the energy’s nature.

The theory of the experiment was as follows:

There was no way or method that he knew of that could observe Destructive Energy, and there was no way to collect them, but it was because of that reason that it reacted to anything that had destructive elements. That was why one of Grimm’s plans was to create a container packed with a sticky substance, and then trigger the energy from inside, from then on observe the basic nature from the gaps and traces that were left behind, allowing him to continue on with the next stage of the research.

This summed up Grimm’s initial plans to research Destructive Energy, known as—The Knowledge of Destructive Energy.

This surface-level research was the same as ancient sorcerers observing the common functions of the fire element, and soon discovered the nature of the heat and light that the fire element emitted.

Even so, the equipment required by Grimm for the primary steps of obtaining information regarding the Destructive Energy itself needed at least fifteen years for him to invent!

Grimm named the equipment in his plan as the “Destructive Energy Reaction Log”.

The Destructive Energy Reaction Log was divided into two parts.

The first part was the main part, a high density adhesive. This type of adhesive had certain requirements such as a high density volume, high resistance to energy, clear and transparent substance and an ability to change colors for easier observation of the reaction.

Of course, the invisible requirement here was that the creation of the equipment had to be as low cost as possible.

For this type of adhesive, Grimm had a few ideas in mind, one of them was to buy the rare materials directly, but it would be costly. Another plan was to use his alchemy abilities and medicinal knowledge to slowly mix them, transforming a type of slime known as Dolus into an ideal density.

The second part of the Destructive Energy Reaction Log, was to balance the fire and water element clashes to form a foundation.

The Destructive Energy according to Grimm’s idea, was to be a cylinder with a height and a diameter of one meter respectively. Except for the balancing seal on the hard crystal glass around the cylinder, the foundations above and below were made of six energy reactor magic nodes forming the clashing of two water and fire elemental magic circles, and thus forming the Destructive Energy.

The energy reactor nodes on the foundations, specifically the fire elemental nodes, were the ones that Grimm currently had under the microscope using a sharp carving tool to carve the lava crystal. Based on his estimation, he would need at least a year to complete a single energy reactor rune, and the fire and water elemental foundations required twelve magic reactor nodes in total.

As for the energy balancing seal on the hard crystal glass, Grimm had absolutely no research done on that, so he had to pay a Daemon to go to the Holy Tower of Seven Rings to commission it as a quest.

The whole process was really time consuming, and taking accidents that might happen into consideration, Grimm estimated that after fifteen years, his ideal design of the Destructive Reaction Log would be created.

However…

Grimm was already an officially advanced sorcerer, fifteen years to a sorcerer apprentice might be a long time, but for an advanced sorcerer’s long lifespan, it was negligible.

The resting time for a Demon Hunter in between quests could be as long as two hundred years.

This was the difference in the nature of a sorcerer and an apprentice.

How an apprentice viewed the development of a situation would depend on how long their lifespans were. They could only see what was expected to happen in the time dimension, and this time dimension could go for as long as a few months or a few years. If they could see any further into the future, they were considered to have extraordinary far-sighting abilities and knowledge.

In the sorcerer area here, however, a simple magic principle research might take up to ten years in the blink of an eye. The knowledge that the sorcerer gained within that time span alone could easily take over the apprentice’s foresight abilities.

For example, the Purple Tulip family “stole” Grimm’s formula for the Love Vials.

***

A few months later…

With a table filled with delicious dishes as per usual, the Gnaw that had finished his work diligently stood at the side, staring at Grimm and the Myna who were tasting the results of his hard work.

Grimm showed no expression and ate motionlessly like a machine, his mind was still fixed on the progress of the previous experiment.

About Grimm’s Elemental Great Staff 1.0 Enhanced Edition, it would be completed in a few years’ time, and that would be the start to his journey of creating the Mask of Truth.

By using the Mask of Truth to smelt the Endless Eye, Grimm could then begin researching on the peculiar thunder strike patterns on the two severed branches and unravel the secrets that they held.

As for poison alchemy, an ancient sorcerer’s scroll “The Hatred of Adny Shaman”, had finally bore a little result, it could fulfil Grimm’s requirement of achieving at least fifteen times of poison alchemy. To research and analyze, plus to smelt the actual product, the whole process would need about five years.

The spiritual script on the Devil’s Pact, on the other hand, did not really have much progress.

Suddenly, the Little Myna’s loud reprimanding voice broke Grimm’s train of thought.

“Gnawy! You bastard! Only a few days without your Lord Myna here to supervise and keep you in line, how dare you cut corners and cook without giving your very best! You must think I’m good-tempered and won’t get mad, is that it?”

The Myna pointed angrily at the Gnaw and yelled loudly. As if being caught up in a cock fight, the green-skinned Gnaw was clearly intimidated to the point that it was shaking, his face filled with terror as he looked at the two.

“I-I…”

The Gnaw wanted to use his poor sorcerer language skills to defend himself, but he was too scared so he could not speak?

Huh?

Grimm furrowed his brows, these few days, the so-called delicious dishes seemed to have become bland, that was why after eating he always felt the lingering tastelessness.

Grimm was about to teach his soul slave a lesson, but he felt from his spirit a wave of innocence and stopped himself.

Did he misunderstand him?

Grimm suddenly recalled something…

Whether it was sorceress Elaine from the Black Isotta School of Sorcerers or Master Peranos, they both had a period of time where delicious food could no longer excite them during their apprentice days, and they told him some life stories about themselves that he could not understand at that time.

Now that he thought about it, could it be…

He had started to walk the path that they had walked on as well?

Delicious as it was, if faced with it every day, he would lose interest eventually, was only the him in his happy memories able to give him the feeling of joy?

Grimm scowled, he drew a line in the air, and suddenly a Love Vial appeared in his hand.

He gently popped it open, the aroma from the bottle permeated the air, and Grimm’s body was momentarily stunned! After half a minute, Grimm slowly opened his eyes, still rather dumbfounded.

It was as if a breathtaking scenery had materialized right In front of him.

From what he could see, it was a beautiful night. He gently held Lafite as they danced stiffly on the Death Sail League dance floor to a brisk melody being played in the background.

This feeling…

Was this what the sorcerer meant when he said beautiful memories would emerge, which was the actual wonderful use of the Love Vial?

Grimm waved his hand, a sign for the innocent and terrified Gnaw to take his leave. The Little Myna’s heated yells also stopped, as Grimm used void magic to escort it out of the hall.

Grimm rested his forehead on both his hands as he closed his eyes, he could not stop thinking about the sorcerer’s path.

Was this the sign of transforming from an apprentice to an official sorcerer?

It was now clear why Master Peranos had said that all apprentices that were becoming newly advanced sorcerers, for a short period of time, were just a bunch of apprentices that held a sorcerer’s power.

Until a sorcerer had seen the death of their former fellow apprentices one by one, experienced the flow of time and their transformation, slowly but surely, then only would a real sorcerer be born.

So the Grimm right now, was going through a transformation similar to that of human puberty?

Half a minute later…

He shook his head vehemently, and with a face of serenity he went into the Ascetic Prison. After two and a half hourglasses, he finished his meditation but did not go to the alchemy lab as per usual, instead he went to the Demon Hunter Altar at the top of the Demon Hunter Castle.

Grimm stood at the top of the altar, and awakened a secret seal deep inside his soul.

After a short while, Grimm’s body submerged into a tear of black aura, and he disappeared along with the two Rain-dew Flower Spirits.

In the middle of the island in the World Fragment, Grimm stared happily as the sapling had grown as tall as his knee. He felt the familiar presence of its life essence, and nodded his head in satisfaction.

The Golden Ginseng had became a mother tree, and lost its power of communication.

Grimm turned to the two alarmed Rain-dew Flower Spirits and said, “From today onwards your jobs are to look after this Golden Ginseng mother tree. I will leave some resources for you later. If you are willing to thrive here, it is safe.”

After saying so, Grimm reached into the dimension crack and pulled out some resources, and passed them to the Rain-dew Flower Spirits. He then disappeared from the World Fragment that was his.