Re: Love & Magic

“How did the academy get magic crystals for students?” Vernisia wondered as she looked at the special shop.

“No idea, but I feel like it should be related to the Magic Guild and Astral Land,” Zevien said. “Astral Land is fundamentally different from the Gaia continent. Maybe magic crystals are easier to get there? Also, I found out that there are magic crystal mines in my Inviolable Blood Garden labyrinth. So Astral Land might have such mines as well.”

“Yeah, that’s possible,” Vernisia said before she and Zevien walked towards the main desk in the cabin and gave the card to the person sitting behind the desk.

“What do you want to buy?” the man in his late twenties asked before taking the card and inserting it into a tablet device. “W-what the… so many points!”

…

After buying four gray-rank magic crystals and two white-rank magic crystals, they kept the rest of the points and went back to their mattress before meditating with the magic crystals in their hands.

After an hour, they absorbed two gray-rank and a white-rank magic crystal each and hit the 1500 magic power limit.

Opening their eyes, they let out a heavy sigh. “Let’s sleep for a while,” Zevien said.

“Right,” Vernisia nodded in agreement before laying down and pulling out a blanket from her storage ring to cover Zevien and herself before closing her eyes.

Zevien created a small Omni-barrier around them and covered it with mist by casting a magic formation of the mist concept from the tier-2 spell, Decaying Poison Mist. He had learned the spell concept of this spell, so he used the mist concept from it and created its magic formation before using mana to cast it and creating a simple mist to obstruct others from seeing inside.

Many students had created barriers around them since no one wanted to let others see their sleeping posture.

Dan and others had already slept while Zevien and Vernisia were absorbing their magic crystals.

…

Five hours later, Zevien and Vernisia woke up and saw that most of the students were gone from the ship.

After stretching themselves, they also stood up. “We can’t trigger our evolution right now. We need to practice and empty our entire mana reserve twice to get used to this power-up before triggering our evolution,” Zevien said.

“Yeah,” Vernisia nodded as she popped her arms and neck by stretching. “Let’s gather some more points while we consolidate our magic core,” Vernisia smiled.

“Oh, we shouldn’t recover our mana directly from the mana stones for now. Let’s recover it by meditation as it will also help us consolidate,” Zevien said after they arrived at the ship’s edge.

“Alright, let’s return to the ship after two hours then,” Vernisia nodded before she jumped from the ship and summoned Lyn below her while she was in the air before flying into the forest.

Zevien also used Blood Morphing Art to absorb eight drops of blood from Frigid Eagle’s blood in his magic eidos body and produced wings from his back before flying into the forest.

He internally cast of Somatic Rage to enhance his physical prowess and took out the Crimson Wind boomerang from his storage ring.

After ten seconds, he saw a 4th-grade magic beast rushing towards a student from behind while the student was still fighting a peak 5th-grade magic beast.

Zevien narrowed his eyes and pointed his palm towards the 4th grade Green Fang monkey, who was going to attack the student, and cast as a bloody hook conjured in front of his palm.

The hook shot towards the monkey and wrapped around its neck as Zevien dug the point into its skin.

*Chaaaa!*

The monkey quickly screeched and turned around before finding Zevien, but right after that, Zevien exerted his strength and pulled the bloody rope connected to the hook to yank the monkey towards him.

*Screeee!*

The monkey screeched with anger as its body exuded poison liquid and blew it from its mouth to release poisonous phlegm.

Zevien snorted as he dodged the attack before throwing his boomerang while the monkey was getting yanked towards him and cut off its neck.

Zevien straightened the palm with which he pulled the bloody rope as it pierced into the beast’s chest when it reached him and took out its beast core before throwing it to the side.

“Thanks a lot, mate!” the student thanked Zevien while dodging an attack from that giant frog and finished it off with his next attack. However, when he turned around, Zevien was nowhere to be found.

…

Once Zevien almost emptied his mana, he sat down on a thick tree branch and used an Omni-Barrier with the last bit of mana he saved and rested to recover his mana.

One can recover their mana automatically, but if they meditate, the recovery is faster. Mana recovery speed always correlates to magic power. So no matter how much mana they have, even if they emptied everything, one can recover it in the same time frame.

For instance, Vernisia has 15,000 mana, and it takes 20 minutes to refill her mana pool by meditating. Zevien has 30,000 mana, but he also takes 20 minutes to refill his mana pool by meditating.

Time passed, and after spending two hours, they returned to the ship on time and met there. They emptied their mana pool twice and meditated to recover it twice, which sufficiently consolidated their magic core.

After getting 1480 points from their two hours of hunt, they walked toward Headteacher Dunlax.

“Teacher, can we get a private room or something?” Zevien asked.

“So, you’ve decided to trigger your evolution, huh? Well, good luck,” Dunlax smiled before he signaled a teacher. “Get them an empty room on the 2nd floor below.”

…

After Zevien and Vernisia entered the room, they locked it from the inside and sat down on the bed.

“This is our 2nd evolution, and it won’t be as simple as the first,” Zevien said. “There will be some kind of test, but we have to complete this evolution in one try.”

Vernisia nodded with resolve. “We can do it on our first try.”

Both of them closed their eyes and entered meditation before triggering their 2nd magic core evolution.

Soon, Zevien and Vernisia’s bodies disappeared from the room before they appeared in different mystical places.

Zevien appeared under a waterfall and instantly got wet.

[Comprehend the magic circle and receive magic essence from Magia realm for your 2nd evolution. Do not move away from the waterfall no matter what happens, and maintain all of your focus on the magic circle. If you cut off your focus and can’t comprehend the magic circle in 6 hours, you will fail and lose 200 magic power.]

Zevien took a deep breath and looked at the magic circle with focus.

*screee!*

Just a few seconds later, a sharp screech reverberated. Zevien slightly trembled to the sudden screech and almost looked toward that sound’s direction, but maintained his focus.

‘Unacceptable. I almost screwed up.’

Zevien soon entered the deeper focus state and didn’t get distracted by the next gimmick as he continued to comprehend the magic circle as his eyes only saw the magic circle and nothing else.