Chapter 779: Creating a Forest Branch, and Grand Magic: Burial Ground

Behind Wizard Berbel, an undead summoning channel appeared. Beyond that channel was a world permeated with white bones and negative energy, a world that resembled a burial ground.

Six great ice spikes stood upright in the burial ground, driving chains into the bone-white earth. Chains etched with magical runes floated in the skies above the burial ground, and upon them rested a dragon pearl.

Grand Magic: Burial Ground.

Wizard Berbel's gaze was cold and indifferent. In his day he had been something of a prodigy among black wizards, rising steadily within the Pale Pilgrimage, yet unable to flatter or ingratiate himself, he had ultimately been discarded.

He had also been set up by others, his soul damaged, his prospects ruined.

Over these thousand years his magical force could not have grown significantly. In the southeastern quadrant it had in fact continuously declined, reducing him from a state near that of a star ring wizard down to fifteen thousand magic pressure, due to the near low-magic environment combined with natural aging and the wounds he had once suffered.

Yet he had seized every moment in the southeastern quadrant to refine the magic he already possessed, using only the limited resources available and the black wizard talent of the southeastern quadrant to carry out projects and support research subjects he could make use of.

And so in the southeastern quadrant, through lateral development at a constant level, he had paradoxically grown stronger in certain ways.

Though he had lost any hope of advancement, he had spent his time continuously refining what he already had.

Wizard Berbel's opening move was his Grand Magic. He was determined to take down Locke's avatar with the fewest possible spells.

Wizard Berbel said, "Eye Demon Wizard, forgive me. You are a talent of rare caliber, with a future of great promise. You are so young and have already achieved this much. All the more reason you should stay out of murky waters."

"You should have accepted my earlier offer."

From within the burial ground behind Wizard Berbel, through the undead channel, came the roar of a great dragon.

It was a bone dragon.

True dragons possessed immortal dragon scales and could not be converted into bone dragons. Ordinary dragon-type creatures converted into undead were insufficient to become bone dragons, and so bone dragons came primarily from the skeletal remains of great dragons.

After the dragon's roar, a dragon pearl flew out from behind the undead channel. It was a sphere of condensed frost resembling a small sun, and the moment it appeared even the surrounding air temperature began to fall continuously. A layer of frost formed across the ruins of Virdantia University.

Watching this, Locke immediately understood that both Berbel and Isaac, as Pale Pilgrimage black wizards, had taken the path of plane conquest, converting everything in their path to their own use.

The worlds behind their World Stones had both been converted into specific undead planes.

One could say that both of these Grand Magics had come into being through two instances of world-destroying undead catastrophe.

From the perspective of the wizard world, these two were merely ordinary Second Circle wizards, nothing remarkable. But from the perspective of the worlds within the void, they represented at least two undead catastrophes sufficient to destroy entire living worlds.

Locke realized that if Edgar were here, deploying All Things Return to the Tree would likely be an absolute counter to these two men's Grand Magics.

Locke raised his right hand and summoned the Pinellia from not far away.

The blade-like Pinellia flew back into his right hand. Locke deployed Lone Tree Cannot Form a Forest to ride the Pinellia, its spathe continuously radiating light that resembled summer flames, layered like candlelight.

The blazing summer energy collided with the bone dragon's dragon pearl. Frost and blazing summer, death energy and life force, clashed with violent intensity.

The so-called blazing summer energy was not simply summer magical power or fire magic, but the product of summer magical power and the life force within the magical plant blending together, possessing the dual attributes of both life magic and fire magic simultaneously.

The radiance of the spathe bud at Pinellia's crown was suppressed by the frost of the dragon pearl.

In the next instant, the bone dragon flew out from behind.

It was a frost bone dragon, with what appeared to be soul flames flickering in its eye sockets. Wherever it flew, all things froze into frost.

On the other side, Hussein and Wizard Isaac were locked in close combat.

Every collision between the two vampire viscounts was like the earth splitting open and the sky cracking apart. Both possessed tremendous close combat strength and formidable recovery ability, trading blows from the sky all the way down to the ground.

Their curse magic also extended from their blood claws with every exchange.

Quite a few of the black wizards standing nearby were cursed simply by getting too close.

On the whole, however, Hussein was falling into a disadvantaged position, because his magic pressure was lower, meaning every spell and every physical exchange placed him at a disadvantage, requiring greater magical expenditure to compensate.

His consumption was thus greater than Isaac's.

After a hundred exchanges, Hussein had clearly fallen behind and was seized around the throat by Isaac, pinned down and beaten.

On the other side, Locke's main body, in the Second Circle library section of Golden Crown Mountain, found Akman the Troll wizard.

Akman handed him the magical text he had requested.

"Here you are. This is the companion spell model for the Second Circle magical plant Pinellia, the Summer Grass Mars Bewilderment."

Akman pointed to the author. "This is the work of your senior fellow, Wizard Trajan."

Locke paused, flipped to the title page of the magical text, and indeed found his senior fellow Wizard Trajan's name, followed by a long string of honorary titles, most of them relating to plane conquest or plant hunting. It appeared he had discovered multiple summer-type magical plants.

At the same time, Senior Fellow Trajan was also listed as one of the developers of the Pinellia magical plant spell system. According to the title page, he had a research group built around a Tier 2 fund project, all centered on the magical plant Pinellia.

Akman said, "This is the first generation of the Summer Grass Mars Bewilderment, which has since been iterated to a third generation. And so the magical text for the first generation spell model has already been made free and public by your senior fellow."

Locke gave a slight nod. For Second Circle wizards, it appeared that publishing a magical text could serve in certain respects as the equivalent of a published paper.

By the same logic, there was presumably a citation count metric involved, though he had not yet looked into the details.

But he guessed that in order to have more wizards read the book, his senior fellow had simply moved it to the free section.

Wizard Akman said to Locke, "This magic is not difficult for a Second Circle wizard. The main challenge lies in needing a certain understanding of astronomy and access to a special star power."

Locke gave a slight nod, and swiftly constructed the spell model.

The primary reason was that this spell model's requirements in botanical studies were not high, making it quite easy to learn at his current level. As for the most demanding requirement, astronomical knowledge, the blessing of the Sacred Dragon Star meant he could substitute the Sacred Dragon Star directly in place of the Mars alignment.

And so he required only a short time, approximately ten minutes, to construct a complete spell model.

As always, for a Second Circle wizard, learning an existing spell model was not an especially daunting task.

With the exception of a small number of extraordinarily complex spell models.

The true difficulty lay in how to modify these spell models so that they aligned with one's own soul and magic pressure fluctuations, and in building additional power on top of their full baseline output.

And these two steps often took a wizard ten or more years.

Akman the Troll was momentarily taken aback.

"That quickly? I had assumed you would need at least a few weeks to construct this spell model. It really is your senior fellow's research. It suits you precisely."

Locke gave a slight nod.

Since becoming a Second Circle wizard, he had come to understand increasingly clearly how important one's academic lineage was for a Second Circle wizard.

For instance, a spell developed by his own senior fellow was extraordinarily easy for him to learn.

Because his and his senior fellow's magical foundations shared a great deal in common, learning this spell was almost like having something half-tailored for him.

Because of Grand Magics, Second Circle wizards who learned spell models developed by wizards within their own academic lineage had an overwhelming advantage.

They could even manifest greater power from that spell model than others could.

For Second Circle wizards, there was the lifting of the Root Fields, the lifting of their academy, and the lifting of their academic lineage.

The entire Second Circle stage seemed inseparable from the concept of being lifted.

At this moment, in the southeastern quadrant, Locke's Ancient Tree Fruit avatar suddenly altered the incantation it was casting, reciting the revised spell, while the Pinellia swept through the air. In an instant, above Pinellia appeared what seemed to be a star radiating red light.

The spathe of the Pinellia erupted with a burst of fire energy.

In a single instant, the blazing summer energy invaded the frost bone dragon's body. Blazing spiritual energy wound around each of its ice-blue bones, turning them red, then the blazing summer energy converged at the frost bone dragon's throat and surged together toward the bone dragon's skull.

Wizard Berbel froze for a moment.

"Sharpening the spear before battle?"

"You had your main body go and learn a spell model while you were fighting me? You clearly did not know this spell model a moment ago."

Locke had always intended to learn the companion spell model for Pinellia. He had simply never had the time to do so before.

After Locke swept Pinellia, he sensed that the newly deployed Summer Grass Mars Bewilderment spell model appeared capable of simultaneously drawing on the power of his Peach Bow Thorn Arrow and the Sacred Dragon Star, merging them as one with the botanical magic of the Pinellia in his hand.

The Peach Bow Thorn Arrow was already an important component of his Moon of Evolution.

In this way, the Moon of Evolution, the Summer Grass Mars Bewilderment, and the Sacred Dragon Star had combined their three forces together, and his offensive magical attack had surged dramatically in power out of nowhere, as though an additional Grand Magic Rune had been incorporated.

Was this not essentially giving him one more Grand Magic Rune by another means?

No wonder it was a spell developed by a senior fellow from his own academic lineage.

This magic was simply perfectly suited to him.

Even the first version was already this formidable. He could only wonder how much more powerful the third version, which had now been iterated twice more, must be.

The core of this spell was its use of Pinellia and the Mars alignment to connect his Grand Magic with that spell model of the Sacred Dragon Star.

His senior fellow Wizard Trajan was also a person of considerable boldness, having openly published this special spell model. It seemed to be his most important research achievement.

It was through this research achievement that he had become a sun ring wizard at Golden Crown Mountain.

Of course, the free edition of the magical text did not actually include a detailed description of the special spell model's structure. The spell model structure had been sealed.

One could learn from it, but could not reverse-engineer it.

However, the text did mention that Wizard Trajan had a publicly available article in the paid section detailing the spell model, which required a considerable number of contribution points to access, as it had been published in a Second Circle top-tier journal.

Wizards from outside Golden Crown Mountain would need to pay a high subscription fee for the top-tier journal to read it.

After the blazing summer energy erupted upon the frost bone dragon's head, Locke immediately summoned the Magical Dragon Rose, rode it using Lone Tree Cannot Form a Forest, and flew toward Berbel, seizing on the wizard's momentary inattention to sweep Pinellia at him, intending to bring the battle to a swift conclusion.

'Although his magic pressure is higher than mine, he is too old.'

'He moves slowly, and every action he takes must be weighed against whether his remaining lifespan can support it.'

Locke's Pinellia thrust toward Wizard Berbel.

In the next instant, at this most critical moment, a pair of wizard shoes suddenly appeared on Wizard Berbel's feet. He executed a spatial flicker and vanished from where he stood.

He reappeared fifty meters away.

The moment those wizard shoes activated, a pair of golden angelic wings appeared behind Wizard Berbel, and a golden halo materialized above his head.

Large quantities of light element particles accumulated behind him.

Wizard Berbel's aged face reddened slightly.

Sigh. A lifetime of reputation, all about to be ruined by this pair of wizard shoes called the Glorious One 40K.

Locke stared at those shoes for a moment. Were it not for those wizard shoes, Wizard Berbel would have miscalculated the instantaneous offensive power of Locke's Pinellia.

In his estimation, that bone dragon of his could not possibly have been critically struck in an instant by Locke.

And so Locke had seized on his moment of complacency and very nearly dealt him a serious blow.

But those wizard shoes had disrupted that plan.

Locke looked at those shoes and connected them to the fact that the Pale Pilgrimage had behind it the backing of the Rose Council and the Storm Tower. He suddenly said, "Does your operation this time have the Rose Council's backing?"

Wizard Berbel's gaze sharpened.

"Wizard Locke, what are you saying."

Locke said, "Those shoes of yours were made by Solas Light Foot, but they do not match any of Solas Light Foot's currently sold wizard shoe models."

"And the upper of those wizard shoes uses a fabric I recognize, the Cloud Whisker Cloth."

"That is also someone's invention, and I believe it has not yet gone on sale. For a pair of shoes like that to appear on the feet of a wizard like you, there is only one possibility."

"You accepted the testing assignment for those wizard shoes. Since you are also taking this opportunity to test those wizard shoes, it is highly probable that your operation this time has the Rose Council's support behind it."

"There is nothing in the southeastern quadrant worth the Rose Council's attention. Hmm... then it could only be the Forbidden Forest. Both your Pale Pilgrimage and the Rose Council have their eyes on something within the Forbidden Forest?"

He had not expected that returning once to the southeastern quadrant would lead him to accidentally stumble upon the Rose Witch's machinations.

He would have to report this to his teacher Witch Yekaterina.

Wizard Berbel's expression grew grave.

He had not expected that merely using a pair of wizard shoes in front of Locke could reveal so much of his hand.

The war between wizards was a war of information.

At this moment Wizard Berbel was deeply displeased. Having been seen through by Locke meant that he had been at a disadvantage throughout the entire exchange.

He is nothing but a wizard who only just became a Second Circle wizard.

A genius of the same sort he himself had once been.

Can one who has climbed the mountain really mock one who has descended it like this?

Wizard Berbel said flatly, "Say what you like."

He stamped his right foot, and the halo above his head emitted a burst of radiance. In the next instant he teleported directly to Locke's side.

He extended a finger and pointed it forward, Corpse Robe One Finger Strike.

Every trace of death energy from the Grand Magic Burial Ground converged upon that single pointing finger. Locke seemed to see the boundless death energy of the entire world streaming toward the burial ground, while the death energy of the burial ground streamed toward that finger.

This was a Second Circle spell model with a Grand Magic Rune incorporated.

Fifteen thousand magic pressure, meaning at least two Grand Magic Runes.

Though there was also a possibility of more.

The other party's opening move aimed to kill him outright, to destroy this avatar. The finger struck his body, immediately causing violent friction with the Magical Dragon Rose, while the death energy forced its way through the Magical Dragon Rose's leaves and struck him directly.

He felt as though he had been plunged into an endless tide of death energy.

Wizard Berbel's gaze was ice-cold. While Locke was caught within the burial ground's boundless death energy, he immediately launched a second killing blow, reciting an incantation and deploying the undead magic, Summon Dragon Legion.

Sustained by the boundless death energy, that energy dissipated from Locke's body and formed three great undead channel gates. Behind each channel stood three ordinary bone dragons.

This was the maximum number of summons he could achieve using his current magic pressure and the combined chain deployment of his two Second Circle spells with Grand Magic Runes, the product of a thousand years of research.

He then deployed his final Second Circle spell model with a Grand Magic Rune, the Death Energy Dragon Pearl.

The death energy emanating from Locke's body transformed into four dragon pearls that entered the bodies of four bone dragons, and then all four bone dragons simultaneously breathed a modified dragon breath at Locke.

That too was death energy.

Wizard Berbel's expression was cold and merciless. His opening gambit was already his full strength.

He did not have a great deal of time, and so he could only forcibly suppress and kill Locke while also venting the fury of an old senior whose pride had been affronted by a young wizard catching up to him in such a short time.

"The Pale Pilgrimage possesses a mature and comprehensive necromancy technology. The Pale Pilgrimage's bone magic is not merely a form of summoning. Our death mages cannot be nothing more than beings who summon undead creatures. And so the Pale Pilgrimage long ago shifted its definition of itself from summoner to expert in the engineering modification of death creatures."

The four bone dragons behind Wizard Berbel all had grey-black dragon pearl spheres at their core, those spheres appearing to be embedded within their chests, like the round belly of a Sun-Herding Dragon.

These bone dragons had clearly all been modified by him.

Wizard Berbel breathed heavily and said, "Within my death energy cycle of this magnitude, Augustine, even your main body will run into serious trouble."

"I... I am a black wizard. Once a hand is raised, the matter must be done thoroughly."

"Your avatar I will kill, and your main body I will also kill."

A venomous yet deeply satisfied light appeared in Wizard Berbel's eyes.

"The world of the Second Circle is this ruthless. One misstep and one dies or is permanently ruined. Ha ha ha ha... allow me to teach you a lesson."

At this moment, Hussein was struck from the sky by Wizard Isaac and slammed into the ground before Locke, gouging out a crater-like pit upon impact.

Wizard Isaac laughed loudly. "I told you long ago not to attempt resistance against us."

"Come with me."

At this point, Locke's main body also felt a surge of death energy rushing toward his soul.

Wizard Berbel had initially appeared to be focused solely on suppressing Locke's avatar, but barely into the exchange he had moved directly against Locke's main body, avatar, and Grand Magic simultaneously with lethal intent.

Locke's main body at Golden Crown Mountain had an odd expression on its face.

"Since this is the Rose Witch's move on the board, I truly cannot ignore it."

"After all, this is my teacher's academic enemy."

"That black wizard's idea is good, but he has forgotten one thing. My main body's magic pressure is sixteen thousand. Higher than his. And my total magic pressure is also higher than his."

Because of the Forest Sanctuary, Locke's total magic pressure was far greater than that of wizards at the same level.

At this moment, Locke drew that death energy into his Forest Sanctuary, allowing it to surge against the Forest Sanctuary as it pleased, and then used the life energy produced by the ancient forest within the Forest Sanctuary, composed of over a thousand First Circle tree-type magical plants, tens of thousands of apprentice magical plants, and a single Second Circle Ancient Life Tree, to directly counter the opposing death energy flood.

A fierce light flashed through the tiger's eye on Locke's forehead.

He used his powerful insight to detect a significant flaw in Wizard Berbel's spell model: this death energy flood was susceptible to a reverse surge.

"Berbel's so-called thousand years was a thousand years of continuous regression, wandering between various subordinate wizard territories. That kind of thousand years is entirely meaningless."

"Repeating the same action endlessly only makes that action more practiced, while cementing bad habits along the way. Only by leaving one's comfort zone and continuously pushing forward can one be said to have worked for a thousand years."

At this moment, Locke naturally had no respect for Berbel's alleged thousand years of experience.

Apart from those wizard shoes, which had surprised him once and placed him at a momentary disadvantage, nothing else about Berbel's magic had managed to impress him.

Over these thousand years, constantly improving within his own territory and constantly crushing weaker opponents, he had long since fallen below the normal standard expected of a Second Circle wizard.

In the next instant, from Locke's body erupted the surging life force of the Forest Sanctuary, which reversed and rushed back against Berbel.

In an instant, all four bone dragons began sprouting various vines across their bodies, and Berbel himself was struck by the counter.

He cried out, immediately aware of his mistake.

"Wait, your main body's magic pressure is... sixteen thousand? No, nineteen thousand..."

"A forest... an ancient forest. Your total magic pressure behind you is far greater than that of a normal Second Circle wizard."

In the next instant, Locke took advantage of the planar channel that Berbel had opened with his death energy flood, and through the life energy flood blew large quantities of tree seeds from within his Forest Sanctuary through it, along with a touch of the Moon of Evolution's moonlight.

Locke immediately deployed the Moon of Evolution, catalyzing those seeds and using the Lunar Cultivation Method to send them into leaping evolution.

He did not merely want to kill Wizard Berbel. He also wanted to seize this magical loophole in Berbel's magic to directly establish a forest sanctuary branch base within Berbel's plane.

This had been an embryonic idea of his from before.

But only by doing it could he know whether it would succeed and how it would need to be adjusted.

And so when Wizard Berbel obligingly charged out and offered himself as a test subject, Locke accepted with a smile and moved immediately.