The All-Adam Laboratory plan was a necessity now. He had reached the peak of a level-one Mage the moment he was promoted, and he urgently needed new knowledge to support his next advancement.
At the Mage stage, a Mage's strength could be measured by a formal, standard numerical reckoning.
Spiritual power's role weakened yet again once the formal ranks began; it had become almost entirely an auxiliary tool outside the Mage power system. The total mana a soul could hold was now the yardstick of a Mage's strength, and Adam's total mana stood at one hundred ninety points.
Because of the Mage World's soul-transformation promotion system, once an apprentice advanced to Mage, the next great bottleneck would not come until the peak of fourth-rank; before that, every small breakthrough in knowledge was enough to support a small leap in spiritual power and mana.
Such improvements, however, would not trigger any ether bestowal.