The road leading to the dormitory was dead silent; everyone stared at Adam in fear. They could not imagine that while they were still congratulating themselves on mastering a single low-level spell, an apprentice already existed who could do this much.
"Is he really a new apprentice?"
"Next to a monster like that, what are we?"
Those two sentences were probably what every onlooker there was thinking. The blow landed in their hearts like a heavy hammer, and their confidence tottered on the edge of collapse.
Adam felt no joy at all. Killing them in an instant was only natural. By his calculations, even if he fought every apprentice of this batch at once, so long as it was not in a public, transparent setting like the duel grounds, he was absolutely certain he could wipe them all out.
Instead, he was dissatisfied. So far, the only research he had come across that truly touched the level of knowledge was the meditation method. The magic he had just used looked dazzling, but at bottom it was a technical achievement—anyone who met the requirements could use it.
Just then a violent tearing of air came from the distance—the sound of something flying fast enough to break the sound barrier. Elliot said, "Don't move. Those are the academy enforcers."
Before Elliot finished speaking, a squad of four alchemy puppets landed around Adam and swiftly scanned the surroundings. Then a stiff synthetic voice rang out: "Severe ground damage and the aura of death detected within range. Present your identification immediately, or the Mordo Elemental Tower has the right to kill you."
Adam held the token out in front of him. The four alchemy puppets gave off a mysterious energy fluctuation and knit a force field around him; inside it, Adam felt his spiritual power beginning to dissolve, and his mana was cut off completely.
"Identity confirmed: Apprentice Adam. The damages you have caused the Tower will be delivered to your dormitory in the form of a bill. Pay it promptly, or the Tower will enforce punishment."
A casual, even perfunctory verification process—which only confirmed for Adam that the weak had no value whatsoever in a mage's eyes. Rather than human lives, they were sets of moving data.
Adam put his token away. This time the alchemy puppets did not stop him, and simply let him go. After parting with Elliot and returning to his dormitory, Adam continued with the final stage of constructing his meditation method.
James and his former team had all been researching how to attach special effects to the Mage Armor in hopes of achieving an effect like a soul inclination. But Adam thought that direction was wrong: spiritual power is born of the soul, and rather than trying to give spiritual power special effects, one should study spiritual power itself in depth.
Adam rejected James's research direction almost entirely, working only on two things: the nature of spiritual power, and how much mana it could carry. The carrying capacity needed no discussion—however strong spiritual power became, it could never reach the energy level of ether, and chasing spiritual power alone while abandoning mana was absolutely unwise. A workable meditation method had to be a good vessel, and at the apprentice stage that was crucial.
So what, then, was the true nature of spiritual power?
To be honest, with his current learning Adam could not explain it—but in a world where the "black box of technology" was always at hand, failing to understand the essence did not hinder the creation of technique.
Adam's main line of attack was research into the materialization of spiritual power. Spiritual power was an energy with no form but with substance; most apprentices treated it only as a vehicle for mana, but from the trick of moving objects with his mind, Adam inferred that it could be put to more powerful uses.
According to the fragmentary information in Adam's mind, it could be called psychokinesis. In this world's terms, it should be called spirit-element magic.
Adam could not guarantee how much power such magic would have. He did not believe that across the Mage World's countless ages of evolution, with the wisdom of countless mages, no one had ever researched it. Perhaps there was simply no way to advance on pure spiritual power; perhaps at higher levels a mage relying on spiritual power alone could not form effective combat strength. But at least it was a direction with some promise.
For the next three days Adam did not leave his room, devoting himself entirely to deducing the model and structure of the rune group, all the clamor of the outside world left behind.
After Adam's blow, the atmosphere in the academy changed greatly. Adam had scoured the restlessness out of the apprentices' hearts like a wire brush. Howard and his companions had counted as an extremely strong organization among the apprentices, and yet their full elite had not lasted two spells against Adam—which taught them that they were, in fact, still fools.
So from crudely flexing their muscles, they turned one by one into humble seekers of learning. The library became the liveliest place in the academy; they pinched and scraped so they could read every book they could get their hands on, and even took on a certain air of poor scholars from humble households.
William went completely quiet, silent as Adam had once been, drifting through the academy alone with only his shadow for company.
After that day, Ophelia shut herself in her room for a full day. At dawn the next morning she went to the laboratory and signed a contract with a body-refining Mage, and from then on she vanished completely.
Cristel became the brightest new star among the apprentices after Adam. She succeeded in taking Mage Blake as her master, becoming the personal disciple of that second-rank Mage and formally leaving the ranks of the new apprentices.
On the last day of the ten-day deadline, in the middle of handing over his work, James learned of Adam's "glorious" record. He was not surprised in the least—no one knew better than he how strong Adam was; without exaggeration, he was no match himself. And Adam's strength did not lie only in combat; his research ability was equally astonishing. In his own laboratory their positions had long since reversed, Adam having gone from assistant to the one in charge.
"Ah."
James watched the alchemy puppets seal the laboratory and let out a soft sigh, his heart full of melancholy. His road as a mage ended here. After leaving the Mage Continent he would have to be careful even about using magic, because communicating with the ether in a low-magic environment would place an even heavier burden on his body.
He had no friends. He was the oldest apprentice in the academy; of his cohort, the rest had either advanced or died long ago. He had never been a dazzling figure, so that no one had come to see him off was no more than he had expected.
"Adam didn't come." He muttered it with mixed feelings and strolled slowly through the academy, transferring the payment Adam was owed into his balance. James took one last look at the place he had struggled in for decades, then turned and walked away without looking back.
Adam was running his mind at overload.
If anyone could have seen his soul sea, they would have found densely packed runes constantly forming and annihilating in that infinite space; a newborn rune would usually shatter and vanish the instant it appeared. As time passed, the number of new runes dwindled, until at last only nineteen pyramids remained in the soul sea.
These pyramid-shaped runes had curved bases, and their structures varied from base to apex, making them exceedingly complex.
Adam was elated. This meditation method, built of nineteen runes, was fully self-consistent; not only did it carry mana better than the Basic Meditation Method, it also possessed an attribute all its own.
Adam assembled all the runes, and they finally formed a spherical rune group. At the same moment his spiritual power spread out on its own, sweeping through his room in a violent surge; every man-made object in the room was smashed to fragments in an instant. Its power was startling.
"New meditation method construction complete. Empirical trial successful. Designated the Psychokinesis Meditation Method."
After the logical thinking finished its report, Adam leaped out of his room, throwing himself unprotected dozens of meters into the air. The new spiritual power, named psychokinesis, spread out of his body and held him steadily aloft—and so, by the action of pure spiritual power alone, Adam achieved flight.
True flight, not floating: psychokinesis first canceled gravity, then kept carrying air, turning resistance into propulsion. At a thought, Adam shot himself out like an arrow, changing direction freely in the air.
The people on the ground were dumbstruck.
"Hey, hey, hey, look—up there, up there!" An apprentice clutched his companion's arm, shouting unconsciously. He gripped so hard that bruises were already rising on the other's skin.
His companion irritably pried his hand off and grumbled, "Let go, are you crazy? What's in the sky—" Then he looked up and froze as well. "My god!"
Of course they had seen flight before—but that was done by the mages of the Tower. Never had they imagined that an apprentice beside them could do such a thing!
Adam felt a heartfelt delight, and it drove him to childish antics: he kept changing his posture in the sky, now fast, now slow, diving one moment and soaring the next, playing with abandon.
The behavior of the two on the ground drew the attention of the others. Gradually more and more people looked up at the sky and then stood frozen where they were, and the unconscious murmurs from their mouths merged together, two words growing louder and louder.
"Flight."
"Adam."
People in the library, the classrooms, the dining hall and the dormitories came out when they heard the noise. They did not know what they felt; they only watched Adam's figure flying free, spellbound.
Distracted by the noise, Elliot's hand slipped and a flask of potion burst. Cursing, he walked out of the laboratory, and before he could voice his complaints he saw Adam in the sky.
He had no idea what madness had gotten into his little friend. It's just flight—wind-element magic can do that easily. Why show off in front of the rookies? He stamped his foot, and air currents gathered into wings behind him; then Elliot too flew up into the sky and came to Adam's side.
"What are you doing? You've ruined all my potions," he complained to Adam.
Adam said offhandedly, "Oh, what a shame. Do you know where James is?"