Chapter 266 : Chapter 266
Chapter 266. A Large Number of Points
Fulan glanced at the changes on her panel and felt deeply satisfied.
First of all, a two-star profession had finally appeared in the profession section: “Elite Elemental Mage.” It had brought her a tremendous increase in strength.
The greatest increase was, of course, in her mental power. Her mental power had already been extremely high to begin with, so after advancing, she estimated that it now exceeded that of an ordinary Second-Tier Mage by a noticeable margin.
Judging from this, she guessed that after advancing, a normal Second-Tier Mage would probably have mental power somewhere between 30 and 34.
Normally, one’s Physique would also increase with a rise in Tier, and that held true even for a Second-Tier Mage.
But Fulan guessed that her increase had been so small because her Physique had already been absurdly high from the start.
Under normal circumstances, this increase in Physique could never surpass that of a First-Tier melee profession no matter what, yet her own attribute had already exceeded that by a wide margin. That was why her Physique had only risen by such a small amount.
As for the skills section, the first thing that surprised her was that the three spells she had used for her advancement had all gained a large amount of proficiency.
Those three spells had originally been close to the Mastery tier, but after her advancement, their proficiency had somehow risen to nearly halfway through the Mastery tier.
“So all mages who advance through the Elite Mage path receive a major increase in their spell mastery.”
In addition, she also saw a skill in the skills section that was entirely filled with question marks, and it was marked as not yet begun.
When Fulan first saw it, she froze for a moment, unable to figure out what that skill was supposed to be.
But very quickly, she more or less understood where it had come from. It was most likely a spell granted by her advancement.
What was strange was that she remembered the paper recording the advancement method for the Elite Mage profession never mentioning that one would gain anything extra after advancing.
Only then did she realize that the entire paper had been about how to advance, and that the other papers she had found had all been notes on what to watch out for during the advancement process. None of them had given any detailed introduction to Elite Mages themselves.
“I should go look through some more papers in the Mage Tower later. I need to find one that talks about the advantages of Elite Mages.”
Setting that aside for the moment, she looked at her traits section and found that two new traits had appeared there.
This Multi-Element Mastery was probably the trait she was supposed to obtain after advancing. It was also something normal mages could receive.
Judging from the description of Multi-Element Mastery, her elemental mastery seemed to be limited to the three elements of fire, wind, and earth. She did not possess elemental mastery over any other elements.
The description of elemental mastery was different from that of elemental affinity. Elemental mastery explicitly stated that it could only be applied to spells.
Elemental affinity, however, was different. Quite a few professions could make use of her elemental affinity. Her Gale Swordsman profession, for example, worked that way.
That made her look forward to this trait even more. The enhancement to spell effects brought by her elemental affinity was already quite powerful, so the trait granted by her advancement to the Second Tier would presumably strengthen her spells even more.
Now was not the time for experiments. She wanted to wait until she got to the Mage Tower before testing it, so she forcibly pushed those thoughts down for the time being and turned to her final trait, 【Perfect Mage】.
This trait should have been the result of all the effort she had spent using straightedge-and-compass constructions to create a “standard” spell structure.
To be fair, the name 【Perfect Mage】 alone already sounded impressive in a way that made people instinctively feel it was extraordinary, and that made its effect even more eagerly anticipated.
Fulan examined it for a while and still did not understand what it meant by improving the efficiency of mental power. After thinking about it a little, however, she understood.
She immediately began to test it in practice. She did not verify it by casting spells, because the wide variety of traits on her body made it difficult to conduct any precise quantitative analysis that way.
She walked over to a corner and picked up a souvenir she had gotten from the White Star Sand refining project: an intact White Star Sand refining magic device.
This was the magic device Fulan had specifically asked Philip for after the project ended, precisely so that if she ever needed to refine White Star Sand again in the future, she would not have to go out and buy one herself.
Would that not have been ridiculous? She had improved the White Star Sand magic device, only to end up having to buy the improved version herself.
One had to know that this magic device was something that could even allow apprentices to refine a Second-Tier alchemical material. If she bought one outside, it would cost at least a hundred gold coins.
If those experimental magic devices had not all been damaged back then, Philip never would have let a bunch of mages who knew nothing about the subject handle them directly.
At this moment, however, this White Star Sand refining device happened to be an excellent quantitative testing tool. It was just right for checking the state of her mental power.
Fulan directly injected mental power into it without adding any materials, letting the magic device run idle.
A glow of spiritual light appeared inside the device as it operated. Since there were no materials inside, the energy could only dissipate in the form of heat.
Just as the heat was about to destroy the magic device, Fulan stopped supplying mental power and let it cool in place.
“The consumption has gone down a little. I no longer need as much mental power as before.”
In Fulan’s view, the use of mental power was normally a fixed value. Even a Fifth-Tier Mage, unless they had special traits or equipment, should consume the same amount of mental power to cast a Fireball as an apprentice would.
And in her opinion, what this increase in mental power efficiency meant was that, whereas one unit of mental power had originally been used as only one unit of mental power, it was now being used as though it were more than a single unit. That was what it meant to improve the efficiency of mental power.
The facts matched Fulan’s guess as well. She found that this time, when she pushed the magic device to the verge of being ruined, she had used slightly less mental power than before.
To measure things quantitatively, she had previously already established a rough numerical scale for mental power expenditure using Fireball as the unit. Under that simplified system of calculation, she arrived at the current value of her mental power efficiency.
“At present, my mental power can be used as though it were about 1.1 to 1.2 times greater than before.”
It might have looked like only a small increase in efficiency, but for Fulan, when it came to the practical use of mental power, it amounted to a qualitative leap.
“Not bad. All that effort I put into drawing a ‘standard’ spell model was not wasted.”
Fulan drew her mental power back into her body. After advancing to the Second Tier, she could feel that the fineness of her perception of the world had climbed to another level.
For example, when she had still been an apprentice, the world had seemed like 480p. When she rose to the First Tier, the world had turned into 720p.
And now that she had advanced to the Second Tier, the world had become 1080p, perhaps even a little sharper than ordinary 1080p resolution.
“All right. Time to head to the Mage Tower and see what the key points are after an Elite Mage advances.”
After briefly examining the changes in herself, Fulan left the house and went to the Mage Tower.
---
After arriving at the Mage Tower, Fulan first went to take a look at the Selections shop outside. There, she discovered that the weekly Selections magazine had released a new issue.
Moreover, the cover left her quite shocked, because nearly all of the Selections covers were the same paper: 《A Mathematical Analysis of Fireball》.
Fulan raised her brows, then remembered that her paper had only been published last week. Naturally, people had seen it by this week. She simply had not expected her paper to be valued so highly by others.
But this had nothing to do with what she had come here to do today. She suppressed her urge to take a closer look and did not buy that weekly Selections issue. Instead, she bought the annual special editions.
If she wanted information on Second-Tier professions, it was unlikely that anyone would happen to discuss them every single week.
Things like that were far more likely to appear in certain specifically curated sections instead.
She selected several annual Selections categories and began flipping through them for the content she wanted.
After some searching, Fulan found a paper titled 《The Unique Traits of the Second-Tier Profession Elite Mage》.
She hurried into the Mage Tower, opened the receiver tablet, and immediately noticed something abnormal in her account.
Beside her account was a string of numbers that looked particularly eye-catching. It was a four-digit number—1345.
Fulan could hardly believe her eyes. Since when had she had so many Points?
When she had come here two days earlier to look up some precautions related to Second-Tier advancement, she had even spent some Points. She remembered that she had ended up with only a little over 300.
So when had it increased by this much?!
What Fulan did not know was that even in the Northern Society, where one could freely study the knowledge of other schools, everyone’s Points were still limited.
Naturally, that meant people would not rush to exchange their precious Points every time another school produced some important breakthrough knowledge.
What was more, her previous breakthrough had been in the field of the Alchemy School, which made it even more niche.
If you were, say, a mage of the Elemental School, would you really spend your precious Points on something you were destined never to use?
No matter where one went, alchemy was something practiced by only a minority. Many mages did not care how this or that material was prepared.
They only cared whether the price of a material had gone up or down when they needed to use it.
But Fulan’s Fireball paper was different. Fireball was a spell that virtually everyone in the entire Northern Society possessed.
Even though it was only an apprentice-level spell, every mage trusted the judgment of the Selections.
And when they saw that nearly all the Selections covers were featuring this paper, they naturally concluded that it contained a breakthrough of major significance.
Since it dealt with a field that every mage understood, and with such powerful promotion from the Selections, the popularity of this Fireball paper far surpassed that of Fulan’s previous paper.
So the fact that Fulan’s Fireball paper had earned her even more Points than her White Star Sand paper was perfectly normal.
Fulan stared blankly at the Points for a while, then gave up thinking about it. No matter how she looked at it, this was obviously a good thing.
These Points were enough to last her for more than ten years. She probably would not need to publish any more papers in the future.
She steadied her thoughts and focused her attention on 《The Unique Traits of the Second-Tier Profession Elite Mage》, which she had purchased for five Points.