Chapter 3 – A Dozen Thunderstorms

Arthur ordered the slaves to cultivate grapes in half of the land that he prepared. The other half would be planted with what they would need for food and maybe trade. As long as the slaves take care of the field and patrol his territory, he basically left them to their own devices.

Arthur needs to finish his wizard tower. Wizard towers are created to assist wizards in everything. From food, cultivation, defense, healing, etc. Using all the secret knowledge for building wizard towers that he got from his master, Arthur plans to build the best wizard tower that he could using the materials that he can gather.

His nightly raid for resources for the past few years have netted him more than enough resource to build his tower. What he lacks right now is energy. That is why he will first build a temporary tower. One made from cheap materials. He will use it to cast a strong weather spell and harvest lightning. His initial estimate is that he will need one or two thunderstorms to gather the energy. After that he can build his tower.

Six months later, Arthur is at his temporary wizard tower, preparing to overload it. He miscalculated about the amount of energy needed to build a wizard tower. The ores and minerals do not combine properly and he used more energy to force the fusion of all materials. That is why every floor of his wizard tower needed one thunderstorm. Even if he rushed things, it still took him six months to complete 11 floors.

For the final floor, Arthur was willing to destroy the temporary tower to make the final thunderstorm as strong as possible. He even stole materials from other tribes. When he released the weather spell, it looked like a calamity designed to destroy the country is approaching.

Three days of nonstop lightnings was barely enough to finish the 12th floor of his wizard tower. After finishing his wizard tower, Arthur spent 6 months inside. On his 9th birthday he came out.

"Activate" Arthur ordered his wizard tower and a spherical energy enclosed the area with the wizard tower at the center. The dome increased in size as the wizard tower continue to pump more energy. It covered the mountain range on the left and reached the sea on the right side. This is Arthurs domain. Within this area he is invisible.

Arthur picked a smaller area and covered it with various arrays. This will be his personal area where he will cultivate herbs, plants and even raise familiars. Normally, when a wizard tower is built people would seek refuge and build their homes near it. The tower can protect a large area from monsters and even the weather. Plus, when the wizard is looking for an apprentice, they are the immediate choice.

Arthur decided not to follow this convention. He wanted to isolate his wizard tower and make sure that he is the only living being that knows of its existence. He doesn't want to become an official wizard through the adoration and worship of people. That would bind his soul to this world. If he did that then he could say goodbye to any chances of going back to his original world.

What he wanted is to become an official wizard the traditional way. Hard work and accumulation from years of meditation. The survival rate to becoming an official wizard in this way is 1 in every 10,000. And considering that 1 in every 10,000 has talent to awaken. Those odds are low.

At least his odds this time is better. Last time his body suffered some damage from bonding with Milly. It kept Milly alive, which he was happy about. But it also made it harder for him to rank up to become an official wizard. In his new body, he does not have that problem. This body do not have any injury and he is hopeful with his chances.

Since he does not want to become a wizard through the faith of people. It is important no one knows that he is a wizard and no one knows his name if ever he helps anyone. Now that he has his own wizard tower, he can train and meditate to become an official wizard or wait the centuries needed for the dragon hearts to be filled with energy. Either way, he needs to stay here for several centuries.

As for taking in an apprentice. Arthur would only consider that when he is an official wizard. He himself is just an apprentice and has no right to take in one. What if he took a talented apprentice to manage to become a formal wizard faster than him? That would be the biggest joke ever since the foundation of his school.

Arthur made sure that his slaves move far away that they would not be affected by the thunderstorms. As he has enhanced their bodies, it would take an army to take them down. That is for face to face battles. As they currently live in the jungle, sneak attacks and traps are the preferred way to attack.

Arthur then returned to his wizard tower to continue his long hours of meditation and start his project for wine-making. Wines are wizard's choice of enjoyment between meditations. That is why every wizard would make sure that they have an area outside their wizard tower, dedicated for growing crops that can be turned into wine. As for plants needed for potion making, they will be planted inside the tower so that they can be saturated with mana.

Because he is the owner of the tower, he does not need to leave it to maintain his crops. He can simply casted the spells from within the tower. He would take a break every harvest time to start processing everything into wine.

The next ten years was spent cultivating, planting crops, creating wine, going out to mine and practicing spells. Out of all his activities, increasing the size of his mana vessel is the most important. This is where he failed last time. Because he bonded with Milly before becoming an official wizard, his body sustained damage causing the rate of improvement of his mana vessel to become stagnated. At the very least, one millennia of cultivation, he only improved by a little. This time we would focus on increasing his mana vessel before venturing out. There is no damage to his body to hinder him in his cultivation.

Arthur stopped his retreat because he encountered a snag. His mana vessel has grown as well as his strength but his control was unable to keep up. He found about it when an eagle built a nest on top of tower. He threw a spark spell to frighten the eagle. The spell should be harmless and the eagle would leave. But what came out is a fireball spell. Good thing that he cast the spell a meter distance in front of the eagle. Otherwise he would have killed it.

He needs to learn to control the output of his spells. He decided to take a vacation and tour the world. Looking for resources while relaxing might help him improve. Living with weaklings, he will be forced to reign in his strength so as to avoid killing people.

Now that he has a new plan, he created several golems to continue the cycle of cultivating crops and creating wine. The ever-growing space storage in his tower will be wasted if he stops producing wine. Wine is a wizard's best friend. If ever his master finds him, this will be his gift to get out of trouble.

The quality of the wine will drop but it is better than nothing.

Arthur first toured Africa. Because his skin color is white, he used a simple illusion spell to blend in with the others. A ring artifact to translate language, an earring artifact to make people ignore him was among the few artifacts that he created. Artifacts are items built with two ways to accept energy for the purpose of allowing non-wizards to use the spells inscribed in it. The language translation is a spell that lasts for 5 minutes if cast by an apprentice wizard and 5 years if cast by an official wizard. With an artifact, the spell will be cast every 5 minutes.

An artifact can absorb mana from the person holding it or from the environment. As an apprentice with two millennia of experience, Arthur can create an artifact with three inscribed spells. That is his limit.

After moving around in Africa and living with a few tribes, he turned most of his spells and Milly's spells into ring artifacts. He wanted to create scrolls but the natives do not use paper. If he has to manufacture his own paper then he has to create the spell first. That would take years to research it. Not to mention that his talent in spell making is low.

Because of his large mana vessel plus the fact that while he played around in Africa, no one was able to resist, avoid or block any of his spells, he became more confident. He used spells that would not deal any injury or cause death of people but the fact remains that they are helpless against it. Because of his confidence, Arthur thought that he can fly to other continents and not bother to ride a ship.

Arthur flew in a random direction. He can fly but his flying speed is slow. Not to mention that the first ten islands he found were uninhabited. The next island has natives that eat meat raw. This made him feel bad. He wanted to meet civilized people and live as a free citizen for a while. That is why, this time when he saw a ship, he didn't avoid it and immediately boarded.

Much to his dismay, the ship he found is a pirate ship disguised as a merchant ship. The pirates began shooting and hacking at him. To avoid their attacks, he levitated away for a few seconds and casted sleep spell three times to make sure everyone on board would be affected. He didn't expect the fire that was brought upon by the pirate captain's tobacco pipe which fell when the pirate captain was affected by the sleep spell. The fire hit the ammunition and the ship exploded.

Arthur only had time to cut a lifeboat loose and escape. His luck was bad and he encountered a storm. He would have been able to avoid the storm if he was flying but this time he is in a lifeboat. Not to mention that he spent some time to eat and even slept for a couple of hours after eating. To run away from the storm, he cast a spell to control a passing shark. He had it bite the rope and pull him towards land. Because the maps in the ship were destroyed by the fire, he can only rely on the shark to look for land where people can be found.