The Solitary Magus (3)

As soon as Clei closed his eyes, he instantly felt a dense air around him. This dense air was constantly in motion, and it completely filled every single space in the surroundings.

This dense air was precisely the world essence.

In hindsight, the world essence is a naturally occurring energy that exists in every single corner of the world.

For mages, it would be something that they could absorb and transform into mental force, and for warriors, it would be something that they could absorb and transform into life force.

However, not all people would be able to absorb the world essence. In fact, becoming an entity who could absorb and wield the world essence as their own force could be described as people who had gone against the heavens.

And Clei, as a mage, could be described as an elite among those people.

Eight years ago, Clei's journey as a mage started when he became enamored by how his father could naturally control fire as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

He couldn't help but become amazed and wished he could do so too. Hence, he asked his father, and only after bugging him for a few months did his father agree to actually teach him.

However, who would have thought that becoming a mage in itself was actually so ruthlessly painful to a naive child?

The very first step in becoming a mage was to feel the world essence in the surroundings. This step, however, was already extremely difficult; only by clearing a person's mind to the utmost could they possibly feel the existence of the world essence.

Everyday, for 3-5 hours, Clei would have to meditate and clear his mind. But to a child like him, this process was very tedious. In fact, it was only after an entire year before he was actually able to feel the existence of the world essence.

The problem was, feeling the existence of the world essence was the simplest and easiest step. The next step, absorbing the world essence into his body, was the cruelest step that almost made Clei give up so many times.

Absorbing the world essence was something his father described as going against the rules of the heavens. It was a method to improve the entirety of a human being, increasing their strength, capabilities, and even their life span.

The first time Clei absorbed the world essence, it triggered a backlash, which brought him unimaginable pain, preventing him from moving his entire body for an entire week.

Afterward, every time he would try to absorb the world essence, it would repeatedly trigger the backlash, and it would cause him to become disabled for a few days.

It was only after the 7th time he had absorbed the world essence did he finally receive no backlash.

At that point in time, his father's command was just to absorb, absorb, and absorb more world essence.

A year after, when Clei was already nine years old, he felt as though his entire body was filled with world essence. But that was it; he was still incapable of harnessing it or doing anything about it.

Since his body was full, he could no longer absorb more world essence, and this time, he had finally asked his father what to do.

Finally, Clei learned that he had arrived at the most crucial point, and he was only one step away from actually becoming a mage.

The world essence he had absorbed in his body was there, but it was dormant; he had no way of actually using it. To use it, Clei needed a container inside his body that could convert the world essence into mental force.

Naturally, since Clei wished to become a mage, he required a container to convert the world essence in his body to mental force.

For anyone aspiring to become a mage, this was the hardest step—the ultimate bottleneck—before they could break away from the clutches of being a common man.

Although it was described as the hardest step, Clei had a massive advantage, his father. Clei was unclear about the entire process of what happened that time, but after he felt a strong power surge in his mind, a vast space suddenly opened in his mind, and as his father described, it was the mental space where the world essence could be converted.

As soon as he had this mental space, everything became much, much easier. Although the process was incredibly slow, he was able to convert the dormant world essence in his body to mental force and store it.

Within four months, he was able to convert the entirety of the dormant world essence in his body to mental force and store it in his mental space. With his mental space filled, he had, at last, become an Elementary Magus.

At that time, he was finally able to use his first fire spell, [Fire Ball], and he was also able to realize how long the journey of a mage was.

Starting from an Elementary Mage, there were seven more levels: Intermediate Mage, Advanced Mage, Adept Mage, Elite Mage, Grand Mage, Arch Mage, and Saint Mage.

To improve his level from a mere Elementary Magus, he had to expand his mental space and increase his mental force by varying degrees.

From an Elementary Mage to an Intermediate Mage, he was required to have twice the original size of his mental space and twice the amount of his mental force.

From an Intermediate Mage to an Advanced Mage, he was required to expand his mental space by four times of its original size, and increase his mental force by the same amount.

For this to happen, he had to continuously harness his mental force; he had to exhaust it and, afterward, fill it again with even more mental force. This was a continuous process that served to temper his mental space.

However, it was a rigorous process that even though Clei knew his mental space was getting bigger and bigger, he knew that its development was extremely slow.

All in all, as he proceeded with each level as a Mage, the required mental space and mental force grew larger and larger, making it harder for him to advance.

Since he had first become an Elementary Mage up to the present, he had increased his level twice. A month before his tenth birthday, and also a month before his father had vanished without a trace, he had officially become an Intermediate Mage, enabling him to cast intermediate spells like [Flare] and [Conflagration].

Then, after two years of intense training, he was able to expand his mental space and mental force to a certain point, enabling him to become a full-fledged Advanced Mage that could cast the spell, [Fire Storm].

As of today, three years after he had become an Advanced Mage, his mental space had already increased by five times its original size, and the amount of mental force stored in it had also increased.

But, to break through and eventually become an Adept Mage, he still had to expand his mental space by three times its original size, which, at his current rate, would only happen after two to three years.

For Clei, this wasn't a very long time. The problem was, at the moment, he had reached a point where he was way too strong against the magical beasts in the "safe zones", yet he was still too weak to venture in those places where there were stronger magical beasts.

To put it simply, he had no competition, and his only possible competition would eventually crush him to death. As such, he wasn't able to fully harness his mental force, and the rate at which his mental space was expanding had gradually become slower.

If he were to keep up his current pace, perhaps even five years from now, he still wouldn't be able to become an Adept Mage.

Clei was very troubled by this. In the past, when he had asked his father about what he should do once he reached this point, his father had only given him two options: first, go to a Major City, enter a Mage Academy and fight side-by-side with other Mages against even stronger foes, and second, try his luck in the dangerous areas of the Great Forest of Althea… which his father had strongly advised against.

As such, Clei was becoming more and more impatient, and even though he had continuously put off deciding on these matters, he knew that when the speed of his mental space's expansion had reached the lowest of low, he would eventually be forced to take action.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

While Clei was still deep in meditation, he was suddenly startled by loud explosions, which almost made him think that he had broken through.

Opening his eyes, he thought about the source of where those explosions came from, and as soon as he did, he immediately realized that those explosions came from a restricted zone not too far away from where his home was.

Clei immediately stood up and ran out of the room. As he dashed out his house, he put on his black mask and hurriedly ascertained the direction of the sound.

His destination—the restricted area where the Battle Mammoth was said to be living.

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