This was a dark, damp forest, teeming with monsters of all kinds and shapes.
Deep in the heart of the forest lay a swamp that was perpetually cloaked in corrosive toxic mist. At its center stood a seven-story stone tower.
Neither magical creatures nor ordinary people could see it, because it had been concealed with an invisibility spell.
Inside the arcane laboratory at the top of the tower, Lynn stared at the mutated two-headed giant python he had just killed from long range and let out a long breath.
At a thought, a blue screen that only he could see appeared in his mind:
[Current Level: 10 -> 11]
[Spell Slot Unlocked: 6th Circle (1/1)]
"Level eleven... finally... finally level eleven!"
Lynn was so excited that his eyes turned red with emotion. The final one percent of experience from Level 10 to Level 11 had taken him over a full year of nonstop monster grinding in this forest.
That’s right. Lynn was a transmigrator.
Ten years ago, he had been pulling an all-nighter at his computer playing Baldur’s Gate 4 when he suddenly blacked out. When he woke up, he had become an unlucky person who had been bitten by a venomous snake in this forest.
And that blue screen in his mind was his transmigrator’s advantage, his D&D Character Panel.
Although his soul had transmigrated, he had inherited absolutely none of the original owner’s memories. He did not even know where he was.
Fortunately, the original body had probably belonged to a mage. Its starting Intelligence and Wisdom were both fairly solid. Combined with the information on his panel, Lynn successfully obtained the Wizard class.
At first, he had tried to kill weaker monsters while searching for a way out of the forest. But after discovering one particularly strange mob, he gave up on leaving altogether.
The creature resembled a Wraith, but the panel identified it as a Demilich. Everything else, including its Challenge Rating, was blank, with no detailed information at all.
Just to test it, Lynn cast a few cantrips at it.
To his shock, it died just like that.
And in that instant, he leveled up to Level 2.
What made Lynn even happier was that not long after, he ran into the same strange mob again in the forest. After killing it a second time, he gained another large chunk of experience.
As an experienced gamer, Lynn immediately realized that this fixed-respawn mob was an absolute treasure for a newbie like him. Although the experience it gave grew less and less as he leveled up, it respawned reliably. More importantly, even if the amount seemed small, the experience reward scaled with his level.
In other words, it gave percentage-based experience.
So Lynn happily treated that monster like a "renewable resource" and camped its spawn for nine straight years.
Then, one year ago, the mob suddenly disappeared.
With his experience pack gone, Lynn was stuck at Level 10 with 99% EXP for an entire year. Only today, after killing a random wild monster, had he finally managed to level up.
"Losing that god-tier elite mob is a real shame, but at least I finally level up."
Lynn was in a wonderful mood. Feeling the surging magic power inside his body, he opened the spellbook on his panel.
"At Level 11, I can finally learn Disintegrate and Globe of Invulnerability. With those as trump cards, even against a fire dragon, I’d have a fighting chance..."
Suddenly, a shrill alarm rang out.
This was one of the defensive spells Lynn had laid around the perimeter of the wizard tower he had built. As long as it detected any living creature trespassing, it would sound a violent warning.
Ordinary creatures would be driven away by the outermost repulsion wards. So there were only two possibilities for anything to actually trigger the alarm.
One: a monster strong enough to ignore repulsion magic, with a Challenge Rating of at least 5.
Two: a human capable of dispelling magic.
The first possibility was practically zero, because over the past year, Lynn had already farmed every high-level monster in the surrounding area to extinction in his efforts to level up.
That meant it could only be a human.
And most likely, a spellcaster.
Lynn immediately waved his hand, summoning a huge water mirror into the air.
The image displayed the edge of the mist surrounding the wizard tower.
The space there was abruptly torn open, as if ripped apart by a pair of invisible hands. With a crisp explosive pop, the distinctive spatial compression sound of Greater Teleport, a tall, thin figure appeared out of nowhere.
It was an old man.
He had a silver-white beard long enough to tuck into his belt, half-moon glasses perched on his crooked nose, and a peculiar purple robe patterned with stars. In one thin, somewhat withered hand, he held a slender little wooden wand.
The automatically triggered detection spell immediately fed information back to Lynn:
[Target: Human Male (Spellcaster), Estimated Level: 15+]
"Above Level 15?!"
A chill shot from the soles of Lynn’s feet straight to the top of his head.
In Lynn’s understanding, Level 15 meant the power to casually destroy an entire city. It meant access to 8th-circle spells.
That was the realm of top-tier magic like Control Weather and Demiplane.
"Calm down... Lynn, calm down."
He had set countless defensive spells throughout the area. Hopefully, those would be enough to make the old man leave on his own.
The old man seemed to be searching for something. After landing, he looked somewhat puzzled.
But very quickly, he noticed the abnormality in the area.
"A magical barrier?"
The old man murmured softly, his gaze locking unerringly onto the location of the invisible wizard tower.
Then he raised that little wand.
"Please forgive my intrusion, but I must confirm whether darkness is hiding here."
He spoke softly, then gave the wand a light wave. At once, the invisibility barrier covering the entire area failed, and Lynn’s wizard tower was revealed in the middle of the swamp.
From the top of the tower, Lynn saw it all clearly.
The old man had not even chanted.
"Silent casting? Activate the first line of defense! Fourth-circle spell, Wall of Fire!"
Whoosh!
A wall of fire instantly ignited from the ground in front of the old man. Endless flames curved around the wizard tower, forming a massive ring of fire to protect it.
But what Lynn saw in the water mirror made his pupils shake.
Facing the blazing wall before him, the old man merely made a graceful circular motion with his wand.
The raging fire was instantly tamed. The flames twisted and stretched, transforming into a flock of crimson flamingos made of fire itself, which cried out merrily before flying up into the sky and dispersing.
"What kind of spell is that? How can he even distort energy into a completely different form?!"
Though stunned, Lynn had already activated the second line of defense.
"Fifth-circle spell, Conjure: Earth Elemental Servants!"
Three five-meter-tall stone giants rose from the ground and charged forward with roaring bellows.
But the old man remained completely calm, waving his wand like the elegant conductor of a grand symphony and lightly tapping it toward the stone giants.
In an instant, the three supposedly indestructible giants went limp and collapsed into piles of fine white sand.
He even turned the sand into two stone lion statues of different designs.
"Instantaneous... ignores resistance... permanent transmutation of matter..."
Lynn’s palms were slick with sweat.
Too strong.
This was far beyond anything he understood about magical theory. He could not even tell what spells the old man was using, much less what circle they belonged to.
By this point, the old man had already reached the wizard tower itself.
Though invisible to the naked eye, he had clearly sensed the indestructible wall of air in front of him, Lynn’s final trump card: the fifth-circle spell Wall of Force.
The old man obviously sensed it as well.
And once again, he simply gave his wand a light flick.
Pop.
The wall vanished.
This was a barrier that could block any physical passage, and even extended into the Ethereal Plane to prevent spatial bypassing.
And yet it had still been dispelled.
Curled up in a corner at the top of the tower, Lynn had layered himself with spell after spell in a riot of flashing colors, Disguise Self, Stoneskin, Greater Invisibility...
Beside him, he had already drawn a Teleportation Circle, ready to abandon his stronghold and flee the instant things turned truly bad.
I can’t beat him. There’s no way I can beat him. This old man is definitely some plane-favored protagonist-level monster.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
There was no devastating strike as Lynn had expected. Instead, polite knocking echoed through the void.
Then that aged, gentle voice, yet one that still pressed down on Lynn with overwhelming weight, sounded directly beside his ear.
"My apologies for disturbing your seclusion, unknown sir."
"My name is Albus Dumbledore."
"I am the current Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
"I came here in pursuit of an old friend who escaped to this place, but it seems he is no longer here. Might I have the honor of speaking with the master of this residence?"
Inside the arcane laboratory, everything fell into a deathly silence.
Lynn, who had already stepped into the center of the Teleportation Circle and was just about to activate it, froze in place as if he had been struck by Flesh to Stone.
More than ten layers of defensive auras were still flashing wildly around him, illuminating a face that had gone completely blank from sheer shock.
"You said... what?"
Only after a long while did Lynn finally speak in a dry voice. His words were carried from inside the wizard tower to the entrance through the spell formation.
"Hogwarts? Dumbledore?"
I spent ten whole years grinding D&D wizard levels, and now you’re telling me this is the magic world from that children’s novel?
<><><><><><><><><><><>
Good Reviews/Ratings are greatly appreciated
Drop some POWERSTONES to push the story forward!