POV: Zhang Xiaohou
Sunday morning arrived with a crisp, cool breeze that rattled the small window of our dorm room.
The sun hadn’t even breached the horizon yet; the sky was a deep, bruised purple, fitting for the element currently coursing through my spiritual world.
I sat up and looked at the clock.
It was 4:30 AM.
Across the room, Mo Fan was snoring loudly, dead to the world.
He had pushed himself to the absolute limit again last night, trying to wrangle his Fire stars.
I knew he wouldn’t wake up until noon, which gave me the perfect window of opportunity.
I slipped out of bed, my bare feet making absolutely no sound against the wooden floorboards.
I quickly changed out of my pajamas and pulled on a set of plain, unmarked civilian clothes: dark cargo pants, a black hoodie, and a pair of sturdy running shoes.
I threw a simple medical mask over the lower half of my face and pulled the hood up.
I grabbed my wallet, checking to ensure the sleek, black corporate bank card linked to “Zhang Studios” was tucked securely inside.
I didn’t bother using the front door of the hostel.
The wardens would ask questions.
Instead, I opened the window, slipped through the frame, and engaged my [Parkour: Lv.
25] and [Stealth: Lv.
16].
I dropped from the second story ledge, tucking into a flawless, silent shoulder roll on the damp grass below.
From there, I became a ghost.
I scaled the ten foot perimeter wall of the school campus in three fluid, consecutive strides, vaulting over the iron spikes at the top without snagging my clothes.
I landed softly in the dark alleyway on the other side.
Thirty minutes later, after jogging through the quiet, early morning streets of the Southern District, I hailed a civilian taxi.
“Bo City Mage Association,” I told the driver, using my [Vocal Mimicry: Lv.
18] to pitch my voice deeper, adding a slight, gravelly rasp.
The driver nodded, too tired to care about a hooded teenager traveling before dawn, and stepped on the gas.
When the taxi pulled up to the grand plaza of the Mage Association, the sun was just beginning to cast its golden rays over the towering, pagoda like structure.
Even at this hour, the building was humming with activity.
Hunters returning from night patrols walked through the massive glass doors, their armor scored with claw marks, smelling faintly of blood.
I kept my head down and walked inside.
The lobby was just as breathtaking as I remembered from my childhood visit with my father, but this time, I wasn’t an awe struck kid.
I was a Mage.
I bypassed the crowded public mission boards and walked directly toward the polished marble counter of the private services desk.
The receptionist, a pretty woman in her mid twenties wearing the Association’s official uniform, looked up with a polite, practiced smile.
“Welcome to the Bo City Mage Association.
How can I help you today?” she asked.
“I need to rent a private, reinforced training room,” I said, keeping my raspy voice low and even.
“Class-B barrier rating.
Fully soundproofed.”
Her smile faltered slightly, her eyes flicking over my hooded appearance.
Class-B training rooms were usually rented by Intermediate Mages to test highly destructive spells.
They were overkill for a Primary Mage.
“Sir, our Class-B rooms are heavily warded and come with self repairing tungsten alloy targeting dummies,” she explained professionally.
“Because of the magical upkeep, the rental fee is quite steep.
It is 40,000 RMB per hour.”
Two hundred and forty thousand RMB for six hours.
To a normal working class family, that was a year’s salary.
To me, it was less than what ‘Derpy Griffin’ generated in ad revenue while I was asleep last night.
“I’ll take it for six hours,” I replied smoothly.
I pulled out my black corporate card and slid it across the marble counter.
The receptionist’s eyes widened when she saw the card.
Corporate accounts meant wealth and significant backing.
She immediately dropped any preconceived notions about my age or appearance.
“Right away, sir,” she said, quickly processing the transaction.
She handed the card back along with a heavy, rune inscribed brass keycard.
“Room B-14, on the fourth subterranean level.
The elevators are down the hall to your right.
The barrier will automatically activate once the door is locked.”
“Thank you,” I nodded, taking the keycard and walking away.
I took the wind rune elevator down into the depths of the Association.
When the doors chimed open on the fourth subterranean level, the air felt different, heavy, dense, and practically vibrating with suppressed magical energy.
The hallway was lined with thick steel doors, spaced far apart.
I found Room B-14, swiped my keycard, and stepped inside.
The room was massive, easily the size of a professional basketball court.
The walls, floor, and ceiling were constructed from a pale, dull stone inscribed with hundreds of intricate, glowing defensive runes.
At the far end of the room stood three humanoid dummies forged from dull gray tungsten alloy.
I closed the heavy steel door behind me.
A series of heavy deadbolts slid into place with a mechanical thud, and the runes on the walls flared with a bright, blue light.
The room was now entirely sealed off from the rest of the world.
I pulled off my mask, lowered my hood, and took a deep, steadying breath.
‘Time to see what magic really feels like,’ I thought.
I stood in the center of the room, rolling my shoulders and shaking out my hands.
I didn’t take a traditional martial arts stance.
Magic wasn’t about physical leverage; it was about spiritual conduction.
I faced the tungsten dummy fifty feet away.
I closed my eyes and sank into my spiritual world.
The purple Lightning stardust was spinning calmly.
My Level 19 Parallel Processing flared to life, acting as the perfect, optimized interface for my magical commands.
‘One.
Two.
Three.’
I grabbed the first three stars effortlessly, snapping them into place.
‘Four.
Five.
Six.’
The stars locked together in a jagged, crackling line, eager to release their stored energy.
I zeroed in on the seventh star.
It buzzed violently, resisting the pull, but my spiritual grip was absolute.
I dragged it into the final slot.
*Click.*
The Star Path was complete.
A brilliant, violent surge of violet light exploded within my mind.
But this time, I didn’t stop there.
I willed that energy to breach the barrier between the spiritual void and the physical world.
The energy rushed through my nervous system like a shot of pure adrenaline.
It traveled down my shoulder, burned through my forearm, and pooled in the palm of my right hand.
I snapped my eyes open.
I locked my eyes onto the tungsten dummy, thrust my palm forward, and shouted the magic’s name.
“Tier 1 Lightning Strike: Python’s Mark!”
A thick, violently crackling beam of purple lightning erupted from my hand.
It didn’t travel in a straight line; it arced and whipped through the air like a massive, predatory serpent.
It crossed the fifty foot distance in a fraction of a second.
*BOOM!*
The lightning slammed directly into the center of the tungsten dummy’s chest.
The concussive force of the blast was deafening.
When the blinding purple light finally faded, I stared at the result.
The heavy, enchanted tungsten dummy designed to withstand intermediate spells had a massive, glowing, molten crater melted directly into its chest plate.
Residual arcs of electricity were still snapping across its metallic limbs.
I looked down at my right hand and let out a breathless, euphoric laugh.
The destructive yield was absolutely staggering.
All those years of practicing punches and kicks, all those months of bruising my knuckles, paled in comparison to the sheer, unadulterated devastation of a single Novice-tier magic spell.
Due to my Lv.3 Spiritual strength magic cast by me was more destructive than the others.
It took me less than two seconds to form the Star Path, but I needed to improve it so I could cast instantly.
Then, a System notification popped up in front of my eyes.
> [Tier 1 Novice Magic Release: Lv.4]
When I saw this notification, I couldn’t help but take a deep breath.
I never thought Magic Release would also be present as a skill in the System.
With the notification came a rush of knowledge on how to complete the Star Path faster, along with slight changes in the alignment that would increase the spell’s power.
I was once again left in awe of the System.
I also realized that for magical abilities, Lv.
10 seemed to be the maximum limit, unlike non-magical abilities, where I hadn’t found a ceiling yet.
A One-Eyed Magic Wolf could cross fifty feet in two seconds.
If I stood still and tried to cast, I would be torn to shreds before the lightning ever left my hand.
I needed to improve, again and again.
With the System’s help, when I reached Lv.
10, I would be able to cast it instantly.
“Again,” I muttered to myself.
I closed my eyes and connected the stars.
‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.’
‘Lightning Strike!’ This time I didn’t shout.
*BOOM!*
Another massive blast of violet energy slammed into the second dummy, melting its head into slag.
I noticed a slight increase in damage to the dummy compared to the first one, thanks to the new knowledge from the Lv.
4 skill.
Even though the casting time remained the same, it was a clear improvement.
For the next thirty minutes, I repeated the same magic over and over again, completely draining my spiritual energy, only to sit down, activate my Spirit-grade Stardust Magic Tool, and meditate to forcibly replenish my reserves.
> [Tier 1 Novice Magic Release: Lv.5]
I found I could use Tier 1 Novice Magic eleven times before exhausting my energy, requiring 34 minutes for my spiritual energy to recover.
This was the brutal reality of magical cultivation.
It was a cycle of exhaustion and recovery.
But thanks to my System skills, my recovery was absurdly fast, and my mental fatigue was halved.
By the end of the third hour, I had managed to reduce my casting time to one second.
The Star Path was becoming muscle memory.
My brain didn’t have to consciously drag the stars into place anymore; they were beginning to align automatically the moment I willed it.
> [Tier 1 Novice Magic Release: Lv.7]
But standing still and casting was still fundamentally flawed.
I wiped the sweat from my forehead, my chest heaving, and rested for another thirty minutes before moving on to practice targeting the dummy while running.
This was where my [Parallel Processing: Lv.
19] was going to shine.
I took a deep breath, dropping into a low sprinter’s stance.
I didn’t close my eyes.
I kept them wide open, locking onto the final, undamaged tungsten dummy at the other end of the room.
I sprinted forward.
I dashed toward the side wall, jumped, and planted my foot against the vertical stone surface.
I began to wall run, defying gravity for three rapid, horizontal strides.
At the exact same time my foot hit the wall, I activated my spiritual world.
My brain screamed, trying to calculate the physics of the wall-run, the balance of my body, and the intricate, delicate alignment of the seven Lightning stars simultaneously.
The two tasks fought for dominance in my prefrontal cortex.
The first star snapped into place.
Then the second.
Then the third.
My foot slipped on the fourth stride.
My physical concentration wavered for a second.
The stars in my mind instantly shattered, breaking the connection.
The violent magical energy, suddenly lacking a conduit, backfired.
A painful shockwave of static electricity exploded inside my spiritual world.
It felt like someone had driven an ice pick directly into my temple.
I lost my footing entirely, plummeting off the wall and crashing hard onto my shoulder on the stone floor.
I groaned, rolling onto my back and clutching my head.
The magical backlash was agonizing, a sharp, ringing migraine that threatened to split my skull open.
I lay there for five minutes, waiting for the nausea to pass.
‘So that’s what a backlash feels like,’ I thought, gritting my teeth.
‘It sucks.’
Most novice mages would have called it a day after experiencing a backlash.
But I forced myself up, ignoring the throbbing pain in my head and the bruise on my shoulder, and calmed down for another five minutes.
“Again,” I commanded myself.
I ran at the wall.
I jumped.
I engaged my spiritual world.
‘One.
Two.
Three.
Four…
Shatter.’
I fell again, the backlash ripping through my mind, sending another spike of agony behind my eyes.
“Again.”
For the next hour, I tried the same thing over and over.
> [Tier 1 Novice Magic Release: Lv.8]
Then, new knowledge poured into my brain.
I took one final, deep breath, burying the pain beneath a wall of absolute focus.
I sprinted.
I hit the wall, my sneakers finding perfect traction against the stone.
One stride.
Two strides.
Inside my mind, the stars didn’t resist.
They flowed.
‘One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.’
*Click.*
The Star Path formed flawlessly while I was completely airborne, transitioning from a wall run into a forward somersault.
While inverted in mid-air, I thrust my right hand out.
‘Lightning Strike!’
The purple beam of destruction erupted from my palm just as gravity began to pull me down.
The lightning whipped across the room, smashing into the final tungsten dummy with a catastrophic explosion of light and sound.
I completed the rotation, landing perfectly on my feet in a crouch, the shockwave of my own spell blowing my hood back.
I stared at the dummy.
Its upper torso was completely gone, vaporized by the direct, high-velocity impact.
> [Parallel Processing leveled up: Lv.
19 —> Lv.
20]
I let out a breathless, exhausted laugh, collapsing onto my back against the cool stone floor.
I had done it.
I had successfully cast a Primary spell while executing a high speed parkour maneuver.
I spent the final forty five minutes of my rented time repeating the same movement, but my Magic Release skill remained stuck at Lv.
8.
It still took me three seconds to fire a spell while moving at a stationary target.
I needed to improve my casting speed again, but the warning chime echoed through the room, signaling the end of my six hours.
I stood up.
My body was completely drained, but my spirit felt invincible.
I pulled my hood back up, adjusted my medical mask, and walked out of Room B-14.
The journey back to Tianlan Magic High was uneventful.
I took a taxi back to the Southern District, scaled the school wall, and slipped through the window of my hostel room just as the morning sun fully illuminated the campus.
Mo Fan was still snoring.
I quietly changed back into my pajamas, hid my civilian clothes, and collapsed onto my bed.
As I closed my eyes, my thoughts shifted from magic back to business.
The servers for ‘Derpy Griffin’ were holding steady, but I needed more capital.
The Spirit-grade tool and the magical armor I had ordered had put a massive dent in my liquid funds.
It was time.
Next week, I am going to release ‘Ruin Runner’ onto the civilian app stores.
The magical elites could keep playing their political games; I was going to quietly bleed the civilian market dry to fund my ascension.
To be continued…