CHAPTER 38: FIRST, SHORT-TERM GOAL

Wayne returned to the manor and settled into meditation, legs crossed, focusing on enhancing his thoughts and mana. He could now meditate efficiently for thirty minutes daily. Beyond that, mental exhaustion and drowsiness would set in from overexertion.

His mental capacity determined his meditation duration, and meditation exhausted his mental power while strengthening his thoughts and mana.

He decided to first give himself a short-term goal: maintaining efficient and lasting meditation, utilizing his potential to strengthen his thoughts and make his meditation last longer at greater efficiency.

His first goal was to meditate twenty-four hours a day!

He had to make sure he had enough mental power to meditate every day before he started with his second short-term goal: to make his body get used to the act of meditation so that he could multitask, keeping himself in a meditative state without actively doing so.

Come on, meditation! You're all grown up now—learn to activate automatically!

His ‘mediocre’ talent made him anxious. He didn’t want to be a run-of-the-mill mage. With the finest master and superior meditation method at his disposal, he should excel as a mage.

What if the geniuses were talented? Bring it on. He would outwork all of them! Even if it meant going bald from the effort, he'd surpass every gifted prodigy through sheer determination!

***

March 23rd, afternoon.

A package from Londan arrived at the manor in Enrod. Two maids carried the wooden crate into Wayne's bedroom, and he eagerly opened it.

Inside lay nearly sixty books. Some were basic texts about magical theories compiled into books by academies, some were training manuals, and others were about counseling for magical studies.

After sorting the books by categories, he discovered an assortment of bottled medicines, including supplements designed to enhance mental acuity and pills for mental clarity and meditation assistance. The most numerous were medications for psychological wellness.

Mages were never found without their pills, and many attended counseling sessions. Magic was dangerous. The three magical girls had not been joking with Wayne. Even during the initial phase of illuminating their hexagram, mages could develop mental disorders from imbalances between the four fundamental elements, the void, and the self.

Prolonged illness inevitably led to insanity!

Wayne also found a curriculum schedule detailing the requirements of magical theory for each academic year. Grade-skipping was strongly discouraged. Even geniuses required their mentor's approval before advancing to more challenging courses.

Wayne opened the textbooks for the first grade. Most required only rote learning, and with his photographic memory, he could memorize everything by pulling an all-nighter.

Rather than rush through the books, he opened the Hexagram Magic Manual and studied the techniques for illuminating his hexagram. Silvia had given him a crash course in lighting up the four elements. There was no shortcut; the only way to do it was to practice and practice more.

When a mage captured the elemental particles, they would enter their body and enhance the corresponding parts of their life.

Earth elements were the foundation of life and enhanced the muscles, bones, and internal organs. Fire elements were the energy of life and amplified desires. Water elements were the source of life and balanced the desires from fire. Wind elements were the breath of life and kept a mage healthy, even eternally youthful.

These four fundamental elements combined to embody a mage's most basic life essence.

Self, meaning one’s thoughts, enhanced life essence to an extraordinary level and enabled a mage to alter reality. The strength of one’s life essence differed individually. Disregarding the enhancement brought by thoughts, the intrinsic life essence would determine a mage’s potential.

Humans were born with different strengths!

Take Veronica as an example; her dragon blood granted her an incredible physique, making her life essence much stronger than that of a regular person. When she meditated, she had to capture an incredible amount of earth elements to enhance her muscles, bones, and internal organs. Until she satisfied her body, she had no additional earth elements to light up her hexagram.

The same was true of the other three elements. Fire was an exception. Humans already had strong enough desires, so usually, there was no need for a large intake of fire elements from nature. Only after the four elements completely filled one's life essence could a mage light up the earth, fire, water, and wind portions of their hexagram.

Lighting up self was the easiest since people were born with thoughts. Through meditation, it would activate automatically.

Void could be easy or difficult. It was easy because the way to light it was straightforward—studying and learning knowledge. What was taught at the academy was enough for every student to light up void. On the other hand, it was difficult because one had to restrain oneself from learning more advanced knowledge before their hexagram was properly lit up and formed. Otherwise, the hexagram would lose its balance, and activating it would be forever impossible.

Wayne spent the afternoon reading. In the evening, he received a call from Silvia. She gave him a long-distance lesson and explained all the questions he had.

She ended the call soon due to her busy schedule. She had been moving nonstop since setting foot in Londan. Her assignment for him was to meditate and prolong the duration he could stay in that state, as well as capture more elemental particles. The particles would be filling up his life essence, essentially strengthening his magical foundation.

It couldn’t be done overnight, and there was no telling how long it would take exactly. Usually, the longer it took for one to fill their essence, the greater their essence and potential.

Silvia gave him an estimate: three months.

“Isn’t that too short, master?” Wayne was disappointed. It wouldn’t be bad to light up his hexagram soon, but that would mean his potential wasn’t that great.

“It’s long enough!” she said with exasperation. Her apprentice didn’t understand how terrifyingly incredible his elemental affinity was. Three months was a conservative estimate. Most academic geniuses required three to five years of constant meditation from childhood to accumulate sufficient elements.

She thought highly of Wayne’s talent, but she couldn’t quite estimate his life essence. Since he seemed like an ordinary person who hadn’t inherited special bloodlines, she assumed his life essence would be at the level of a top genius among regular humans. That led her to the prediction.

Wayne felt deflated after hanging up, his ego suffering another blow. While he'd love to be a super-genius with limitless potential, reality said otherwise. Under its relentless assault on his confidence, hard work remained his only option.

He couldn’t help but complain about his cheat. The Book of Greed couldn’t do anything and left nothing after its feasting. And its one effect of transforming him turned him into an inhuman abomination.

“At least improve my potential! Just a little!”

He closed his eyes to meet the book’s large eye. As their gazes met, his point of view shifted to the book’s, making him feel like the book and he were one and the same.

That night, the white dove jumped out of his fedora and opened its bag of feed for dinner. The messenger birds of the Wayne family were self-sufficient. The dove, for example, knew to seek out food on its own.

If it waited for its owner, it would have zero meals every day; feed itself, and it would never miss a meal.

After eating, the dove fluttered around the table and windowsill briefly, attending to its basic need without disturbing Wayne, then returned to the hat unprompted. Meanwhile, Wayne sat on the carpet with his legs crossed, his tentacles capturing the elemental particles that failed to get away in time. He hadn’t sensed the limit of his life essence just yet.

“Right, my talent is mediocre, and my elemental affinity is lacking. I have to exhaust myself to gather a thousand particles, not even one percent of the amount real geniuses could capture easily. No wonder I can’t sense my limit...”

Feeling lightheaded, he took a deep breath and popped another pill into his mouth, entering a meditative state once more.

It seemed that the elements had sounded a warning for their fellow elements, and no earth, water, and wind elements dared to approach. The fire elements alone swarmed up to the manor in increasing number, eagerly circling him.

The heart always yearned for what it could not get, and the favored took everything for granted.

Wayne heeded Silvia’s warning that humans already had excessive desires and needed not to acquire more from nature, so he turned a blind eye to the fire elements, giving them the cold shoulder no matter how much they tried to get his attention.

I’m busy. Maybe later.

Meanwhile, the Book of Greed feasted on seventy percent of all the elemental particles he gathered. While it yearned for the fire elements it lacked, it could not change his mind, so it waited for him to eventually relent.

Numerous smaller eyes opened around the central large eye. The book had undergone a dramatic transformation recently, most notably the three larger eyes slowly emerging in the three corners of its cover. They were each yellowish brown, deep blue, and turquoise.

Initially closed, then opening but remaining gray, these eyes now glowed with faint light. Wayne was gradually awakening them.