?The white light flashed for only an instant before a loud sound erupted from Andar’s position.

“Boom!!!!”

The entire space for fifty miles collapsed as if pressed by a giant palm and the bones surrounding the Nyre Flower for tens of thousands of feet across shot up before compacting itself into a ball of bones.

The bones flickered with many colored lights of various spells as everywhere became silent and Andar walked past the ball of bones that was more than a thousand feet tall, inside were imprisoned the groaning and passed-out Mages who came for this treasure hunt.

Andar had imprisoned all of them, except for Zaros. Andar tapped the stunned Mage as he walked past him on the shoulder, “Go for the pistils Zaros, all the Crown here are mine.”

Behind him, he could hear the laughter of Mayu.

Behind him Zaros had collapsed to his knees, recalling the moment when the earth below him sank and the bones carried a life of their own. They had zipped past him, missing his body sometimes by a mere millimeter, as they surrounded all the Mage here and imprisoned them all.

He had felt the power present inside every single shard of bone that was whipped by him, and it was choked full with spells.

‘How the hell did Andar cast so many Mid-Order Spells at once, and he was just a damned Acolyte! Should he not be stuck to a Tier 0 or a Tier 1 Spell, even if he had a Spirit Body?’

Zaros turned to look at the cage of bone and was stunned into silence and for a long while, he could not remove his gaze from it.

“What sort of Spell is this?!” Zaros was nearly going insane.

The cage of bones was not haphazardly built but carried a charm as if made by the living hands of a hundred master craftsmen. Andar had created statues of gods and demons, snarling gargoyles and screaming mortals were molded from the bones and affixed to it, and the cage of bone carried a haunting beauty.

From afar it resembles a haunted castle, the image was further improved when you heard the moans and groans of the hundreds of Mages imprisoned inside that could not move a single inch.

One Acolyte did not just crush hundreds of Mages, he did it was a flair that only an Archmage should be capable of. .

When Zaros thought to look for the image of Andar, he was already at the base of the Nyre Flower, he had placed both hands in his jacket pockets and was climbing the flower, disregarding gravity as he walked up the Nyre flower, his back pointed towards the ground.

With every step he took, he left imprints of spell formation that suppressed the defenders of the Nyre Flower.

Abominable creatures of darkness stuck in place as if frozen in ice as they came within a few feet of Andar.

Zaros shuddered as fear consumed his heart.

?

Andar was not concerned with the defenders of the Nyre Flower, they were creatures of darkness boosted by the vitality of the Nyre Flower.

It was easy to freeze them in place with many stacks of Myrdas Touch, a unique Spell he created just for this instance. It not only froze the defenders, but it slowly killed them while extracting their vitality.

He killed them slowly not because he was cruel, but to make sure the vitality extracted from them was properly filtered with no wastage. If he killed them quickly the vitality he would harvest would be tainted, reducing his harvest by a third.

The Spell brought the gathered vitality to his side where it began to form a black gen that was slowly getting bigger with every step he took up the Nyre Flower.

His eyes became clouded as he focused on his memories, he would be reaching the Crown in two minutes, and Andar could not help but allow his mind to wander.

Andar remembered the years of teaching under the Archmages, about Spells, Spirit, and Aether and how they were all connected, and he quickly ran through the summary of all he had learned in his head one last time before his Ascension to become a Mage.

Apart from casting the Spells Engraved in their Spirit Matrix, any Mage could cast a Spell using their Spirit, and Spells were separated into tiers, Lower Order Spells—which comprised Level 0 – Level 2 Spells, 𝘳𝘦.𝒸𝑜𝘮

Mid Order Spells—which comprised Level 3 – Level 5 Spells,

and then High Order Spells—which consisted of Level 6– Level 8 Spells.

Spells from Level 9 upwards could only be wielded by Archmages, and they were famed for the difficulty of learning them, for not every Archmage could wield a Level 9 Spell, supposedly there were many reasons for that.

Spells were all-encompassing and depending on the field of study a Mage wishes to specialize in, they all had unique methods of tackling Spell Casting.

For a Mage whose focus is on Talisman Crafting, to wield the Spell of their choice, they would need to follow the Spell Node and link them together as if they were crafting a Talisman. A mage that specializes in Formation, may view the Spell as a map, all these were various methods every Mage interprets a spell, and all of them were unique to the individual.

For Andar, crafting Spells was like breathing. There was a cadence to it, that had become nearly unconscious for him, the more knowledge he gathered inside his cells, the easier it became to craft Spells.

When a Mage unlocks their Spirit Matrix and their Engraving slots, depending on the Meditation Art they had available to them, they could Engrave specific Spells that suited the elements most favorable to their talents and fix them inside their Engraving Nodes.

This was where talent and the sort of Meditation Art you selected determined your future because Mages who had Ordinary Meditation Arts would only have a small amount of Engraving Nodes available to them.

This not only affected the level of Spells they could learn but also the limits they could reach as a Mage. It was the reason why every Mage would not begin Engraving any Spells to their Spirit Matrix until the moment they were about to break through to become a Mage, or after they were about to Ascend from Their previous rank to the next.

This content is taken from 𝘪𝘦.𝘤𝑜