Training-Addicted Mage In A Progression Fantasy-Chapter 23: Regular Exchange Festival (5)

As Leon retrieved the wooden sword, blood gushed from the center of the man’s pierced chest.

Leon examined the retrieved wooden sword for a moment.

Follow current novels on freewebnσvel.cѳm.

Was it because the opponent let his guard down......?

Or was it simply because the magic sword was powerful?Was it due to its ability to interfere with spell formulas?If not that, then was it the effect of the magic infused with mana?

Numerous possibilities came to mind.

However, since Leon’s mana quality wasn’t that impressive yet, he didn’t think it was simply because his mana was powerful.

Wiping away the cold sweat of tension, Leon first carefully scanned the surroundings with a detection spell, then picked up the man’s corpse and entered the Magic Orb.

Kito wasn’t around.After confirming that she could fly normally, Leon had sent her to explore the vast space inside the Magic Orb.

Leon grabbed the silver disc and came back outside.

He quickly erased the blood-soaked floor with water magic.

The gouged floor from the initial attack and the wall the man hit......

Finally, Leon summoned the 4-star Arpina earth elemental that he last memorized.

“Eosweet.”

A brown, round, and smooth-looking head emerged from the ground.

While the earth magic that could be linked with Eosweet included spells that could instantly sink the ground or gather and throw rocks, Leon used it appropriately to fill in the gouged floor and wall.

I can’t make it completely natural, but......

He decided to make it just confusing enough to prevent accurate judgment.

A loud noise had occurred, so he didn’t know when a mage might appear.

After using even the mana trace eraser, Leon quickly left the place.

****

In the end, Leon returned without even getting to sell the items he had, and was now experimenting with the power of the ‘Moonlight Scattering Sword’ inside the Magic Orb.

Leon poured all the mana he had into the floating wooden sword.

“Pierce.”

The wooden sword flashed and flew in the blink of an eye towards a thick tree far away from Leon, piercing through it.The sword didn’t stop there but continued to fly at undiminished speed.

Crack- Crack- Crack-

Several trees fell in succession.

The wooden sword flew and disappeared to a place too far for Leon to retrieve with basic telekinesis.

“Huff...... Hah......”

Leon wiped the sweat from his brow, panting heavily as the sudden mana depletion left him breathless.

It does get stronger the more mana you pour into it.

It was also true that it was hard for Leon to handle, but that was because he poured in all his mana.

To think magic gets stronger just with mana quantity......

With his current low mana quality, a method to strengthen magic by just mindlessly pouring in mana was quite the boon.

Leon, who was confident in his mana quantity if nothing else, welcomed this gladly.

Leon sat cross-legged and regulated his breathing.

As clear mana circulated through Leon’s body, his mind became somewhat calmer.

The mana inside the Magic Orb always made Leon feel good.After becoming an all-attribute, that feeling intensified as his affinity for mana increased.

He couldn’t deny that it became the driving force for consistent training.

After regulating his breathing to some extent, Leon retrieved the wooden sword himself and put it in his spatial pouch.

Now it’s time to examine......

Leon approached the man’s corpse.

There were two spatial pouches found on him.

One pouch contained only mana stones.Even a rough look revealed over 1000 mana stones.

Leon set aside the mana stone pouch and emptied out all the items in the other spatial pouch onto the floor.

The first thing that caught his eye was a black magic book.

The title was ‘Acreepa System Void Seal.’

Leon took out a book titled ‘Call of the Abyss’ from the makeshift magic book storage he had created.It was the black magic book he had obtained after killing Paulin.

While Void Seal was a high-level magic that Arcane Mages could use, it didn’t seem to particularly link with Call of the Abyss.

Call of the Abyss was one of the lower-tier magics that even apprentice mages could learn.

On the other hand, Void Seal is......

Leon frowned sharply at a certain point.

These guys are really crazy......

Void Seal basically required a mage’s core to use.Not the user’s own core, but the core of another mage.

Since the core doesn’t have a physical form, it naturally disappears when the mage dies.

The black viscous liquid that Leon found unsettling was made by forcibly extracting and condensing these cores.

Mages are beings who can affect reality with will alone.

The viscous liquid made by mixing the cores of these mages exuded an eerie aura as if containing vengeful spirits.

Moreover, the artifact that could forcibly hold and temporarily store these cores......

Leon picked up the purple crystal lying next to the magic book. A crystal small enough to hold between the index finger and thumb.

On the purple surface of the crystal, seven gray stripes were wriggling as if alive.

The mage’s core is stored in this crystal, then condensed according to the magic of Void Seal.

The more cores condensed, the more powerful viscous liquid could be summoned.

What an unpleasant magic.

Leon put down the book and crystal for now, and picked up the token.

A token with more intricate patterns engraved than the one Leon had.

Upon examination with appraisal magic, it was an artifact that could form a D-rank barrier.The one Paulin had was E-rank, so this was an upgrade.

D-rank could withstand even entry-level Arcane magic.It seemed it could be used 5 times as there were no signs of use yet.

So he did let his guard down......

The fact that he didn’t use such an artifact while having it meant he thought he could block the wooden sword with magic alone.

Well, if I saw an ordinary wooden sword flying at me, I’d probably sneer and try to block it too.

While the magic sword had the cheating ability to disturb a mage’s spell formula, it was rather vulnerable to artifacts that only required mana injection.

Leon fell into contemplation with the token in front of him.

The man had clearly seemed to realize something upon seeing Leon’s token on the ground.

Is it some kind of identifier for black mages of the same affiliation to recognize each other?

He was hesitant to use it just because it was D-rank.

It wasn’t clear whether the man had tracked Leon through the token’s tracking magic, or if he had started following directly because Paulin’s weekly research journal stopped arriving.

Appraisal magic couldn’t determine if tracking magic was applied.

Let’s keep it inside the Magic Orb for now.

Even if there was tracking magic, he didn’t think it would work all the way into the space inside the Magic Orb.

The same went for the red bead next to the token.It was a communication bead, which he planned to store in the Magic Orb and drop overboard at any time when returning by ship.

The next thing that caught his eye was a vial containing a deep navy liquid.

Upon examination with appraisal magic, it had the effect of restoring damaged terrain or buildings to their original state when sprinkled.

So that’s why he ambushed in the middle of a magic city.

Leon belatedly felt regret thinking of the place he had left after only roughly cleaning up.

It’s too late to go back now.

Lastly, there were 5 E-rank elixirs remaining.

He thought they were left uneaten after reaching Arcane rank, as E-rank elixirs would be ineffective at that level.

Leon set aside all the other items and fell into contemplation again with the black magic book and purple crystal in front of him.

Acreepa’s Void Seal.Apart from the magic of condensing mages’ cores, the shadow assimilation technique, which was simply a movement magic, seemed useful, but that wasn’t why Leon was contemplating.

There was another reason why Leon actually felt extreme crisis upon seeing a Arcane-rank black mage.

What’s needed to quickly learn black magic is the darkness attribute.

The darkness attribute, along with the light attribute, is evaluated as the most excellent talent except for all-attributes.

It was because it couldn’t be substituted.The reason for this goes back to the beginning of time when gods and demons waged war.

After the war of the gods ended, magic, called the byproduct of the gods, remained, and ancient mages systematically established it.

That magic system has led to the current magic system.

According to that system, the realm rises quickly when learning attribute magic that matches one’s attribute.

So of course, to reach Arcane rank at a young age, one would need the darkness attribute, wouldn’t they?

But what he learned while examining Void Seal was that there was a way for those without talent to quickly raise their realm.

Create a new core around the heart.This core was different from the one naturally formed around the solar plexus.It’s creating an artificial core by sacrificing one’s own heart.

Of course, you’d need some talent for that too.

There must be side effects to this method, but that wasn’t written in the magic book.It continued the content assuming that one had already learned that secret technique.

There was a reason mages persecuted them......

The term forbidden technique suited it well.

Leon’s gaze turned back to the purple crystal.

Seven small gray stripes wriggling as if alive.

Could it be the cores of 7 apprentice mages?

It probably wasn’t really souls trapped, but Leon had no way to use it anyway, and it was unsettling to just keep it.

Should he break this crystal?

After contemplating, Leon picked up the black magic book.

It seemed possible to modify the magic of condensing other mages’ cores mentioned in this magic book to instead release them from the purple crystal.

Is this too superstitious?

Void Seal was magic designed to be used based on the artificial core created in the heart, but this didn’t apply to Leon.

After all, Leon had talent in the darkness attribute.

He had no need to create such an artificial core.

This isn’t something to do right now.

Leon also took out and spread all the items from his original spatial pouch.

It was to determine which items to put in the immediately usable spatial pouch.

In other words, setting priorities.

But Leon’s plan didn’t go as he thought.

As soon as he took out the wooden sword from the original spatial pouch, the wooden sword started to tremble.

And then the purple crystal also started to vibrate, and something was sucked out of the crystal and absorbed into the wooden sword.

“Ah, no......”

It all happened so fast, Leon could only stare in disbelief as it all happened.