Ancient Wizards: A Little Progress Every Day

After leaving the academy's administration office, Dargo casually found a long bench in a corridor somewhere in the castle and sat quietly on it, watching the people coming and going.

There were quite a few people in the corridor, most of them wearing apprentice robes, and a few wearing mentor robes. The two were easy to distinguish; the apprentice robes were all gray with the college badge embroidered in silk thread on the chest.

The instructor's robes were different; they were white with beautiful embroidered patterns on the edges and corners, and the academy badge was embroidered in silver thread on the chest.

Dago also discovered that the collars and cuffs of these mentors' robes were embroidered with intricate wizarding runes, each rune appearing almost alive, shimmering faintly in the light.

Its texture appears extremely soft, as if it were woven from delicate spider silk, yet it possesses a resilient quality.

As time slowly passed, fewer and fewer people walked in the corridor, it seemed they were getting ready for class.

"This can't go on, or these ten low-level magic stones will become the cost of a trip to the academy!"

Dago thought anxiously.

He didn't care about anything else, and with the black book in his arms, he followed behind a wizard wearing a mentor's robe with blue dots.

From behind, she appeared to be an elderly female wizard with completely white hair, like the first snow of winter.

After turning two corners, Dago followed the elderly female instructor into a small, arched classroom. The old desks, chairs, and blackboard all showed signs of age, proving that this was an old classroom.

There were small groups of wizard apprentices sitting at tables and chairs, some flipping through books, others whispering among themselves. There weren't many apprentice wizards, only about ten in total.

Dago casually found an empty table and chair in the corner of the classroom and sat down, glancing at the podium.

The elderly female instructor sat quietly on the podium, looking at the sparse students below, her eyes revealing a hint of disappointment.

In the depths of her eyes, it seemed as if she had traversed time, carrying the ancient and weathered memories of the past.

"Apprentices, today we will mainly learn basic ice spells, specifically the detailed pronunciation technique for the sixth syllable of the Hailstorm spell. First, press your tongue against the roof of your mouth..."

With a kind smile on her face, she adjusted her reading glasses and spoke with a touch of melancholy. Her voice, like a rusty key, unlocked the students' eyes and instantly drew their attention.

Dargo stared blankly at the stage. He felt that her words were like the seeds of a multiplying vine, which crawled into his ear and began to take root, growing into Roman columns in his cochlea.

He listened to the entire lesson in complete bewilderment, feeling utterly lost for the entire thirty minutes.

After the lesson ended, the students packed up their books and left the classroom.

Only Dago sat in his chair, negotiating with his mind, trying to salvage some of his lingering attachment to knowledge.

The old witch saw his comical appearance, shook her head and smiled, then packed up her thick textbooks and prepared to leave the classroom.

Dago picked up the book, quickly got up and followed, stopping her in the corridor outside the classroom.

"Hello, Instructor Rosalyn, I am Dago, a new apprentice at the academy. I accidentally followed you into this classroom. Would you please be my guide at the academy?"

Dago asked Rosalyn earnestly that he had only learned the old lady's mentor's name by asking the apprentice two seats away during the lecture.

He was glared at fiercely by the apprentice for this, but fortunately he got the old lady's name.

"Don't you know this is a classroom specifically for teaching ice magic? I see that you have a very sincere attitude towards learning, and I can be your guide at the academy."

"However, I've been quite busy lately and haven't had time to teach apprentices individually. I have a copy of an ice spell here as a gift for you."

Rosalyn pulled a thin manuscript from the thick textbooks in her arms and handed it to Dago. It was covered with her delicate handwriting.

Dago felt that she was like a fireplace at the entrance of an old alley, always providing warmth when people needed it.

"Your sincerity touched me. Although the number of wizards studying ice magic in the academy is gradually decreasing, I still hope to contribute to its development."

"Here I must emphasize to you that ice magic has drawbacks. As your cultivation deepens, it will gradually affect your mental strength, and even your soul, thus causing you to reject other schools of magic."

"That's why there are fewer and fewer apprentices practicing ice magic. I hope you will consider this carefully, as it's a path that's increasingly difficult to turn back from once you start down it."

The witch Rosalyn gave Dago a few words of earnest advice.

Dago listened attentively, took the A4-sized manuscript, and thanked her with tears in his eyes.

The wizard Rosalind didn't say anything more, gave him a deep look, and turned to leave.

Dargo carefully tucked the manuscript into his black leather book, then wandered around the academy castle to familiarize himself with the surroundings until he got tired and returned to his sheltered little nest.

........

At the shelter, Dago changed into light hunting clothes and sat on a wooden stump outside the shelter. It was already past five in the afternoon.

Bathed in the soft sunlight, Dago read the manuscript in his hands. In fact, he had also skimmed through the black-covered witch book, which was obscure and difficult to understand, requiring a certain level of reading ability.

After weighing the options, he chose the simpler ice-based spell – Ice Crystal Spell.

That is, the witchcraft recorded in the manuscript given to him by the witch Rosalyn.

The principle behind releasing the Ice Crystal Technique is quite simple: it involves invoking a spell to summon strange energy particles hidden in the spirit world, and then using mental power to manipulate and aggregate them.

The spell looked extremely simple, just two syllables. Dago tried to pronounce it according to the description on the paper.

"Kryos...Thalassa..."

However, in practice, Dago found that actually producing the sound was not easy.

After an hour of rambling practice, Dago's mouth was dry, but he still couldn't succeed even once.

"This is way too difficult!"

He looked at the thin manuscript and wondered if he had practiced something wrong.

"Never mind, let's eat first. We'll have the energy to train when we're full."

With a sigh, he quickly went to wash the rice and cook the rice, then chopped some dried meat to cook together, making it a simple meal.

Before we knew it, the sky darkened and two moons hung in the sky.

Night fell like a giant black curtain, silently enveloping the Emerald Forest. Moonlight struggled to penetrate the layers of branches and leaves, scattering dappled silver fragments on the ground.

The sounds in the forest were like an eerie symphony. A cold wind swept through the treetops, emitting a low, mournful wail.

Dago lit a fire in the clearing, dispelling the darkness and bringing warmth.

By the firelight, he carefully studied the manuscript again, determined to memorize it this time.

Rosalind's handwriting on the manuscript was beautiful, filling the entire page. She had broken down and explained a lot of knowledge in great detail, which greatly enhanced Dago's understanding of the wizarding world.

Reverend Rosalyn believes that spells are like a "key" that opens a door and connects to another world.

Those strange energy particles can then emerge from behind the door and descend into the natural world.

Some exotic energy particles dislike heat in nature and will transfer heat to exotic energy particles that like heat through an unknown means.

Energy can only be transferred, it cannot disappear into thin air. This is a truth that the wizarding world has only discovered in the last hundred years.

Strange energy particles that dislike heat are known as ice elements in the wizarding world.

Strange energy particles that love heat are naturally fire elements.

These magical arts that control the energy particles that shape the world, whether they are elements such as fire, earth, ice, and wind, or acid, alkali, electrical, and mechanical energy that come with the progress of civilization, are collectively known as energy-shaping magic.

These spells can cause a lot of damage to nature in a short time. Of course, ice crystal spells don't have that power; they are just basic spells in the ice magic system.

Most of the knowledge comes from Rosalind's expansion of the Ice Crystal Technique.

Dargo tucked the manuscript back into the black book, closed his eyes, and carefully savored every word on the paper. When he opened them again, a sapphire blue halo shimmered in his eyes.

"Kryos...Thalassa..."

The strange and difficult syllables came out of Dago's mouth with perfect accuracy.

The moment the incantation was finished, a large portion of his spiritual power vanished, as if it had been devoured by something.

Dago looked around and saw scattered ice elements, like dust particles, suddenly appear around him, hovering in the air and constantly drawing heat from the air.

The temperature around Dago plummeted, and he shivered from the cold.

He quickly used his mental power to gather the emerging ice elements to a distance of one meter in front of him.

Ice elements rapidly gathered in front of him, forming a blue energy ball the size of a pigeon's egg. A large amount of water vapor rapidly sublimated and grew around the blue energy ball.

As more moisture was replenished from afar, the blue energy sphere grew into an ice crystal pillar as thick as an arm, floating in the air, according to his will.

Countless ice flowers drifted slowly down from the ice crystal pillar, appearing dreamlike under the moonlight. With a slight thought, Dago sent the ice crystal pillar shooting out with a "whoosh".

The ice flower trailed a dazzling tail from the ice crystal pillar, then with a "thud" it plunged into a large tree more than ten meters away, before disappearing and melting into a puddle of water.

Overwhelmed by a surge of joy and a sense of accomplishment, Dago was greeted by a notification popping up on the system panel.

[Skill that can be improved: Ice Crystal Technique. Would you like to improve it?]

Dago immediately selected "yes," and the system panel changed.

【《巫师通用冥想法》（入门111/1000）；《空气弹》（入门123/1000）；《冰晶术》（新手1/100）】

"It seems that as long as I successfully cast the spell the first time, it can be loaded into the system."

Seeing the Ice Crystal spell loaded into the system panel, Dago breathed a sigh of relief.

His heart was surprisingly calm. Instead of indulging in joy, he continued practicing.

With his current mental energy, he can probably exhaust it after casting Ice Crystal Spell twice. Ice Crystal Spell requires much more mental energy than Air Bullet, so it's roughly equivalent to casting Ice Crystal Spell once every three Air Bullets.

Therefore, he now meditates once, then releases three air blasts and one ice crystal spell, and so on in a continuous cycle.

After three hours of training, Dago dragged his tired body into the shelter, changed out of his sweat-soaked hunting clothes, quickly took a shower, and then lay down on a small bed with a deerskin floor.

He reviewed his evening's training. With the improvement of his Ice Crystal Technique, he became increasingly adept at controlling the ice element. Moreover, as his progress increased, the requirements for spell syllables were actually decreasing.

So in the future, perhaps I won't need to chant spells to cast magic. Lost in these beautiful fantasies about the future, I drifted off to sleep without realizing it.