Wizards begin by accessing the Inspiration panel.

Chapter 71 Summoning Skeletons (Please continue reading)

"Mentor, I plan to take the Prophet's Potion and wait for its full effects to be absorbed before participating in the school's advancement assessment."

"Sure, for you, the promotion assessment is just a formality. Getting promoted sooner will improve your benefits in all aspects." Seres nodded.

After leaving Celes's laboratory, Richard ran into Melo as soon as he went down to the first floor.

Meiluo was still as youthful and beautiful as ever, her naturally curly golden hair even more charming than before.

"Richard, you're absolutely amazing! Congratulations on winning the top spot among the freshmen!"

"Thank you, senior! It was just a fluke."

"Sigh! You've only been here for half a year and you've already surpassed me. But I'll be close too. I estimate that in a few more days, I'll meet the requirements for advancing to the second-level wizard apprentice level." Meiluo raised her clenched little fist and said happily.

"Congratulations, senior! You're pretty fast too. By the way, senior, for the promotion assessment, can I go anytime, or does the academy have a designated time?" Richard asked with a smile.

"Well, the school schedules two exam periods each month for advancing to the second level of apprenticeship, one at the beginning and one in the middle of the month. If you want to participate, Richard, there should be one in three days. The location is right where you complete the enrollment procedures."

Richard nodded; he still remembered that location.

Furthermore, he wasn't surprised at all that Meiluo was about to be promoted. After all, Meiluo's talent was a level above his, and she had been a senior student for a year and a half. Considering the time, it was about time.

Upon returning to his dormitory, Richard immediately took the second bottle of the Prophet's Potion.

Having learned from the experience of taking it the first time, the main ingredient of the Prophet's Potion, Dream Flower, has far fewer side effects, but correspondingly, its efficacy is reduced by nearly half.

After taking the medicine, Richard brought up the control panel.

[Attributes]: Strength 4.4, Agility 4.6, Constitution 4.3, Spirit 11.4

Before taking the second bottle of the Prophet's Potion, his mental strength was 10.5 standard units, and now it has become 11.4 standard units, an increase of 0.9 standard units, which is already a pretty good result.

This gave Richard the idea of ​​getting another bottle of the Prophet's Potion.

Although the effects of the medicine decrease with each dose, judging by this rate, the third bottle could still increase his strength by 0.4 to 0.5 standard units. However, considering the price of nearly 200 magic stones, Richard shook his head and decided to pass for now.

After all, there are other kinds of drugs that can enhance mental strength, so there's no need for him to stubbornly stick to this one that his body has already developed a tolerance to.

After taking the Prophet's Potion, Richard began to ponder the battles of the ranked matches and his next move.

Looking back on his final match against William, Richard now feels that he was extremely lucky to have won.

William was able to win partly because the final witchcraft surprised him, and partly because his opponent underestimated him.

Facing an opponent like William, who possesses high mobility and explosive power, is truly a nightmare for ordinary wizard apprentices.

If only we had help to hold them off.

Hey, that's right. If I could learn level zero sorcery to summon skeletons, battles would be much easier.

Another way to deal with this is to find defensive magic items to withstand William's sudden attack. However, due to the scarcity of magic items, defensive ones are even rarer. Richard thought about it and shook his head, giving up the idea.

For me, learning witchcraft is the most practical thing to do.

In fact, Richard really wanted to learn Ophelia's magic for accelerating the growth of mutated plants, but his natural affinity was only at an inferior level. He estimated that the effect of the same nature-based magic would only be one-third or even less than that of the higher level.

Upon thinking about this, Richard dismissed the idea.

It seems that if I want to improve my combat power immediately, I should hurry up and learn the level zero sorcery of summoning skeletons.

The next morning, Richard took a paid course called "Introduction to Necromancer's Calling," and after the course, he went to the library to borrow several related books.

After studying it carefully, Richard finally gained a general understanding of the level zero spell, Summon Skeleton.

Here, it's worth mentioning why a first-level wizard apprentice cannot learn to summon skeletons, but a second-level wizard apprentice can.

The reason is that to complete the witchcraft of summoning skeletons, one must first draw an inverted pentagram array to connect with the realm of the dead and then summon skeleton soldiers across realms to help in battle. This process consumes the most mental energy.

Only those with a mental strength of ten or higher can fully activate the magic array.

That's why only second-level wizard apprentices can successfully cast this spell.

Relatively speaking, the mental energy required to maintain undead summons is much less. Specifically, it is proportional to the strength of the undead summons. For example, maintaining an ordinary skeleton soldier in the Overworld consumes about one standard unit of mental energy per hour.

In addition, the instructors of the paid courses also mentioned that when communicating with the spirit world, the higher the level of mental control of the spellcaster, the better.

Taking the summoning of skeletons as an example, when the caster's mental tendrils probe into the undead realm, the higher the degree of mental refinement, the more skeletons can be found, and the better the best among undead creatures of the same level can be selected.

However, Richard still has a few preparations to make before the official summons.

Since casting the spell to summon skeletons requires drawing a pentagram, a special ink called ethereal ink is needed.

Richard himself didn't have any of these, so he had to go to the trading area to buy some.

As for paintbrushes, no extra preparation is needed; the Banshee's Finger in Richard's hand is an excellent choice.

Of course, there are also simplified methods for drawing spell circles. For example, you can solidify the form of the summoning spell circle using a crystal ball. Although using a crystal ball to summon skeletons consumes more mental energy than drawing by hand, it saves you the few drops of blood essence and tedious spell circle drawing steps required for each summon.

The solidified summoning circle is also the mainstream summoning method adopted by third-level wizard apprentices and full wizards.

However, Richard, as a beginner, still needs to start by drawing magic circles by hand.

Half an hour later, Richard returned to his dormitory, bit his index finger, dripped a few drops of his own blood into the ethereal ink, stirred it well, then dipped it with the banshee's finger and infused it with his spiritual power, beginning to draw a reverse pentagram array on the ground.

The purpose of adding essence blood is to reduce the difficulty of summoning and also to reduce the consumption of mental energy.

[Host is casting a level 0 spell to summon a skeleton. Do you wish to consume energy to gain inspiration for the level 0 spell to summon a skeleton?]

After a moment's thought, Richard decided to drag the slider to the 1000 position and selected "Yes!"

With a dizzying sensation, Richard's soul arrived in the dream space. This time, he came to a closed room. In the center of the room was a blurry figure, who was bending over and carefully drawing something on the ground.

The next second, he possessed the figure. As soon as he was possessed, he realized that he was drawing a reverse pentagram magic circle to summon skeletons.

Only after accurately drawing the inverted pentagram can one proceed to the next step: sketching out all five runes for summoning the skeleton in one's mind and constructing them into a sorcery model.

Thank you to readers Qianfeng, Liuzhongxu, Hello Author, Aolai Baishi, and Wangjiaqiao Dugujinren for their monthly tickets!

(End of this chapter)