Ethan opened his eyes.
Deep within his pupils, a flash of emerald-green light flickered and vanished.
He could feel the changes in his body.
His bone density had increased by at least twentyfold, and natural energy circuits were branded onto the surface of his bones.
A faint wood-element energy flowed through his muscle fibers, and every single fiber could unleash a terrifying strength far surpassing what he had before.
The surfaces of his internal organs were covered with an extremely thin, emerald-green light membrane—a protective layer automatically formed by the radiation field on his organs.
Vitality surged within his body.
His physical fitness, which had already been extremely enhanced by the tempering of the Elemental Torrent Body Refinement Technique, had now multiplied dozens of times over.
His mental sea had undergone an even more earth-shattering transformation.
The original gray mist had completely vanished, replaced by a clear, emerald-green space.
The mental crystal floated in the exact center of the space, slowly rotating.
Ninety-nine layers of light patterns flowed across the crystal's surface, each layer resonating simultaneously with the other ninety-eight layers.
His total mana had multiplied by at least fifty times compared to before the radiation-based transformation.
His mental power strength had also skyrocketed by dozens of times.
Now, it was time for the third step: completing the solidification of his First-Tier spell.
The complete wizardry model of Thorn Blood Armor unfolded within his mental sea.
Three hundred and seventy-two mental power incisions, seventeen energy nodes, and a complete set of energy circuits.
He had repeatedly constructed this model countless times in his mental sea, and the depth, angle, and curvature of every single incision were already engraved in his mind.
Phase One: Deep Study of the Wizardry Model.
He constructed the model of Thorn Blood Armor in his mental sea once again.
His mental power precisely guided each incision to its designated position, completing all three hundred and seventy-two incisions in one smooth, continuous motion.
The seventeen energy nodes were activated at the exact same instant, and the complete energy circuit began to operate.
The model construction was perfect, without any redundant mental power fluctuations; its structure had been optimized to the absolute limit.
Phase Two: Crystal Resonance.
His consciousness sank into the mental crystal.
The rotation speed of the crystal began to quicken.
All ninety-nine layers of light patterns lit up at the exact same instant, and an emerald-green light erupted from the crystal.
The light spread, echoed, and resonated within his mental sea, forming a stable resonance field.
The surface of the crystal began to soften, and the originally rigid mental power structure became imprintable within the resonance field.
Phase Three: Model Imprinting.
He constructed the wizardry model of Thorn Blood Armor in his mental sea once more.
The moment the model took shape, he did not release it. Instead, he wrapped the entire model with his mental power and pressed it down onto the surface of the mental crystal.
Fine lines began to emerge on the surface of the mental crystal; these were the imprinting marks produced as the Thorn Blood Armor model fused with the crystal.
The three hundred and seventy-two incisions were branded onto the crystal's surface one by one, and the seventeen energy nodes re-condensed within the crystal.
As the last incision finished imprinting, the stinging pain receded like a tide.
A tiny, emerald-green rune had been added to the surface of the mental crystal.
The rune was only the size of a grain of rice, yet its structure was astonishingly intricate.
The rune rotated slowly on the crystal's surface, stirring up a faint ripple of energy around it with every turn.
Phase Four: Solidification and Stabilization.
This involved repeatedly tracing this newly solidified model with his mental power.
Each trace would deepen the fusion between the model and the crystal by a fraction, and stabilize the glow of the rune a bit more.
Time lost its meaning during his meditation.
One day.
Two days.
Three days.
...
The rune on the surface of the mental crystal completely stabilized.
The rune stopped rotating, quietly branded onto the crystal's surface, becoming a part of the crystal itself.
Phase Five: Solidification Complete.
Ethan opened his eyes.
With a single thought,
blood-red wood fibers surged from within his body, intertwining, weaving, and taking shape over the surface of his body.
A blood-red armor covered his entire body in an instant. From his neck to his ankles, every inch of his skin was enveloped in tough wood fibers.
Poison-coated wooden thorns, an inch long, grew evenly across the surface of the armor, their tips gleaming with a cold, dark green light.
The armor was fully linked with his body's nerves.
He could feel the position of every single thorn and perceive any impact received by any part of the armor.
The armor would automatically contract to deflect force along the direction of impact, and the counterattack angle of the thorns would adaptively adjust according to the direction of the attack.
Three hundred and seventy-two incisions.
Seventeen energy nodes.
A complete energy circuit.
Base defense: 3,000 degrees. Base contact reflection damage: 200 degrees per hit. Base duration: 1 hour.
And this was just the baseline data.
The Superpowered Armor passive boosted all defensive capabilities by a hundredfold.
A base defense of 300,000 degrees.
What did this number mean?
It meant that even if he just stood there and let that old fire-wielding geezer blast him as much as he wanted, the old man wouldn't be able to breach his defense even if he drained all his mana.
After all, the base power of a First-Tier Wizard's spells only fluctuated between 3,000 and 20,000 degrees.
This level of attack was a mere drop in the bucket.
With another thought,
blood-red wood fibers surged from beneath his skin, reweaving into armor over his body.
From shedding it to re-covering himself, the entire process took less than half a breath.
The casting speed of a solidified spell was ridiculously fast.
There was no casting time, no mental power fluctuations, and no need for any preparatory actions.
He could activate and retract it at will.
This was the gap between an Official Wizard and an apprentice.
The instant-cast nature of a solidified spell was merely a surface-level feature.
Its essence lay in the transformation of the casting method from "constructing a model" to "activating a model."
The former was like hand-carving a stamp, where one had to carve it anew every time they wanted to use it.
The latter was like carrying a pre-carved stamp in one's pocket, ready to stamp whenever desired.
In actual combat, the few seconds of casting time saved made the difference between life and death.
Just as Ethan was testing the defense of his Thorn Blood Armor, a strange yet familiar aura drifted over.
The aura was formless and intangible, without weight, temperature, or any physical attributes that could be perceived.
Yet, Ethan felt it.
It surged from the deepest depths of his mental crystal, from the innermost core of his bone marrow, and from the gaps between every single muscle fiber.
A sense of warmth.
Like the residual warmth from his mother's palm on a winter night after she tucked him in, back during his childhood in the Marquis's manor of the Thorn Empire.
Like an even earlier time, within the fragments of memories he thought he had long forgotten, the vibration of someone's chest as they held him and hummed a lullaby.
The warmth above his head grew increasingly intense.
The ceiling of the cultivation room disappeared.
Stone slabs, wooden beams, roof tiles—all those tangible materials peeled away from Ethan's perception layer by layer.
He saw the sky.
The sky above the Blood Bone Tower Academy.
The afternoon sunlight poured down from above, pleasantly warm.
Clouds drifted slowly high above, occasionally blocking the sun and casting fast-moving shadows on the ground.
Then, that eye appeared.
In the center of the sky, above the clouds, and amidst the sunlight.
A massive golden eye opened from the void.
Its pupil was a vertical slit, its iris was pale gold, and a circle of fine runic patterns slowly flowed around its edge.
The size of the eye was beyond any scale of measurement.
It hovered in the sky, devoid of physical form, consisting only of an outline condensed from pure light.
Clouds passed through its surface, and sunlight scattered from its edges.
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