Starlight Life Of The Sage

Public Release: March 12th, 2019

Cara read scroll after scroll and delved deep into the library. She compared every mage technique she could find. They followed similar patterns, but each technique, much like a Dantian Cultivation method, varied wildly in scope and design.

Some mage techniques required a cultivation of a mana crystal within the core of the brain, a central housing for the user's soul that would represent an acc.u.mulation of their entire being.

This type of technique, though, had a fatal flaw. If the soul were confined within the brain, then it would be unable to drive a knight technique. 'Cracking the core' was all for the purpose of hatching the nascent soul so that it could fuse with the body's flesh eventually, forming an immortal body.

A soul trapped in a crystal wouldn't be able to bond with the body.

Despite knowing such techniques led to a dead end, Cara continued to read and copy them down.

The second type of mage technique she found involved grafting an 'enchantment' on the user's brain, letting them drive mana through it in order to power preset spells. Such a method had a few advantages to it... alongside several disadvantages.

The greatest advantage was the speed of the spellcasting. By using preset spells, the caster could activate them within a quick moment. The spells could also be of high quality, and they would always activate, with no failure rate whatsoever.

The downside was that the spells needed to be set up every day. At the start of the day, just after the 24 hour mark from the last setting, the arrays would fade and need to be redrawn. Adding in the limited array space, depending on the user's overall level, the number of spells available to such a mage could be small in both amount and variety.

The path didn't conflict with Cara's others, but she didn't like the thought of predicting what spells she'd need every morning, nor did she like the idea of being absolutely shafted should she get involved in a fight close to, or just after, the rollover period.

She compared such a method, while strong in its own ways, to an iron rod. It was sturdy and strong, good for whacking someone over the head, but if she faced down a foe with a longer rod, or some other weapon that a rod couldn't deal with, she would be shit out of luck!

With a bow and arrow, even if her foe had a better bow and arrow, she could outperform them in a fight through strategy and technique... But there was only so much 'technique' that could be involved with swinging an iron rod.

-

Cara continued to rifle through strange and unorthodox mage techniques, and similar patterns continued to appear. The methods of cultivating them often had terrible drawbacks, but the spells themselves were usually related in design.

Fire-type spells followed a pattern Cara found familiar, something akin to her Dragon's Breath attack she learned back around when she first arrived in this world.

Frost and Ice spells followed a pattern similar to the one she theorized oh so long ago.

The cogs in Cara's head turned. She dug deeper and found more inspiration. Finally, after a long while, she drove her own mana and felt ice on her tongue.

[Skill Gained - Dragon's Frost Breath

Dragon's Frost Breath: 8]

Cara hadn't had the strange 'status' screen pop up in quite a while. She smiled as she looked over it briefly. She knew the new skill related to her bloodline, and she still needed to see the related information about her bloodline too, but she wasn't in a rush. She didn't want to skip over a single piece of relevant information. Perhaps somewhere hidden in the dusty recesses of the library was the one technique or scroll that would reveal the truths of the Mage Path to her.

-

Cara's delve into the depths of the bookshelves returned more and more mage techniques, each stranger than the last. They were tiered, much like the first she ever found, and she understood that the tiers worked in reverse from how a mage's strength was classified. A Tier 2 technique could allow a mage to reach the 9th Level, which was equivalent to a Xantian Cultivator or a Grand Knight.

The tiers and numbers were confusing, and so Cara decided to reject the nominal classification and replaced it entirely with one of her own. She simply, upon every copy she made, numbered the mage techniques from 1 to 10, with level 10 being the weakest potential and level 1 being the highest.

Below the levels of Mage was the rank of magic apprentice. There was no equivalent cultivation to it. Cara remembered laughing upon seeing how low Prince Lars's cultivation was, and now she understood why his mana levels seemed so off.

A level 10 Mage was equivalent to a Houtian Cultivator or a regular Knight.

A level 9 Mage equaled a Xantian Cultivator or a Grand Knight.

A level 8 Mage equaled a Zong (Cracked Core) Cultivator or a Broken Soul Knight.

A level 7 Mage equaled a Nascent Soul Cultivator or a Half-Soul Knight.

A level 6 Mage equaled a Soul Refining Cultivator or a Perfect Soul Knight.

And so on…

-

Of the techniques she found in the Library, Cara didn't find a single that reached up to Level 3. There were a few level 4 techniques, though.

Cara's mind continued to churn and bounce ideas around, as if her thoughts were trapped in an avalanche. The further she fell the bigger the snowball around her grew. New ideas and branching paths spread out before her one by one.

Cara wasn't called 'The First Paragon' for nothing. She, herself, consolidated and researched the Six Paths to Power in her first world, and she advanced the world itself beyond its previous limits. At one point in time, every cultivator once thought that the Golden Core stage was the furthest a cultivator could go…

Then The Sage cracked his golden core and hatched it, advancing the world further beyond the known.

Just as Cara cracked the code to the cultivation world long ago, she started to understand the Mage Path as well. Her mind roiled and thundered like a sea at storm. A veritable squall hammered at the furthest recesses of her mind.

Time passed by with Cara in a haze. She formed theorems and came to conclusions one by one. She approached the pinnacle, the highest seat of knowledge possible on the subject. She tested her thoughts by creating complex simulations in her mind, stressing her meager cultivation base to its limits. Mana surged around her as she walked the halls of the Library, and the Cracks on her vessel started to fill faster and faster, as if they were a rising exponential function.

She pieced her idea together in one final push, in one grand Eureka moment.

She developed a new Mage Path, one that didn't follow the conventions established in the scrolls of the Library.

Cara's swirling mana focused itself on her head, towards her brain, and it coalesced. The flesh of her brain swelled with energy and her body started to tremble. In the center of her mind a crystal started to form, and she felt her soul, her cracked vessel, start to get be pressured towards the crystal.

Cara's eyes glowed with excitement and she hammered at the crystal in time, both with her soul and with her excessive mana. She sat cross-legged in the hall and drew upon her Spirit Connection to aid her.

The forming crystal in her mind, under such a tremendous pressure, cracked itself apart into ten pieces, which spread to the corners of her skull, forming their own pockets of swirling mana.

Cara screamed from the pain. Blood trickled down her nose, mouth, and eyes. Her head trembled and shook, shivering like a wet cat, but her eyes were laser focused, filled with a determination larger than life itself.

A string of mana stretched from her soul to the first of the 10 shards, and they linked together in a powerful bond.

-

Zara stopped reaching the alchemical manuals she found the moment she heard her teacher scream. She rushed up two flights of stairs and found her teacher cultivating in a strange way.

Zara's worries evaporated. Instead, her anxious eyes were replaced with something more profound; her eyes were glowering with respect.

Her teacher just founded a new Path.