Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Becoming a Mage

He took in large stifled breaths while trying to maintain his calm.

'Damn it! I'm such an idiot! Why did I think that this child's body will have the same anatomy as a person from my previous world?

...Sure they are almost exactly the same but because I failed to account for that, I couldn't locate where the final circuit was!'

'Wait what if-' His eyes opened in horror as a dreadful thought crossed his mind.

'What if there isn't a final circuit?'

How else could he possibly become a mage if the most important part of his mana circuits was missing?

He felt lightheaded since he lost too much blood.

"Damn it..." He couldn't help but curse at his own misfortune.

He slowly crawled towards the stacks of herbs that he gathered and took one stalk of a particular herb that helps in dressing wounds.

He grinded them with stone and slowly applied them to his wound.

Zed irked in pain as he desperately tried not to bite his own tongue.

"Haa... haa..."

After some time, he regained his breathing and sorted out his thoughts.

'The last circuit is missing and it's not inside the brain. If so, where is it?

Do I need to search for it or do I have to form one? If it's the former, then that would be a lot easier since I have confidence in weaving mana inside my body.'

It was precisely because of Zed's expertise in manipulating mana inside his body that he was able to get through the failure with minimum damage.

If it had been others, then they would have no doubt, exploded mana on the inside or ended up damaging one of their circuits.

'However, if it's the latter then... becoming a mage is near impossible as I have never heard of anyone forming a circuit of their own.

Even then, many had tried in the past only to lose their lives in the process.'

He took a deep breath and hoped and prayed with all his might that his final circuit must be inside his body.

"Uwaa!.. uwaaa!"

Zed was taken out of his thoughts when he heard Lan'er's cries.

He bitterly smiled before forcing himself to stand up, walk towards her, and cradle her in his arms.

"Calm down now, little Lan'er. Brother is here.'

The baby Lan'er soon quieted down as she observed Zed's face. Her tiny chubby arms reached out to his face.

This warmed Zed's heart as a smile appeared on his face. He gave her his index finger to which she grabbed with her tiny little hands and fingers.

After playing with Zed's finger, she brought it towards her mouth, signifying that she was hungry.

Zed followed her wishes as he briefly washed his thumb and wounded himself once more.

He had done this many times already so he was used to it.

While feeding Lan'er, Zed decided to look for the last circuit and so, he slowly unwrapped the wound on his chest and began to sense mana through it.

Seconds later, mana flowed through his wound once more and began spreading throughout his circuits.

This time he guided them towards exploring the other parts of his body. Starting from the toe and all the way towards the brain.

But even after 15 minutes of searching, he couldn't find the last circuit and so he began to worry.

He kept double checking, even triple checking every part of his body only to end up with more anxiety.

'Damn it... do I really need to form that last circuit? But I can't afford to throw my life away like this!'

Just then, he felt a slight tugging on his chest. He opened his eyes to see that Lan'er was absentmindedly staring at his chest.

He first thought of comforting her but only to realize that she wasn't just absentmindedly staring at him. It seemed like she could actually see something.

When Zed thought of this, he didn't spare effort to move the mana towards his chest but didn't find anything.

'Hah... am I so crazy to think that a baby could help me?'

However, he sensed a slight fluctuation in the mana that was flowing inside him. He wouldn't have noticed this if he didn't focus on the mana this consciously gathering on his chest.

'What's this?' He wondered as he slowly guided the mana towards that place of fluctuation.

He ended up arriving at a tiny second aorta located inside his beating heart.

"..! This is!-"

He spared effort in circulating the mana there and after an hour of hard work.

"Ha... haha... HAHAHA! FINALLY!"

Zed wanted to laugh with all his might but the pain from his wound prevented him from doing so. When he smoothly circulated the mana inside his completed circuits, he couldn'y prevent the toothy grin from appearing on his face.

How could he not? After all, not only is his current mana circuit twice or thrice the size of his previous mana circuit but actually five times!

Five times!

This was greater than the size of the 1st rate mages in his previous world.

'Incredible!'

He felt an immense surge of mana coursing throughout his body, so much so that it brought him to euphoria.

He decided to bathe in his musings for only a second or so before returning to the matter at hand.

Lan'er had fallen asleep in his arms once more and he had finally realized that it was night time.

He took a sigh of relief as his mental stress lessened while he finalized his mana circuits. At the same time, he was also excited that he could fulfill his greatest ambition which was to reach the apex of magic!

Although this world had plenty to offer such as eternal youth and immortality but no- he wants to achieve further than that.

He wants to become a God! The God of Magic!

-

Mages are split into 3 different levels. They are Acolytes, Apprentice, and lastly, Masters. Acolytes are those fledgling mages who had only started walking on the path of mages.

Apprentices are mages that are able to conjure spells to use in their daily lives. They are also capable of battling other mages but against Masters? They could only end up as cannon fodders.

Meanwhile, Masters are those mages who reached the peak of their affiliated path. There are different affinities for every mage and only Masters are capable of unleashing the peak of magic according to their affinity.

In Zed's previous life, he had only reached Apprentice level because although he was masterful in using mana, he could never conjure enough mana to unleash a high-level spell befitting Masters.

His last spell which made him go out in a blaze of glory was a dangerous spell that pushed his thin mana circuits to the limits, eventually exploding them altogether.

Master-rank mages are well respected in every country in his previous life. They live a life of luxury since they are capable of unleashing attacks on the scale of an atomic bomb.

To understand how terrifying master-rank mages are, there were several dark ages in Zed's world history to which mages conflicted one another.

From a country trying to dominate the world to terrorists destroying countries to the point where the geographical map was eternally changed.

And those who were capable of releasing such destruction or preventing it, are only master-rank mages.

It wouldn't be too farcry to say that Master-rank mages are Gods in Zed's previous world, and in the past, there had been some master-rank mages who started religions.

However, none of them could truly became an omnipotent being like a God.

In the end, they were mortals who could bleed and die of old age.

However, as previously mentioned, although Master-rank mages aren't considered Gods, they were still feared in respected in every part of the world.

This was mainly due to the fact that there was one point on the history of mages where both mages and humans were on the brink of extinction due to the battle of two Master-rank mages.

That was how terrifying the might of Master-rank mages were.

Moving on to affinities, most mages are born with different affinities. Some having elemental affinities that significantly stronger while the others were close to nonexistent.

That's why there is also a classification between mages such as, Acolyte-rank Fire Mage, Apprentice-rank Nature Mage, Master-rank Light Mage, etc, etc.

Zed was an Apprentice-rank Wind mage in his previous life.

His precise and masterful control came from his continuous accurate calculation and usage of his wind element.

But that didn't mean that every wind mage was smart like Zed. This was only possible because of Zed's years of research, adjusting, and calculation for his own element.

He wanted to become a Master of Wind.

However, he lacked what all Master-rank Mages had which was a bountiful mana circuit.

But even when he was born with such conditions, he still kept running towards his goal, never stopping to calculate and adjusting master rank spells into his level to end up having the same output as a real Master rank.

Of course, that also didn't bear fruit because if it did, then Zed would've become a known magical researcher.

-

Zed woke from a dream about his previous life. He felt calm the moment he felt the small infant sleeping in his arms.

He tried to move but ended up irking in pain as he still hadn't healed his wounds.

Before he could conjure a spell to heal himself, he first made sure of what his affinity was.

[Basic-Level Fire Magic: Ignis]

Soon enough, a small ball of flame, similar to a smoke lighter appeared at the tip of his index finger.

He was ecstatic to notice that this barely used his mana reserve.

[Basic-Level Wind Magic: Verrunt]

A gale of wind exuded from the tip of his finger but it was only similar to a soft breeze when it reached his face.

Zed proceeded to test out all the other elements and he had no problem reciting other elemental spells since he completely memorized them due to his research.

As a result, he found out that his strongest affinity was with Water. Fire and Wind were on the same normal output while his lowest affinity was with Nature.

He tried to conjure spells of other elements such as Light, Darkness, Time, Space, and more but there was no result.

This means that he had four elemental affinities with Water at High tier, Fire and Wind at Normal tier and Nature with Low tier.

In terms of levels between affinities, there is Blessed, High, Normal, Low, and lastly, None.

Blessed Tier allows the user to use the same spell only to end up with three times the effect of the said spell while only using the same amount of mana normal spell uses.

High Tier results in twice the effect of the normal spell with the same mana usage.

Normal Tier is self explanatory meanwhile None, means that the user wouldn't be able to use the element at all.

It's normal for mages to have multiple affinities but usually, they end up choosing only one path to focus on.

In the midst of his thoughts, Lan'er had woken up and cried for her morning meal.

Zed was about to bite his thumb out of habit but decided to do something different.

He raised his right arm forward and cast two spells at once.

[Basic-Level Water Magic: Genero]

[Basic-Level Wind Magic: Meven]

A small orb of water levitated on top of Zed's palm.

[Advance-Level Water Magic: Mutare]

He tried his best to rack up his mind for the chemical composition of milk.

During his research, he also dabbled in the studies of chemistry but that was during his mid ages and he died at the age of 105 so it was reasonable for him to have forgotten most of his difficult studies.

'Hmmm... Water... Protein... Carbohydrate.. Lipid.. and what was that last one?'

He worked his mind at great speed just to try and remember that last component

'Was it oligosaccharides? Most likely. I remember it being one of the medium sized words.'

With that, he finalized the spell and as soon as it formed in his mind, his mana reserves were drained by more than half.

The ball of water on his hand turned into a whitish liquid.

'And that's just using it on this small amount of water.

But this is fantastic! I could already use Advance level spells just because of the huge mana reserve I have!

Normally, one would wait to reach apprentice rank in order to use advanced level spells.'

Zed was elated with the result of his little experiment along with his new mana circuits.

The only setback he suffered from his previous life was lifted.

Slowly, he directed a small strand of the conjured milk towards Lan'er's mouth.

However, despite tasting the milk, she refused to drink it and continued crying.

'What's wrong?' He wondered.

He tasted the milk himself and he was sure that he got it right.

Lan'er stretched out her hands and Zed instinctively gave her his finger.

She held it towards her mouth and it was enough for Zed to realize what she wanted.

'Seriously? She still prefers my blood? No, how about I do this...'

He offered his finger for her to suck on while slipping in tiny amount of milk and just as he expected, she began eating greedily.

Soon, the ball of milk that levitated around him disappeared and Lan'er was satisfied. He cradled her by his shoulder while softly tapping on her back.

"...burp."

In result, Lan'er let out a tiny and soft burp that made Zed smile once more.