Chapter 933: Rank Twenty

Abel came back to check and realized that this area was already empty. Tens of thousands of years had left everything withering away. With that, he turned to walk towards the clear pool, straight towards the round part that was extending outward. The moment he stood on the platform, a mechanism was triggered to elevate a stone bridge from under the water. It seemed to be leading a teleportation door in the middle.

The teleportation gate was activated. Since the golden energy stored inside was already too full, endless streams of light started shooting in all directions. He knew that this was the teleportation gate opening to the next region. He had new challenges waiting for him, and he was ready to take big steps forward to accept them.

The first thing he saw as he moved to the next area was a castle that he recognized as the “demon-gathering fort.” It was about the smallest gathering spot for humans he had seen. The spot he was located at was a plaza that just was not so large. In the deeper part was a grand and solemn-looking building, where the occupation holders used to have their group discussions. On the other side, there was a waypoint that was already extinguished. His first task became apparent. He went forward, took out two of his perfect gemstones, and started to light up the waypoint.

Quite some energy was shot out of the waypoint after it had remained unused for so long. He waited for a bit, and once it became available to use, he could see that all the places he could arrive at were available for quick access. However, for now, he was going to leave this waypoint to discover the fort that was standing on the cliff.

Upon seeing some pillars marked with the sun and spirits’ symbols, he began walking towards the inside. There was a hallroom with nothing in it. Apart from the wall and furnace, nothing else was in the room. It was kind of sad, really. He could imagine the people that used to enjoy all sorts of conversation inside. All that seemed to disappear when the forces of the underworld came to take all that away.

Next, he walked out of the hallroom towards the plaza. After passing by a staircase leading down, he saw two lines of stores with quite an extraordinary blacksmith workshop. As for the others, there was just nothing inside any of them. After passing these shops, he saw that there was a giant gate made of giant steel. The outside was a staircase leading downward, right towards where the hell creatures’ domain. No, he wasn’t going to bother with these hell creatures immediately, not when he’s already had a tough boss fight.

Right. With that in mind, he returned to the Rogue’s Encampment after passing through the waypoint. He needed to head back towards the oak tree so he could prepare for his mediation session. Judging from his previous two experiences, he knew how increasingly important mediation was becoming for him. The song of life’s blessing continued to influence him even during this moment, and he would try his absolute best to find a safe spot to help further the effect. He needed a safe spot to do it, and so far, the oak tree was the safest place he knew.

With the world stone fragment, The Rogue’s Encampment, Lut Gholein, and Port Kurast just became a part of his world, but that was only because he had access to the world stone fragment’s power. To him, he could only feel a sense of familiarity when he was right next to the oak tree that had protected him so many times. He was going to meditate with it.

The oak tree was a tree of life. He was sure of that at this point. There was something mysterious about it, however. While other trees of life had the capability of producing life elixir, his tree never did give fruit to any. He thought that it had something to do with the figs on it after doing some observation. Whatever was stopping the process, he thought that the answer would come to him after seeing that the figs became mature.

Throwing away all the random thoughts in his head, he first sat down at the tree to appreciate the bond he shared with it. Whilst bearing the sense of affection, he commenced his daily mediation training with an advanced “light stone” in his hands, putting himself in his favorite position.

The song of life started becoming louder when he entered mediation. Mana channeled at a rapid pace into his body. There seemed to be no need to filter it, though, as the mana was already transformed by the song of life into energy that could be absorbed by his wizard crystal body.

While Abel was sitting under the oak tree, an endless stream of mana started rushing towards him as though they were attracted by something. It was starting to loosen up the supply of mana inside the Rogue’s Encampment. There was no need to worry about that, it seemed. The oak tree understood what was happening, and very responsively, it wiggled its leaves to start distributing the needed amount into its owner. Every one of its leaves, branches all acted like a mana gathering circle on their own, dragging in energy all the way even from Blood Moor.

Before the mediation began, more than half of his rank eighteen wizard crystal body was filled with newly channeled mana. This was the result of his recent efforts. Not to claim that it was insignificant by any measure, but when the mana swarmed into his body, he was starting to realize something. No matter how good his mana gathering circle was, it was just not going to do a better job than his trustworthy partner. The oak tree really did him a huge favor this time. After becoming a rank eighteen wizard, it was becoming very difficult to make enhancements, especially when the demand for mana was increased by so much. Even some of the talented wizards had to struggle for centuries before they could gather enough resources to help them with their training. Now, whilst barreling down the mana gathered by the song of life, his wizard crystal body was already becoming full in just ten minutes.

As soon as the wizard crystal body became full, the promotion qi started emerging immediately. It was not giving him the time to prepare for it mentally. He was glad that there wasn’t anyone around to see it. The advanced wizards, especially. Their jealousy would be sky high if they saw that he was achieving more in just ten minutes compared to what they had to go through for decades or centuries of dull, tedious preparation work.

Abel was sucking way too much mana from the Blood Moor. he was extending his reach from areas that were further away, like the ocean. Very quickly, the mana swarmed up in Blood Moor, which actually supplied the drained area with so much mana that the concentration was much higher than normal.

Abel wasn’t paying too much attention to that. Right now, he was focusing on his promotion to draw a new rank nineteen wizard rune onto his wizard crystal body. He got it done in five minutes. It was a feat that no other wizard could do, but he had the help of his status as a divinity. When the new crystal body was created, he could feel a strong sense of ecstasy when he realized that more and more mana was flooding in. He needed to stay calm, though. He knew that it was better to contain himself when such opportunity was coming to him.

Whilst trying his best to direct the tremendous amount of mana that was coming his way, he tried to stuff in as much of it as he could into his own body. There was just too much mana required for the job, though. Pretty soon, Bloor Moor became drained once more. He had no ways of knowing that, of course. Since he was so immersed in his own mediation, the only thing he could notice that was different was that there was less energy than before.

That was when the druid spirit became quite handy. It didn’t have a conscience, but it could tell that Abel required a lot of mana, so it opened up his Valaya’s ring on its own and threw out five hundred types of various types of perfect gemstones. Normally, this would trigger an explosion, but the oak tree was a specialist in transforming a huge amount of unstable energy into something harmless and easy to absorb. It worked with the druid spirit to flush in a huge chunk of energy inside Abel even after the mediation was over by thirty minutes. About half of the time was gone, and the perfect gemstones became so bountiful that Abel felt like he was swimming inside a pool when the energy surrounded him.

Soon, he attained a full rank nineteen status. That would make him about an average fighter in any major wizard organization. The song of life didn’t just end there, however. Soon, a promotion qi started emerging, indicating that it was now time to draw a rank twenty wizard rune. It was getting to a stage where it became less necessary to make any significant adjustment to his body. His body would seldom be affected even when his total capacity of power of Will was elevated.

When the rank twenty wizard rune started flashing light, he knew that he was already a full-fledged rank twenty wizard. The mediation still had not stopped. There was still ten-something more minutes left, and he planned on sucking in as much energy as he could so he could spend less time mediating. Mediation was supposed to last for one hour. That was just how things went. Given that the blessing effect of the song of life was technically a free meditation, he decided that he might as well draw his power of the Will to absorbing the energy, just so that he could save more time the next time he was going to have his meditation session.

The oak tree seemed to catch onto that thought very quickly. It started dropping so many leaves on top of his head that they were covering him up completely. All the energy was pure praying energy, something that the blue howling rabbits had gathered up after days and years’ worth of worship for the sole provider of everything they needed to survive. Soon, green energy started lighting up the golden rune on the leaves, covering up Abel as strange patterns started flying in the air. It’s like they were trying to rip open the boundaries that were binding him for a very, very long time.

Again, Abel was completely oblivious to all of this. Even when the meditation was already over, large amount of energy was still flooding into his own body. Seventy. Eighty. He only woke up when he realized that his body was too full. The song of life started becoming weaker as he was waking up. He tried closing his eyes again to sense the power he just gained. He could tell that the rune could effectively boost up levels for all his spells. He could also unleash a lot more suppressive powers now, now that his total rank was two levels higher.

In any case, he was much, much stronger than his former self. If he was fighting a version of himself before this mediation, he knew that his chance of winning was absolute. Still, he had his doubts, because one mediation session was not supposed to do so much. His consciousness was still quite faint, but he still had basic ability to make judgment.

He opened his eyes to see the leaves that were around him. Right now, the leaves that were originally green became dry yellow. They started to be crushed as his bodily movements were becoming weaker and weaker. That got him raising his head very quickly. He could clearly see that the oak tree was becoming weaker. It’s like watching a young man turning sixty within the span of a few minutes.

“Oak Tree!” he stood up in shock. He placed his hands on the trunk and switched up his soul speaker’s ability to inquire for the truth. From what he could gather, the oak tree sacrificed a huge amount of its life force to activate the power of prayer, making it possible to break the rules at the expense of its own wellbeing. He was lucky that he wasn’t promoted into a law-defying wizard just then, because the life force of the oak tree could’ve just obliterated him if it tried to get him to absorb power of the rule around the area.