Chapter 251: Level up

There was an enormous difference between the Light Body I had possessed before and my current state.

Before, I could still call my body one of flesh and blood. Now, after completing its evolution, it could truly be called... a Radiant Body. I had truly become immune to the light element.

I no longer needed to rely on the Brighter Light Staff to protect my body. I could enter the ocean of scorching Solar Light at any time.

I could swim freely through its depths. And the absurdly high temperature of that place would no longer be capable of harming me.

Previously, the light-element immunity spell I cast externally over my body could only protect me against damage caused by relatively low-grade light-element energy.

When the intensity of the light exceeded a certain threshold, that protection was no longer absolute.

I would still suffer damage. This had become evident throughout the entire process of strengthening my Light Body. The light-element energy present in that ocean was so intense that it exceeded the maximum limit of my immunity. I had to rely on regeneration to survive.

But that was now in the past. Now, I could even transform parts of my own body into elemental energy whenever I deemed it necessary. In that state, any damage purely caused by the light element would simply cease to exist.

In the future, even if I faced a Level 2 Mage, a simple Elemental Energy Light Ball launched at me would not be able to injure me.

However, I couldn’t be careless. My immunity had a very specific limit. It applied to the light element, not to every type of attack. For example, there were mutant light-element spells.

A Magma Light Ball was an excellent example. That spell combined light-element damage with physical damage. I could completely ignore the portion corresponding to the light element.

But I couldn’t simply ignore the physical impact of the magma.

I would still be injured. In fact, mutant light-element spells like that represented a considerable portion of magical spells.

It was a fairly common strategy among Mages. After all, if an enemy had developed absolute immunity to a certain element, all one had to do was combine that element with another form of damage.

That way, even if part of the attack was completely nullified, the remaining portion could still injure the opponent.

However, that wasn’t the end of the advantages. The greatest advantage provided by the Radiant Body was that the offensive power of all my light-element spells had been doubled, my casting time had been reduced by half, and my mana consumption had also been reduced by half. Furthermore, in any region rich in light-elemental energy, my mana recovery speed would be doubled.

—Biochip, show me my status.

[STATUS]

[Name: George Gil]

[Gender: Male]

[Age: 17]

[Race: Human]

[Level: Pseudo-Mage]

[ATTRIBUTES]

[Strength: 9.25]

[Agility: 7.35]

[Vitality: 13.22]

[Mana: 20]

I stared at those numbers for a few seconds, and then a smile slowly appeared on my face. I had finally become a Pseudo-Mage.

From that moment onward, I was no longer simply a novice acolyte whose fate could be freely decided by anyone more powerful than me. My Mana had reached twenty points.

That was the maximum limit an acolyte could reach. If I wanted to advance any further, I would need to perform the necessary ritual to become an Official Mage.

But that could wait. There was something far more important at the moment: putting the plan I had been preparing into action. After obtaining the Radiant Body, the human aura present in my body had practically disappeared.

If I disguised myself carefully and took advantage of the hostile environment of the ocean of scorching Solar Light, it would be extremely difficult for the humanoid Spirits to find any trace of my presence.

I had been waiting for this moment for months. I returned to the edge of the ocean and carefully equipped all of my magical equipment. Then, I dove into the ocean of scorching Solar Light once again.

[Author’s Note: He can dive in with his clothes and items without any problems because of his Light Body.]

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Point of View: Emperor Bligty

Over the past few days, I had been feeling extremely restless. As the leader of the surviving clan of humanoid Spirits, I carried a responsibility that no other member of my people could simply take upon themselves.

My entire existence had to be devoted to protecting the continuation of our clan.

Because I knew a truth that none of us could ignore. This world did not belong to us. Although the humanoid Spirits possessed enormous bodies and formidable individual strength, we were a special race incapable of surviving far from this mountainous world.

We could only remain firmly entrenched within our own territory, which was why we needed to prevent outsiders from intruding.

After all... This was a world that belonged to human Mages. Even the first humanoid Spirit, the one who had been born from the depths of the Earth’s core, had understood this reality.

Human Mages tolerated the existence of our unique race for one simple reason.

They wanted to enslave us, and they wanted our resources. The Crystal Peak Mountain of Light belonged to our people. But we... belonged to the Brompou Family.

A thousand-year magical contract had sealed our fate, and under that contract, our powerful clan had been transformed into a kind of special mining group for the local Mage family.

Every five years, we had to hand over a long list of resources. A list so extensive that even we, the Children of the Flaming Ocean, felt a headache coming on whenever we looked at the required quantities.

We were a powerful race. We were proud, and naturally, we had tried to rebel. But the power of human Mages was not something we could stand against.

Without personally experiencing that power, no one could truly understand just how terrifying the capabilities of a Level 3 Mage were.

Our rebellion ended in tragedy, and one-third of our clan members were exterminated. It was such a devastating loss that it took us nearly four hundred years to recover.

After that rebellion, we learned a lesson we would never forget. Before it, although the human Mages treated us with cruelty and severity, they rarely entered our territory.

But over the past hundred years... the Brompou Family had begun putting more and more pressure on us.

Whenever the mountain entered its resting period, they would frequently send a few acolytes down here to train.

To the humans, it was merely training. To us, it was completely different. Those acolytes killed our enslaved beasts and hunted creatures that belonged to our territory.

And sometimes, they even surrounded a young humanoid Spirit who had wandered away on their own, killing innocent children of our clan. Naturally, that aroused our anger.

I had negotiated with the Level 3 Mage of the Brompou Family several times. But the response was always practically the same. I was not to arbitrarily harm any acolytes of the Brompou Family who were training here.

But there was a difference. Visiting acolytes who did not belong to the family were not protected by the same consideration. The problem was that, in our eyes, human acolytes were almost impossible to distinguish from one another.

How could we know which ones belonged to the Brompou Family and which ones did not?

We had no choice. We had to swallow our insults, endure the humiliation, and organize our own patrol teams to prevent any human acolyte from getting too close to our home.

Fortunately, the acolytes who came here for training were not particularly strong.

Furthermore, we could deliberately drive light-element creatures toward the outer perimeter, forming a kind of natural blockade. As a result, it was rare for anyone to disturb our lives in the ocean of scorching Solar Light.

But this year was different. There was a mysterious individual among the human acolytes. Someone who had repeatedly violated the borders of the ocean of scorching Solar Light. Judging from his behavior, he seemed to be perfecting some kind of unknown magical spell.

And he was extremely cunning. We had sent patrol teams and even set up ambushes, but we couldn’t intercept him.

In the end, I could only order the members of my clan to increase their vigilance even further. I also forbade our children from leaving their homes alone at night. I didn’t want to take any chances that some foreign human might cast his perverse eyes upon the bodies of our children.

However, even so, when I was comfortably immersed in a lake of scorching Solar Light inside my own cave, that feeling remained.

An inexplicable fear, a sensation that I had forgotten something. No matter how hard I tried to ignore it, it always returned.

I was Bligty. The oldest member of my clan.

I was seven meters tall. And that year, I had reached the age of one thousand eight hundred and fifteen. My overall strength had reached the peak of my species. If my strength were compared to the hierarchy of human Mages, I could be considered equivalent to at least a Level 2 Mage.

But our strength had limitations. As a special race that relied primarily on powerful bodies and innate talents to fight, we had mastered fewer than ten truly powerful light-element abilities.

A human Mage of the same level could possess nearly a hundred different magical spells and use them freely. The difference was enormous. We did not possess the profound accumulation of knowledge that human Mages had built up over hundreds or thousands of years.

We did not have the countless strange magical items they could produce, nor did we have a large number of minions that could be summoned whenever necessary.

We relied primarily on the powerful innate talents granted by the Will of the World. And because of this, we could never completely escape the fate of being enslaved by human Mages.

With my current strength, as long as that terrifying Level 3 Mage of the Brompou Family did not appear personally, I had no fear of facing an opponent of the same rank within our own territory.

But that feeling that something bad was about to happen had continued to torment me.

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