I Arrived At Wizard World While Cultivating Immortality Chapter 828: The Practical School

The title itself was nothing especially unusual; the point lay in the annotation after the presenter’s name.

Seventh-level wizards were not rare at an academic exchange conference, but wizards specifically marked as combat-type were very rare indeed.

That made Jie Ming think instinctively of that group of combat wizards going gaba-gaba at the back of the hall during Savien’s earlier address.

He had wondered before why an academic exchange conference would invite combat wizards, but looking at it now, did these combat wizards have research results of their own?

…Presumably?

Jie Ming was not entirely sure. Nothing to be done; the image of the combat wizard was simply too deeply rooted.

It was not that combat wizards’ minds did not work; anyone who could become a wizard would do fine as a basic researcher.

But the thing minds most suffer from is comparison, and set against proper logistics wizards, combat wizards really did fall somewhat short in research and study.

Jie Ming looked again, and beneath the presenter’s name there was a further short description:

…This technique adjusts the frequency of mental energy fluctuation to suit different rune structures, and can slightly increase the casting speed and power of spells. Applicable to the overwhelming majority of conventional wizardry systems.

“Now that is interesting.” Jie Ming raised an eyebrow.

Increase casting speed?

Increase a spell’s power?

That technique certainly matched a combat wizard’s style…

The margin might be only “slight,” but anyone who had been through high-intensity combat understood that sometimes a few percent faster, a few percent stronger, was enough to decide a battle.

What was more, judging by the description, this skill had very nearly no threshold to it.

At that thought he changed direction outright and headed for that session.

…

…

Arriving at the designated session, Jie Ming looked the place over carefully.

The whole hall was in the very traditional stepped layout, but there was no formal podium at the center; instead a large open space had been left.

Judging by the arrays around that space, spatial expansion methods had been used here, along with a great many protective measures.

And in the open space, rows of training rune targets, mental energy detection crystals and demonstration arrays had already been set up in advance.

One look at all this and you knew the thing was in an entirely different visual key from the other academic lecture halls.

In the other venues it was a crowd of wizards sitting there listening to reports, then discussing or asking questions of one another.

Whereas this session… was less a report than a training ground.

And it was livelier than Jie Ming had expected.

When Jie Ming arrived there were already a good many wizards standing in the middle of the floor, trading casting experience with one another.

Several had even begun releasing spells of various kinds on the spot.

Looking closely, was the overwhelming majority of the audience combat wizards?

Although combat wizards and logistics wizards showed no especially obvious difference in combat methods or power systems, there was still a subtle difference in bearing.

Put simply, a combat wizard was rather more openly edged.

But there were also logistics wizards fond of fighting who carried the same bearing, so it was genuinely hard to tell.

Just then, a burly middle-aged wizard with bronzed skin walked to the center.

He did not wear a broad robe as ordinary wizards did, but a black combat suit that allowed free movement.

The man merely stood there and gave off the sharp aura of one who has come through countless slaughters.

He swept a glance across the venue, and everyone at once felt an indescribable sense of danger sweep over them from head to foot. The whole hall fell silent instantly!

“I am Rades.”

Seeing the venue go quiet, Rades nodded, satisfied, and spoke straight out.

“What I am going to talk about this time you should already have seen on the light screen outside, so I will not introduce it at length.”

“As for what the deeper principles and theory behind this technique are, I have no idea myself. If you are interested in that, you can go and research it slowly later.”

The words had barely left him when a burst of laughter came from below, and even Rades laughed a little himself.

Jie Ming pinched the bridge of his nose helplessly, unable to shake the feeling that this fellow was no longer anything like a wizard.

Rades went on, “I may not be much good at theory, but if you can learn what I am going to tell you today, you can use it today and it will save your life on the battlefield tomorrow!”

Hearing that, Jie Ming sat up straight despite himself.

After all, the man before him was a proper seventh-level combat wizard. He could not speak to anything else, but on the subject of combat, whatever the man said he absolutely believed.

Seeing everyone’s attention fixed on him throughout, Rades nodded, satisfied, and then raised his right hand.

In the blink of an eye, a perfectly ordinary fireball condensed in his palm.

“With the same fireball spell, over ninety percent of wizards keep their mental energy at a constant output while casting. That is not to say you are doing it wrong; for the overwhelming majority of wizards, keeping mental energy constant is the correct choice.”

“But… certain particular spells can be improved with my technique.”

The next moment, under Rades’s deliberate demonstration, everyone could feel his mental energy suddenly undergo a subtle change.

The mental energy seemed to begin oscillating.

And the several hundred basic runes inside the fireball spell shifted faintly along with that oscillation, all at the same time.

Boom!

The fireball spell shot out abruptly and struck the rune target, bursting into a spray of sparks.

The recording crystal beside it immediately displayed the various figures.

Jie Ming’s eyes lit up at the sight. Even without looking at the recording crystal he could feel clearly that when Rades had cast the fireball spell a moment ago, he had used the standard mental energy of a first-level wizard casting a fireball spell.

But from that slight oscillation of mental energy alone, this fireball spell had come out very nearly a tenth faster than standard, and its explosive power had risen by close to seven percent!

Rades displayed the data from the recording crystal beside him. “See that? That is the effect of this technique.”

He casually condensed two different runes with his mental energy:

“Different runes have subtly different degrees of fit with a mental energy frequency. If you compare mental energy to an instrument, then runes are the strings.”

“Learn to adjust the fine frequency of your mental energy in sequence, according to how each rune of each spell operates, and you can raise the effect as far as possible without consuming any more mental energy!”

As he spoke he went on to demonstrate several kinds of basic spell, and the mental energy and fluctuation frequency corresponding to each spell were entirely different.

Rades kept explaining the mental energy fluctuation requirements needed in various rune combinations, and detail after detail made his listeners’ eyes light up.

Later on, Rades even had the wizards come to the training area at the center of the venue to test it in practice.

While he stood to one side and kept correcting and adjusting them.