Chapter Six: The In-depth Analysis and Dissection of Magic!

[Talent: Heart of the Mage: lv1 (0/100)]
[Special Effect 1: Skills you cast will not consume mana]
[Special Effect 2: Skills you cast have no cooldown]
[Special Effect 3: Locked]
[Special Skill: Arcane Specialization]
...
[Arcane Specialization (SSS): Allows you to decompose specified items for focused research. Each decomposition grants a certain amount of specialization points. When enough points are accumulated, the level of your talent skill will increase. Additionally, during the specialization process, there is a chance to obtain attributes, skills, or items related to mages.]
...

It took nearly two or three hours just to bring his level up. Originally, he only wanted to grind a little more to gain some extra attributes, but unexpectedly, the Heart of the Mage talent underwent a change after leveling up!

Back when he had just crossed over, Yi Shen had been curious as to why there was an as-yet-unlocked third special effect in the Heart of the Mage talent, and how to increase the talent’s level.

Now, after leveling up, he automatically acquired the ability of specialization, and the Heart of the Mage entry in the talent column finally displayed an experience bar!

“SSS skill?”

After acquiring the special skill, Yi Shen found that in his skill bar—aside from the F-level Fireball and F-level Haste—there was now a targeted skill.

Though the color was not much different, the bold SSS classification still gave Yi Shen a jolt of surprise.

Just days ago, an SS-level piece of equipment at auction had already caused quite a stir.

Over the decades, while humanity had gradually developed, S-level items remained rare treasures.

Much less a special skill that could exist permanently; most of the time, the effect of a skill far exceeded that of equipment or items of the same level. This alone proved the terrifying potential of the SSS skill.

“If even a derived special skill reaches SSS level, could this talent’s grade already exceed the upper limit?”

With the emergence of this skill, Yi Shen figured out a great deal. This so-called talent was even more extraordinary than he had initially thought. He had originally planned to ask his father about mage talents when he returned, but now it seemed the fewer people who knew about this, the better.

“Arcane Specialization.”

He had acquired the skill.

Yi Shen was certainly going to give it a try.

He took out some of the materials he had just obtained and performed a targeted casting.

A faint blue radiance appeared before him, enveloping the toxic sacs, snake skins, and other items he had gathered.

Immediately, these items seemed to dissolve into strands, gradually decomposed and absorbed. The blue light then flowed into Yi Shen’s body, as if nothing had ever happened.

[Ding, you have performed Arcane Specialization. The absorbed materials have been converted to 1 specialization point.]
[In this specialization, you have gained: Intelligence +1]

Arcane Specialization worked quickly.

Once the items vanished, Yi Shen checked his status panel; sure enough, his intelligence attribute had increased by one, and the Heart of the Mage entry now read: [Heart of the Mage lv1 (1/100)].

It seemed that once specialization points reached 100, his Heart of the Mage talent would undergo a second enhancement.

The rise in level and the acquisition of new skills suddenly restored some of Yi Shen’s motivation.

While there was no significant increase in combat power yet, the attribute boost from Arcane Specialization opened a new path for him!

If a mere dozen F-level items could net him one point of intelligence, then if he bought large quantities of toxic sacs and snake skins—or even higher-level items—from the market, wouldn’t his attributes skyrocket explosively?

Though for now intelligence only increased his mana pool without much practical effect, it was said that with C-level and some D-level skills, damage was not just base damage but also gained attribute bonuses. At that point, wouldn’t he receive terrifying boosts?

All of this would require Yi Shen’s careful testing. Since he was still grinding levels, killing more monsters might also reveal further hidden properties of the Heart of the Mage.

...

Another hour passed.

As he fought more, his command of his skills grew increasingly adept.

He now needed less than a hundred experience points to advance to level four.

Moreover, over the past hour, he had indeed discovered a few new things.

First was the use of Fireball. Yi Shen noticed that Fireball primarily relied on charging, but if he intentionally compressed the casting time, the size of the Fireball could be greatly reduced—yet the damage didn’t diminish much.

Yi Shen wasn’t sure if others could do the same, but he was already able to casually fling seven or eight Fireballs per second, all landing perfectly on the enemies ahead.

Second was the Arcane Specialization of items.

After some experimentation, he deduced that Arcane Specialization could only be performed on items that could be placed in the inventory; things that couldn’t be stored, or meaningless inorganic materials around, couldn’t be specialized.

For example, both toxic sacs and snow snake corpses were F-level materials, but only the toxic sacs could be specialized; the snow snake corpses served little purpose.

Furthermore, not every specialization yielded both points and attributes.

Initially, Yi Shen had to use over a dozen materials just to gain a single point, and when he later tried to decompose items one by one, he received messages saying that specialization did not yield points that time.

He suspected that only when the amount of material reached a certain threshold, or when the item’s level was higher, would specialization be effective.

With this in mind, Yi Shen ventured deeper into the bone piles. As a level-three novice entering a monster gathering spot, with level-four and level-five monsters starting to appear, this was actually quite dangerous.

But as he felt no pressure in the face of these monsters, he was tempted to keep exploring further.

Truth always belongs to the brave.

At last.

When Yi Shen reached a broken wall of bones, he discovered several strange small burrows.

Around these burrows, there were at least fifty dune worms and the occasional snow snake lurking beneath the ground.

At this point, Yi Shen was only about thirty experience points away from leveling up. He specialized all the items he had stockpiled, including two pieces of white equipment he’d acquired along the way.

He was preparing to clear out the monsters in these burrows and make a push for level four.

But before he could act, specialization unexpectedly delivered a pleasant surprise.

[Ding, you have performed Arcane Specialization. The absorbed materials have been converted to 3 specialization points.]
[In this specialization, you have gained: Intelligence +1, Endurance +1, D-level skill: Flame Bomb]