Chapter Fourteen: The Legendary Mage

Hearing Antinoia’s answer, Zhao Xu nearly lost his grip on the heavy tome in his hands. Suddenly, his intelligence score of sixteen no longer felt so impressive. He even began to doubt whether players and NPCs truly operated on the same stat system.

All living beings, it was said, possessed a card.

No NPC’s stats were simply conjured out of thin air; how they advanced at each level could always be traced. This was a consensus among future players.

“Your look of disbelief is truly amusing,” Antinoia chuckled unexpectedly, her demeanor shifting from enigmatic archmage to that of a noble young lady.

“Are mages allowed to boast?” Zhao Xu hadn’t invested in negotiation skills, but that didn’t stop him from trying a little trick.

Antinoia, however, remained unfazed. “Your provocation doesn’t affect me, but perhaps if I tell you how it’s done, it might motivate you to work harder in your studies.”

The moment Zhao Xu heard this, his breathing quickened.

Fifty points of intelligence.

That meant a full twenty points of intelligence modifier—not to mention the saving throw DCs increasing by twenty. Just the extra spell slots alone: five each from first to fourth level, four each from fifth to eighth, and three at ninth level. The total nearly matched what a twentieth-level wizard would have by default.

“First, my Headband of Intellect grants a +12 enhancement bonus.”

“Isn’t the maximum only +6?” Zhao Xu immediately interjected.

Antinoia responded as if it were the most natural thing in the world, “For casters below level twenty, the headband’s enhancement cap is indeed +6. But legendary wondrous items can reach a +12 limit.”

Zhao Xu knew legendary items were powerful, but this exceeded his expectations. Most ordinary people might not amass as much intelligence in a lifetime as such a headband could grant. When the mass transmigration comes in a year, even placing this headband on an infant would let them outclass average adults in intelligence.

Duplicate items with the same name didn’t stack. Wearing two headbands would make no difference. To go further, one would have to seek ways to increase the base stat itself.

A +6 attribute item already cost thirty-six thousand gold pieces. A fifth-level divine scroll required a thousand gold, and Resurrection, due to its material components, was priced at six thousand. But the value of a human life had already been calculated: six thousand gold, as long as the body was intact and the spell cast promptly.

Without a body, a higher-level spell was required—True Resurrection, a ninth-level divine spell, with a scroll costing twenty-eight thousand gold.

In his previous life, Zhao Xu could never have scraped together such a sum; in fact, he didn’t even have access to the means of procurement.

If goods could circulate freely between Earth and Arthur, fifty gold coins—about 0.9 jin—would, when compared to Earth’s gold at 350 yuan per gram, make one gold piece worth about three thousand one hundred yuan.

A fifth-level Resurrection spell would thus cost around twenty million yuan. True Resurrection at ninth level would be ninety million, nearly a hundred million. Of course, using these conversions inflated the price due to Earth’s gold valuation system.

On Earth, the gold-to-silver ratio had already fallen to 1:100, but in Arthur, it remained at 1:10. Even priced in silver, two point four million and eleven million yuan for resurrection spells were utterly unattainable for the common man.

With this in mind, a +6 attribute magic item at thirty-six thousand gold could easily buy a True Resurrection scroll and still have change—enough to bring you back from dust.

So, a +12 attribute magic item would be one hundred forty-four thousand gold.

What an extravagant sorcerous class.

Zhao Xu asked honestly, “One hundred forty-four thousand GP?”

Antinoia laughed softly at this, “Multiply by ten.”

“One million, four hundred forty thousand gold pieces?” Zhao Xu would have spat blood if he hadn’t already suffered enough internal injuries.

“That’s right, legendary items are always priced thus. Otherwise, why do you think they’re so rare?”

Zhao Xu stared blankly at Antinoia; was she truly carrying a walking treasury on her head?

Didn’t it feel heavy to have something worth twenty-six tons of gold atop her brow?

At gold’s value, that was 4.4 billion yuan; in silver, it was 570 million.

The sheer cost of the headband made Zhao Xu’s teeth ache; he knew he could never hope for his own intelligence to reach fifty.

“Second,” Antinoia continued, “the Wish spell can permanently increase an attribute by one point each time, up to five times for a total of five points.”

Wish, too, required costly material components.

One point per casting, five points would tally up to about one hundred forty thousand gold—less than one million four hundred forty thousand, but still a prohibitive sum for him.

Wait, Zhao Xu glanced at the woman before him anew. Someone who could afford over a million gold would surely raise more than just one attribute.

Six attributes—even without daring to imagine the full sum, he could still calculate that twenty-eight thousand times thirty came to around eight hundred forty thousand.

But Antinoia was already continuing, “Third, there are spells like Divine Beauty and Attribute Transfer, which can last over twenty-four hours.”

“Fourth, as a legendary mage, I’ve received more attribute increases than you would assume—certainly more than just three.”

The third point, Zhao Xu listened to quietly. But at the fourth, he was struck dumb, raising his head in astonishment.

Antinoia, before him, was actually a legendary mage?

The qualification for legendary mage was a class level above twenty-one, able to cast legendary spells.

Ninth-level spells were already world-shaking—Time Stop could freeze one’s own temporal flow, Gate allowed travel to any plane, Shapechange granted the abilities of countless creatures, Disjunction could shatter all magical barriers, and Prismatic Sphere could thwart any attack or detection.

At this pinnacle, a wizard with ninth-level spells already stood above all others.

Their defenses surpassed mere numerical values, reaching the realm of conceptual protection. Being immune to non-magical weapons was but a basic measure; true mastery lay in using spells to negate an opponent’s actions outright.

In terms of probability, they could even erase prior failures and force a new outcome.

And beyond this, legendary mages could create their own legendary spells.

Few native to Arthur knew much of legendary spells, but it was widely suspected that floating cities were raised by such magic.

So, the Antinoia before him was a true master, able to cast legendary spells?

For the first time, Zhao Xu truly felt he might just be Fortune’s own favored child.