Chapter 151: Level 3 Mage (1/3)

“I’ve been in Floating City for so many years, and I’ve never heard of a trainee impersonating a lecturer before,” said Tassy, an official from the Academic Forum’s General Logistics Department, as he looked at the three players beside him.

Stuck as a Level 2 wizard for over a decade, Tassy had managed to climb to the position of Tier 2 supervisor within the Academic Forum department, an achievement inseparable from his diligent and conscientious efforts over the years.

The leader of the three players was none other than Jiang Shan, the man who had just crossed paths with Zhao Xu. As the scion of a wealthy family, this was his very first time experiencing such frustration in a video game.

In this Floating City, practically any NPC he laid eyes on felt like someone untouchable.

Furthermore, Arthur had not opened any cash shop or microtransaction channels, leaving zero ways to top up money.

Even the outfit obtained by paying an extra three hundred for the deluxe edition was merely in the form of a projection, completely impossible to introduce into the market for resale.

Thus, for the first time, a tycoon player like Jiang Shan felt that a game could be this difficult.

Jiang Shan had contacted several gold-farming studios, but most were far away and utterly incapable of transferring those limited gold coins into Floating City.

The other day, when Jiang Shan heard someone mention that Wang Ningwei had obtained a "Pearl of Power," he had reached out to her.

Who would have thought that Wang Ningwei, reputed by everyone to be exceptionally well-liked, would flat out reject his purchase request?

Today, Jiang Shan had intentionally come to intercept Wang Ningwei in person, intending to name his price and crush her psychological defenses with sheer wealth.

His father had taught him since he was young that any failed transaction was mostly because the price offered hadn't broken the other party's psychological bottom line.

If a 1,000-gold-coin Pearl of Power wasn't enough at ten thousand, he would offer twenty thousand. He refused to believe Wang Ningwei could withstand that kind of temptation.

In fact, his target was no longer just a single Pearl of Power.

Wang Ningwei enjoyed a remarkably high reputation among the players in Floating City. If she could be made to cooperate with him unconditionally, he believed his money-throwing plan would yield twice the results with half the effort.

Yet, upon arriving at the forum, he found Wang Ningwei chatting and laughing happily with a novice wizard player.

That unclean sensation of someone else soiling something he fancied instantly provoked Jiang Shan.

Later, seeing that player dare to take the podium, pretend to be a lecturer, and drive them away, Jiang Shan went along with the flow.

Because he knew that the stern rules of Floating City would make that clever little wizard player suffer immensely and possibly even get driven out.

At that moment, Tassy had already led Jiang Shan and his two companions to the entrance of Lecture Hall No. 91.

Tassy was on night shift duty today and couldn't go back to celebrate his daughter's birthday. Originally, he was already immensely annoyed and just looking for a target to vent his anger on.

"So this 'Teleportation Beacon' spell, through this nested structure, allows its information transmission to be sub-chained, thereby enabling an additional six people to receive the information."

Inside, Zhao Xu was standing at the podium, analyzing the Tier 1 spell "Teleportation Beacon" mentioned at the beginning of the lecture notes.

Initially, that Lecturer Bruan had never witnessed this spell.

The only information available was probably just the name of the spell and some scattered references in portal data.

Consequently, there were quite a few errors regarding this spell in the lecture notes.

Zhao Xu simply decided to focus on explaining it first, and the subsequent content would also be sorted out according to this pattern.

Down below, quite a few wizard apprentices were already showing looks of startled doubt.

Meanwhile, Esweth and Wang Ningwei had both taken out their notebooks, correcting the errors in the handouts while simultaneously taking shorthand notes.

After listening to Zhao Xu's explanation for a full minute, Supervisor Tassy finally turned his head back, gazed coldly at the three Jiang Shan members, and asked, "Do you still think this lecturer is a player taking someone's place?"

Jiang Shan, too, stared in disbelief at Zhao Xu, who stood on the stage explaining the spell's principles with complete confidence. His once-firm conviction now inevitably plunged into deep self-doubt.

"That definitely isn't a player," Jiang Shan panted, comforting himself.

"You should know the rules of Floating City. As long as you are inside the academic forum, a lecturer holds supreme authority. Even if he feels you offended him by stepping through the door with your left foot first, he has the right to kick you out."

Tassy gritted his teeth and warned the three of them. "If you make trouble again, it won't just be getting thrown out of the forum."

Realizing this, Jiang Shan's two attendants hurriedly bowed their heads in apology to Tassy and dragged away Jiang Shan, who was still muttering that it was impossible.

Watching the three of them leave, Tassy turned back to look at Zhao Xu by the door.

He had once heard a certain high-ranking official mention the Tier 1 "Teleportation Beacon" spell described by Zhao Xu.

This spell, when cast upon a portal, could reveal the portal's direction and distance.

Portals had always been strategic assets of Floating City; even when a wizard association branch applied to establish a portal, the approval procedure itself was extremely strict.

All spells involving portals were even more so—without approval from the Door of Truth, gaining learning permissions was utterly impossible.

As one of the comprehensive logistics supervisors of the forum, Tassy knew that the lecturer originally scheduled for tonight was Bruan. Only after Bruan was injured did the higher-ups temporarily decide to have a lecturer named "Wind" take his place.

The Bruan that Tassy knew was a somewhat eccentric Level 5 wizard.

However, Bruan's depth of knowledge and familiarity with low-tier spells were second to none among ordinary wizards like them.

Sometimes, even mid-tier wizards encountering an unfamiliar Tier 1 spell would deliberately go ask Bruan for guidance.

Yet, had Bruan's proficiency really reached such a terrifying level?

The lecture notes he wrote actually managed to touch upon the series of portal spells sealed away by Floating City.

Thinking of this, Tassy shook his head; how could he possibly manage to worry about so much?

Just as Tassy was about to step forward, the next sentence drifting from the lecture hall made him stop dead in his tracks.

"Speaking of illusion magic, let's simply touch upon the Tier 2 spell 'Invisibility'."

Zhao Xu suddenly said on the podium, then picked up a black marker and simply sketched the spell structure of Invisibility on the whiteboard.

Having once cast the Level 9 spell "Greater Invisibility," Zhao Xu had gained a firsthand, personal appreciation of how the entire series of invisibility spells progressed step by step, filling him with unique sentiments.

Within the Final Scroll space, Zhao Xu's own spellcasting had carried a powerful feedback sensation.

It was completely different from when he previously cast spells using a staff.

When casting with a staff, he had no inkling of how the spell itself flowed or how the spell structure was released and underwent multiple transformations.

Because the spell was stored inside the staff, he was equivalent to merely striking a match, completely unable to see what the internal construction looked like.

However, when he cast spells within the Final Scroll, those spells felt as though he had prepared them personally; they were released straight from his mind, causing Zhao Xu to feel an impact every single time he cast.

Casting spells with a staff or a scroll was like playing an electronic shooting game, where pressing a mouse button fired a shot.

Casting spells in the Final Scroll space was equivalent to actually going to a shooting range and running a live-fire drill.

Therefore, as he delineated the spell structure of Invisibility, he felt an extraordinary resonance in his heart.

Because with this structure as a foundation, he was crystal clear on what kind of improvement paths to take in the future.

Even though he currently had not mastered any spell structures of Tier 3 or above, this remained true.

He felt like someone who, having witnessed futuristic smartphones, returned to the past and beheld early mobile phones.

Even without the slightest experience in the mobile phone industry, Zhao Xu could describe the future development direction of smartphones with uncanny accuracy.

Moreover, what Zhao Xu himself gained went far beyond that.

Prompted by a sudden surge of inspiration, Zhao Xu began expanding the content on the invisibility spell, dissecting its inner core.

Down below, quite a few wizard apprentices were already failing to keep up with the pace, several of them forced to hurriedly copy down the contents from Zhao Xu's whiteboard just to carefully ponder them later.

Meanwhile, Wang Ningwei and Esweth were listening with rapt attention to Zhao Xu's analysis of the spell structures.

"Isn't this a review of Tier 1 spells? How did it become a Tier 2 spell?"

Esweth was somewhat puzzled by Zhao Xu's advanced tangent, yet her pen still flew across the paper, recording rapidly.

"It must be because this spell holds significant reference value for Tier 1 spells like 'Silent Image' and 'Disguise Self,'" Wang Ningwei said, quickly grasping Zhao Xu's train of thought.

"So, if you perform a reverse operation right here, and then cascade it with the fourth basal structure of divination magic, and reconstruct it, you get the Divination school's 'See Invisibility' spell."

Zhao Xu suddenly demonstrated this spell transformation on stage.

Instantly, the breathing of many people in the audience grew heavier.

The Illusion school's "Invisibility" and the Divination school's "See Invisibility" could be considered opposing spells. The possibility of reverse-engineering one from the other indeed existed, but the methods were complex on one hand, and the implementation conditions were difficult on the other.

It wasn't that no one could deduce "See Invisibility" from "Invisibility," but those who could were basically quite advanced wizards.

This filled the wizard apprentices below with a faint sense of profound respect and deep emotion.

They hadn't expected that with Lecturer Bruan absent, Floating City would arrange a high-level wizard well-versed in low-tier spells to teach them; it was practically treating them like his own flesh and blood.

Sometimes, high-level wizards' depth of understanding regarding low-tier spells might not even match that of seasoned low-level wizards.

It wasn't that high-level wizards weren't smart, but rather that they possessed more efficient high-level spells as replacements and saw no need to cling to older systems for optimization.

After finishing a long segment of his lecture, Zhao Xu couldn't help exhaling an excited breath.

Back then, it was only after casting the Level 6 divination spell "True Seeing" upon himself that he managed to grasp the bridge connecting "Invisibility" and "See Invisibility."

As a Level 6 divination spell, "True Seeing" could pierce through all illusions with formidable effects.

Some even joked that if "True Seeing" didn't exist, the number of trainees choosing to specialize in illusion magic would at least double every year.

Just as Zhao Xu flipped to the next page of the lecture notes and prepared to move on to the next Tier 1 spell, he caught a glimpse of a wizard standing outside the door actually bowing to him.

However, Zhao Xu was still busy with his lecture at the moment and didn't stop to inquire further.

Outside the door, Tassy, who was bowing, was bathed in tears.

Having heard the spell analysis, he—someone who had stagnated at Level 2 for a full decade—had finally advanced to Level 3.