Chapter 158: Lecture Notes on the Forum (2/3)

Zhao Xu gazed at the mosquito net hanging from the top of his bed, not yet fully recovered from the sensation of traversing the long river of time.

He only remembered that the moment he shouted Antinua’s name, he lost consciousness entirely, and his game connection was abruptly severed.

Normally, this kind of situation only occurred when a player experienced excessive emotional excitement or an abnormally rapid heartbeat. For the sake of the player’s physical safety, the brain-imaging helmet would directly cut off the game like this.

Whether a player logged out voluntarily or was forcibly disconnected, there was always a twenty-minute delay before they could log back in.

Thinking of this, Zhao Xu couldn't help but take off his helmet, turn around, and climb down from the bed.

During the time he had traveled back to the Dark Age, most of his efforts were spent traveling to the village, and then from the village on to the Morlin Stele.

It had only taken a major part of a day, and since it was still just afternoon in the real world—and his class didn't have any afternoon lectures today—both Zhang Qi and Chen Sinan had returned to their dormitories to log directly into Arthur.

Ironically, Zhao Xu had ended up as the first one to log out of the game.

Naturally, Zhao Xu would reconnect to the game after twenty minutes, but he didn't want to waste this rare twenty-minute hiatus.

Therefore, he simply opened his laptop to check his QQ chat groups and the latest forum updates.

[Wang Ningwei: Summer, Summer.]

Zhao Xu immediately noticed a message directed at him in the QQ group. He clicked on it directly, and hundreds of replies instantly flooded past.

For the past few days, his entire schedule in the Final Scroll realm had been a race against time. He had been so time-constrained that he even forgot to eat his meals, let alone browse the forums.

The process of frequently casting spells consumed an immense amount of mental energy. Basically, whenever Zhao Xu logged out of the game, he would just collapse and fall fast asleep.

[Wang Ningwei: Summer, that lecture handout of yours has been posted on the forums.]
[Aisweihi: It’s quite impressive. Ningwei and I both thought you were just going up there to act like a lecturer to chase away that fool.]
[Wang Ningwei: Speaking of which, I'm sorry, Summer, if that brought you any trouble.]
[Wang Ningwei: But that guy's fixation vanished over the next few days; he stopped coming over to pester me.]
[Aisweihi: Hmph, if he dares to pester our Ningwei again, I'll make him know the price.]

Zhao Xu glanced through the subsequent group chat records and quickly scrolled down to the bottom.

At this thought, he couldn't help but open the forums directly to see what this handout Wang Ningwei mentioned was all about.

"On the Diversity of 1st-Level Spells."

Since last night, this thread had accumulated tens of thousands of replies, instantly blowing up the recent popularity rankings. The moderator had immediately marked it in bold red and pinned it to the very first page of the forum.

Zhao Xu harbored a slight sense of foreboding, but he clicked on it anyway.

The entire thread consisted of a series of images—or rather, photocopies of the lecture Zhao Xu had given that night.

At the very end of the thread was a supplementary note left by the poster:

"These photos were sent to me by a friend of mine, who is a wizard apprentice in the Floating City. That night, because he took a wrong turn, he ended up stumbling into a classroom that didn't require a lecture ticket, and thus he listened to a lecture that completely rewrote his perspective on spellcasting."

"I have no idea how many times my friend had to log in and out consecutively just to painstakingly memorize that dozens-pages-long handout from the game bit by bit, and then transcribe it into his notebook. But I think I should share it with everyone."

"I don't have any hidden motives for posting this. I just hope that those wizard players who are about to give up might perhaps grit their teeth and hold on a little longer. I refuse to believe that a class with over a hundred first-level spells alone, each possessing its own model structure and various origins, could ever be a garbage class."

Zhao Xu understood immediately.

Even though his lecture that night was titled "The Diversity of 1st-Level Spells," the scope of what Zhao Xu shared had actually extended into 2nd-level expanded spells as well—arguably even crossing into uninhibited territory.

Granted, players couldn't deduce the spell structures to learn them simply from his descriptions, but it had torn aside the curtain that was previously half-concealed.

It let many players, who had only ever been exposed to the 39 core 1st-level spells, realize that there were actually so many more 1st-level spells in the world.

Especially given that quite a few 1st-level spells possessed extremely high potency, such as the spell Zhao Xu had mentioned, "Command: Pain."

While a solo player had to consider how to protect themselves over multiple rounds of combat, for a team, this was equivalent to a divine skill for draining enemy health.

While players in the Floating City could still learn a thing or two about expanded spells through spell tomes and lectures, the training systems for players and native wizards in Arthur were completely independent everywhere else.

Therefore, the wizard players on the forums basically all assumed that a 1st-level wizard’s journey would be fulfilled once they eventually learned those 39 first-level spells.

Thus, the appearance of this thread—especially the exhaustive detail of its content—instantly stirred up countless ripples like a lead weight dropped into a small pond.

"Suddenly feeling like my warrior character isn't that appealing anymore. May I ask if it's too late to change classes now?"
"At least a hundred spells, and the mentor who wrote this lecture notes is probably someone who has mastered all of them. Does this mean there is a way in Arthur to copy spells without taking a full day?"
"The person above is overthinking it. Don't use your month or so of gaming experience to gauge the decades of accumulation possessed by characters in the game world."
"But didn't other threads have players who attended the lecture saying that the lecturer looked very young, and that his vibe felt a lot like a player?"
"Do you think it's possible for any player to reach the height of having hundreds of spells right now? Even if they spent the entire year copying them, there wouldn't be enough time."

After briefly glancing through the thread, Zhao Xu smiled and closed it.

Fortunately, players in the game weren't able to record video footage; otherwise, his face, which he hadn't heavily concealed at the time, would definitely have been recognized by Zhang Qi.

However, he did admire the person who managed to transcribe his entire manuscript into the real world word for word.

For someone like Aisweihi, possessing photographic memory, achieving this wouldn't be too difficult, but for an ordinary player, even with a sufficiently good memory, wanting to pull this off required a massive amount of effort.

Zhao Xu checked the time and, taking advantage of the fact that he still couldn't log back in yet, continued browsing the trending forum threads.

"As a Mistra Floating City player, I'm so happy to finally be able to hold my head high on these forums for once."
"Your lecturer is amazing, acting as if *you* guys are amazing. If you're so tough, why don't you pull out a 2nd-level wizard and let us see?"

Zhao Xu shook his head as he read this post. Sure enough, the replies below had devolved into a flame war, with both sides trading insults back and forth for dozens of rounds.

Zhao Xu had never looked favorably upon mutual verbal abuse; aside from venting petty impulses, it was completely meaningless.

He simply searched using "Floating City" as a keyword, while keeping an eye out for recent intelligence regarding the Floating City.

No sooner had he finished his search than Zhao Xu's gaze was caught by a particular thread:

"An undercover journalist inside the hidden Floating City player group risks their life to expose the truth!"

"Curious about Mistra, the author joined several Mistra player groups, where a bizarre matter was once discussed. It turns out that at their combat testing pavilion, a player once eliminated a 20-HP skeleton with a single arrow, and obliterated a 10-HP dretch without any magical enchantments."

"Even if you aren't a wizard, everyone should understand how terrifying this kind of power is. I ask you all: is it possible to achieve this kind of capability using a light crossbow?"

"Combined with the thread about copying a spell scroll in 22 minutes, and today's lecture notes, I have reason to suspect these were all done by the very same person."

Reading the analysis in this post, Zhao Xu couldn't help but marvel slightly.

He genuinely hadn't expected that someone among the players could connect the entire truth of the facts together like this.

Yet, it was indeed true. When numerous incredible events occurred, suspecting that they were caused by multiple different individuals was simply introducing unnecessary speculation.

Therefore, in many cases, directly attributing them to a single individual could cut straight to the core of the matter.

However, after clicking on the thread, Zhao Xu discovered that it was quite unpopular. It seemed this speculation lacked any persuasive power; aside from a few replies calling the original poster whimsical, the thread had quickly sunk to the bottom.

Suddenly, as if an idea had struck him, Zhao Xu opened a brand-new thread of his own—titled "The Wizard's Path."

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It wasn't until the full twenty minutes had elapsed that Zhao Xu logged back into the game.

As soon as his data transfer completed, he was immediately struck by the aftereffects of the "Lesser Rapid Metablitz" spell, leaving him utterly dizzy.

Although Zhao Xu couldn't make any physical movements, a wave of relief washed over him deep inside.

At the very least, right before his eyes was the entrance to the Floating City's obelisk, and those familiar spell-turrets surrounding it were definitely not products of the Dark Age era.

As soon as the six-second dizziness subsided, Zhao Xu hurried over to the seventh floor where Antinua resided.

And right then, she was standing there, as if she had known with absolute certainty that he would arrive.

"You saw that Morlin Stele," Antinua asked softly.

Zhao Xu nodded. "The stele was completely blank. Moreover, after I chanted the name 'Morzelin,' an otherworldly entity projected onto it, which seemed to originate from the Elemental Plane of Fire."

"Then the entity called me a traveler of time, shouted that I didn't belong to that era, and unleashed countless fireballs, trying to kill me outright."

"So I activated Lesser Rapid Metablitz, shouted your name, and returned to this very moment."

Listening to Zhao Xu's account, Antinua nodded.

"In that case, accompany me somewhere," Antinua said.

"Where?"

"To see the Morlin Stele of the present day—though the current one has had certain contents inscribed upon it."