[Mages] were the worst classes to go solo. For a [Mage] to match the other classes in solo capability required them to spend more time learning spell matrices that would enhance the body and shift a good portion of your mana into maintaining those spells.

  Even the Pioneers couldn’t be said to have surpassed that standard. After all, who could say that the Witch Pioneer or the Mage Pioneer were better than their peers in a one on one duel?

  There was, of course, one example that defied that standard. It was him.

  “Ol’ One-Eyed Rick. That’s who~”

  And he would maintain that standard throughout, always maintaining his full stack of S+ scores. He was no silly [Mage] that had forsaken the true path for a more compromised one. No he was a true [Mage] through and through, and he would stay one throughout the entirety of this Trial System’s ordeal.

  On this auspicious day, where The Realm continued to be washed with blood and death, a hunched over elf paced in a large circle. The hunching of the back was a habit, and not part of his disfigurement. Natural elves did not hunch, even in old age. But he had–Ol’ One-Eyed Rick.

  He chuckled as runes were written into the air and added to the ground in front of him. Each one a marvel of magic, of promises and the future. Each one guided with an activation of a skill.

  Rick did not surround himself in a circle, no, each singular rune a spell circle on its own. Perpetuating a singular command. The of individual spell circles came into a spiral, with the latest one pointing closer to the center. Where he would stand as part of the ritual. Rick glanced up, his one eye darting around.

  “Come to witness my great work, Jai?”

  The Shadow Pioneer appeared on the outskirts of the spiral. The shadows roiling around him, a black dagger in hand.

  “I have come to kill you.”

  Ol’ One-Eyed Rick placed another circle down.

  “You have come a little too late to do that. Hehehehehe.”

  The Shadow Pioneer tried to blink forward, only to find his skill unable to find purchase.

  “Your [Shadow Step] is mana based, hehehe. You can’t teleport when there’s a higher order of power at play.”

  The other, more inferior energy sources wouldn’t work either. His grand siphon was churning up too much mana for anything else to punch through either. But he wasn’t going to share that. He threw another circle down.

  “Are you planning on hiding there forever?”

  Ol’ Rick knew they had this place locked down. He could already feel the Witch’s spatial locking skill surrounding his massive spiral. Rick could still punch through, no problem, but he didn’t intend to run.

  “No. Hehehe, like I said, it’s too late, Pioneer. You all should have completed the Tenth Realm Trial instead of guarding it like dogs.”

  Now Jai seemed to understand. He called for his little team.

  “Lihua, Xavien! Ayla! Plan C!”

  The Shadow Pioneer stabbed through the first layer of the spiral. To the Pioneer’s surprise, his arm went through, and started being torn to shreds. He immediately withdrew his arm. From that brief contact with the first layer of the grand siphon his arm looked like it had been thrown into a blender.

  The Witch and the Mage Pioneers appeared before the first layer of the siphon. They started trying to deconstruct the circles at blistering speeds, then they frowned. They had realized something.

  Not that he could focus on that. After all, the threat was here. Another woman, human, appeared next to the Shadow Tyrant and into the siphon. Her body withstood the immense flow of mana. She took three steps forward, her arms raised over her head.

  Ol’ Rick raised one ol’ eyebrow. Then raised a finger.

  [Protective Coating] + [Spatial Edge] + [Shatterbolt]

  A gigantic orb containing shards of broken space flew at the mad Pioneer. She slammed her forehead into the orb as the [Shatterbolt] failed to cut through her apparently tougher-than-space body.

  Rick decided to stop playing around.

  [Implosions, Implosions, IMPLOSIONS] + [Multiplicative Casting]

  A bombardment of force equivalent to hundreds of missiles hit the mad woman head on and her surroundings. The blow made her finally lose posture and fly backwards.

  The Mage and the Witch snapped one of the thousands of spell circles. Faster than Rick expected.

  He chuckled as they realized the problem.

  “I must say I’m impressed, you were able to flawlessly deconstruct the spell in such a short period of time. Without making the whole siphon go out of control. Good luck with the next seven thousand.”

  The Mage Pioneer was furious.

  “Are you mad?! Do you think you will be safe standing in the middle when this goes out of control?”

  Rick laughed, then he threw down his last circle. This one was a different color, a detonator style. Lihua’s eyes grew wide and she tried to drag Xavien away from it all. She screamed at Jai to help her drag the [Mage] away.

  The spirals started snapping like dominoes. Each broken circle causing the manastorm within the spiral to intensify, causing the next circle to snap faster. Even for Ol’ Rick, if he took a step outside of the center he would die.

  The other Pioneer dragged herself back. Her eyes shining at the grand siphon going out of control. She saw the manastorm intensifying and her first thought was to step towards it. One-Eyed Rick’s open eyesocket flashed with blue, watching her move.

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  Yet her allies held her back.

  The Witch Pioneer shouted something Rick could no longer hear. For a moment, Ayla looked once more at him then turned back to her allies. She grabbed the Mage Pioneer and fled.

  Rick shook his head. “A true shame. This is why Ol’ one-Eyed Rick works alone. He works so much, that even his eye wanted to work alone!”

  The snapping circles finally reached the outer layer of spell circles. When the first of the outer layer snapped, the rest of the circles snapped all at once. The manastorm instantly increased in size by a magnitude, the Pioneers barely getting away from the ever expanding torrent.

  “Beautiful.”

  What was each of those spell circles he laid down? Nothing more than a complex near-perpetual enchantment. All it did was siphon the mana from the air in a spiral, fueling the spell while forcing the flow into a vortex. The excess mana powered the next spiral. One-Eyed Rick couldn’t maintain a thousand active spell circles by themselves, but if they were enchantments woven with mana and etched into the ground?

  One fueled the next and the next fueled the next. It couldn’t be maintained anywhere else but in The Realm, where mana rich environment was the norm. By the time the Pioneers were alerted of his actions, it was too late.

  The formation was already done.

  Rick went with a natural formation. A manastorm of uncontrollable design, one that kept siphoning mana and increasing by itself.

  He raised his hands in worship.

  “This is real magic. No artificial spell circles designed by someone else, no copying the spells written down in the writ of the universe. True Unrestrained Magic!”

  The mad mage in the epicenter of the greatest manastorm laughed maniacally. His body rose into the sky as the mana started spiraling towards him. He dragged it towards the manacore in his chest. It took two seconds before it was completely replenished and now overflowing.

  His body and core would not be able to withstand it.

  “HEHEHEHEHE [RESOURCE OVERDRIVE: MANA]!”

  His core instantly expanded, taking in all the mana it could from the natural formation. The core expanded until it grew out of his body.

  The expanding storm–having already grown to a size visible throughout Sector Three, started shrinking.

  The core continued to grow, and grow until Rick was a tiny speck in his own manacore. The core by all rights, should have exploded, yet the skill helped him out. A [Resource Overdrive] in the deep level 30s held firm.

  Then all at once, the core imploded. In an instant the ever-expanding orb collapsed in on itself with its own weight. Into a singular point of pure dark blue, almost black. A tiny orb the size of a fingernail.

  Rick’s body started forming around the core, all his veins, his muscles and organs were recreated in full with mana. He clenched his hands.

  “A perfect mana body with a perfect magical core.”

  Rick threw his head up in the air and shed a singular tear from his singular eye.

  [Seeker of the Arcanum] turned his head towards the fleeing Pioneers.

  –

  Ryan was flung out, with a fraction of a fraction of the mana from the first tenth realm in The Realm. It was too much for him. He had expected to deal with a tenth realm ascension but not

  He tried to stand–so he could throw himself towards the King’s orb. But the moment he moved an inch, he screamed out in pain. The core was connected to his chest and was heavier than he was.

  It would kill him. He did not have [Resource Overdrive: Mana] like Rick did. The mana core kept taking in the mana that had come with the orb.

  “No!”

  [Resource Overdrive: AuraMan–]

  Ryan desperately tried to will the skill to change to mana. The Epic refused to change.

  .

  He had one last option. If this went badly it was going to kill him. He gritted his teeth.

  [Instant Dodge]

  Ryan screamed in pain as his body flung towards the King’s orb.

  When he was ejected back out he immediately gathered the aura into himself. With a lack of excess mana, his manacore had stopped growing but it looked like it would explode at any moment.

  [Aura Overdrive] + [Aura Command]

  “Scatter.

  It was like what the king had done to the blue meteor, except this was happening inside his body and the exploding fragments of mana spread throughout all of his body, wreaking havoc on his internal system.

  Ryan passed out from the pain.

  –

  When Ryan woke up, the only thing that could move was his right arm. He felt at a pouch in his inner belt and found the object he was looking for. It was the red vial that he pocketed from his encounter with Larix. He shoved it into his mouth and let the contents pour down his throat.

  He groaned in uncomfortable pain. This was at least a moderate potion, but he had no idea if it would work on his circulatory channels.

  At least it repaired his muscles. Ryan sat up and checked the time remaining.

  “Crazy damned bastard.”

  Ryan passed out for three whole days. Nearly sixteen days wasted if you didn’t include the King’s orb. Though the confirmation of his thoughts had been worth it.

  “Sonofabitch.”

  [Resource Overdrive: Aura] could be used to ascend realms. Not just realms, but the realm ascension from nine to ten which was supposed to be a barrier done by a handful of people in history. Out of all of them, One-Eyed Rick had been the first, and probably the most perfect evolution.

  There was more to the word ‘utilize’ than he first thought. Imagine for instance, utilizing a mass of energy that was far above your realm, you would have control that exceeded your realm to match. The Epic at higher levels would effectively fine tune your control above anything anyone at your realm could accomplish.

  Ryan remembered how his arm was still not perfect. How Larix had immediately found a weakness in his overcomplicated structure. While it would be fixed when he climbed to realm six, that would be the Trial System’s doing, not his. Ryan had no doubt that Rick’s tenth realm ascension had been perfect.

  It was what Rick had done to be ahead of everyone else. He had likely maintained a perfect evolution, one realm grade higher than the completion of the Trials. It was why he could operate solo.

  And when he hit the ninth realm? He used [Resource Overdrive] to ascend to the tenth. Before anyone else. He even had a team of Tyrants fleeing from him.

  One-Eyed Rick might have been what pushed the Tyrants to complete the tenth Trial early.

  Once Ryan leveled the [Resource Overdrive] and learned it. He would no longer need the Trial System to progress in the realms. Then he dared to dream. A mad thought that even One-Eyed Rick would pause at.

  People had tried it before, of course. But none of them truly succeeded. Those that attempted to develop both cores found their talent at nurturing the secondary core was nothing compared to the core that the Trial System forged for you. Even [The Magelancer Extraordinaire] was a [Mage] first that learned specialized combat spells rather than someone that had tried to focus on qi spells.

  He hesitated. Even for him this might be a little too greedy. Originally his plan had been to focus on being a physical classer with his right arm being the wildcard.

  Then he remembered something.

  Ryan laughed.

  But that was for later, for now he had work to do. First was to perfect his arm. Then it was to level [Resource Overdrive] as much as he could in the next thirty days.

  Unbeknownst to him, his eyes had a faint, icy blue sheen of mana going through them.

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