Luke looked at Izar’s rather unimpressive five-element magic and felt both helpless and a touch sympathetic.
He knew all too well that the true power of elemental magic lay in elemental affinity—a gift innate to magicians, nearly impossible to change through later effort.
Senior Izar’s pitiful five percent elemental affinity was indeed an insurmountable flaw.
Over these six years, Luke had witnessed Izar’s struggles and attempts on the path of magic firsthand.
Whether it was relying on complex magic circles for support or taking various enhancement potions, Izar’s elemental affinity had never managed to break past the ten percent bottleneck.
For someone who had transmigrated into a world of magic, being unable to cast dazzling, powerful spells was an undeniable regret.
Honestly, who wouldn’t want to conjure raging flame storms or freeze thousands of miles with a wave of their hand in another world?
Even if limited by talent, unable to learn high-tier magic, at least make your low-tier spells look somewhat decent, right?
Precisely because of this, what Izar had longed for most over these six years was for the system’s damnable random stat points to just once favor his [Attack] stat. Just once!
Yet, the most absurd part was—over a full six years, the system hadn’t assigned a single point! Not even once! To [Attack]!
Izar had even started to suspect that [Attack] was locked by the system from the start, utterly impossible to increase through stat allocation.
This sense of powerlessness, of striving in vain, had eventually worn him down, and he gradually gave up on directly pursuing combat power.
Since the path of magical attack was closed, there was no need to waste time forcing it.
Staying alive was his top priority.
So, Izar devoted more of his energy to pharmaceutics, magical apparatus forging, and magic circle research.
While these skills couldn’t deliver instant, spectacular bursts of power, they did substantially boost his survival, support, and foundational abilities—perfectly matching his “Stealth Path” philosophy.
Sara watched Izar’s persistent but ineffective magic, but instead of finding it laughable, she felt a faint sense of regret rise in her heart.
She could clearly sense Izar’s effortless and subtly intricate control when handling five basic elements simultaneously. This should have been a once-in-a-million magical gift, yet it was held back by an elemental affinity so low it was almost hopeless.
Was it really as the saying goes, “When heaven opens a door, it always shuts a window”?
Yet as Sara reflected on herself, she didn’t feel like any “window” had been closed to her… This cruel contrast of fate made her feelings toward her junior even more complex.
She was certain that if only Izar’s elemental affinity could reach the average level—if it could just stabilize at Tier 3 or 4—with his unique multi-elemental control, his position and future in the Empire would be assured.
Bringing her thoughts back, Sara’s gaze returned to the front of the battlefield, locking tightly onto the armored goblin leader who had yet to make a move.
The dangerous aura radiating from that fellow kept her on full alert. Her spells didn’t stop for a moment, as she efficiently and precisely cleared away the relentless tide of goblin warriors.
On Izar’s side, he continued tossing out all sorts of Tier 2 spells from time to time, disrupting the goblins’ push from the right. The effects were minor, but at least it bought some time.
The heaviest pressure was still on Luke. While maintaining the Firewall to block the main goblin force, he picked off individuals attempting to break through with Explosive Fireball, which quickly depleted his mana.
Seeing Izar still “wasting” mana on those ineffective spells, Luke couldn’t help but shout, “Senior Izar! Stop wasting your mana on those spells! Save some for yourself, just in case!”
Izar just waved it off without a care, “It’s fine. I’ve got plenty of mana—I can afford to spend it.”
Luke grumbled to himself: Even if you’ve got all the mana in the world, pouring it into these spells that can’t even kill goblins is a total waste! He tried hinting again, “How about, senior… you use some… uh… of those ‘useful’ things to help us out?”
He was referring to those miraculous potions or magical tools with unique effects.
Izar immediately shot him a warning glare, righteous and resolute, “My most useful asset is my magic! As a magician, how can I rely on external tools?”
With that, he casually tossed out a few more half-meter-tall [Firewall]s.
Watching the goblins awkwardly raise their legs—or even clumsily hop over—every time they encountered his wall, Izar suddenly found it pretty amusing to trip up the goblins and watch them make fools of themselves this way.
Half playing, half researching, Izar began thinking about how he could make life harder for these little green-skinned dwarfs.
“If I put two Firewalls close together, will they have to jump twice in a row?”
“What if I stack another Firewall on top of one? Would that double the height?”
Think it, do it! Izar immediately started experimenting.
To his surprise, it actually worked!
He found a single Firewall too thin, so he put several side by side, forcibly “stacking” a solid barrier of flames.
Thinking the heat wasn’t fierce enough, he repeatedly cast [Firewall] on the same spot, causing the magic to compound until the fire there roared even more violently.
Under his seemingly whimsical experiments, a wall of fire matching Luke’s own in height, thickness, and ferocity took shape on the other side of the battlefield!
Luke, busy fighting the front line, happened to glimpse the newly formed, proper-looking Firewall and was puzzled, “Huh? When did I cast a Firewall over there?”
He took a moment to ask Emma behind him, “Senior Emma, did you see me cast a Firewall over there?”
Emma, just as focused on support spells, glanced over and shook her head uncertainly, “Maybe you did it subconsciously while concentrating?”
Luke scratched his head, “Oh, maybe…” and put the doubt aside.
At that moment, Izar’s eyes shone with the thrill of a new discovery!
He felt like he’d glimpsed a possibility completely different from traditional magical thinking!
Slipping off to a quiet corner, Izar stopped testing Firewall and began experimenting with the most basic Tier 1 spell—[Fireball].
The fireballs he cast were still a bit smaller than normal, but the gap wasn’t as obvious as it was with Tier 2 spells. (The higher the spell’s tier, the more it demanded elemental affinity—the lower the affinity, the greater the power drop.)
A small fireball wobbled over and hit a hulking elite goblin square in the chest with a “puff.” The goblin barely paused, looked down at the now slightly singed chest hair, gave a disdainful roar, and kept going.
Izar didn’t give up.
He fired two more, both hitting its head dead on.
This time, the goblin noticeably stiffened, turned in fury, and started searching for whoever was provoking it with the fire it hated most.
Before it could spot its assailant—
Three in a row! Four in a row!… Ten in a row!
Tiny fireballs came like a torrential downpour, pelting its face one after another! What’s more, as Izar’s technique improved, the speed of his fireballs actually increased!
The first few weren’t much, but when a string of ten fireballs came shrieking in back-to-back, the elite goblin finally realized something was off.
It tried to block with its weapon, but the barrage was too dense—most of them hit it square in the face.
“Bang! Bang! Bang-bang-bang…!”
After being “baptized” by dozens, then hundreds of little fireballs in a row, the thick-skinned, muscular elite goblin finally staggered back a few steps, shook its head, its face now blackened by fire and disbelief—then collapsed to the ground, never to move again.
Izar clapped his hands excitedly, a “Just as I thought!” look of delight on his face!
His gamer instincts from his previous life had kicked in at that very moment!
In game settings, every monster has an HP bar.
Even if each attack only chips off “1 point” of HP, as long as you attack fast and often enough, you can theoretically grind down any powerful foe!
His [Fireball] might be weak, barely scratching the enemy, but it undeniably did damage!
Traditional magicians, after learning higher-tier spells, would always favor them for their greater mana efficiency and destructive power, naturally abandoning low-tier spells.
To illustrate,
Tier 1: Fireball deals 50*elemental affinity damage, mana cost 20
Tier 2: Flame Jet deals 120*elemental affinity damage, mana cost 35
So unless the Tier 1 Fireball does enough, everyone chooses Tier 2 Flame Jet.
This logic was universal, whether for locals or players.
But for Izar, his biggest advantage was different!
It was that bizarrely bottomless pool of [Mana] the system had stacked up for him! If anything, he had “blue bar” to spare!
Plus, the system had conveniently boosted his [Speed] stat!
That didn’t just affect movement and reflexes—it directly amped up his spellcasting speed!
His casting speed was ridiculous!
So as long as the enemy couldn’t counterattack or recover effectively, even if his attacks were weak, as long as he “scraped away” fast and often enough, water would eventually wear down stone. Why couldn’t he grind any target to death with a barrage of low-tier spells?
“So… magic can be used like this?!” Izar stared at his own hands, a sense of novelty and excitement surging within him.
He’d been stuck in rigid thinking before, always obsessing over raising his elemental affinity, always trying to learn higher-tier spells.
Now, though, it seemed he’d found a magical path all his own as someone with “low affinity, high mana, and lightning-fast casting!”
A path rarely walked, maybe even scorned as unorthodox or a waste of mana by orthodox magicians, maybe even dismissed as the work of a fool—but… it really might work!