Ness heard Sunders’ words.
And he was furious! Sunders knew about the nature of the gray fog all along!
Ness spent years of his strength on Angor so he could learn the data of a “new soul spell” from Angor’s soul and recreate the spell using his expertise as a soul master.
But there was no such thing as a “new soul spell”! This was the embodiment of natural law!
And he could not possibly study the rhythm of a law! This was a gift bestowed to lucky people by the world’s consciousness. Only legendary wizards had a chance to comprehend the force of the law by other means.
It was already a big question of whether Ness could become a level-2 wizard in his life. Legendary? Forget it.
And Ness was infuriated about how Sunders tricked him into doing the experiment.
Sunders was the owner of a gravity garden. He would see the law of gravity all day! Obviously, he could see it from the strange fog!
Ness felt like crying. He was kept in the dark by this pair of shameless assholes. He spent a whole day on a useless experiment while spending his own resource, only to get nothing in the end!
“You knew! From the start! Huh??” Ness questioned Sunders.
Sunders still looked indifferent as he replied, “I was still uncertain when looking at the strange ripple when Angor tried to move the fog on your bench.”
“And you decided to trick me into helping?”
Sunders was unmoved by Ness’ sad expression. “It’s a harmless test. If my assumption was wrong, you would gain a piece of valuable knowledge. You were just not lucky enough.”
…
When fighting with Parasite Queen, Angor managed to move his gray fog. However, instead of triggering the true power of the fog, he only placed the fog into a different position around his soul.
But here, Angor completely displayed the full potential of the gray fog with the help of Ness’ soul energy and revealed its effect.
When he did, Angor immediately understood the nature of the fog. He could manipulate the fog however he wanted just like casting cantrips.
Gravity. He was using the sequence of gravity.
Angor always felt something familiar from the strange fog because he had been doing combat training with Toby, who often wielded the sequence of gravity right in front of him.
Angor realized how to wield the new power almost instantly. He pointed a finger to a metal block nearby. The object which weighed several dozen kilograms immediately floated into the air.
“Use all the energy you have and throw it at me.” Sunders’ figure shifted in front of Angor.
Angor was trying to find a target to direct the object at when Sunders’ offer solved his problem.
Angor nodded without hesitating. He covered the metal block with all the gravity energy he could gather and hurled it against Sunders. He was not sure how strong the attack was, but he knew it would do nothing to harm Sunders for real.
When Angor pressed his sequence of gravity against it, the hovering object gained a frightening velocity in a blink of a second and went for Sunders like a meteor. A trail of flame was left behind it when the flying metal ignited the atmosphere around it.
Before reaching Sunders, the metal was stopped by a semi-transparent barrier and created a deafening noise. Sparks were scattered sideways like fireworks from where the metal connected with the barrier. Some of them stuck into the metal walls in the room.
Sunders’ barrier wavered a bit, but it soon regained its sturdiness. The metal block had been trimmed into a smooth sphere, which finally fell onto the floor and created a loud clanking sound while still releasing a stream of blue smoke.
“Such power… that’s already deadlier than average cantrips. It’s still far from a spell, but when he gained deeper knowledge about the sequence of gravity, this move will grow a lot stronger,” said Ness. He put on a jealous look. “Lucky bastard. Once he’s a formal wizard, he’ll have a Quickened Spell without spending any spell slot. A powerful one at that! I mean, shit! Why didn’t I have one?!”
Angor had exhausted his soul energy. With the bloating sense gone, he felt exceptionally refreshed. Also, after being tempered by the soul furnace, Angor’s soul was now purer than ever.
The boy floated to Sunders with a joyful look.
“I get it, professor. It’s the sequence of gravity,” Angor spoke proudly.
Sunders nodded. “Indeed. Compared to Toby, you gained a better comprehension of the sequence. You already know how to apply gravity to other objects.”
Sunders spoke in his calm tone. However, deep inside, the gentleman had developed a mixed emotion. As the owner of the gravity garden, he never learned the sequence of gravity, which was still acceptable. Yet his student beat him to it… Heck, even the bird of his student could do it. This could be a big joke when people learned about it.
Although Sunders quickly got over this little embarrassment. He had seen too many things in the human world to get troubled by such trivial problems.
“It’s a pity that you cannot use it again without enough soul energy of your own,” said Sunders. He revealed a puzzled look and asked, “I’m wondering… When the Sorcerer’s Garden was constructed, you really didn’t sense anything?”
Usually, when the world’s consciousness injected a law into a finished Sorcerer’s Garden, anyone who learned something about the law would quickly understand it. Toby had already proved it by showing them its new strength on the same day.
Angor, however, only achieved the same thing after he understood the nature of the gray fog. When Angor said he did not learn anything from the garden, he really meant it.
Angor went over his memory. “I… did not sense anything back then.”
And he was sure of his answer.
“But… I was in a really strange state when the world’s consciousness worked on the law.”
“A strange state?”
Angor tried to describe what he felt that day with the correct words. “It was something new to me. It wasn’t meditation, but I still felt the surrounding turning very calm and quiet. My mind felt like a giant grassland. It could contain wind, clouds, the sky. I could sense everything that was happening around me, including the rhythm caused by the world’s consciousness.”
Ness sent a voice transmission to Sunders, “I think I know what he’s talking about. It sounds like…”
“Tranquility of the soul!” Sunders and Ness revealed the answer at the same time.
The tranquility of body, mind, and soul meant three different meditation levels. The tranquility of the body was the first challenge that separated mortals from supernaturals because mortals could not enter the state of meditation with their distracting thoughts.
The tranquility of the mind was only something possible for wizards. Such a state helped them enter a meditation quickly in the noisiest environments.
An even higher level of the meditation was called “tranquility of the soul”. When someone could calm his soul, nothing would ever disturb him again.
This was mostly an unreachable state for wizards. Someone who managed to achieve tranquility of the soul would be able to comprehend all reasons and learn knowledge faster than ever. Every wizard out there would give everything to meditate in such a level.
How to enter such a state had been a constant debate topic among wizards in the south. There had been wizards of different levels who succeeded in it, including legendary wizards and fresh apprentices. This meant that whether someone could achieve tranquility of the soul had little to do with their strengths.
But not everyone believed so. There were ancient parchments which said that high-leveled wizards could all enter the state. Here, by “high-leveled wizards”, the stories in the parchments referred to level-6 formal wizards or someone beyond.
Today, only level-4 wizards who successfully found their paths of truth were considered “legendary wizards”.
Level-6 meant two more levels beyond these people. The southern region had not seen another legendary since Barzel the Great Twisted Wizard disappeared from everyone’s view a thousand years ago, which meant these ancient stories would never be proved.
Nowadays, most wizards in the south considered such a meditation state as something brought by a rare destiny.
“Maybe he simply hit the luck? But why must he enter the tranquility of soul right when the world’s consciousness brought the law? Such a coincidence,” Ness transmitted his voice to Sunders.
“Or maybe it isn’t all about destiny after all. The appearance of the world’s consciousness fulfilled one of the conditions,” Sunders pondered. Like Ness, he did not believe that his student only had his luck to thank for. There had to be something that helped Angor achieved “soul tranquility”, and Angor found it.
Angor continued his story. “The rhythm brought by the law beat in my mind like music notes that came alive. But it didn’t last very long. Some powerful drumbeats interrupted the music, and they pressed me on the ground. I couldn’t move. I only felt better when the law was finally completed.”