CHAPTER 189: BREAKTHROUGH, SENIOR-LEVEL MAGE!

"Has automatically evolved into new skill - Blazing Fire Spear!"

"Comprehended skill [Blazing Fire Spear]! Gained attribute points: Mana +2, Spirit +1!"

[Blazing Fire Spear] Lv1 (0/10): Consumes mana to resonate with fire element, forming a powerful blazing fire spear that deals damage to enemies and applies "Burn" effect (Blazing Fire Spear has strong piercing characteristics, with increased penetration probability against medium/heavy armor and magic shields)

The advanced version of [Flame Arrow], as expected, is also a single-target type skill, and like [Flame Arrow] can apply "Burn" effect while additionally possessing piercing characteristics.

Compared to Lin Mo's previous two Exceptional-Grade skills [Flame Chain Star] and [Blizzard], this skill seems rather ordinary and somewhat plain at first glance, but its actual single-point breakthrough capability far surpasses the previous two.

And this is exactly what Lin Mo currently lacks the most.

In the physical profession aspect, he previously already had [Blood Qi Blade] as his breakthrough method. Whenever encountering powerful opponents, this skill often ultimately proved effective in opening breakthroughs.

But in the magic profession aspect, Lin Mo had always lacked a single-target skill with powerful destructive force.

And for single-target skills, magic skills' destructive power and force are generally stronger than physical skills in most cases, not to mention that Lin Mo's mana has now become his highest attribute, becoming his absolute main output.

The power of [Blazing Fire Spear] is definitely worth anticipating!

Of course, like previous Exceptional-Grade skills, [Blazing Fire Spear] also has evolution paths to choose from.

Please select evolution direction—

Evolution Path 1: Incineration I: The "Burn" effect applied after Blazing Fire Spear hits increases by 30%!

Evolution Path 2: Sharpness I: Blazing Fire Spear's piercing characteristics are additionally enhanced by 30%

Lin Mo carefully examined them - both evolution directions were simple, direct power enhancements, just with two different emphasis directions. One leaned toward enhancing the sustained damage burn effect after hitting, while the other further improved piercing performance.

Without much hesitation, Lin Mo directly chose Evolution Path 2.

The reason was simple - the advantage range of [Blazing Fire Spear] is single-target damage and armor-breaking capability, not sustained damage. Lin Mo isn't the type of mage with few skills who needs to compensate for weaknesses, but should pursue maximizing his skills' strengths.

As for other aspects, other skills would naturally handle them.

Besides [Blazing Fire Spear], Lin Mo also simultaneously obtained another Exceptional-Grade skill.

"Has automatically evolved into new skill - Spiral Wind Vortex!"

"Comprehended skill [Spiral Wind Vortex]! Gained attribute points: Mana +2, Spirit +1!"

[Spiral Wind Vortex] Lv1 (0/10): Consumes mana to resonate with wind element, forming a wind vortex with powerful suction and continuous pulling, dealing minor wind element damage to affected enemies. Targets pulled by the wind vortex will additionally receive 10% increased ice, fire, and lightning element damage. ȑἈƝo͍𐌱Ęs̩

"Interesting."

This skill was even more interesting. Compared to output skills like [Blazing Fire Spear], [Spiral Wind Vortex] clearly emphasized functionality more.

In terms of pure output power, it might not be ideal, possibly not matching Landon's [Wind Cyclone], but in pulling capability and functionality, it far surpassed.

Weak suction, continuous pulling... those terms all reflected that this skill's core function was gathering monsters.

For Lin Mo who already possessed area AOE skills, this was quite useful. For example, Blizzard plus this Spiral Wind Vortex would be like a large meat grinder, continuously pulling surrounding monsters into the "Blizzard."

Not to mention this skill also had a very powerful additional effect - ice, fire, and lightning element vulnerability.

This type of element vulnerability is different from element affinity. For example, assuming Lin Mo currently has 30% fire element affinity, if adding another 10%, because of diminishing returns it wouldn't reach 40%, and even 40% fire element affinity wouldn't compare to 30% fire element affinity plus 10% vulnerability.

The reason is simple - referencing the independent multiplier concept from certain games, 40% element affinity would result in final skill power of 1x1.4=1.4, while 30% element affinity plus 10% vulnerability would result in skill power of 1x1.3x1.1=1.43.

The higher element affinity is stacked, the greater relative improvement vulnerability can bring, and vice versa.

This made Lin Mo even more anticipate this skill's evolution path selection.

Please select evolution direction—

Evolution Path 1: Pull I: Spiral Wind Vortex's pulling capability increases by 25%!

Evolution Path 2: Vulnerability I: Spiral Wind Vortex's ice, fire, and lightning element vulnerability effect is additionally increased by 5%!

This made it difficult to choose...

Lin Mo fell into hesitation for a moment. Whichever evolution path he chose would enhance this skill's functionality, and both were quite useful.

Ultimately Lin Mo still chose Evolution Path 2.

Evolution Path 1's pulling enhancement increased this skill's pulling force by 25%, which is a 25% improvement.

While Evolution Path 2 seemingly only added 5% vulnerability, considering the original vulnerability effect was only 10%, 5% additional vulnerability could be seen as a 50% effect improvement for this skill.

Moreover, targets that couldn't be pulled originally might still not be pullable even with 25% improvement. Compared to that, solid damage improvement was more practical and had higher versatility.

The surprise of obtaining two new skills didn't end there.

The original two excellent-grade skills reaching max level, plus successfully obtaining these two new Exceptional-Grade skills, increased Lin Mo's mana attribute by a full 8 points, going from the original 56 points to 64 points, exceeding the requirements needed to advance to level 6 mage.

This also meant Lin Mo would finally break through the entry-level professional category and become a Veteran Level professional!

"Promotion conditions met, Profession Mage (lv5) promotes - Current Profession Mage (lv6)"

"Gained profession attribute enhancement: Strength +1, Constitution +1, Agility +2, Spirit +4, Mana +4!"

Holy crap...

A full twelve attribute point enhancement?!

You need to know that when level 4 mage upgraded to level 5 mage, there were only 6 attribute enhancement points, but level 5 to level 6 directly doubled that. No wonder they say the gap between Veteran Level professionals and entry-level professionals is equivalent to the gap between professionals and non-professionals.

12 attribute enhancement points is indeed almost a qualitative improvement for normal professionals.

Even for an outlier like Lin Mo, these 12 attribute enhancement points were quite substantial.

And it wasn't over yet!

"Your mage profession skill - Mage Heart has leveled up!"

[Mage Heart] Lv2: The mysteries of elements begin here, the glory of spells shines upon you!

Skill effect: Mana recovery speed increases by 20%, magic casting mental load decreases by 20%

The Mage Heart profession skill actually leveled up along with it, with effects directly doubling from the original, going from 10% to 20%!

And it still wasn't over!

The information before his eyes continued to appear...

"Congratulations on becoming a Veteran Level mage, your understanding of magic has progressed further. Your profession tier has improved, gained profession tier identifier - Veteran: Increases 10% spell surge!"

This...

Spell surge - Lin Mo had seen this term in books.

Regarding these subtle changes after mage professionals advance to Veteran level, Lin Mo could see them directly through his status panel, but for other mages, this required continuous experimentation and actual combat to analyze.

After years of research by relevant scholars, they eventually named this change "spell surge."

The explanation for this term is actually quite simple - it reduces the spell silence period after casting.

Although the real world doesn't have "cooldown time" concepts like games, Lin Mo had discovered a problem during continuous actual combat - after releasing a magic spell, if wanting to continue casting the same spell, there would always be a brief period of "stiffness."

Because spellcasting requires operation through mana circuits. After mana circuits complete operation, you need to wait for mana to flow back to the origin point before being able to operate the circuits again.

So Lin Mo would previously choose to operate one magic spell first, after releasing it not letting mana flow back, but directly forcibly divert the mana from the previous magic circuit to operate other circuits, thus quickly beginning to accumulate another magic spell.

That's why he could throw a fireball spell with his left hand while his right hand began accumulating wind blade spell.

This was a self-taught usage method, actually a rather "violent" and very difficult approach, and basically only different attribute magics could be used this way. Normal mages almost certainly couldn't achieve this.

So normal mages, after completing one spellcast, generally need at least two to three seconds or even longer to adjust mana. And the more powerful the magic, the higher the magic level, the more mana consumed, the longer the time required.

And "spell surge" increases the speed of mana recovery, shortening this "stiffness" time.

To put it simply, casting speed improvement reduces spell wind-up, while spell surge reduces spell recovery.

It's just that Lin Mo isn't a normal mage after all, so he wasn't really clear about what use spell surge would have for him.

It would definitely be useful, but still needed further research to develop his own usage methods.

According to Lin Mo's current conception, since he can now almost continuously release different magics through alternative methods, and spell surge can increase mana recovery speed, then is it possible that he directly splits the mana inside his body into two streams for simultaneous control.

One stream follows the normal route for mana recovery, while the other follows his current wild method, directly forcibly diverting to other circuits.

And if the mana recovery speed is fast enough, completing before the other, wild method magic circuit completes, then synchronously conducting the second spellcasting process, could he then simultaneously release two magics?

Going further, could these two magics also undergo some collision or coordination? The magic combinations between different elements he previously conceived might then have truly feasible methods!

But achieving these has two difficulties. One is splitting mana into two streams and operating them simultaneously.

Just this point alone could block 99.99% of mages.

Everyone knows how difficult magic is to learn. Being able to understand basic magic is already quite challenging, not to mention creating fancy variations on top of that.

This is like controlling the clone in [Shadow Split], belonging to the approach of left and right brain competing against each other, and the difficulty far surpasses that.

After all, controlling the body is quite simple for humans - any normal person can easily do it, so the difficulty of controlling two bodies is relatively not that great.

At least far less than simultaneously controlling two mana streams.

To put it bluntly, this is like the difference between making you walk with same hand and foot coordination versus making you simultaneously solve two Olympiad math problems with completely synchronized progress.

Don't even talk about attempting and practicing - this simply isn't something normal people should even conceive...

Lin Mo's conception was actually still a somewhat clever approach - splitting from already operating circuits rather than directly simultaneously operating two types of circuits. This could utilize some of the original circuit's spellcasting inertia, making it relatively simpler.

While the latter is true "dual casting," currently only existing in mythological legends as a generally considered impractical concept.

For his current stage, it's almost impossible to achieve.

And even if truly able to achieve simultaneous precise control of two mana streams, there remains another difficulty.

That is making the mana recovery speed and recasting speed keep up with the second other element magic that almost begins operating immediately after the first magic is thrown.

This on one hand requires the second released spell's level to be higher than the first spell's level, to lengthen casting time for waiting, and on the other hand requires very high spell surge.

Lin Mo didn't know how much spell surge this would require, but the current 10% is definitely far from enough.

After all, still being in the midst of battle, although even if he kept spacing out these goblins before him wouldn't pressure him much, Lin Mo still didn't continue thinking, snapping back to reality to continue fighting.

Things too far in the future shouldn't be overly dwelled upon - keeping feet on the ground is the most correct approach.

Lin Mo looked at the goblin army ahead. As battle continued, the goblin side's offensive had gradually entered the intense stage. The number of goblins charging toward the battle line hadn't decreased but instead kept increasing.

Time to take action.

Lin Mo's gaze sharpened, then he immediately began mobilizing mana. Wind element frantically gathered in his palm.

[Spiral Wind Vortex]!

Lin Mo shouted sharply, a massive vortex immediately appeared, landing in the most densely populated goblin area.

Instantly, goblins located in the vortex's central area were directly swept into the wind vortex, unquestionably cut into pieces.

Although [Spiral Wind Vortex] primarily focused on gathering monsters and functionality, with its own power being just supplementary, that still depended on who the opponents were. These ordinary goblins before him were naturally easily instantly killed.

Besides the goblins in the central area, goblins in the nearby area were also attracted by the powerful wind force, uncontrollably moving toward the wind vortex direction.

Lin Mo attempted to forcibly divert mana to other circuits, but the process wasn't very smooth.

After all, this wasn't previous normal and excellent-grade magic but Exceptional-Grade magic - the difficulty suddenly increased greatly.

Finally after nearly two seconds, Lin Mo's other hand began quickly accumulating ice element power.

[Blizzard]!

Instantly, countless fine hailstones fell from the sky, covering a large area ahead.

Goblins hit by this skill almost instantly fell to the ground, even adult mutated goblins were no exception. Their struggle time wasn't even half a second before they were frozen into ice blocks, then easily smashed to pieces by falling hail.

Thanks to [Spiral Wind Vortex]'s monster gathering effect, surrounding goblins kept being pulled into the blizzard's range.

Although not truly magic combination in the real sense, just simple pure coordination, it already achieved quite good results.

Unfortunately, the two skills' formation times were separated by several seconds after all, so [Spiral Wind Vortex] quickly ended.

Blizzard continued for another second or two, but basically no new monsters entered the range, so the number of killed monsters didn't increase.

But this was already terrifying enough. Lin Mo's current total mana had reached a truly terrifying 96 points. Such powerful mana also made his skill effects unprecedentedly exaggerated.

The number of goblins affected and killed by these two combination skills probably exceeded two hundred!

[Spiral Wind Vortex] proficiency +74!

[Blizzard] proficiency +74!

So satisfying!

Although Exceptional-Grade skills already had significant proficiency reduction when killing ordinary monsters, there was still some. Plus just now there were quite a few juvenile and even adult mutated goblins that were also affected by the two magics, so this wave still added quite a bit of proficiency.

[Spiral Wind Vortex] was a newly obtained skill - this wave of 74 proficiency points directly made it fat, immediately continuously leveled up, directly reaching level 4!

"Skill [Spiral Wind Vortex] Lv1 (10/10) leveled up!"

"Current skill [Spiral Wind Vortex] Lv2 (20/20)"

"Skill [Spiral Wind Vortex] Lv3 (40/40) leveled up!"

"Current skill [Spiral Wind Vortex] Lv4 (4/100)"

"Gained attribute points: Mana +2, Spirit +1."

And the [Blizzard] skill, originally only level 2, also smoothly leveled up to level 4.

"Skill [Blizzard] Lv1 (10/10) leveled up!"

"Skill [Blizzard] Lv3 (40/40) leveled up!"

"Current skill [Blizzard] Lv4 (29/100)"

"Gained attribute points: Mana +2, Spirit +1."

Nearby, Landon who had just seen the goblins becoming increasingly dense and also saw the perfect timing, was just about to raise his staff to use his signature magic "Wind Cyclone" to harvest a wave, personally watching Lin Mo consecutively use those two magics, directly froze in embarrassment.

What the hell is this power?!