harleyscars 011: Intermediate Apprentice
011: Intermediate Apprentice
Back in his dorm, Lin Qi immediately began meditating.
In the past, his mental energy was like a fog, requiring him to exert tremendous effort to condense and drive it in order to painstakingly "carve" the outline of the will runes.
At this moment, that cold, slippery, alien aura seemed to transform into a strange catalyst or amplifier. The flow of spiritual energy became much smoother, and the perception of elements became exceptionally sharp and clear.
When outlining the rune lines, it is no longer entirely like the stiffness of "carving ice with a blunt needle," but rather has a smoother feel of being "guided" or even "pushed."
However, this "smoothness" does not come without a price.
Just as he entered a deep meditative state, and his mental energy resonated positively with the external elements, he felt a subtle, tingling, creeping sensation on the back of his left hand.
The dark purple slit that had appeared and disappeared after he took the potion had reappeared. It resembled a closed scar, or a sleeping eyelid, and was now slowly opening and closing in response to the fluctuations in his mental energy.
The skin at the edge of the slit turned slightly outward, revealing not flesh and blood beneath, but a deep, dark purple that seemed to be a condensation of the night sky. Then, a cold, eyelash-less purple eyeball fully "opened" from the slit.
The eyeball had no pupil; rather, the entire eyeball was a complex, dark purple rune that rotated slowly and continuously, emitting a faint glow. It coldly "gazes" at the void, not at the material world, but at the flow of elements in Lynch's mental perception.
Under the "gaze" of this "eye," Lynch felt as if the surrounding dark elements were being summoned, converging on him more actively, and the subtle ripples in the space became easier to perceive. His meditation efficiency was thus significantly enhanced.
However, this improvement was accompanied by an extreme discomfort and chill from being constantly watched, or even "parasitized" to some extent. He could feel a faint but continuous spiritual force interacting with his sea of consciousness through this "eye" in a one-way, irresistible manner.
After an unknown amount of time, his mental energy was once again nearing exhaustion, and he withdrew from meditation.
I opened my eyes and immediately looked at the back of my hand.
The eerie purple eyeball had closed again, retracting beneath the skin, leaving only a slightly raised, dark-colored slit, like an unhealed brand. The slit was still wriggling extremely slowly, rising and falling slightly with his breath as if it were alive.
Lin Qi suppressed the complex emotions surging in his heart and summoned the system panel.
Name: Lin Qi
[Status: Mild Evil Eye Contamination]
【Occupation: Low-level Apprentice lv1 (296/3000)】
[Secondary Class: Apprentice Knight (30/500)]
【属性：力量0.6、敏捷0.8、体质0.5、精神0.6（+0.02）】
[Mana: 6/6]
[Knowledge Acquired: Apprentice Meditation (Contaminated State), Forest Fairy Crest, Swift Swordsmanship]
Experience points: 296!
One deep meditation session increased my experience points by 25!
Lynch's heart skipped a beat. At this rate, going from 296 to 3000 would only require about 108 deep meditations. Even if he did it only twice a day, it would only take 54 days, less than two months!
This is more than twice as fast as he had previously estimated, which was over four months!
At this rate, he has a good chance of advancing to intermediate apprentice before the nightmare beast awakens, or even earlier, thus gaining the qualification to enter the Gray Tower and avoiding the calamity of being used as "feed".
A strong sense of relief, like surviving a disaster, washed over him, making him almost want to let out a long breath.
But the next second, his gaze fell on the glaring "Slight Evil Eye Contamination" in the status bar and the writhing crack on the back of his hand that seemed to have a life of its own. All his relaxation instantly froze, turning into a deeper chill.
This improvement is the fruit of poison. It is the bait and shackles cast by the evil eye tyrant. Behind every highly effective meditation lies a deeper erosion of the soul by pollution, another step towards becoming a "qualified vessel".
He did see a glimmer of hope for survival in the short term, but the path to that hope was leading him toward a more terrifying and hopeless future of enslavement.
……
Time flies, and half a year has passed in the blink of an eye.
Lin Qi's training has also reached the final sprint.
Inside the dormitory, the air seemed to freeze. Even the fine dust particles stopped floating in the pale moonlight filtering through the cracks in the wooden planks.
Lin Qi, sitting cross-legged on the bed, trembled slightly. A layer of fine, constantly moving dark purple lines appeared on his skin, the same color as the wriggling crease on the back of his hand.
These patterns were not static, but rather rose and fell and spread like living things, changing with the dramatic changes within his sea of consciousness.
His consciousness was completely submerged in the depths of his spiritual sea at this moment.
The once chaotic sea of consciousness was now stably anchored by three completed basic will runes, emitting a steady, faint light. At the center of the three runes, the outline of a fourth rune was rapidly condensing with unprecedented clarity.
The new rune is no longer composed of the thin, sparse spiritual energy that was difficult to activate in the past, but rather a more solid and powerful spiritual torrent. This power is mixed with a cold affinity for dark elements, and a trace of... a voyeuristic, dark purple light emanating from the gap on the back of the hand.
"Buzz—!"
A silent tremor erupted at the core of his consciousness. The final stroke of the fourth basic will rune, under the combined infusion of spiritual torrents and dark purple light, suddenly lit up!
The four runes were linked together as if by invisible threads, forming a stable, constantly rotating miniature array.
A surge of immense spiritual power erupted from within, sweeping across the entire sea of consciousness and forcefully expanding the boundaries of chaos outwards. Perception became clearer than ever before, and the intensity of sensing free elements in the surrounding environment increased several times over.
Intermediate Apprentice!
However, at the very moment the promotion was completed, a sudden change occurred!
The crease on the back of his hand, which had been slowly wriggling, suddenly opened to its limit! The cold purple eyeball was fully exposed, staring intently at the fourth rune in his sea of consciousness that had just formed and was still radiating pure spiritual light.
A dark purple stream of light, invisible to the naked eye but clearly perceived by Lin Qi's soul, shot out from his eyeballs, ignoring the obstruction of the physical body, and directly pierced through his sea of consciousness, accurately hitting the brand-new will rune.
"Uh!" Lin Qi's body stiffened, and a sensation as if he were being sculpted by a cold carving knife came from the depths of his soul.
The surface of the newly formed rune was rapidly eroded and permeated by the dark purple light. The light, like the most viscous filth, spread and filled along every line of the rune, eventually imprinting itself deeply and becoming inextricably linked to the rune's own spiritual structure.
A cold, stronger connection than ever before was forged between him and some distant, greedy, and malevolent being through this corrupted rune.
Clearly, the inner wall of the "container" was engraved with the owner's more distinctive emblem.
The eyeball on the back of the hand completed its "job," slowly closing and retracting into the slit.
The still candle flame flickered and resumed burning. The floating dust continued to fall slowly.
Lin Qi opened his eyes.
He frowned as he looked at the crack on the back of his hand that seemed to have deepened. The feeling of being constantly watched was extremely uncomfortable.
"It seems we need to resolve this problem as soon as possible..."
The Evil Eye Tyrant is a fifth-order life form from the abyss. To completely remove him would require at least a fifth-order wizard, a price he absolutely cannot afford.
However, apart from high-level wizards taking action, certain unusual materials or substances can also achieve the same effect.
Silver Dragon's Reverse Scale Powder, Soul Cleansing Grass, or perhaps...
The saint's virgin blood...