Wizard: Starting from the Skill Tree

A layer was swallowed, then wrapped in another layer.

The devouring speed of the black flames became increasingly fast, but the Duke’s spiritual power surged out even faster.

His total spiritual power exceeded five hundred points, and with the Six-Element Compound Spiritual Crystal on him, the strength, resilience, and endurance of his spiritual power were unmatched by ordinary Level 2 Mages.

He wasn’t afraid when it came to consumption.

But the terror of the ghost flames lay not only in consumption but in the momentary clash of wills.

The struggle of the flames suddenly became fierce; it no longer slowly devoured, but violently exploded into countless tiny sparks, spreading inward along Duke’s spiritual power straight to his Spiritual Sea.

Duke’s pupils suddenly constricted.

His spiritual power was almost ignited in an instant; the spiritual power enveloping the flames burned fiercely like oil.

The flames followed the veins of spiritual power like a viper, directly attacking his consciousness core.

Duke’s spiritual power advanced instead of retreating, coalescing into a thick barrier at the entrance of the Spiritual Sea, blocking the frenzy of black sparks.

The flames crashed against the barrier, emitting a silent scream, trying to tear it apart, penetrate it, and bypass it.

Duke gritted his teeth, injecting more spiritual power into the barrier, layer upon layer, level upon level.

The impact of the flames grew stronger, but the barrier grew thicker.

Meanwhile, he diverted a strand of spiritual power, gently touching the statue beside him.

The statue moved; it raised its giant palm and reached into the space between the flames and Duke from the side, not directly touching the flames, merely blocking the flames’ diffusive energy with its massive body.

The ghostly flames seemed to perceive the presence of the statue, directing some attention towards it, but the statue had no soul of its own, nor a Spiritual Sea, and the flames couldn’t ignite it, merely uselessly adhering to its sand-constructed arm.

Duke seized the moment when the flames became distracted, tightly gathering his spiritual power to recreate the scattered black sparks into one cluster, then forcefully compressing, compressing, and compressing again.

The flames violently struggled within his spiritual power cage, but this time, it couldn’t escape.

The cage shrank smaller and smaller, from the size of a fist to that of a fingernail, from the size of a fingernail to a grain of rice.

At the same time, Duke activated the Light Divine Status within the Six-Element Compound Spiritual Crystal, radiating pure light attribute power to firmly suppress the ghost flames.

The Light Divine Status was Duke’s actual trump card for subduing the ghost flames.

The struggle of the flames became weaker and weaker, its intent changing from fierce resistance to unwillingness, then from unwillingness to submission.

When the black flames finally settled, a black mark appeared deep in Duke’s Spiritual Sea; the flames had acknowledged him as its master.

Duke loosened his spiritual power and exhaled deeply.

His face was pale, his forehead drenched in cold sweat, and his Spiritual Sea was considerably diminished; the exhaustion from the spiritual power devoured by the flames was immensely heavy.

But at least he subdued the troublesome flames, obtaining the fire seed that could heed his command.

Duke raised his right hand, opening his five fingers. A wisp of black flames appeared from his palm, quietly hovering above.

The flames weren’t large, each only the size of a fist, without any temperature or light.

Yet Duke could feel that it was different from before, still filled with hostility to everything around it, but submissive to him.

The ghost flames could enhance themselves by absorbing and devouring surrounding Fire Attribute Free Energy Particles, the more absorbed, the stronger the power of the ghost flames.

This thing now appeared to be just a tiny flame, but a spark could start a prairie fire.

...

A year later.

The conquest of the Four Spirits Elemental Plane began a month after the Wizard Council officially announced the recruitment of personnel.

The first batch of wizards entering were elite meticulously selected by the Plane Conquest and Strategy Department, tasked with clearing the periphery, establishing strongholds, and probing enemy conditions.

The Wizard Council dispatched billions of Slave Creature Legions, turning the Four Spirits Elemental Plane directly into a meat grinder, with extremely high-intensity warfare.

The Wizard Plane had conquered countless planes over the millennia, and during conquest, the natives of those planes were either slaughtered or converted into slaves, marked with an indelible mental imprint via Slave Contracts.

These slave creatures lost their freedom, dignity, and the right to choose life or death from then on.

They were imprisoned in camps on various planes, bred and raised like livestock, and their only fate awaited them was to serve as cannon fodder in future plane wars.

The Slave Contracts left them no room for resistance; their master’s will was their everything.

The Slave Creature Legions mobilized by the Wizard Council surged into the Four Spirits Elemental Plane like a tide made of flesh and blood.

Stronghold after stronghold was eradicated at a near-mad cost by the Slave Creature Legions, segment after segment of the front line pushed forward.

Every counterattack by the Elemental Life forms reaped thousands upon thousands of slave creatures, but more filled the gap from behind, seemingly endless.

The wizards hid at the rear, occasionally targeting those elite objectives breaching the front line; the substantial majority of casualties were always borne by those nameless, selfless slave creatures.

The dead were already dead, the living continued forward.

This had always been the Wizard Plane’s cold, efficient, and indifferent manner of conquering countless planes, viewing the slave creatures’ lives as insignificant.

The Elemental Life forms in the Four Spirits Elemental Plane had never witnessed such warfare.

They weren’t afraid of facing the enemy head-on, not afraid of clashing with swords, not afraid of magic clashes.

But the year began instilling fear in them, for they discovered the enemy was endless.

Those charging monsters on the battlefield had intelligence, emotions, and could experience fear and pain, but the power of the contracts erased everything, leaving only obedience, one hundred percent obedience.

Command them to charge, and they would charge; command them to die, and they would die.

They weren’t soldiers, but expendables, single-use expendables.

The brutality of the battlefield was pushed to the extreme within this year.

As the front line advanced, the wizards’ front began to solidify in the outer region of the Four Spirits Elemental Plane.

The first strongholds were established, teleportation arrays began operating, and resources were continuously transported back to the Wizard Plane.

Piles of magic metal ore were stacked in the stronghold warehouses, high-purity elemental crystals were categorically stored in Space Rings, and Elemental Life corpses were transported back to the Wizard Plane to be sold as alchemy materials.

During this year, Duke collected abundant intelligence on the Four Spirits Elemental Plane through various channels, chatter in virtual taverns, open information released by the Plane Resources Development Department, firsthand accounts brought back by wizards from the battlefield, even spoils leaked from the black market.

Piecing together this information, he gradually outlined the image of that plane in his mind.

The elemental energy density in this plane was extremely high, the concentration of Four-Element Free Energy Particles was nearly ten times that of the Wizard Plane.

This meant the self-forming elemental crystals within the Four Spirits Elemental Plane were of high quality and plentiful.

The elemental crystals brought back from the battlefield were abundant in Level 1 and Level 2, Level 3 was not uncommon, and Level 4 occasionally appeared.

Level 5 and above crystals required penetration into the enemy’s heart to obtain and hadn’t yet entered the market.

Furthermore, the corpses of elemental life forms were excellent alchemy materials. Especially those Level 3 and above elemental life forms, their elemental cores could serve as permanent energy sources, holding significant value; a complete, well-preserved Level 3 elemental life form corpse could easily sell for billions of Magic Stones in the market.

Lastly, the abundance of magic metal ore veins was staggering.

The magic metal ore veins in the Wizard Plane were mostly buried deep underground, making extraction difficult and yield low.

But in the Four Spirits Elemental Plane, magic metal ore veins were often exposed on the surface because the elemental energy concentration there was so high that magic metal could directly crystallize in the rock.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!