Wizard: Starting from the Skill Tree

He flicked his finger, and the ghost fire silently shot out. As the black flame traversed the lava, it didn’t stir any ripples. The intensely dense fire attribute free energy particles in its path were automatically absorbed, and with each absorption, the flame’s volume would slightly expand, the color changing from pure black to black with dark red streaks.

This is the terror of the ghost fire. In an environment with an abundance of fire elemental particles, its power will continue to grow. The more it absorbs, the stronger it becomes.

At the exact moment Duke made his move, the Lava Spirit also released a dark red fireball from its palm. The fireball, carrying the remaining power of a near-death Level 3 life, howled towards Duke.

But the Lava Spirit forgot one thing: it was not actually battling a Level 2 Mage, but racing against its own death countdown.

When the ghost fire and the dark red fireball met in the air, there was no physical collision.

The ghost fire is non-flammable; the dark red fireball passed directly through the black flame and continued flying towards Duke.

And the ghost fire equally passed through the fireball, continuing towards the Lava Spirit.

After releasing the ghost fire, Duke no longer paid attention to the fireball flying towards him.

The moment he completed the release, he abruptly shifted sideways, compressing his fire-elementalized body to the limit.

The dark red fireball grazed his elementalized body, exploding behind him.

The shockwave lifted him ten meters away, but the foundation of his Level 3 body combined with the damage reduction of his elementalized form allowed him to withstand it without any substantial harm.

He knew the fireball would scrape past him. A near-dead Level 3 life, not fully conscious, single eye blurred, elemental core shattered—in this state, its attack would be easy to dodge as long as he didn’t foolishly stand still and take it head-on.

But the Lava Spirit on the other side was already incapable of dodging.

The ghost fire magnified before its eyes, landing lightly on the fissure in its chest before it could react.

A hint of bewilderment flickered in the Lava Spirit’s single eye. It felt no pain; when the black flame landed on it, there was neither a burning sensation nor impact force—just like being brushed by a feather.

Yet the next instant, its single eye widened in shock.

When the ghost fire touched its body, it immediately found the exposed spiritual power veins within the fissure, as if a shark finding the scent of blood, burrowing through those veins.

The Lava Spirit’s body began to tremble violently, its remaining right arm frantically clawing at its chest, trying to dig out the entity invading it.

But the ghost fire was burning something beyond the reach of its hand.

Agony erupted from the depths of its soul.

The Lava Spirit emitted a scream of utmost shrillness, sounding less like it came from its throat and more like something forcibly torn from the depths of its soul.

Its spiritual power veins snapped piece by piece under the blaze of the ghost fire, each snapping line clouding its consciousness a bit more, while the ghost fire, having devoured its spiritual power, grew more vigorous, spreading along new veins towards the deeper spiritual sea.

More lethally, the environment here was saturated with fire attribute free energy particles.

As the ghost fire consumed the Lava Spirit’s spiritual power, it simultaneously absorbed the surrounding high-density fire elemental particles, swelling from the size of a fist to a head, with the dark red lines in its black flame growing denser, its power continually climbing.

The Lava Spirit’s body started twitching uncontrollably, its single eye flickering between dim and fiery, the light in its pupil rapidly blinking—that was a sign of spiritual power being swiftly devoured.

It attempted to summon the last of the flame rule power from its elemental core to suppress the invading black flame, but its core was already cracked.

The rule power was difficult to mobilize, the remaining bit not enough to form a defense, let alone suppress the ghost fire, which had nearly reached Level 3 power.

It could only helplessly watch the black flame advance along its spiritual power veins, spreading towards the depths of its spiritual sea, powerless to do anything.

From the moment the ghost fire landed on the Lava Spirit, the entire process took less than a minute.

When the black flame finally incinerated the Lava Spirit’s spiritual sea, the body of that Level 3 Elemental Life suddenly went rigid.

The light in its single eye extinguished completely, like a candle snuffed out, its remaining right arm drooping powerlessly, the whole body starting to collapse from the inside out.

Scales shattered, magma-like blood gushed from the cracks, and the elemental core in its chest emitted a final brittle sound, breaking into countless fragments.

Its corpse slowly sank into the depths of the magma, swallowed by the surging lava, as if it had never existed.

Duke gathered up the scattered ghost fire seeds, as the flame was extremely precious, having cost him too much effort to tame, and couldn’t be wasted on an already dead enemy.

The black flame retraced along his spiritual power veins, back to the black mark in his spiritual sea. Upon returning to its nest, he could sense the energy contained within the flame had grown stronger than when it was released.

Nurtured by the spiritual power remnants of the Level 3 Lava Spirit and the surrounding environment, the ghost fire had grown a bit more.

He noted this change, turning to continue floating towards the surface.

Moments later, the magma began to thin, and the surrounding temperature dropped to normal lava levels.

Duke accelerated one last time, his fire-elementalized body breaking through the surface of the magma lake, leaping into mid-air with a surge of hot air.

He landed on a slab of charred rock by the lake, exiting his elementalized form and returning to his flesh and blood.

The moment his feet touched solid ground, a massive wave of fatigue surged from deep within, almost making him collapse on the spot.

If not for the Key of Rules, he would never have taken such a risk.

The underground environment was exceedingly perilous, akin to the eye of an energy storm. Traversing below was like treading on thin ice.

However, the outcome was at least positive; he finally managed to truly seize a Key of Rules.

On the ruins of Black Stone Plain, the pillar of fire that pierced the sky finally dissipated completely, leaving only a massive void in the sky and continually falling gray-white volcanic ash.

In the distance, the banners of the Six-Ring Tower Legion were seen being raised once more in the camp, as the Wizards began rallying the remnants, tallying losses, and assessing the pyrrhic victory’s cost.

...

The southern camp on Black Stone Plain was established on the third day of the war, and it had been there for some time now.

Despite being called a camp, its scale was approaching that of a small military town.

Crisscrossing roads, solidified by Earth Magic, divided the camp into neat grids, each housing different legion units.

The logistics team’s carts ran day and night from the rear, continuously delivering supplies, and perpetual magic lamps with sentry, detection, and lighting functions stood at intervals along the camp’s perimeter, illuminating the entire area.

On the eastern side of the camp was the Slave Creature Legion’s zone, where the odor and noise were noticeable from hundreds of meters away.

The western side housed the command center and senior Wizards’ quarters, with tents visibly larger than elsewhere, featuring dual-purpose Witch Arrays for soundproofing and defense at the entrances.

The southern side was for battle credit settlement and the logistics warehouse where people queued from dawn to dusk.

The northern side was a temporary allocation point for the teleportation array, where silver-white teleportation halos lit intermittently, sending wounded soldiers back to the Wizard Plane from the frontline.

Duke and others had also moved to this camp for a temporary rest; he visited the battle credit settlement point daily but was always informed that the Twenty-Third Battle Group’s battle credits had not yet been tallied.

It wasn’t due to inefficiency but rather the peculiar situation of the Twenty-Third Battle Group.

Over half the group was killed in action, and the battle group commander himself perished as well, requiring the battle credits’ counting and distribution to be personally audited by legion-level command officials.

And Ares had no free time in recent days to handle these trivial matters.

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