The Black Iron Glory
Surprise in the Diary

Chapter 64

Surprise in the Diary

That day after school, Claude went to Eriksson's dock when the little fishing boat got its last coat of paint. After being dry for approximately five days, you can finally sail. Claude, Welikro, and Borkal go there to help Eriksson paint his beloved ship.

Eriksson returned home and brought enough material for the barbecue event that they would celebrate the completion of the ship. After they finished eating, they chatted briefly at the dock before returning to their homes.

When Claude got home, it was too late. When his mother heard him enter, she complained, "Why did you come home so late? Are you hungry? There's something in the kitchen for you to eat." Claude gave her a cursory response before she started taking a shower. When he was done with it and was about to head upstairs, the snow dog heard it from his sister's room and started crying. Claude scolded her in a soft voice. Intelligent puppies stop making noise immediately.

After he entered the attic, he turned on the oil lamp in his room and lay on his bed, took out Landes' diary and prepared to read before going to bed. If he is honest, Claude must admit that Landes' diary is much more interesting than the biographies of other famous people. People won't see famous people recounting their experiences of being bullied at school, for example.

But after she read only two pages, she jumped out of her bed, too shocked to process what she had just found. Claude found some detailed explanations of how Landes learned meditation and even included diagrams and training techniques for it.

That means I can start practicing meditation as well. . . Claude forced out his desire to shout out loud in joy. After trying hard to find information about magic, he found nothing. However, it appeared when he least expected it!

He never even dreamed that the secret to start practicing magic would be in the diary of Landes. If he had discovered it before, then he would have already worked hard studying the mystical art once he returned from Egret instead of throwing those two diaries aside and spending a month.

"I think the diary will only have an insignificant record of events. Why am I always so unlucky? Who would have thought that I would find a meditation technique in the diary?" claude muttered to himself.

Ah, for someone who could even remember the names of those who bullied him, why didn't he write down what he learned during his journey to become a magus rune in his diary? Magus Landes must be quite proud of his memory. Perhaps when he wrote the diary, he thought about how he could become a magus rune earlier than those who excommunicated him.

Claude suppressed his excitement and continued reading.

As expected, Landes' exhibition was clearly visible from his writing. He wrote in a diary about how they were left behind.

So what if you are richer than me and preferred by instructors? So what if you look down on me and bully me? How did that work for you? I only needed three months of meditation practice to be able to start circulating the mana in my body and become a first rank magus rune. Now, you should call me 'teacher' when you see me. Haha. . .

As expected of a genius. Despite this, Landes did not fail to thank Tawari, who patiently taught him every step of the way, in his diary. Without Tawari's guidance, Landes would never be able to become a first rank magus rune so quickly.

As expected of a genius. Despite this, Landes did not fail to thank Tawari, who patiently taught him every step of the way, in his diary. Without Tawari's guidance, Landes would never be able to become a first rank magus rune so quickly.

Normally, an apprentice magus with an elemental affinity of seven or eight would require one or half years to become a first rank magus rune, and it was under the assumption that the apprentice received full guidance from their instructor. Otherwise, it could take up to three whole years, unless they managed to find the key to meditation on their own.

Being a battlemagus on the other hand is more troublesome and will take up to two or three years. They had to practice magic hand sigils and other battle techniques along with their meditation as well as physical abilities.

But the good thing about being a battlemagus is that there is no complicated relationship between the student and the instructor. Although the battlemagi candidates were only students, they would eventually become comrades of the battlemagi instructors in the future. No one will leave their back open to a friend who hates them.

Take for example the female apprentice Magus who had been living in the tower for five whole years. According to Landes, he did not have good magic talent. He only had element six affinity and should have been disqualified. But because his family was rich, they gave a large sum of money to the Appraiser Magus as bribes and he was taken to the tower when he was fourteen years old.

Now that he no longer had the financial support of his family, he studied very slowly because he lacked talent in magic. So, he had no choice but to become a lover of five-ring rune magus and an alchemy lab supervisor, who was also highly valued by Loenk. Only then could he stand firmly in the magic tower. But even so, he had stayed for a full five years in the tower and was still unable to become a first rank magus rune. Thus, his lower five-ringed rune magus was unable to help him with anything else.

It is said that Archmagus Loenk angrily declared that if he could not become a first rank magus rune when he was twenty, there would be no more place for him in the magic tower. He would only have two options: pack up to go home or sign a contract to become a slave for life. He only has one more year.

Back then, Landes did not understand why there was such a huge difference in learning speed between those with elemental affinities of six and nine for example. Had Tawari not expressly prohibited her from sharing the meditation techniques she learned with the girl, Landes might have done so out of pity to help her become a first rank magus rune as soon as possible.

With no one boasting and sharing his excitement about becoming a first rank magus rune so quickly, Landes could only write down his feelings in his diary. Although by the time he started writing it, he was already a third rank magus rune, instead, he could still vividly recall the excitement he felt when he first made it past the first rank after the successful mastery of the meditation technique. He also noted more insights he gained after his successful progress.

For humans, magi are terrifying and mysterious figures who possess supernatural powers and can control everything in nature. They could easily use magic to kill ferocious and ferocious wild beasts and build structures and buildings that even ordinary people would not dare to imagine. They were at the top of the world and were worshipped by ordinary humans even more than the gods.

But Landes describes in his diary the clear and simple source of magus power. Through training in meditation techniques and absorbing the essence of the invisible, yet present, element in the natural world into their bodies, the magi were able to convert and store energy as they could control. The key is that the magus must imagine its own body as a vessel. The more mana a magus could store, the higher its rank.

Landes notes in his diary that Tawari told him some mysteries about the magical world that were often hidden by instructors from their students.

The Magi from the first to the fifth ring are considered low order magi. The division between the fifth and sixth rings is that between the low and middle magi. Both the meditation and the effect of the mantra will change qualitatively after crossing that boundary. However, the knowledge required to break through the barrier was completely monopolized by the silver-white magi nobles, who were unwilling to divulge it. In the world of Faslan, the fifth ring was the limit for the magi of a common birth.

Magi from the sixth to eighth rings are collectively known as middle-level magi. For example, Loenk, a seven-ringed magus, was one of them, and he was one of Faslan's elites and also a member of the magic authority. The magi of nine rings to twelve are of high order. Currently, there are only seven nine-ring magi in Faslan and a nine-ring council that they are part of the highest authority in the entire world. No magus dared to ignore their orders.

According to legend, the magi on the twelfth ring will begin the path to divinity. However, no magus has managed to reach that level in the past two millennia. The Grand Archmagi was nothing but a legend at this point in time in Faslan.

The key to becoming a proper magus as an apprentice is the training of meditation techniques. With a shortage of magical resources building up over three thousand years since the start of the magical civilization, inefficient techniques that consumed more resources than necessary were phased out.

According to legend, the magi on the twelfth ring will begin the path to divinity. However, no magus has managed to reach that level in the past two millennia. The Grand Archmagi was nothing but a legend at this point in time in Faslan.

The key to becoming a proper magus as an apprentice is the training of meditation techniques. With a shortage of magical resources building up over three thousand years since the start of the magical civilization, inefficient techniques that consumed more resources than necessary were phased out.

The meditation techniques available to low-level disciples and magi were only limited to two or three types that did not consume any resources, either, but they rely on the user's own understanding of magic and collective experience. As long as one's talent for magic was high, one could become a five-ringed magi after a strict time and training.

Landes drew a precise hexagram on one of the pages in the diary to explain the meditation techniques taught to apprentice magi in great detail. The formal name for the technique is called Hexagram Meditation.

When an apprentice starts training, he must relax his body and empty his mind of all thoughts without falling asleep. Once that was done, he would feel the void and would have to visualize the hexagram in that void with his mental strength. Soon, he would feel the presence of many points of light in the surrounding space and the points of light were photons of essence existing that were invisible all over the world. They will be attracted to the hexagram and gather around the hexagram dots.

What the apprentice had to do was do his best to move the essence photons to each of the hexagram points, with the key being to choose the type of essence that was most harmonized. In the case of Landes, since he was most familiar with the fire element, he was, the absorption of photons of fire element essence will be much faster than other elements and it can fill six hexagram triangles with photons of fire essence in a much shorter time. .

After that, the apprentice can convert the essence photons collected around the point into mana to be stored in the body. In some ways, a hexagram is drawn in a mental void like a well and the dots are the openings. The six triangles of the hexagram will be the columns of the well.

The way it differs from a normal water well is that the apprentice must convert the photon of essence collected in six hexagram triangles into mana before it can be stored in the 'well' at the center. When the middle well of the hexagram was filled with mana, the apprentice would be able to channel the mana from his body into the outside world, making it a full ring magus.