A mage's journey begins with a battle mage.

Chapter 31 Ritual Preparation

"It's finally out!"

The wood was scattered haphazardly all around, with scraps of wood strewn everywhere. Luckily, Jiang Shuzhou was wearing shoes; otherwise, one step would have been fatal...

He couldn't even imagine how intense that feeling would be.

It's noon the day after the tree spirit was killed. Jiang Shuzhou sold most of the gold coins dropped by the tree spirit and the gold coins he had before, keeping only ten gold coins.

I've earned nearly 200 million in total. The price of gold coins has gone up again, so it seems like someone is buying them on a large scale again.

Fortunately, although the price of gold coins went up, the price of saws did not, and Jiang Shuzhou bought one for "only" five thousand.

Looking at the life tree on the ground, Jiang Shuzhou felt a sense of relief.

Name: Wood of Life

Category: Materials

"Class: First Rank"

"Introduction: The heart of the Tree Man contains a boundless life force."

Now that the hardest and most tiring work is done, all that's left is to learn various spells and ritual arrays.

These things are much easier than cutting down trees.

After collecting the Life Wood into his inventory, Jiang Shuzhou went on a shopping spree at the trading house, mainly buying food. Although the prices of various equipment had increased, the prices of these foods had actually decreased significantly.

Jiang Shuzhou planned to cook a nice meal to treat himself. It was too difficult. He saw others on the forum riding horses and enjoying life to the fullest, while he was struggling to survive on a deserted island.

Not only that, but when it's time to risk your life, you have to risk it.

Jiang Shuzhou paid a heavy price for his promotion.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Opening the book, Jiang Shuzhou planned to learn the magic array needed for the burning ritual today.

"How can it be so simple?"

Unlike the struggle of learning spells, learning magic arrays seemed much easier. Jiang Shuzhou only needed one hour to fully understand how to draw a magic array.

It seems that the talent of "Alchemy Master" has come into play, after all, magic arrays are also an important part of alchemy.

This is the true value of 200% learning efficiency!

The theory is complete; now it's time for practice.

The magic circle used in the burning ritual is called the Energy Binding Array. As the name suggests, it is used to bind elemental energy to prevent leakage and failure of the ritual.

After all, the principle of the burning ritual is to artificially create an area with extremely high elemental content, and then use magic to resonate, causing the magic to undergo a transformation.

The transformed magic will have stronger control over the elements, enabling it to restrain wilder elemental energies. This lays the foundation for unleashing more powerful spells later on.

Otherwise, untransformed magic cannot unleash more powerful spells. If it is forced to unleash them, at best the spell will fail, and at worst it will cause the spell to explode.

The energy-binding array is not picky about materials; it only requires a hard substance.

Of course, if you have absolute confidence in yourself and believe you have good luck, you can also draw energy arrays on soft and easily modifiable materials.

It is important to note that if the runes on the magic circle change, its energy-binding effect will be lost, and the ritual may fail as a result.

Speaking of energy binding arrays, Jiang Shuzhou also recalled a story about their origin.

For a long time, mages have had one question: before the creation of the energy binding array and before the burning ritual appeared, how were mages able to control such violent elemental power?

The answer is simple: because the elements were so abundant everywhere at that time, mages didn't need to transform their magic; they were naturally able to control the raging elements.

So what caused the mage to lose this ability now?

The answer is because of the magic network, because of the goddess of magic.

The establishment of the magic network calmed the raging elements. The once-flowing elemental magic veins have now become the magic network, and the dense elements have gradually become thinner.

In short, all of this is because of the goddess of magic.

She's a legendary scapegoat; she's the one who did all the bad things.

Why is this goddess of magic so wicked?

Getting back to the main point, Jiang Shuzhou had already bought a carving knife at the trading house. He planned to carve the magic circle on the deck. In any case, the magic circle was not very large, only about two square meters. Moreover, if he made a mistake, he could reuse it.

Just cut off the parts that were drawn incorrectly.

With this in mind, Jiang Shuzhou began to inscribe the magic array.

"First comes restraint, then barrier, and finally power supply. Input is placed here, output is placed there, and finally a cycle is formed."

"This doesn't look like a magic circle to me; it looks more like programming."

Looking at the magic circle drawn in front of him, Jiang Shuzhou felt a strange sense of déjà vu.

Logically speaking, it does resemble programming.

For example, after the binding rune, some runes representing elements need to be drawn. Only in this way can the binding rune bind the elements. If the runes are not drawn, the binding rune may bind all the items in the magic circle at the same time.

Similarly, barriers must be properly set up to allow air to circulate; otherwise, not only might a fire not catch fire, but people might even suffocate inside.

The remaining three runes are also very important. The power rune, as the name suggests, is used to power the previous runes.

Input and output serve two purposes: one is to input magic power to maintain energy supply, and the other is to output excess magic power to prevent the magic circle from overloading.

The final cycle is to keep this magic circle running continuously. If it's not added, it might only run once, making the magic circle practically useless.

You know what, they really do look exactly the same.

Regardless of whether it resembles programming or not, Jiang Shuzhou didn't care. He didn't know how to program anyway, and he wouldn't learn programming just to better learn runes.

He turned around and went back to the cabin to get some wood, intending to test whether the magic circle would work.

The binding effect can be observed by observing the flow of elements during meditation, but the binding effect of the magic circle and the air circulation need to be tested by Jiang Shuzhou himself.

However, Jiang Shuzhou had already thought of a testing method: find a basin, put in some ordinary wood, light it, throw it in, and activate the magic circle.

If the air doesn't circulate, the wood definitely won't burn; otherwise, it will circulate normally. Then, physically go over and take the basin out. If Jiang Shuzhou can't get in or lift the basin, it means there's a problem with the binding module or the barrier module.

"It's just like a programmer testing bugs."

If a program designer fails to test and causes a problem, at most the computer will crash. But if Jiang Shuzhou fails to test and causes a problem with the magic array, then he could be killed.

As expected, since it was the first time drawing a magic circle, even with the advantage of talent, problems were bound to occur on the first try.

The smoke can't escape.

This was something Jiang Shuzhou had never imagined. Although the wood could still burn, the smoke produced was trapped within the magic array.

"What's going on? It wasn't mentioned in the book!"

Jiang Shuzhou was completely dumbfounded. He was as distraught as a doctor on his first day of examining a patient. How could this be so different from what was described in the book?

Jiang Shuzhou quickly found the problem: the barrier runes were faulty, probably drawn incorrectly. The barrier runes were supposed to not block airflow, but now they were filtering air. In other words, although entry and exit were normal, only air could enter and only air could exit, while the smoke and dust were blocked.

The only good thing is that people can still come and go as they please.

"It seems this part will have to be cut out and redrawn."

With a sigh, Jiang Shuzhou scraped off the runes he had painstakingly drawn and picked up a carving knife to carve runes on the deck again.

Wish me luck, I hope I succeed on my first try.