Level 1 Magic Weave

The bitterly cold seawater seemed to chill one to the bone as the mountainous black figure suddenly appeared in front of Leylin.

As the A.I. Chip finished scanning, the Tigershark’s stats appeared in front of him. [Mutant Tigershark, Estimated Stats: Strength: 7+, Agility: 2-4, Vitality: 13+, Spirit: 3. Abilities: 1. Sharkskin: A Tigershark’s skin has a slight resistance to physical and magical attacks. 2. Lesser Regeneration: Slight ability to restore a certain amount of life force.]

“Not bad, not bad. With this physique and abundant energy, it’s worthy of being called a deep sea creature…” Leylin’s eyes seemed to glow a crimson red.

Aquatic Swiftness! A glowing enchantment draped itself over Leylin’s body, and he obtained greater speed in the water. It made him as nimble in the water as he was on land.

An enormous sound wave spread out, causing massive vibrations. The forcefield around Leylin’s Mage Armour creaked, as if unable to bear the attack.

The Tigershark seemed to care very little for the insignificantly tiny Leylin, and it occasionally used its giant dorsal fin to smash against the Black Tiger. It looked like it wanted to flip the ship over.

In this situation, Leylin immediately arrived at the back of the Tigershark, and climbed up the coarse surface of the shark’s skin.

“According to the perspective drawing on the map, it should be here!”

Numerous shadowy daggers suddenly appeared from Leylin’s hand as he shouted, “Cloud of Daggers! Ice Knife!”

*Shlook!* The ice daggers plunged into the Mutant Tigershark’s back, making it suddenly swing its entire body around. Copious amounts of fresh blood poured out from its wounds. Its sharkskin seemed like paper under Leylin’s attack.

*Bang! Bang! Bang!* At this moment, the Mutant Tigershark’s body seemed to become a burden to it. As it was so enormous, it could only violently shake its body and hope that this would throw Leylin far away. It was to the point where the Tigershark once slammed the part of its body where Leylin was against the ship. It seemed to want to crush Leylin to death.

However, long before that enormous collision could occur, a glowing dagger that was the colour of blood appeared in Leylin’s hand, the Devilblood Dagger.

“Its artery is here!” Leylin’s eyes seemed to glow, and he stabbed down.

The Mutant Tigershark bellowed with rage, and its movements momentarily stilled. Afterwards, it began to sway and twitch even more violently than before, which made Leylin feel like he was riding a rollercoaster.

Leylin used Adhesion, and was finally able to stick firmly to the Tigershark’s body like a lizard. He felt a strong heat flowing from his palm, the dagger in it like a greedy devil that was relentlessly absorbing the Tigershark’s life force.

Accompanying the absorption of life force by the Devilblood Dagger, the Mutant Tigershark’s back began to atrophy first, exposing dried-up and eroded flesh. Following this, the corrosion began to spread. The Tigershark’s death throes were extremely violent. It gave up on the Black Tiger, and began to travel at a great speed into the sea, swimming deeper without stopping.

However, Leylin remained unmoved by the situation. The Tigershark had such a powerful body that the boost he gained from it was very considerable. He listened to the A.I. Chip’s constant prompts and saw his own slowly increasing stats, clearly feeling the surging life force of the creature constantly being drained. The Devilblood Dagger converted its life force into another form of energy, and transferred it into his body.

Finally, the Mutant Tigershark had one last spurt of movement before it stilled. Its malevolent eyes lost their lustre, and it slowly fell towards the seabed like a sunken ship, dead.

It did not end just like that. The Tigershark’s originally glistening skin had completely dried up, now looking like ancient tree bark even as it had shrunk to half its former size. If it was dissected, then it would be possible to see that the Tigershark’s internal organs had also lost all their life force and had become a pile of waste.

[Beep! Host has killed the Mutant Tigershark, and received a boost from the Devilblood Dagger. Strength has increased by 0.1, vitality increased by 0.3, spiritual force increased by 0.009.] At this moment, the A.I. Chip sent over its final summary, and Leylin noticed his updated stats.

[Leylin Faulen. Race: Human, Rank 7 Wizard. Strength: 2.6, Agility: 2, Vitality: 4, Spirit: 7. Status: Healthy. Feats: Sturdy, Erudite. Spell Slots: Rank 3(1), Rank 2(3), Rank 1(4), Rank 0(???)]

‘This Tigershark seems to be much stronger than the assassin from before. However it only raised my stats a little, and the most it did was to raise my vitality by 0.3. My spiritual force doesn’t seem to have changed…’ Leylin’s expression was a little gloomy.

As his stats increased, and every stat broke through 10, the Devilblood Dagger would grow less useful. He would eventually grow completely immune to its effects.

‘However, the open sea is full of resources. Many drops of water make up an ocean 1, so it should be enough to let me advance to become a rank 9 or even rank 10 wizard…’ Leylin’s expression clouded over.

This was one of his plans. The Devilblood Dagger’s flesh devouring ability meant that outside of high-level Professionals, the only place that had enough flesh to feed it was the open sea. The bodies of deep sea creatures were terrifyingly massive, and organisms full of life force could be found everywhere.

Naturally, these monsters all had their own intelligence and faith, so slaughtering them as one pleased would damage one’s reputation and could even attract an intervention from the gods of other races. It could even draw the attention of druids, who were all lunatics and naturally hostile towards those who destroyed nature.

Now however, the blood on the Black Tiger had attracted the spontaneous attack of many monsters so it wasn’t possible to give them preferential treatment.

One could imagine that in the near future, more than one sea monster would be attracted by Leylin, and all of them would become an unending stream of life force, pushing forward his advancement.

Leylin’s body split open the surface of the sea with a loud splash, and he landed on the deck.

“Cousin Leylin! Are you alright?” Isabel looked at him worry in her eyes.

“I’m alright, continue sailing!” Leylin waved his hand, and all the sailors who heard his command suddenly became sluggish.

He was alright, but it was clear that the terrifyingly powerful monster from earlier was still howling unstoppably on the seabed. They could guess at the powerful battle that occurred after Leylin jumped into the sea, while standing on the deck.

It appeared like their captain could kill even a Mutant Tigershark!

Very quickly, even the most frightening pirates looked at Leylin with eyes filled with respect. They only admired the strong, and now that Leylin had revealed his savage nature, he had also exposed his own powerful abilities.

This carrot-and-stick method was enough to subdue these old pirates. The subconscious actions of theirs made Leylin smile at the scene that would occur many, many more times in the future.

After the battle of Half-Merfolk Island, he would possibly possess an army of pirates that only listened to him.

……

Under the sunny and cloudless sky, Robin Hood’s eyes were filled with unconcealed respect as he reported from behind Leylin. “Captain, we will arrive at Half-Merfolk Island in half an hourglass’ time!”

“I know, pass on the order. Prepare for battle!” Leylin looked out towards the distance, and seemed to be rather distracted. Yet Robin Hood did not notice that, and immediately began to carry out his order.

In reality, Leylin was experiencing an enormous change at this very moment. Ever since he had fought that Mutant Tigershark, he had also attacked various other sea monsters. Under Leylin’s Devilblood Dagger, they all became gifts of experience which helped his stats steadily rise.

The most important thing was that after the boost from this power, the A.I. Chip’s rate of analysing the Weave had increased greatly. Many rank 0 and 1 symbols glowed in front of Leylin, as if forming the mystery of the universe in their array.

Only when he heard a sharp and clear ring did Leylin snap out of his trance-like state. The A.I. Chip displayed its newest progress in front of him.

[Beep! Rank 1 Weave has been fully analysed! Progress is 100%] [Weave Analysis Progress: Rank 0 Weave: 100%. Rank 1 Weave: 100%. Rank 2 Weave: 13.61%. Rank 3 Weave: 0.45%]

The higher the rank of the Weave, the harder it was to analyse it. This was especially true of the rank 3 Weave, the analysis of which hadn’t even reached 1% yet. However, Leylin was already very satisfied.

[Beep! Rank 1 Weave has been fully analysed. The host now has all rank 1 magic models, and spells will not be deleted. Host is exempt from forgetting magic!] The A.I. Chip’s prompts came incessantly.

Leylin now felt that a layer of the Weave had been uncovered, and many rank 1 spell models, from the most basic Alarm to the Endure Element spells and even frightening spells like the Necromancer’s Ray of Enfeeblement were displayed before him.

After the breakthrough of the rank 1 Weave, not only did was he exempt from all the limitations of rank 1 spell models, he could directly use spiritual force to perform magic. It even gave him a lot of authority within the Weave.

It could be said that the benefits brought about by the advancement were of greater help to him than advancing to a higher rank as a wizard, especially when he was on the verge of attacking Half-Merfolk Island.

Leylin couldn’t help but glance over his stats:

[Leylin Faulen, Race: Human, Rank 7 Wizard, Strength: 3.5, Agility: 3, Vitality: 4.5, Spirit: 7.9, Status: Healthy. Innate skills: Sturdy, Erudite. Spell slots: Rank 3 (1), rank 2 (3), rank 1 (???), rank 0 (???)]

Day after day of sailing, as well as constantly attracting sea monsters, had made enormous contributions to his strength.

1. Little things add up