Chapter 0185

Graden closed his eyes sighed in relief. He knew from an early age his spirits were not like the other spirits.

Whereas the other spirits tried to communicate with their mortals in one form or another, his spirits remain silent.   

If he didn’t test for his affinities, he wouldn’t have known he was a mage. The other mages in his family have a close bond with their spirits. His family members always talk about what the spirits said, what they learn from the spirits, how the spirits love and guide them.

Aside from the first meeting he had with his spirits, all he got was silence. Graden didn’t understand why. Why his spirits didn’t his spirits speak to him? Why was his combination of affinities so strange? Why was he the way he is?  

Graden noticing the effects of mana on mages wasn’t an accident. He delved deeply into the effects the spirits or mana had on their mortals. He kept a journal of his observation. Over time, he saw a pattern emerging.

During childhood, mages experience periods of extreme mood swings. The period of time the mage spends during their lows and highs become longer and longer unless they made an effort to curb their emotions. Mages taught to control their emotions were able to curb their bipolar tendencies, however, their cultivation also drops. Those who let their feelings reign experience a marked increase in their cultivation. The trade-off was their inability to control their feelings.

Graden had also noticed the emotional outburst occurs more often in mages with higher degrees of mana absorption. After years of careful observation, Graden concluded the emotional outburst correlates with mana. The higher the mana absorption rate a mage has the higher the chance he or she experiences an emotional outburst. Conversely, the lower the mana absorption rate a mage has, the greater the control they have over their emotions.

It isn’t to say the mage’s personality isn’t affected by other variables such as education, status, wealth, or family circumstances but the general trend was there.

Then there was him. Graden was one of the few outliers in the massive amount of data that can not be explained. He is an 89 fire 51 wood mage who acts more like a wood mage instead of his predominant affinity, fire. His mana absorption rate is higher than an 89 fire 51 wood mage should have.  

Graden’s affinities marked him as a low to medium level alchemist. He simply doesn’t have a strong enough understanding of plants to be able to create high-level pills. 

Pills are given 2 designations in the Magus Alliance. The first designation is a numerical one represent the overall difficulty of the pill. The higher the number, the harder it is to create for the alchemist. It doesn’t take into consideration the rarity of the materials.  

To a mage with wood affinity, finding and growing plants is as easy as breathing. Finding those legendary rare herbs is nothing to an alchemist mage. Herbs with the slightest sentience come running to wood mages.

Those beauties Graden was raising, taking them to any auction house in the other three realms and they should fetch an astronomical price. Yet in the Magus Alliance, they were treated as low-level plants used for fighting.

The second designation is used to measure grade. The grade is divided into poor, low, mid, high and perfect grade.

The number one pill recognized by all alchemist is a level 23 perfect grade Soul Recall pill.

Graden can make a level 9 perfect grade pills.

Everything about him points to a high wood affinity, not the measly 51 the test showed. Graden tested himself several times with different stones and he still got the same result.

The only explanation he came up with was deliberate manipulation by the spirits themselves. Graden didn’t know what the spirits were up to but he wanted to know why. Why did they make him the odd mage out? Why did he feel as if he was a stranger in his own skin?  

There were so many questions Graden want answers to but his spirits barely made any time to speak to him. No matter how often he meditated, there was no response from the spirits.

It wasn’t to say he was short-changed by the spirits or anything like that. They did their job converting providing his body with mana but that’s it.  

Graden has no access to basic spells because his spirits barely communicate with him. One of his relatives took pity on him and gave him a few low-level fire spells or else he would be a mage who doesn’t know any spells!

Graden knew he couldn’t rely on the generosity of his family for the rest of his life. If he learned everything by rote memory, then he won’t understand the underlying theories or laws. Mages need to understand the underlying theories or laws to go further with their spell casting.

At the same time, he couldn’t remain defenseless in a cruel world. Graden needs a method to fight without the need to understand the theories or laws and luckily his wood affinities gave him just that.  

A gardener needs to know properties associated with the plant, what kind of soil, water, temperature, sunlight the plants needs to grow.  

All this information, Graden has access to. So, instead of being a fire wood mage, Graden practically abandons the fire aspect of his affinities and focus wholeheartedly on his wood affinities. 

Still, a seed of confusion remained in his heart.

When Tempest mention she wasn’t worried about her secrets leaking out because she knew about their secrets and it was much more dangerous if the information was to leak out, Graden felt his heart rate increase. Did she truly know the secrets his spirits hid from him? He wanted to ask. He wanted to demand Tempest tell him the secret. Graden held himself back because he knew now wasn’t the time and if his secret was as dangerous as Tempest implied, he wants to ask when no one was around.

Graden knew where Tempest was all the time. He knew she wasn’t at the guild. He didn’t tell anyone about it and schemed to send them in to search for her in a different direction to create the chance for him to speak to Tempest alone.

The others suspect he was up to something but they were kind enough to ignore his weak attempts at scheming.

Graden had his answer now. He wished he didn’t. He wished he remained ignorant.

Tempest might not know how alluring the Eternal Flame Tree is to an alchemist. A rumored map to the location of a small leaf from the Eternal Flame Tree had all the alchemist foaming in the mouth hankering after it.

One can imagine the lengths an alchemist would go to get their grubby paws on a living Eternal Flame Tree. Even hearing the name sent an intense desire to obtain it through Graden and he was the one who had it! The Eternal Flame Tree was that alluring. 

The dawn of creation was a whirlpool of diverse forms of energy colliding with each other, giving rise to the Primordial Chaos. From the chaos emerged strange creatures of unfathomable powers and unimaginable strength. One of these creatures was a tree.

The tree was different from the rest of the creatures existing in the Primordial Chaos in that it absorbs all the different types of energy in the Primordial Chaos into its body and converts it into fire energy.  

The plant grew in its corner of the Primordial Chaos, guarded by three birds who later became the first phoenix, vermillion bird and golden crow. The tree was called the Eternal Flame Tree by the three birds because they hope the tree would stand strong eternally. As long as the Eternal Flame Tree lived, the three birds would always have a place to call home.   

From time to time, the Eternal Flame Tree would bear fruit. After dining on the fruit, the birds would fling the seeds into the Primordial Chaos. Some of the seeds would mutate as it came into contact with chaotic power, but the majority of the seed would burn. It would burn brightly for eons upon eons as it waited for the right conditions to germinate. The burning seeds would later mutate and became what humans know as the sun. 

“Found you!” Fenix yelled, breaking Graden’s reverie.