‘It’s still incomplete.’

It wasn’t as he had expected. The fireball simply contained a bigger version of the rune. ‘So its just a lack of energy density.’ Shaking his head, he withdrew his divine sense.

‘Hmm?’ He stopped retracting his divine sense as soon as it reached the edge of the fireball. ‘This…the particles are making their way into the fireball to complete the rune?’ He shook his head at this. ‘No, its more like they are being swept into the rune.’ The criss-crossing lines formed by the movement of the particles was slowly accumulating. ‘It would have been impossible to capture if he wasn’t utilizing Meditation and Concentration at the same time.’ Indeed, it was too fast for him to catch without being in this form. ‘Then, maybe if?’

Closing his eyes, he opened up his palm, ejecting the half-complete rune formed by his true essence from it. As more energy was siphoned from his dantian, the rune began slowly completing. ‘Why is it such a huge energy-intensive effort?’ A frown appeared on his face as he felt himself slowly emptying out. His face had soon lost nearly all of it’s colour. ‘Come on, just a little bit longer.’ Gritting his teeth, he focused on trying to squeeze out just a little bit more energy from his dantian. ‘Just a little bit.’ His gaze wandered over to the mana counter on his status window to observe his true essence as he could no longer feel it. The points were lower than 20 points and continued decreasing. Cold sweat drenched his back as it ticked below 10 points.

9 points

8 points

7 points

He suddenly felt as if he was stabbed just underneath his navel. Sucking in a sharp breath through his gritted teeth, he continued observing the rune.

6 points

5 points

4 points

The world was becoming increasing duller and a vignette was forming in his vision.

3 points

2 points

Just as he was down to his last point, a blinding light flashed on top of his palm, accompanied by a bird’s cry. His vision completely faded to black, yet he could see the notifications popping up in front of him one by one.

[Congratulations on creating a fire elemental!]

[The fire elemental has fused with the user. User has gained Accelerated Recovery <Passive> Temp]

[Detected that the user has understood a law to the Small Success stage, unlocking Concepts Window]

A smirk appeared on his face before his consciousness completely faded.

‘At least I wasn’t out for long.’ Opening his eyes, Lin Ming’s gaze drifted towards the window. Although there was no chirping of birds, the sunlight was still strong. ‘I think I’ve unlocked a new function?’ He stretched out his hand and called out into the ether. “Concept window.” A holographic screen suddenly appeared in front of him, different from all the other windows. ‘So it works exactly like the skill window.’ His gaze traversed through the text.

Concept of Fire Lv. 4

Burning Heat Lv. Max

Annihilation Lv. Max

Creation Lv. Max

Manifestation Lv. Max

Virtual Fire Lv. 1 0.0%

Yang Flames Lv. 1 0.0%

Star Flame Lv. 1 0.0%

Fire of Nirvana Lv. 1 0.0%

To Ashes Lv. 1 0.0%

Beginning of the Blaze Lv. 1 0.0%

Concept of Wood Lv. 4

Overgrowth Lv. Max

Tenacious Vitality Lv. Max

Vital Core Lv. Max

Manifestation Lv. 1 Max

Virtual Wood Lv. 1 0.0%

Evergreen Glade Lv. 1 0.0%

Vital Transference Lv. 1 0.0%

Green Star Lv. 1 0.0%

Dominating Root Lv. 1 0.0%

Life Origin Lv. 1 0.0%

‘I don’t think there was ever a window like this in the Gamer. I guess maybe because it’s a different world there are different functionalities. After all, the Gamer ability is based on the rules of the world.’ Shaking his head, he tried to focus back on the window. ‘No point wondering about all of this. I should simply be grateful that I have a functionality like this.’ His gaze naturally landed on Manifestation Lv. 1 as he clicked on it.

Concept of Fire: Manifestation Lv. 1 50.0%

The elemental energy in this world can manifest itself as living elementals when in high enough concentration or shaped in the form of a law rune. These elements can be utilized to attack, defend or even merge with, in order to increase recovery rate.

‘Wait, is that what happened with the elemental I created? It seems like it’s used up in the process.’ He scratched his chin whilst thinking of a couple of different ideas. ‘Then, why didn’t the Manifestation work when I congregated it in my palm?’ He struck his finger out and weaved the true essence into the wood rune before projecting it out from the tip of his finger. A dim, azure light bloomed at the tip of his finger before a small roar echoed from the hazy image. It looked like a spiral as it shot up into the air, spinning before finally dissolving into thin air. ‘Right, so the true essence needs to be outside to manifest into an elemental.’ Nodding his head, he stared at the rest of the concepts. ‘I think the best course of action would be to learn the rune for all the elements. I’ll decide the next course of action after that.’

‘10 days,’ Lin Ming stared at the tiny sparrow made of fire resting on the knuckle of his index finger, ‘it took me 5 days to figure out all the runes.’ Flipping his palm, the sparrow jumped to standing on the tip of index finger. An azure light shined as a tiny dragon materialized on his middle finger, coiling around it. This was followed by a small black tortoise materializing on on his ring finger, a dull bronze coloured ox appearing on his small finger and a yellow dragon appearing on his thumb. Finally, a qilin peaked its head out from between his thumb and index finger, giving off sparks as it floated up followed by a tiger made from wind. ‘I have seven out of the eight trigrams.’ He released a sigh. It had taken him repeated forming of incomplete runes to finally complete the law runes of the eight types of runes. Earth and water were tricky, given that the runes were severely broken, but with some perseverance and a lot of resting, he was finally able to use the autocomplete mechanisms that seemed to exist in these runes to complete them. It was similarly tricky for him to fully visualize the runes for thunder and wind. He had to use the tiny parts he could gleam and exploit the auto-complete. For wind, he had to blow really hard and use his divine sense. Even then, in the end, he had to use his blanket and tie it around the tip of his spear to swing around and create the wind. He still remembered the glorious sight of him swinging the blanket like no tomorrow. ‘The things we do for power.’ Even the Gamer’s Mind skill struggled to help him keep the embarrassment down. A few minutes of heavy sighing later, he was finally ready to come back to the problem at hand.

‘Its time to create my Practice Method.’