As Jack kept repeating his daily training plan, time slowly passed and soon half a year had passed since he took the position of City Lord. During that time, no major events happened and everything was quite peaceful. Jack’s training also bore a lot fruit as he had managed to create and imprint all of the Seven Elements Base Diagrams onto his Soul.

This drastically reduced the casting time of spells and all of the spells that Jack used, he had familiarized himself himself with them to the point of being able to cast them in his sleep. If he wasn’t training, resting or doing his work, he was reading through all the records left behind for him by Raelag.

His own understanding of the Essence of Magic had grown dozens of times and now he even understood the theory behind Chantless Magic. Chanltess Magic did not require any form of a Chant, so it was a very practical method to use in sneak attacks. Jack’s understanding of activating Magic had taken a surprising turn when he accidentally tried to use cultivators method to cast a spell.

After it worked, Jack realized that Chants were not needed at all and were there to help a person concentrate on the shape the Spell had to take. Jack had always been confused about these Chants but when he understood that they were nothing more than instructions, he started experimenting on using several methods to use Chantless Magic.

After several experiments he reached the conclusion that if he imagined the effect and look of the Spell in his mind and poured his Mana into the appropriate Base Template, he can cast the Spell. Although the cast time of the Spell wasn’t as fast as an Innate Spells, it was still several times faster than using Chants.

After familiarizing himself with the three Spells, he used the special method of turning them into his Innate Spells and after doing so, the cast time, Mana consumption were significantly reduced. This made Jack deeply try to understand difference between Base Template and Innate Spells to apply it to his Chantless Magic.

Maybe he could find a way to instantly cast some Spells like Innate Spells but to do so, a lot of time and thorough research in that department was needed.

The main advantage Jack had was that he had libraries upon libraries of detailed knowledge left behind by Raelag, a person that had become a Sage. Since he had so many records, every time he hit a slump or a dead end, all he had to do was look up the relevant records and draw inspiration from them.

Raelag was somewhat fanatical about Magic Research and besides the thousands upon thousands of Spells Raelag had either augmented or completely created himself, there were mountains of records on his research of different Magic Types. Augmenting Magic, Soul Magic, Space Magic, Time Magic and so on…. Raelag had done extensive research in all of these departments and his gains were enormous, so no matter what problem Jack ran into, he could find at least one book or scroll that held some kind of insight or information on it.

This was also the reason Jack could progress in the Path of Magic so fast and at the same time steadily. Usually, Mages guard their research and records of them like their lifeblood and take most of their knowledge to the grave with them even if they have Legacy Disciples. Raelag however had written all of his knowledge down and had given Jack full access to it to make his path easier.

If he didn’t have to take detours all the time, his path was several times faster. Also because he didn’t fumble around with things that had no direct use for him at the moment and focused on raising his fighting strength alongside absorbing everything left behind by Raelag, his foundation was extremely sturdy.

Even without having Raelag remind him, Jack knew that the importance of a solid foundation in the Path of Magic was several times higher than in cultivation. In cultivation, even if you half-assed your foundation, you could make up for it later. It will be several times harder and required several times more effort but it was still doable.

However, if you take a wrong turn in Magic Research, it may end up as a fatality that can not be reversed. To prevent that, besides the [Flame Angel Art], Raelag also left behind several methods on nourishing the Soul and accelerating Mana movement.

Jack practised each of these methods in the specific order left behind by Raelag each and every day. This sped up Jack’s training efficiency by several times by itself and also had the effect of purifying and nourishing both is body and soul. After following the training plan left behind by Raelag, Jack could only sigh at how important a good teacher is.

Even though Raelag wasn’t there to oversee his training himself, all the records and plans left behind by him increased Jack’s progress rate by a dozen fold. If he had to fumble around on his own, he guessed he wouldn’t even have 10 per cent of his current fighting strength. However, Jack’s progress had now decreased drastically as he reached one certain bottleneck: The lack of practical experience.

His progress rate had been astonishing for the last half a year but in the several recent weeks, Jack felt that he had reached the limit of what he could do without taking part in life and death battles. His training hall had the best of the best conditions for training all sorts of Spells but still they were either not moving targets or had set movement patterns.

If you figured out the pattern, you could easily dodge all the golems threw at you, so Jack felt that he wouldn’t be able to progress at all in a few weeks if it goes on like this. If he fought against other intelligent beings, it would be far easier to find mistakes in his techniques or find some inspiration on how to improve his own strength.

However, there was one problem with that as well, in this Cosmos, the number of people that actually dared to make a move against him could be counted on one hand and every single one of those people were way out of Jack’s league. To have a true life and death battle in this Cosmos was exceedingly hard, so Jack was put in a tough spot at the moment.

Shu had also returned to the Headquarters so if he wanted to ask for his opinion or suggestion on what to do, he would have to travel all the way there. The closest Teleportation Portal that would take him to Dragon Cross was in a branch sect and it would take him about a day and a half to reach there.

Thinking about this, Jack felt that it was a shame that there wasn’t a portal here that could directly bring him to the Island. Without having any other option left, he organized all the things so that there wouldn’t be any problems for the time he left. He left all of the authority on the matters of the City to the people that dealt with the mundane matters and unless it was something exceedingly important, they would not need to bother him and can make the decision themselves.

After making all the preparations, he took Nalser with him and rented a Silver Eagle that would take him to the Branch Sect. Silver Eagles were exceedingly large and strong, so they were the favoured transportation method for people that didn’t have some high grade Movement Artefact or were unable to teleport like Origin Realm cultivators. For the whole road to the Branch Sect, Jack kept training because he had nothing better to do while sitting on the back of the Silver Eagle.

Since it was general knowledge that anyone who has the option of riding on a Silver Eagle is someone with backing, nothing happened for the whole flight.

Jack himself thought that there would be some bandits or rouge cultivators that would be blinded by greed but to his surprise, no one stepped forward to try and hamper his journey. This left Jack a little disappointed as he was currently in the need of a good fight to see his true fighting strength. Since there were no incidents through the whole journey, Jack reached the Branch Sect in a day and managed to get through the Teleportation Portal just before it was closed for the night.

The Branch Head invited him to stay for the night and throw a banquet in the evening but Jack politely declined the offer as he was in no mood to party. Although Jack’s position was quite high in Dragon Cross, he himself didn’t flaunt his status around. Since he spent most of his time training or on his research, most people looked down at him for having such a position.

The amount of people that knew that Jack was training in the Path of Magic was quite small, so most of the people thought that he was just a cripple without any future prospects. Everyone were courteous on the outside but inside, they mocked and ridiculed Jack. Some even didn’t try to hide their sneers but Jack didn’t bother with these people because he knew that greed and jealousy was present everywhere.

Even buddhists had greedy and jealous emotions so there was no place in this vast Plane where everything was in harmony.

When Jack reached the Dragon Cross Headquarters, it didn’t take long for someone to guide him to the Island. When asked for the purpose of his visit, Jack asked to meet with Zhi. He felt that it would be for the best to directly talk to Zhi about his problem. He quickly got permission to enter the Island and was guided towards the Meeting Hall he had been to before.

All the way there people courteously bowed to him and none of these people looked down on him for one simple reason. They had been here and seen the Inferno Jack had created when he accepted Raelags Legacy.

They knew very well that Jack was no pushover and even though he couldn’t cultivate Qi any more, that didn’t mean that he was thoroughly crippled and all he could do was wait for death. To them, Jack was the prime example of “There is always a way”. If you also accounted all of his previous accomplishments, the amount of respect Jack hard earned for himself from the Core of Dragon Cross was immense.

All those Origin Realm cultivators that were usually aloof and didn’t put anyone weaker in their eyes treated Jack like an equal. This by itself was already an extremely good accomplishment. After chatting a bit with the people from the Island, Jack headed to the Meeting Hall to talk to Zhi about his problem.

When he arrived at the Hall, only Zhi was present and Zhi just smiled as he gestured Jack to take a seat. Jack politely took the seat he was offered and after making small talk with Zhi about how Jack had been for the last half a year, Zhi asked, “So, what is the main reason you sought me out today?” Jack put on an apologetic face as he said, “I don’t mean to be disrespectful but I feel as though I am currently stuck in a cage.”

Zhi’s brows slightly frowned as he asked, “How so?” Jack then sighed as he explained, “I am the City Lord of Virbeth, I have all the resources I need and more. Even though my progress has been fast in this past half a year, I have hit a slump now.” Zhi thought about Jack’s words and vaguely guessed the reason for Jack coming here.

Jack then continued, “In the City, no one dares to cause any problems and I always have more than ten Origin Realm cultivators keeping tight watch over me. As you might have guessed already, that is a bit too safe.”

After hearing Jack’s explanation, Zhi sighed as he nodded his head, “I guessed that his day would come sooner or later. There are limits to how far you can progress without having life and death battles.”

Jack nodded his head and said, “That is my current problem. I feel as though I have reached the limit to how much I can progress without having first hand combat experience. The training hall has the best conditions for training in Magic but it still all quite limited in terms of direct combat.”