For a wizard, even one who has just ascended, killing a third-level wizard apprentice is no more challenging than crushing an ant.
Sunan felt no sense of achievement from effortlessly exterminating over a dozen third-level wizard apprentices.
The gap between a wizard and a wizard apprentice is vast, akin to different life forms entirely.
Such an outcome was inevitable.
However, some discoveries during the battle made Sunan frown slightly.
Shaking his head, he temporarily set aside his doubts, collected the spatial rings of the deceased members of the Council of Truth, and turned to Kyi and the others.
"Are you all right?" Sunan asked.
The Staff, the Traveler, and Rose instinctively shook their heads, then snapped out of their daze, their faces showing a complex mix of shock, confusion, and disbelief.
"Sunan, have you... become a wizard?" Rose asked, needing confirmation despite her suspicions.
The answer was unsurprising.
"Yes," Sunan admitted calmly.
The Staff glanced at the shattered top of the Starlight Tower, hesitating. "And inside the Starlight Tower..."
"Everything inside has been taken by me," Sunan replied flatly. "The Starlight Tower is now just an empty shell."
With his ascension to wizard, there was nothing on the Starlight Continent that Sunan feared.
The power of a wizard was enough to dominate the continent; with such might, he had no need to hide anything.
As expected, hearing this, the Staff and the others hesitated but ultimately said nothing.
Facing Sunan as a wizard, they could no longer speak to him as equals.
"Let's go back."
With a wave of his hand, Sunan summoned a small golem army to surround the Starlight Tower.
Though he had emptied the tower's resources, the tower itself was valuable material.
Sunan planned to dismantle it later and use the materials to build a wizard tower, so he naturally wouldn't allow anyone else to touch it.
In his absence, the golem army would guard the Starlight Tower.
To be safe, Sunan left a secret puppet behind and destroyed the Elemental Pool within the tower.
Without an energy source, the Starlight Tower couldn't slip into a dimensional space and would remain in the material world.
Only after Sunan and his group had departed did the onlookers emerge from hiding, looking at the golem army surrounding the tower and exchanging helpless glances.
"What should we do?"
"What else can we do but leave? Do you think you can take on all those golems? Don't say I didn't warn you; there's an Adamantine Golem in there!"
"Even if you could, would you want that wizard coming after you? Didn't you see how those third-level wizard apprentices were crushed like ants?"
"I never thought someone would really become a wizard."
"From now on, the Starlight Continent is likely to change."
With complex expressions, they recalled what they had just witnessed, feeling as if they had observed a historic moment.
Not far into their flight, the Staff, Rose, and the Traveler took their leave in succession.
Facing Sunan, the pressure was immense, and they couldn't bear to stay any longer.
Sunan didn't mind, wrapping himself and Kyi in liquid metal, forming a shuttle shape, and shooting toward Flash City.
The journey that had taken four days on the way now took only half a day under Sunan's full power.
After parting ways with Kyi in Flash City, Sunan returned to Base No. 1, passed through the spatial passage, and arrived back in Dragon Forest.
Returning to the control center at the top of the Dragon Skeleton Tower, he immediately summoned Butler No. 1 to check the operation logs for Dragon Forest over the past two years.
Before leaving, Sunan had anticipated a long absence and made arrangements, so Dragon Forest was running smoothly, with everything in order.
However, there was a backlog of tasks needing his attention.
There were also matters from the Star Alliance that had accumulated over two years, awaiting his decisions.
But those weren't urgent.
Sunan had other pressing matters to verify.
Standing beside the Elemental Pool, Sunan cast several spells and manipulated energy particles for a while, finally confirming his suspicions.
"Indeed, the concentration of energy particles is the greatest limitation for a wizard."
Sunan's expression was complex.
During his battle with the Council of Truth, he had noticed that the intensity of energy particles he could mobilize was far below his control limit.
If the intensity he could control was 100, he could only mobilize up to 20.
This meant the power of his spells and energy particle manipulation was only about 20% of what it should be!
The reduced power was one thing, but the gradual enhancement of the body through energy particle absorption and the speed of mental energy growth and recovery were severely affected.
Now, Sunan truly understood the adverse effects of energy scarcity.
As a wizard apprentice, his power hadn't reached the Starlight Continent's energy particle concentration limit, so the impact wasn't as noticeable.
But after becoming a wizard, his power level surpassed the energy particle concentration limit, and he truly felt what energy scarcity meant.
In this environment, a wizard's power was significantly weakened, and cultivation was also clearly affected.
Moreover, the sensory experience was uncomfortable.
When he first became a wizard, the Elemental Pool was nearby, so the effect wasn't obvious. But after leaving the Starlight Tower, it felt like moving from normal oxygen levels to a thin-air environment.
"No wonder the wizards left the Starlight Continent a thousand years ago; it's not a place for wizards to stay."
Sunan sighed.
He currently had no ability for planar travel and had to make do on the Starlight Continent.
"The auxiliary intelligent life of the Starlight Tower mentioned something about the recovery of the dimensional barrier. Perhaps there's more to the events of a thousand years ago than I know."
In his past life, Sunan entered the game at version 2.0 of "The Return of the Wizard," and knew little about version 1.0 and the transitional storylines, having only read some documents and heard some intelligence.
He had thought the Starlight Continent was merely an element-starved desert, but now it seemed more complicated.
"Among the books from the Starlight Tower, there appear to be some that mention these matters. It'll be worth setting aside time to read them."
Sunan exhaled deeply, beginning to contemplate his next steps.
First, regarding cultivation.
Growth and refinement of gaseous mental energy are already slow, with a one-percent increase taking years.
With the current energy scarcity on the Starlight Continent, without external assistance, maintaining current levels would be a success, let alone improvement.
"The Divine Blood Amber is almost useless to me now."
"The Transcendental Potion as well. I'll need to synthesize higher-grade potions."
Elemental Pool, potions, and divine energy combined should counteract the effects of energy scarcity.
Next, he needed to find other means to accelerate mental energy growth.
Secondly, wizard tools.
This wouldn't be difficult for Sunan. If not for mental energy limitations, he would have synthesized wizard tools long ago as an apprentice.
However, Sunan didn't plan to casually synthesize just any wizard tools.
Other wizards might not have a choice, but with his synthesis cube, he had plenty of options.
Ideally, he wanted to synthesize the most suitable wizard tool based on his combat style and system.
This way, he could achieve a synergy greater than the sum of its parts.
This would require careful planning.
Then there were experiments.
With his ascension to wizard, many experiments previously limited by mental energy could now proceed.
For instance, improving secret puppets and bloodline imprints, developing higher-level rune engravings than magical tattoos, and more.
Lastly, the wizard tower.
As one of the greatest alchemical creations in the history of wizard civilization, wizard towers are renowned throughout the multiverse.
Countless planar civilizations have fallen under the bombardment of wizard towers.
Their fame is well known across many planes.
There's a saying in the multiverse: "More terrifying than a wizard is a wizard with a tower!"
Every wizard hopes to have a tower of their own.
But building a wizard tower is no simple task.
A functional wizard tower requires stable mana supply, maze-lock protection energy fields, long-range strike capabilities, built-in golem armies, and tower spirit commanders, among other features.
The resources needed to build a basic wizard tower are valued at millions of gold coins.
Even formal wizards rarely have such wealth.
As a result, many first-level wizards don't have their own tower.
Even among second-level wizards, few can afford to build a tower.
Generally, wizard towers are categorized into two types.
Flying and non-flying.
Non-flying towers are typically built on ley line nodes.
These towers are often bound to their location and cannot move, let alone fly.
Many wizards don't consider these true wizard towers.
Unless constrained by circumstances or resources, few choose to build on ley line nodes.
Most wizards opt for flying towers.
In wizard civilization, towers are classified by size: small, medium, and large.
The larger the tower, the more expensive it is to build.
Medium and large towers are beyond Sunan's current aspirations.
Even dismantling the entire Starlight Continent wouldn't provide enough resources for a medium tower.
His goal is a small tower.
Though small, it would still be far larger than the Starlight Tower.
"Building a tower requires immense resources. Given the current state of the Starlight Continent, it's quite challenging."
"Taking apart the Starlight Tower will provide some resources, but there's still a large gap."
"Relying solely on the Star Alliance won't be enough to gather the remaining resources."
Sunan's eyes glinted, his mind already formulating a plan.
Before building a tower, he needed to unify the Starlight Continent!
Only then could he consolidate the continent's manpower and resources to construct a tower.
Unifying the surface world was not overly difficult, as most of it could be handled by the Starlight Duchy, leaving Sunan to deal with the wizard apprentices.
The underground world would be managed by the Star Alliance.
Additionally, he needed to locate the Black Forest and Falling Star City.
These legacy sites likely held substantial resources, which could alleviate some of the resource pressure.
Conveniently, the Black Forest's clues were held by Spider City, making it the ideal starting point for the Star Alliance's unification of the underground world.
After pondering for a moment, Sunan had a rough plan for the future.
Following this, he considered the issue of the [Dark Throne].
By taking the Starlight Tower, he had undoubtedly made an enemy of the [Dark Throne].
The [Dark Throne] was not a forgiving organization and would seek revenge upon returning to the Starlight Continent.
Preparations had to be made in advance.
"The 2.0 version officially starts around Starlight Calendar 2000."
"But for over a decade before that, various wizard factions sent scouts to the Starlight Continent to gather intelligence and establish outposts for their main forces."
Sunan vaguely remembered that the [Dark Throne] was among the first factions to send scouts.
He recalled this because the [Dark Throne] wizards caused significant bloodshed, plunging players into a dark decade.
It wasn't until other factions established a presence that the [Dark Throne]'s influence was curbed, and players' situations improved.
This led to players uniting to push back against the [Dark Throne] as they grew stronger.
"It's currently Starlight Calendar 1269, leaving over 700 years before the first wizards arrive on the continent."
Sunan mused.
This ample time would allow him to turn the Starlight Continent into his domain and build his tower.
By the time the [Dark Throne] arrived, he might even have a "surprise" for them.
Though he had already offended a notorious multiverse faction, Sunan wasn't too worried.
The multiverse housed more than just the [Dark Throne].
If necessary, he could seek refuge with an opposing faction.
In a matter of moments, Sunan's mind raced with possibilities.
The [Deep Blue Alliance], [Star Spirit Spire], and [Wisdom Codex]...
There were a handful of factions capable of rivaling or surpassing the [Dark Throne].
No faction would turn down a genius who had ascended to wizard in just thirty years, despite the elemental desert and resource scarcity.
As for longevity, he had no concerns.
The life span of a wizard, having transcended ordinary human limits, was vastly extended.
A first-level gaseous wizard could live for 700 to 800 years, and with longevity bloodlines or physical modifications, living over a millennium was feasible.
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