Staring at the night sky, Lucien sought his own Host Star using the astrology meditation.
Searching in the vast and spectacular sky, soon Lucien located a star in a distance which somehow he felt familiar with. The star was not very bright, seeming like a newborn one.
Extending his spirit, Lucien approached the star. Under the guidance of meditation, little by little, Lucien started connecting his spirit with the star.
Suddenly, like a string being plucked, Lucien’s soul shook and started vibrating fiercely. Knowing it was the hardest but also the most important part in the process, Lucien quickly reached out his spirit again to grab the almost broken string between the star and himself.
Gradually, the thin string started shining bright as the stars, and gradually grew stronger. The vibrating slowly disappeared. With a last sudden vibration in the end, an image of the star showed up in his soul.
Drawing the power from the star greedily, Lucien continued tempering his soul and spirit until his soul felt “swollen”. Then he switched to element meditation to improve the interaction and strengthen the bond between his spirit and the elements. The stronger the bond was, the faster one could cast the element-specific spells and shorten the cooldown (CD) in general.
Lucien finally opened his eyes when he started feeling extremely tired deep in his soul. They were full of excitement and ecstasy.
“Even when I’m not practicing meditation, I can still feel my Host Star in my soul. And if I focus more, I can even feel that there’s a star shining afar in the sky that is connected with me. I can feel the power of the star…”
But soon he felt confused, “Wait… I came here by mistake. I don’t belong to this world, so why would I find my Host Star of Destiny here? Theoretically speaking, if someone dies, that person’s star would gradually dim until it finally disappeared. But the star I felt just now… It belongs to me, the real me…Xiafeng.”
Lucien could not figure it out at the moment.
Also, from the notes, Lucien learned that a sorcerer or sorceress needed to use specific magic to measure other people’s spiritual power. Only those who just broke through to a new level could be detected in a direct way, without using any magic, due to the instability of their power.
Of course, magic that could hide one’s power existed.
After taking a very short break, Lucien opened the notes with great excitement. He couldn’t wait any longer to see what magic spells were waiting for him.
Since he now had the Host Star of Destiny, Lucien could master all three apprentice spells in the School of Astrology, which were relatively powerful among those of similar level from other schools. But for now, Lucien’s power was only enough to cast the spells two to three times before his spirit was exhausted.
Different levels of apprentice were accessed depending on how many spells an apprentice could cast before exhausting his spirit. An apprentice in training could cast up to five spells, while and intermediate doubled that number, and an advanced doubled it again to cast no less than twenty spells before running out of power. That was to say that, for now, Lucien could only use up to five spells of apprentice level consecutively. As for the Astrology magic, probably only three. When feeling exhausted, one needed to rest or take magic potions to help his or her power to fill up again.
The three spells of apprentice level were: Horoscope (basic-level), Eyes of Stars, and Disarming Loop.
Among them, Horoscope was the best-known one. Even the basic level required lots of knowledge to understand the movement of stars and tell the precise moment to tell the fortune. It took the witch several years to barely understand some of them, but her predictions were often inaccurate.
While for Lucien, the most challenging part was to find a crystal ball made of pure and precious Morning-light Crystal. He had no idea where to find one. The witch’s crystal ball came from her family, but it was taken away by the church.
As for the astrology-related basic knowledge, which the witch found very complex, Lucien realized it was basically just celestial mechanics of high-school level, but it was described in a messy way.
However, Lucien could not explain with his current knowledge why a star would have something to do with a person’s fate.
Picturing himself in the future sitting in front of a crystal ball and casting spells, Lucien felt thrilled. If he wore a black sorcerer's robe, Lucien had the impression he would look more like an evil wizard.
“Eyes of Stars”: An hypnotism magic. The caster needed to have the person staring at his eyes.
“Disarming Loop”: Lucien’s understanding was that the magic could use the gravity from the stars and build an about twenty-centimetre thick loop, in which the gravity could be controlled. It was a magic mainly used for defence.
Lucien decided to start by protecting himself ㅡ he would learn Disarming Loop.
Besides, the other spells all required other materials. For example, Eyes of Stars needed Night Star (a type of herb) as its reagent. And almost all the Element-specific spells had similar requirements.
Although Lucien could also learn magic from other schools, his meditation technique would make it easier for him to start with Astrology and Element.
Keeping himself focused, Lucien cast the strange spell in a low voice, trying to search for the power in the hanging string connecting the star with his own Host Star. He felt his spirit started vibrating with the casting. It was possible to feel the gravity from the star!
Hurriedly, Lucien tried to shape his spirit according to the simple magic pattern in the notes. However, before the pattern was created the combination of his spirit and the gravity ceased. Lucien had failed.
After five failures, finally his efforts were successful. An almost invisible loop of soft light fell down on the table, surrounding a previously lit candle. Controlled by Lucien, the candle flame was suddenly constrained, and in the next second soared up in the air. After two minutes of practice Lucien stopped.
Crossing his fingers, Lucien bit his lip thoughtfully. “I’m not able to create a big difference in gravity. The loop might be barely enough for people to lose control of their weapons to some extent, but not strong enough to disarm them completely. After all, it’s just an apprentice spell.
“And it takes me too long to cast it. If I practice more, I should be able to create the loop within three seconds.
“Anyway, it is my first magic.” Lucien was glad that he could master Disarming Loop in such a short time, while it took the witch more than a month.
“The witch explained in the note that the difficulty came from the the fact that she couldn’t understand why would the stars lead to the chaos of the Earth Element, so she had no choice but to practice over and over again without knowing the reason. But I know the reason behind ㅡ gravity. It seems the saying also works here in this world: Knowledge is power.”
Recalling the whole process, Lucien tried to reduce the casting time. “I felt the spell just created a certain frequency and then made my spirit start vibrating with it. What if… I just remember and follow the specific frequency and skip the spell?”
The answer was yes, but it definitely required a spiritual power control of a higher level. After a long time of practice Lucien was exhausted and he had to call it a day, but by then he had reduced the activating time (no casting since there was no spell needed now) to a bit more than three seconds.
“I need more practice tomorrow. And… I’ll try to find some common materials for magic potions…” Lucien’s brain was not working properly due to his sleepiness.
Even if a sorcerer or sorceress didn’t aim at being an alchemist, the process of learning from creating magic potions was still very significant.