The Truth of Magic

Chapter 36: Immortality?

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

If any other player found out that Zhao Xu could enjoy the benefits of the Wish spell, they would protest strongly.

They wouldn’t care about why or how Zhao Xu was eligible to receive such a privilege.

In reality, TC didn’t have any impact or influence on Arthur at all.

People only started realizing this later, and even upper management couldn’t quite explain how these Testing Accounts came about.

Right now, the whole of Arthur was still quite balanced for most of the players, and very few players had received anything that could really break this balance.

That was mostly because the big shots of Arthur didn’t care about the players very much.

Also, all the magic items in Arthur could be manufactured. the only thing that couldn’t be manufactured was an Artifact and the big shots didn’t have extras lying around either.

Even after spending ten years in Arthur in his previous life, he had never seen any player from earth get an Artifact.

Magic was very frightening, but magic was also reasonable. You could understand its scope and effect.

If it said that it could go through something, it really could. If it said that you could be spared from damage, you really would be.

The only magic that wasn’t so clear was Artifacts.

When Zhao Xu heard Antonya’s suggestion, the first thing that occurred to him was for her to give him those 25,000 gold pieces, then he could take that money and start a business within Arthur, and that would be that.

There were players from his previous life who did business like that. It was mostly because the lack of funding made life difficult for most people in the beginning and all the players were so broke.

25,000 gold pieces. If you just added another half of that, then that would be the price of a +6 Intelligence score Headband of Intellect – 36,000 gold pieces.

A +5 Headband of Intellect was only 16,000 gold pieces, so he would have some left. He could go and use the leftover money for two +2 items to increase his ability scores.

But now the suggestion that Antonya was offering him was to only add 1 point to his intelligence. That was way less than +4 or +6.

But it wasn’t really so easy to count these things.

You couldn’t stack ability score items. So once Zhao Xu put on a +6 Headband of Intellect, then even if he found a +6 Necklace of Intellect later, it would be useless.

Only equipment with a higher additional score would be effective.

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But the +1 Intelligence points granted by the Wish spell could be stacked because it was an inherent bonus.

If you wanted to use an inherent bonus to your ability score, you had to read the relevant books for increasing that particular ability score, like the Tome of Clear Thinking, or use the spell, Wish.

But the price of choosing this was immortality?

A Level 9 spell in Arthur had an amazing reputation, and players might never come across one in their entire lives. If they did, they’d go around bragging about it sooner or later, so there was no way that it could be kept a secret.

But Zhao Xu had never heard of the Level 9 spell of Kissed by the Ages that could grant immortality.

That meant that it was a secret spell and there wasn’t any spellbook you could copy it from.

If he missed it this time, then he could wait until he was 70 or 80 years old to die.

Antonya was probably not going to give him another chance to have this. If it was so easy to negotiate with her, then he would want her to increase all of his six ability scores to their maximum by casting a Level 9 Wish 36 times.

Immortality.

After everyone transmigrates, then this characteristic would truly become part of him.

Even the longest living race of Elves had to prepare to see their gods at around 800 years old or so.

After the transmigration, he could just hide in the floating city and do nothing but pretend to be researching magic. He could just continue like this all the way until the floating city got destroyed.

Zhao Xu lowered his head and started thinking about the pros and cons of each option.

Immortality.

1 point of Intelligence.

Most people wouldn’t have much a problem deciding between the two, but this put Zhao Xu in a terrible dilemma.

After a long time, Antonya continued to look at him with a teasing look in her eyes, and Zhao Xu’s eyes slowly started to light up.

If he was going to do nothing all his life, then his life was going to be pointless.

He would rather live his life to the fullest and its most glorious.

Zhao Xu was ready to say that he was going to choose the second option...

But, just when Zhao Xu was going to act as cool as possible about this, he suddenly stopped himself. There was a rather awkward look on his face as he asked an additional question, “Mentor, if I read Tome of Clear Thinking or if I receive the effects of Wish again, can the scores be stacked?”

It wasn’t that Antonya didn’t know about these things, but she wouldn’t tell him if Zhao Xu didn’t ask about it.

This was very important, so Zhao Xu had to clarify this matter.

“No, they can’t,” Antonya immediately said no.

Zhao Xu’s body almost went cold when he heard this.

Unless he was satisfied with only 1 additional inherent bonus point, then if he wanted to increase it, he had to start all over again?

And the 1 point that he had given up immortality to get would have gone to waste?

This 1 point of Intelligence wasn’t even made from platinum gold.

“If you want to increase your ability score’s inherent bonus, you have to cast Wish continuously, and so the maximum is five consecutive Wish spells. Otherwise, everyone would be walking about with 36 inherent points by now,” said Antonya very casually.

Zhao Xu had finally reached a decision, but not he wavered again.

But since things had come to this, there was nothing else he could do.

He looked Antonya in the eye and said, “I’ll take the second option.”

Antonya raised an eyebrow as she looked straight at Zhao Xu and said, “It’s easy to learn Kissed by the Ages, but there’s a limit to how many people are able to receive it. If we want to cast it on anyone, we have to go through a request and approval process.”

“So, if you miss this chance this time, then you might never get the chance again. Otherwise, that old man you saw today, Mocar, wouldn’t have aged to this extent either.”

“He was greedy for the increase in Intelligence that came with growing old, and, after he enjoyed the increase, he should have gone to receive this spell, but he just didn’t qualify for it.”

“So, you really won’t regret this?”

Zhao Xu shook his head.

What he needed was to quickly increase his capability and to level up as much as possible within this one year before the transmigration.

If he was a native character to Arthur, then he would have naturally chosen immortality and he could think about ability later.

But he wasn’t a native character.

Also, Zhao Xu was confident that after he became more powerful in the future, he would be able to fight for the chance to gain immortality for himself.

After some time, Zhao Xu thought for a while longer and finally spoke up.

“I would rather die with a bang rather than live in silence.”

Zhao Xu just said the phrase in Chinese.

He knew that these wizards had many spells that were permanently in use, and many of them would include the spell, Tongues.

That was a spell that could help them to understand the language of other living creatures and helped them to interact with one another.

If Antonya heard these words, the translation would be a little clumsier.

But as long as the meaning was clear, that was enough.

Either he lived with great fanfare, or he died in great glory.

But Zhao Xu really just wanted to make himself powerful so that he could protect his family. As for whether he could achieve anything big or make a name for himself, he would think about that at a later stage.

When his level was high enough, he wouldn’t go out on adventures without ensuring that he had all sorts of spells that could be easily cast, good for defense, able to revive himself, teleport, and protect him from damage.

But he needed to tell Antonya that he wasn’t good for nothing and he had a desire to improve himself further.

So if she had any insane or incredible skills and feats, he wanted them all.

“Then you’d better work hard,” said Antonya with a nonchalant look on her face.

When he heard these words, Zhao Xu felt a little embarrassed.

Why wasn’t her response, “Since you’re so ambitious, why don’t I grant you both?”.

Zhao Xu almost slapped his thigh hard and he cursed himself for being stupid.

It wasn’t that he had the wrong expression on his face. He had shown the wrong person this expression.

For a Legendary Wizard like Antonya, even if her skill of Sense Motive wasn’t at a very high level, she could always use some other spell to increase her skill to a very high level anytime she wanted.

So high that she would be able to see through what he was really thinking about.

He decided that when he interacted with these high-level wizards from Arthur, he had better behave honestly in front of them and stop thinking that he could fool them.

Just when Zhao Xu had decided to stop putting on an act, he saw Antonya raise her hand and point it straight at him.

There were no incantations and there were no spellcasting gestures at all.

Just like the last time, a bright beam of light flashed by.

Everything else remained the same as before in this space.

But Zhao Xu saw the ability scores on his character stats.

Intelligence: 17 (+3) =16 (Natural) +1 (Inherent Bonus)

He really got one more point of Intelligence.

“Oh, by the way, all that talk about having to apply for attaining immortality earlier was a lie. When you reach Level 17, I’ll teach you the spell and you can go ahead and cast it on whoever you fancy.”

1What the hell? Who said female wizards didn’t lie to others?!