The demon invasion? Over. Done. Finito. All 185 hellish abominations were summarily dispatched on the first floor, not a single one escaping Duke's meticulously designed death traps. And the best part? Not a single one of his 'Heroic Warriors' even got a scratch. Duke was practically preening with satisfaction.
But what truly tickled Duke's fancy was the newfound, intimate connection he felt with Karazhan, the very essence of the Mage Tower itself. Through the magic of his system control, he could practically grasp every single detail of the first and second floors. If he wanted to, he could "see" every nook and cranny, every dusty corner, every hidden passage, as if his soul had decided to take a leisurely stroll outside his body, a ghostly, all-seeing eye.
"Ah! What a glorious feeling," Duke mused aloud, a smug grin spreading across his face. "If only my mastery of magic could be so meticulous, so utterly precise. If only I could control the overall situation with such iron-fisted power, dictating the very flow of every element..." He trailed off, his eyes widening.
Control every elemental force inside...
Wait a minute! Control every element?
When that thought hit Duke, it was like a cosmic lightning bolt of enlightenment. A lightbulb didn't just go off; it exploded into a supernova of realization.
Do it when you think of it! That was Duke's motto. He slowly, carefully, injected arcane energy into his eyes, at a pace so gentle his eyeballs could actually adapt without popping out. When he closed his eyes and then snapped them open again, Duke suddenly found himself staring at a brand-new world, a reality painted in pure, unadulterated elemental energy.
It was a world utterly unlike the basic substances that made up reality. This was a pure elemental realm, a cosmic tapestry woven from raw power. The thick walls around him had transformed into colossal masses of solid, yellow earth elements, almost perfectly still, solidified into an unyielding state.
In the relatively empty spaces, where air usually flowed, the situation was a chaotic dance. Duke sensed the wind element, floating almost erratically in the air, mingling with a touch of water element. It simply drifted along the space defined by the earth element and the long, narrow corridor, like a very confused, very ethereal river.
With a mischievous idea bubbling in his mind, Duke stretched out his hand, and a ball of pure fire suddenly materialized in his palm.
In this elemental wonderland, Duke clearly saw countless, initially tiny, pinpricks of light rapidly converging on his hands from all directions. These yellow light spots swelled, growing larger and brighter, until they finally coalesced into a blazing, miniature sun.
It was just a small flame, but Duke felt a monumental sense of accomplishment, a surge of power that bordered on the divine. Just gazing at the fire element, he felt like he was creating a brand-new star. From the humble light of a grain of rice, it gathered energy tens of thousands, even hundreds of millions of times brighter than its original state, finally becoming a dazzling, blinding light that even the naked eye dared not look directly at.
Duke gently closed his palms, then reached out, extending his fingers towards the earth elements around him.
"Fizz Spark."
A very strange, almost comical sound.
Duke discovered he had absolute, god-like control over the earth element. As he pinched, kneaded, and rubbed his fingers together, the earth element his palm pointed to shifted and changed with his every whim. It was like a giant, cosmic lump of clay, allowing Duke to roll it into a perfect sphere or flatten it into a pancake.
Khadgar, hovering beside Duke, watched in utter amazement as Duke stirred the huge stone wall in the air as if he were kneading a giant batch of dough. In that moment, Khadgar completely lost the ability to speak, his spectral jaw hanging open.
In Khadgar's limited understanding, the power of magic was only good for destruction. How could such a thing be possible? It defied every magical law he'd ever learned!
Duke, however, was in his own little world, completely ignoring Khadgar's gaping disbelief. He was still utterly immersed in this rare, exhilarating experience.
By manipulating the earth element in this way, it stood to reason that his power should be draining away like a burst dam. But in fact, when he truly mastered the earth element, Duke discovered that the very power he extracted from the earth element was actually helping him to further transform it. It was like a magical perpetual motion machine, powered by his own genius.
This wasn't just true for the earth element; it applied to the fire element and the water element too.
Duke effortlessly extracted the heat from the water element, and suddenly, huge, slender ice prisms shimmered into existence in the void above Duke's head, like gigantic, floating icicles. And by combining that extracted heat with the free fire element in the atmosphere, dozens, even hundreds, of fireballs of various sizes spontaneously appeared at Duke's feet, bouncing around like very enthusiastic, very dangerous puppies.
"What!?" Khadgar couldn't believe his spectral eyes. Duke was using fire and ice magic at the same time! Didn't these two kinds of magic famously conflict? Using both fire and ice, connecting two opposite elemental realms simultaneously, was simply a suicidal act!
So, was Duke actively courting disaster?
No! Obviously not.
In Khadgar's disbelieving sight, Duke lightly flicked his fingers, combining an ice prism and a fireball, one-to-one, blending them seamlessly into a 'Frostfire Arrow' that possessed both the chilling power of ice and the searing heat of fire.
He gently launched it at a distant wall. The 'Frostfire Arrow' suddenly pierced through the first wall, leaving a bowl-sized burn mark, then, without missing a beat, it punched through the second wall behind it, leaving a gaping hole covered in frost. Finally, with a resounding CRACK, it exploded at the third wall, collapsing half of it into a pile of rubble.
But that wasn't the end of the show.
There were clearly traces of fire burns on the first wall, but within a second, they all transformed into intricate ice sculptures and then exploded into a shower of frozen shrapnel.
The second wall was the exact opposite, with flames bursting out from the ice like molten lava, a fiery eruption from a frozen core.
Khadgar was utterly, spectacularly confused: "How in the blazes is this possible...?"
Duke didn't bother to answer Khadgar. He was too busy talking to himself, a profound realization dawning on him: "I understand why the adept stage is so... limited. That's because an adept mage is like something fixed to the earth, unable to move, passively accepting the power floating around. But an archmage is different. Everything in this sky is used by him, changed by him, born for him, and destroyed for him. Therefore, the archmage is the... master of the entire sky!!"
As the word "master" was pronounced, Duke felt that in his previously lost spiritual world, in the dark chaos where he couldn't find a way forward, a brilliant light seemed to flash. The light was like a single spark that set the entire prairie on fire, splitting into two, then four, and splitting endlessly. In a moment, it illuminated Duke's entire spiritual world, banishing the shadows.
And those infinitely extending flames would eventually warm up his entire spiritual world, chasing away the cold, dark corners!
It was getting brighter and brighter! It was getting hotter and hotter!
Then, the illusion of light in his spiritual world shattered, transforming into pure information that Duke could understand and his trusty system AI could accept.
Countless green lights and characters flashed across Duke's retina, eventually coalescing into a single, extremely eye-catching line of vibrant green text.
"CONGRATULATIONS! HOST! YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY BEEN PROMOTED TO AN ARCHMAGE!"
Duke suddenly realized that this was also a hidden legacy left to him by Medivh. If he hadn't accepted Karazhan, he wouldn't have started the spatial transformation. Without the spatial transformation, there would have been no such profound, hands-on understanding of space.
And without that understanding, he wouldn't have been promoted. It was a cosmic chain reaction, a very elaborate Rube Goldberg machine of magical advancement.
This wasn't something any book could teach you. This was a lesson you had to live.
Only by experiencing it personally, by feeling it in your very bones, by dominating the elements of heaven and earth through countless changes in those elements, could you truly master that power!
"Phew!" Duke let out a long, satisfied breath, feeling like he'd just run a marathon and won.
At that precise moment, a line of ominous red words suddenly popped up on his system prompt: "YOUR SERVANT REGINALD WINDSOR IS IN A DYING STATE!"