Close Combat Mage
chapter-327

“Hehe…” With a dark smile, Suo Jia said in a low voice, “My request is that aside from me, nobody else is to sell this Blazing Liquor in Icebound City!”

The brewery boss replied without any hesitation, “Not a problem. As long as you really buy 1000 barrels, the selling rights within Icebound City and anywhere 50km from it belong to you!”

Suo Jia looked at the boss in astonishment. Originally, Suo Jia had thought it’d be hard to get the boss to agree; he hadn’t imagined that the boss would accept the request so happily. However, after some thought, Suo Jia soon realized that even if the selling rights weren’t granted to only Suo Jia, nobody else would sell the liquor there. In that case, there was absolutely no need for hesitation.

Suo Jia immediately pulled out his merchant card and completed the transaction with the brewery boss. He also signed the agreement to transferring the selling rights. After the 1000 barrels were stored into his interspatial rings, Suo Jia left the brewery. These barrels weren’t that large, but wooden barrels about the size of trash cans. They were more like the size of large wine jugs.

Of course, Suo Jia didn’t have enough money. 1000 barrels required a million coins. Suo Jia only had 800,000 at the moment. However, Prairie Fire City was a large city. With his merchant card, he overdrafted 200,000, perfectly meeting the card’s overdraft limit.

Overdrafting was one of the major functions of the merchant card. However, it had to be paid back in full within a month. A single day overdue would mean Suo Jia would be unable to continue hanging around here. After losing trust, Suo Jia’s qualifications as a merchant would automatically disappear. Losing his status was equivalent to losing citizenship in a country, and he would no longer have the right to roam around the Greater Trade Routes.

Suo Jia didn’t dare waste any time with the issue of the overdraft timeline lingering. He directly left Prairie Fire City and rushed towards the 400km away Icebound City at full speed….

This 400km distance couldn’t be underestimated. It wasn’t as simple as just crossing it; within 50km, one would encounter at least 800 waves of magical beast attacks. Basically, this journey was the same as charging through a pile of magical beasts.

Based on Suo Jia’s previous efficiency, a distance of 400km would need roughly a month to cross. But it was different now; with the help of the Diamond Dragon, Suo Jia could cover the distance in only 4 days!

This seemed a bit exaggerated, but it was actually the reality. Although the Diamond Dragon could only maintain its other form for 20 minutes, it could fly over 50km in that time.

The Diamond Dragon could transform twice in a day, thus advancing 100km. That’s why the journey of 400km only required four days to complete. Moreover, this time was also Suo Jia’s training time!

With the Diamond Dragon, Suo Jia no longer needed to cross the distance using his strength alone. Only an idiot wouldn’t use the Diamond Dragon at his disposal. However, after reverting from its combat state, the dragon needed 12 hours to recover. Thus, Suo Jia alone couldn’t possibly advance. If he really did try, he’d definitely die before even realizing it.

Suo Jia sat cross-legged in his tent, frenzily absorbing and gathering information from his meditation. This was obtaining knowledge from the 24 hours of communication between his subconscious and the magical elements. By spending only 6 hours every day, he could absorb all the information from the past 24 hours.

Aside from magic power and spirit power, the most important thing to a mage was knowledge. This knowledge pertained to comprehension of the magical elements. By grasping this knowledge, one could lower the amount of magic power needed to activate magic. Their magic power would become denser, and they’d gain better control over their magic. The magic power’s might would also grow. There were many benefits to this, and it could be summarized as boosting the magic power’s awe in all aspects.

Knowledge was actually comprised of knowing and recognizing. One had to know the magical elements’ habits and characteristics, as well as their unique traits and how they manifested themselves. Only then could one truly understand and learn new magics.

Suo Jia’s current levels of magic power and spirit power had already reached terrifyingly high levels. However, because his level of knowledge was too low, he was currently unable to learn more advanced magics. If he didn’t comprehend them, he couldn’t even grasp them, let alone control them!

As he frenzily absorbed the knowledge, a blue ball of light enveloped Suo Jia. Finally, a sliver of comprehension appeared in Suo Jia’s mind! In that instant, Suo Jia could only sense countless blue glows jumping around excitedly. When he saw these, he couldn’t help but feel a burst of delight.

Suo Jia slowly opened his eyes, and the world before him was now completely different. Although he’d already left the meditation state, Suo Jia could still sense the jumping water elements around his body. He couldn’t see them, but he could still feel this happening. Was this the Magister realm?

Suo Jia felt grateful as he closed his eyes once more and carefully felt around for any changes in his body. His magic power had become more concentrated, and its fluctuations were more powerful. Even his strands of spirit power had become tougher.

Suo Jia joyously re-opened his eyes. Judging from the changes in his body, Suo Jia could ascertain that after so long, he’d finally broken through the Great Mage realm, and become a Magister!

As a Magister, Suo Jia could learn a new ice elemental magic—Hailstone. This magic was just creating hailstones and using them to attack enemies. The range of attack Hailstone had was much larger than Ice Roar’s, and…although Ice Roar’s attack range could be boosted, there was little margin to do so, and so the range was pretty much set. However, Hailstone was different; its attack range could go up to double Ice Roar’s.

Ice Roar’s attack range was basically 10-20 meters, with the limit of 20 meters being extremely hard to surpass. However, Hailstone’s attack range was 20-40 meters. Although it wasn’t as good as Fire Meteor’s 50-100 meters, this was simply a difference in trait. In terms of power, it wasn’t any weaker than Fire Meteor Shower.

Although it is called Hailstone, it absolutely could not be lumped together with natural hailstones. The Hailstone magic was actually thousands of Ice Arrows descending from the sky, attacking all life forms within the attack perimeter. These arrows contained large amounts of freezing air in addition to the amount each Ice Arrow originally contained.

Hailstone magic was a mid-ranged magic. It was not only able to ceaselessly shoot at the enemy, it could also use the cold air to freeze them, and even encase them within ice. The Ice Arrow was a single-target attack, Ice Roar was a small-scale magic, while Hailstone was a mid-scale magic, meaning that ice mages became truly frightening after learning Hailstone. That was when they’d be able to massacre large numbers of enemies.

This 20 meter attack range didn’t refer to attacking enemies within a 20 meter diameter circle. In reality, everything within 20 meters away from the central point of the attacks was shot at. In the end, this formed a circle 40 meters in diameter. After mastering the elementary level Hailstone magic, Suo Jia would have the ability to simultaneously use magic attacks on everything within a 40 meter diameter!