It has already been an hour since Nero successfully left the Ascension Camp.

After killing the two guards at the gate, he escaped into the vast forest as quickly as possible.

He wasn't afraid of being pursued by the mortals from the camp, but he feared the vengeance of the magicians. It would be extreme and merciless.

Nero wanted to be as far away from the camp as possible when the main force of the magicians arrived.

He vividly remembered some of the Polykenas from his army, who were capable of detecting living beings and movements from kilometers away. Nero didn't know much about how magic worked, but he knew it was incredibly diverse.

And now, a few days ago, Nero finally learned how to regain magic.

It was both simple and complicated at the same time. He had to torture Gerald severely to extract the necessary information from him, and just to be sure, he also interrogated the Symbolic in the Task House.

Nero learned that obtaining magic was a misnomer. According to Gerald, you were born with it. Either you had it since birth or you didn't have it at all.

The only thing preventing people from immediately using magic was that it dwelled within them like a dormant animal and needed to be awakened. To awaken the magic in his blood, one didn't need much.

You just needed a small stone creatively referred to as an "Ascension stone."

The Ascension stone was a small round artifact that naturally formed in specific places. All Nero had to do was drop a drop of his blood on the stone and then place it in a bowl of some clear white liquid.

In this liquid, the stone would slowly begin to dissolve. After some time, the clear white liquid would start to change color. Once the stone was completely dissolved, one should infuse the liquid into their own blood.

Upon learning this, Nero encountered a problem. He didn't possess an Ascension Stone or the clear liquid.

Unfortunately, Gerald didn't have them either, or at least he claimed not to. So Nero had to find a new way to obtain these items.

Fortunately, Nero recalled a conversation with Koal, where he explained why the children of mortals conceived in the camp were taken away by the magicians. They conducted tests on them for affinity and trained them to become soldiers of the kingdom. What happened to the children who showed no magical aptitude remained unknown.

Nero knew this meant that the magicians had the necessary materials somewhere in their bases, but he wasn't aware of the exact location. Therefore, he participated in an attack on one of the Task Halls to interrogate the Symbolic there afterward. The Symbolic merely confirmed his suspicion and provided him with the information he needed.

Afterward, Nero, together with some mortals, launched a surprise attack on the main base of the magicians at the wall, catching them off guard.

It didn't take long for them to overpower the magicians, either imprisoning them or killing them. The mortals quickly left the premises to participate in other attacks, leaving only Nero behind.

He carefully examined the room. Shortly thereafter, he found a secret door leading to a long corridor.

On the sides of the corridor were various objects that Nero didn't recognize. But among them were the small stones Gerald had described to him. And the liquid was not far away either. As a precaution, Nero pocketed a dozen of the stones and took four bottles of the liquid with him.

Not even half an hour later, Nero found himself in an abandoned house on the outskirts of the Ascension Camp, which he had specifically chosen for this purpose.

He prepared for the Ascension. Of course, he didn't trust Gerald so he took a book from the main base of the magicians titled "Magic - An Open Mystery" by someone named Jefferson Petie.

The book began with a detailed explanation of the process, exactly as Gerald had described it. But here, there were even more explanations for everything. It all started with the introduction of blood:

Stolen novel; please report.

Jefferson described how a certain portion of magic flows through the blood of every person. It was as vital to humans as ordinary blood. However, each person had a different amount of magic flowing through their veins. It all began with ten percent of magic in the blood.

Jefferson explained that children born with less would die within a few hours after birth if they even made it that far.

So, every living person had at least ten percent of magic in their blood, but they couldn't utilize the magic within. He explained this as the result of the absence of a magical heart.

Once a person had more than forty percent of magic in their blood, a qualitative change occurred in the human body.

The heart that Jefferson described as the mortal heart didn't have the power to pump such a large amount of magic throughout the body, so another heart formed directly opposite the mortal heart: The magical heart.

The magical heart was not only responsible for pumping magic throughout the body but also allowed people to gain control over magic.

Jefferson conducted various experiments and discovered that magic was a form of armor,

"The entire space around us is filled with magic. However, this magic is both a blessing and a curse. It presses against us and drains our strength. It consumes our life force. But magic grants us resistance to this pressure. That's why mages with higher realms live longer than ordinary people. They are simply more resistant."

Jefferson explained that a person could have up to ninety percent of the magic in their blood. Children born with more than that suffered the same fate as those with less than ten percent.

However, except this case, having more magic was better.

The more magic flowed through your veins, the easier the cultivation process would be.

Jefferson divided the ranks into different groups, which he referred to as spectra. The first spectrum started from forty to fifty percent magic, and it went up to the fifth spectrum of eighty to ninety percent.

All of this was fundamental for Ascension and the rest of the book.

Afterward, Jefferson finally delved into the Ascension process and described it in great detail,

"The Ascension Stone is a naturally generated artifact. I will later discuss artifacts and the places where they originate, but for Ascension, you only need to know one thing about the stone: It serves as an electric shock that awakens your magic."

He then explained why the stone needed your blood. It needed to attune itself to you and your magic.

After that, one had to wait for about thirty minutes for the stone to fully absorb the magic.

Nero followed the descriptions carefully. After waiting for thirty minutes, according to Jefferson, he should place the stone into the clear liquid.

It would slowly dissolve in it. Jefferson emphasized the importance of this process, as the change in the color of the liquid indicated the person's magical affinity.

Each spectrum had a different color, ranging from light to dark. If you had no magical talent and were below forty percent, the color remained white or turned slightly gray.

But once you reached forty percent, the color of the liquid would turn into a light greenish tone, which would then become a dark muddy green at fifty percent.

In the second spectrum, from fifty to sixty percent, the color was blue.

In the third spectrum, it was yellow, and in the fourth, it turned into a reddish color, eventually becoming brown in the fifth spectrum.

If the color turned black, it meant that you had exceeded ninety percent and were very close to death.

"It's crucial to awaken magic in early childhood. If you perform your Ascension too late, regardless of affinity or talent, your body will deteriorate faster due to the magical pressure, and your lifespan will be drastically shortened. Additionally, magic plays an incredibly important role in human development, and with a late Ascension, it won't have a significant impact, and the body will struggle to adapt."

Nero impatiently waited for the stone to fully dissolve. He anxiously observed the white liquid as it gradually turned gray. He let out a relieved breath when it entered the greenish range.

He had magic!

He had expected it, but he couldn't be sure. While preparing the hose to infuse the liquid into his blood, the color of the liquid suddenly changed to blue.

Then it turned pale yellow and started growing darker until it reached a reddish tint. It darkened slightly further, but then the stone completely dissolved, and the color didn't change any more.

Nero raised an eyebrow. According to the book's description, this meant he was in the fourth spectrum, approximately at seventy-six percent based on the brightness of the red.

It wasn't the best spectrum but above average. Nero was satisfied, although he still didn't fully understand the benefits of the different spectra, according to Jefferson, the higher they were, the better.

Nero was about to start pumping the liquid into his bloodstream when suddenly the pain in his chest intensified, taking his breath away. His vision briefly went black, and his sight blurred.

"No! I'm so close!"

Once again, everything turned black before Nero's eyes, and he felt his life draining away.

"No! Not like this!"

An incredible pain stabbed his chest, but he forced his hands to reach for the bowl. He couldn't see anything anymore, but he had already thrust the hose into his vein and prepared the funnel.

With trembling hands, he lifted the bowl and poured its contents into his veins. Breathing became even more difficult, and he felt his chest constricting.

Suddenly, his entire body burned with a familiar pain. He had experienced it before when he absorbed the black stones. Every fiber, every vein, every muscle in his body seemed to be on fire, and Nero writhed in pain on the ground. But the worst pain was in his left chest.

Nero lay on the ground, breathing weakly.

And then, his mortal heart was at its end and stopped beating. It simply ceased.

But at that very moment, as his mortal heart ceased, his magical heart began to beat.