“By all measures inclusive, on average,” I glanced over at Mu Fuxian calmly. “No, I do not claim to be the most knowledgeable, learned, or sagacious being on the planet. If you take out that phone in your vest pocket, you can claim to have that standing yourself, as the information resources it has available are far vaster than any being on the planet can claim in counterpoint. After all, I doubt there is anyone who has memorized the birthdates and names of everyone born in China for the last forty years, which is something you can dig around and get on your phone if you know where to look.

“In speed of thought, clarity of recall, personal breadth of knowledge, flexibility of approach, ability to process information, ease of learning, analytical ability, capacity to concentrate and focus, as well as harmonizing and adapting to different modes of thought, I am number one on the planet.

“I’ve had this told to me by a High Emperor who could touch my mind, so if you care to refute the opinion of a Psychic High Emperor, I’m just going to laugh at you.” They all blinked and stopped whatever they were going to say before they sounded like idiots.

“Typeless magic responds best to pure intellectual ability. The many Elemental Talents of Magery have limited use in the high-end employment of Typeless Magic. Mr. Mok, your own Talent, for instance, is nearly useless to one of us, as Typeless Magic endorses far more Elements of magic than even your Talent can manifest. Your primary advantage is the sheer amount of Mana you can command with it, not the breadth of your spells.

“A single-Element Talent like Lady Xuehua’s is likewise of limited importance, as it basically limits her exceptionalism to one Element, and the others would be of far less power and utility to her. Still important, still powerful, but much better exemplified through traditional Magery than Typeless Casting.

“The greatest Talent you can have as a Typeless Caster is to be exceedingly smart. I am exceedingly smart.”

“You really did invent all the new spells for the Spellhouses?” Mu Xuehua spoke up cautiously.

“I worked many of the Mage, Archmage, and Sage versions out in conjunction with various Emperors, but yes,” I confirmed patiently. “I’ll have you know that it is considerably harder to take the base spells all the way up the ladder than it is to mostly replicate what they do as an Archmage or Sage, too.”

“And you even improved upon the base spells,” Mu Fuxian also added, nodding to himself. “My Adept and Novice spells were at least ten percent more powerful, just as the videos on the internet promised!”

“Does being Typeless help with organizing your Stars and faster Casting?” Mok Fan asked, raising his hand and building an Archmage’s Star Palace of Fire behind himself with commendable speed.

I deliberately turned my eyes on the Fire Belle, and Mok Fan flushed as he realized I could tell she was helping him.

“Yes to the first, to a VERY minor extent. Typeless Stars are all one Element, and you never have to bounce between optimal mindsets to Cast them, varying your approach because of the Mana. Partially so for the second, but Casting is a Visualization exercise, and it caters to an intelligent person.”

I snapped my fingers, and four Star Palaces flared into being at the same instant, transparent Stars haloed by Elemental Mana of Fire, Lightning, Void, and Earth, his four strongest Elements, respectively. They hung there behind me in the air, plainly ready to go off, while all three of my hosts stared at them in shock. It didn’t seem like I drew them at all, but they just flared into existence fully formed!

Which was totally true, but that was what Wizardry with Valence Casting could do. All I had to do was have the spell pre-formed in Valences, and just add Mana. From their standpoint, the spell was instant, but it actually took longer to set it up ahead of time in Valence than to Cast on demand.

“Or perhaps you want to see the Sage Versions?” I asked, and snapped my fingers again.

The four spells behind me exploded in size, flowering as six more new patterns appeared around each of the Star Palaces, forming a Starry Heavens of each of the Four Elements.

It had taken me no longer to Cast that spell than it had the Archmage versions, practically instantaneously.

“You can do that just by being smart enough?” Mu Fuxian asked breathlessly, gazing up in awe at the four waiting spells of the Sage Level, feeling the terrifying amount of power there waiting to be unleashed.

“You can accomplish the same task with a massive amount of practice, too, but being smart reduces the time needed to learn to do so precipitously. Oh, you mean the four spells at one time? Yes, that’s a function of being smart enough to hold all four spell Formations active at one time. Since Typeless Mana doesn’t discriminate or conflict with the Elements, you can allocate it simultaneously between different Elements without any difficulty.

“An Elemental Mage could do something similar, manifesting the same spell four times over in one Element. I will note that you still have to pay all the Mana costs involved to do so.”

I let the four spells dissipate harmlessly back into the Manafield. The expended Mana was being quickly recovered by my Mystic Archmage Talent, so it wasn’t an imposition.

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“That, those were all Tiered!” Mok Fan blurted out in shock, pointing blankly at the empty spaces where the Starry Heavens had been arrayed. “All those spells were Tiered up! How many Soul Remnants did it take for you to do that?” he cried out in dismay.

I felt the surge of his Pendant, and flashed another look at it.

Oh. Well, that would indeed have been rude of me...

I glanced at the Tokens on Noble, but none of the Emperors seemed to have sensed what I just had. Probably because they were just designations of Intent, while his Pendant was tied far more intimately to another True Emperor Beast!

Probably a good thing I hadn’t intruded on it with an examination...

“Having only one Element makes it much easier to focus on improving them via various means, including Tiering. All of my Stars are at plus-three Tiers, with several score at plus-four, and a handful at plus-five,” I informed him. Which was very true, when I had them all at Tier-Six!

He’d managed to Tier up many of his core Stars for each Element, but the only one Tiered all the way was Lightning, and that at merely +1, although he had at least the 49 Adept Stars at +2, possibly the 343 Mage Stars, in that Element.

He had a lot of Elements to focus on, and by relying on Soul Remnants instead of Soul Crystals, naturally he was far, far less efficient in his Tiering up.

From their standpoint, I must have taken on unbelievable levels of slaughter, and invested the equivalent of tens of billions of dollars into my Stars, an impossibly flagrant use of wealth.

On the other hand, I had 16,807 Stars at Tier-Six, some of them even higher, so who was to say I was wrong? Given enough time, I could get them ALL to Seven, or even Eight. It would just take a while, and a LOT of Soul Crystals.

I think I was raising Mok Fan’s anxiety level even further. “Can you combine Elements?” he finally blurted out, with the air of getting a closely-held secret off his chest.

“There are multiple ways to do so, especially at the Sage Level,” I answered calmly, studying him, and he grimaced again. “What are you referring to?”

He flicked his hand, and I saw the draw of Lightning before it faded, but the Mana did not dissipate. Instead, Fire Mana gathered on his other hand, and he drove the Lightning Mana into the completed spell before the Mana dispersed. He wound up with a crimson ball of Fire in his hand, circled by many purple sparks!

My eyebrows rose. “How novel an approach, and so simple! I imagine the timing is a true pain to get down, but once you have it, an extremely easy method of enhancing all the basic magicks!” I turned to the Mu’s. “Do you know this method? It is a very simple method of doubling the power of your spells!”

They both looked startled, glancing at Mok Fan’s pleased expression. “No, this is not something Mok Fan has shown us yet,” Mu Xuehua said softly, and Mok Fan’s face fell again, as he realized he’d goofed up yet again. Mu Fuxian just sighed and shook his head.

I turned back to Mok Fan. “You invented this, Mr. Mok?” I asked, impressed.

“Uh, no. There is a researcher and his team in Shanghai who developed the method, but he needed a very experienced mage to test it and see if it worked,” he admitted hesitantly. “I’ve been practicing with it, trying to get better at it and see how it works with my other spells...”

“And you’re having problems making it relevant to higher-damage combos, because you can’t draw the spells fast enough to harness the extra Element before the Mana fades away, yes?” I asked, and he sighed at my words helplessly.

“Yes,” he admitted grudgingly. “I can pick up the natural effect, but not much more. So, adding Lightning to a Fire spell makes it penetrate armor better, and adding Fire to a Lightning spell means the effect lasts longer and clings to them,” he explained.

“How many Elements have you tried this with?” I asked reasonably.

His face looked a bit awkward again. “Uh, just Fire and Lightning. Earth doesn’t have an... offensive spell...” He remembered who he was talking to a bit late as I flicked up Crystal Shards, the basic Earth Novice Spell, and shot the glittering wedges off into the air.

The Mu’s looked at him with the long-suffering expressions of him proving himself to be a doofus once again, and he could only look awkward at never having bothered to reserve the Spellhouses for himself.

“You can buy the Novice-level, inferior versions from the Hunter’s Guild, you know,” I reminded him kindly.

His shoulders slumped a moment in defeat. That was certainly something he could have, and should have done, but he’d made Mage and Archmage so fast it likely was just something he’d tossed to the back of his mind, using his multiple Elements to hurl out the best and latest spells of all the Elements instead of caring much for the lesser ones. I was actually a bit surprised, as he’d inferred he knew the Novice spells, but then realized it was probably just for Lightning and Fire. By the time he learned Earth, he was likely an Archmage and could mold it as he wished, why would he need the other spells?

“I will buy him a full set for his Elements,” Mu Xuehua sighed, rubbing her brow. She probably thought he’d picked up the spells himself, and had just never inquired about them.

“Demonstrate that technique for me three times quickly.” It was a pure Magery technique, having nothing to do with Wizardry at all, so not something I’d bothered to attempt.

He grimaced, but did so, dropping the spell and executing the reverse version, Fire first and bringing a great lashing chain-and-forked spear of Fire-wrapped purple Lightning into existence. I stared at the interaction sharply, not blinking, and just waved for him to continue.

He repeated each spell, looking at me almost in fear as I stared at what he was doing, trying to judge what I was seeing.

“Ah. There’s some variance in the method between the Elements, but the timing is the key part.” I snapped up another flight of Crystal Shards... except the dozens of glittering diamond-like missiles were all wreathed in crimson and cerulean Ice-Fire, and silver-purple Lightning was dancing between them.

He jumped in shock, seeing three Elements wound about a fourth, and looked at his own little chain-spear of purple Lightning wreathed in Fire in accusation.

I shot the Crystal Shards off into the air, trailing pretty plumes of color, and detonated them about two hundred paces up in a nice glittering show of pyrotechnics.

“Have you tested this with non-core Elements?” I asked him, as I sent up a Laser with Fire, Cold, and Lightning spiraling about it.

Mok Fan’s face grew even longer at seeing me do that. “I’ve tried with Void and Chaos Magic, but Void Magic wouldn’t stick, and Chaos Magic didn’t seem to really do anything... I’m not sure how Summoning Magic or Shadow Magic would react.”

“Meshing Dark Magic to Elemental Magic will no doubt be powerful, but also ferociously corruptive to the Manafield. I will respectfully ask you NOT to do that. You will accelerate the infusion of Dark Mana into our world by an order of magnitude or more if you give it an easy and unblocked avenue to infecting the other Elements.”