174 Boarding (2/2)

When Annick was fully dedicated to his exercises, someone gently patted on his shoulder.

Before Lucien came to check the apprentices, he could not help practicing Brook Meditation in his room a bit first.

The core idea of Brook Meditation was seeking a specific frequency of vibration of spiritual power, which did not have much to do with a specific mediation environment, and thus it could be applied to other ways of meditation as well, including Lucien’s Astrology Meditation and Element Meditation.

After the short period of time of practicing, Lucien found that Brook Meditation was indeed way more helpful than the ancient ways of doing meditation, at least ten times. Lucien believed that, as long as he stuck to it, he would be able to meet the requirement of spiritual power level and soul strength to become a second circle sorcerer.

”Mr… Mr. Evans.” Although Lucien looked quite kind and gentle, Annick often felt very nervous in front of him, ”It’s… almost done.”

”I still have a couple of pages…” said Layria nervously as well.

Lucien was right now in a pretty good mood since he just got Brook Meditation, so he gently waved his hand and said, ”No worries. I know that you three were working hard. Since we’re leaving tonight, you can hand the exercises in tomorrow night.”

”Awesome!” Heidi grinned.

Both Annick and Layria also looked quite delighted.

”There’s still half an hour to ten. Let’s have a conversation.” Lucien sat down in the couch, ”Honestly speaking, do you three feel that the exercises are too demanding?”

”Although all of us feel tired, I think that’s worthwhile!” Annick answered immediately. He could obviously see his own progress within the seven days.

”It’s not too bad… I know that we gotta work hard to gain a solid foundation for learning arcana.” Layria face blushed, ”But if the workload could be reduced a little bit…”

”But if the workload could be reduced a little bit, we’d be more than happy!” continued Heidi.

”The beginning stage is the hardest. In the future, there’ll be more practice and relatively less exercises.” Lucien smiled, ”And when you three become real sorcerers, you’ll find out that the knowledge that you’re learning right now is not complicated at all.”

”Really?” asked Heidi worriedly. ”I’m already trying my best…”

”I believe so, and knowledge is always advancing. I think that, maybe a hundred or two hundred years later, the knowledge that high-rank mages will need to grip is going to be very abstract and difficult, say… something on both micro and macro levels.”

”Is… is it still possible for me to become a knight?” murmured Annick subconsciously.

And both Layria and Heidi almost felt the same way.

Lucien jokingly took a glance at Annick’s slim figure and shook his head, ”Not very likely to happen, I’m afraid.”

The three teenagers all giggled, including Annick.

”We’d better just stick to our own magic path,” said Heidi to her peers. ”You know that the real sorcerers are often very wealthy and powerful in Holm?”

”All right, all right…” Lucien cut in, smiling, ”It’s almost ten. Let’s go to the study.”

...

In the darkness, two pointy boats were moving along the canal, heading for the wharf.

After arriving at the wharf, the two boats continued to go out to the ocean.

Soon, a three-mast sailboat showed itself in the darkness.

Tom turned around and said to Lucien seriously, ”This trip’s probably gonna be tough. Because of the traitor we had, several of our secret routes have already been found by the Church. We need to rely on the back-up plan.”

”What the Church is doing now? What’s our back-up plan?” asked Lucien. He needed to have a throughout understanding of what they were facing there.

”Divine airships… In the air, the Church’s using precious airships to patrol above,” explained Tom, quickly. ”On the sea, there is a regular fleet belonging to Saint Helmet Knights. At the bottom of the sea, there are Kuo-toans who changed their belief and chose to serve the Church. We indeed bought off some Kuo-toans, but they should be on the fire gallows now.”

”Basically all blocked then… Luckily, there’s no radar in this world yet.” Lucien murmured to himself, ”What shall we do right now?”

Tom pointed at the three-mast sailboat not far away from them, ”That vessel belongs to Viscount Wright, and we have a quite solid business relation with him. Thus, we are going into the cabin on that boat.”

”Is that boat safe?” asked Lucien.

”No knight and pastor would really go down into the filthy cabin and carefully check all the smelly sailors and slaves gathering together there. If we’re lucky and careful enough, we should be fine. And I’ll be providing water and food to you all,” said Tom.